Conservas Game Review

I never wanted to start a review like this, but we here we go: I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways in which board games and capitalism are intertwined. Mea culpa, mea culpa, etc.

Hear me out. I’m not talking about the industry, though lord knows there are plenty of things to reflect on there. Nor am I about to lay down a screed on board games as a heavily consumerist hobby, the “Why I’m Leaving New York” of board game writing. I’m not even talking about the textual settings. Of course Brass is about capitalism, or at least embodies it. If I were going to write about that, I might as well open with “Did you know Monopoly was originally designed as a satire?”

No, what I’ve been thinking about is the ethos of games in general, and how they often reflect two core principles of capitalism. First, there’s the idea of abundance as it exists within the framework of games like Catan. You have to carefully mete out how you use the resources you have, yes, but there is no sense of consuming resources from an ultimately finite pool. If you roll a six, you get some wood, and for as long as sixes are rolled, that will happen. The island itself will never stop bearing…

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