Board Games and the Construction of Cultural Memory

Abstract

Although much has been written about the potential of games for historical representation and their status as historical texts, there is little research placing games into a broader “cultural memory” framework. In this article, I argue that one unique way games as a medium can participate in constructing cultural memory is by simulating historically situated structural metaphors. To do so, I first introduce the concept of cultural memory and link it to material culture studies. I argue that games can be cultural memory “objectivations,” but in order to fully analyze them in this respect insights from game studies, namely, the meaning potential of rules, need to be applied as well. I then discuss how three board games, 1830: Railways and Robber Barons , Age of Steam, and Empire Builder simulate the structural metaphors identified by Wolfgang Schivelbusch that were used by contemporary observers to understand the experiential changes wrought by the railroad. I close by arguing that this type of research is valuable in that it opens up new understandings of how games influence the way a culture thinks about and remembers its past.