Many people equate games with “fun.” Brenda Brathwaite, game designer and Chair of the Interactive Design and Game Development department at SCAD, equates games with interactive experience and education.
Her newest board game design is “Train,” is more of a somber treatise than a traditional game. Through the course of play, Train leads players on a journey allegorical of Jews being transported to Auschwitz. By the way the rules are written, however, players often don’t realize the breadth of each decision and the consequence of each move forward until the end. With the gravity of the topic it touches, Train does more than introduce players to a poignant topic in world history, it redefines the scope of board games in general.
Train debuted at the Games for Change conference in New York City last month. The board is comprised of three train tracks astride a broken window, representative of Kristallnacht, when the Nazi’s smashed the windows of Jewish homes. The three train tracks are the point of play, and players are loaded into the trains and then moved to an unknown destination via command cards.
“Some people approach the game and see it for what it is immediately, and their reaction is no less visceral than those who play the game,” explains Brathwaite, a Savannah resident, in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. “There are those who play all the way until the end and then realize where the trains were going – and it is such a steep drop. People become nauseated. Their faces flush. People have cried. There is always a one-hour period of discussion after.”
“There is then the second experience,” she continues, “one of watching the game being played. I have watched it dozens of times now, and it still nauseates me when people put the passengers in the cars. I am fascinated when one player figures it out – puts it together – and suddenly stops his or her progression toward the end and instead works diligently to thwart everyone else. This player will often immediately request the rules wondering how he or she can subvert the system to save everyone. The dynamics of the experience are fascinating, moving and emotional for everyone, me included.”
Read the Brenda Brathwaite’s full interview with the Wall Street Journal or watch the interview video.
For those who are not familiar with the game development industry, Brenda is quite the star. And, most important to those of us in Savannah, she is working her own projects here, recruiting other respected game dev professionals to the area through SCAD and working with TCCa/SEDA to attract game dev companies.