The Mechanical Rethoric of John Company
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.57021/artcadia.4810Keywords:
British East India Company, Cole Wehrle, board game, John Company: Second Edition, mechanical rhetoricAbstract
This paper explores the rhetorics of historical gaming in the context of Cole Wehrle’s John Company: Second Edition (2022). Wehrle’s board game translates the conventions of the 19th century novel into its own medium, using its mechanisms to stage the rise and fall of the British East India Company. Its historical tableau presents the workings of the Company, the events of Indian and British politics at the time, and the wider social and economic context in which it was established and operated. It does this through the mechanisms of the game, which evolved and took final form through a long iterative process over many years. The paper will recall some of the elements of the latter process: which solutions and mechanisms did Wehrle finally opt for, and to what extent do they support his argumentation on the subject?
References
Dalrymple, William. The Anarchy (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).
Das, Nandini. „The big idea: why we should study the history that never happened”, Guardian 2023. március 20. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/20/the-big-idea-why-we-should-study-the-history-that-never-happened
Dickens, Charles. Dombey és Fia (Európa, Budapest, 1960).
Fanon, Frantz. A föld rabjai (Gondolat, Budapest, 1985).
Ferguson, Niall. Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (Penguin Group, 2004).
Flanagan, Mary – Jakobsson, Mikael. Playing Oppression The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games (The MIT Press, 2023).
„Game Design Deep Dive Interview with Cole Wehrle”, 2023. január 22. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1993070/12096335
„Gaming the Unpleasant”, 2023. április 19. https://sdhist.com/designer-roundtable-gaming-the-unpleasant/
Keay, John. The Honourable Company A History of the English East India Company (HarperCollins, 1993).
Kennedy, Alexis. Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations: Essays on History, Narrative, and Game Design (Occult Scraps Book 1, 2021).
Rees-Mogg, Jacob. The Victorians: Twelve Titans who Forged Britain (WH Allen, 2019).
Roy, Tirthankar. The East India Company. The World's Most Powerful Corporation (India Portfolio – Penguin, 2015).
Said, Edward W. Orientalizmus (Európa, Budapest, 2000).
Salen, Katie – Zimmerman, Eric. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (Cambridge, Massachusetts – London: The MIT Press, 2003).
Thackeray, William Makepeace. A Newcome család I-II. (Magyar Helikon, 1974).
Thackeray, William Makepeace. Hiúság vására (Európa, Budapest, 2019).
Tharoor, Shashi. Inglorious Empire What the British Did to India (Scribe US, 2018).
Thurot, Dan. „The Anarchy Comes Home”, Space-Biff! 2022. november 23. https://spacebiff.com/2022/11/23/john-company-3/
Wehrle, Cole. „What's all this then?” https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1660524/whats-all-then
Wehrle, Cole. John Company: Second Edition (Wehrlegig Games, 2022).
Wehrle, Cole. John Company: Second Edition. Rules of Play (Wehrlegig Games, 2022).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Gábor Zoltán Kiss
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
