J. Rey Lee

What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? by Claire Dederer November 20, 2017 –   Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, William Burroughs, Richard Wagner, Sid Vicious, V. S. Naipaul, John Galliano, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound,

Thanks for the rec! I was looking it up and found the article it's based on. It's a fantastic read: www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11...

Design Diary: What Did I Just Sign Up For? Writing a book on Catan wasn’t my idea.  When Paul Booth and Aaron Trammell invited me to contribute a volume to a new book series on Tabletop Games, Catan just wasn’t the first thing that cam…

Thanks, Liz!

By the way, I’ve posted two design diaries (with one more on the way) for the book if anyone wants to learn more. Here are the links:

lookingglance.com/2025/06/01/design-diary-what-did-i-just-sign-up-for/

lookingglance.com/2025/08/01/design-diary-exemplifying-eurogames/

I DM'd you 😊

Thanks! My dad teaches in an MFT program, so I've thought about that a bit even though my work is more media and cultural focused.

I definitely think there's a connection between play and attachment theory. I wrote about this a bit in a chapter on The LEGO Movie (different book).

Liz is so easy to talk to! I had a lot of fun and the time flew by!

She probably also lulled me into rambling and saying something strange, but them's the breaks. 🤷‍♂️

Feel free to pick apart my choices and let me know what games you would have chosen instead!

Design Diary: Exemplifying Eurogames Catan is hardly an exemplary eurogame.  I don’t mean that it’s bad.  Catan is a classic, solid design that’s still beloved for good reason.  What I mean is that Catan is a bad exampl…

My 2nd design diary for Unsettling Catan is live on BGG and lookingglance.com.

I talk about why and how I chose six more recent eurogames to compare with Catan. Number 4 will shock you!

Image credit to @semicoop.bsky.social

@pbooth81.bsky.social @aarontram.bsky.social @uofmpress.bsky.social

That's a stance just as much as their press release is. It's not as bad as Rowling's stance, but it still merits critique.

It's telling that CGE is trying so hard to sell HP Codenames as thematic while denying it can have any ideological weight. That's textbook detached design.

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And a quick glimpse suggests that CGE is capitalizing on this nostalgia to sell the wizarding world as a space of playful innocence.

There's a reason it's called "Back to Hogwarts" and framed as a friendly inter-house competition. It's trying to recapture that initial HP feeling.

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For my part, I will always push for more art criticism. Although there's some value to separating art and artist, I want to ask tough questions about art from sketchy artists.

For instance, I've always thought the HP books are far more mean-spirited than the nostalgia around them suggests.

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My boycott has little weight since I wasn't planning to buy or cover any CGE games anytime soon, but I applaud anyone who makes their living on reviews who's willing to stand up to publishers. It can't be easy and it does make a difference.

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Great concept! I certainly found it useful for my dice chapter.

Through the Looking Glass? Alice has a famously curious habit of falling headlong into strange and wondrous worlds, tumbling down rabbit-holes and melting through looking glasses as if slipping into a dream.  Alice’s ad…

The post where I talk about this is: lookingglance.com/2025/04/29/t...

An agent waving to a helicopter carrying a person reading in a bubble. The text reads "You can enjoy reading while taking in amazing scenery."

The agent from the previous image saying "Welcome back! How was it?" The bubble is being opened and the customer inside says, "Err. I got lost in the book and I didn't look outside at all!"

When I talk about #boardgames not being immersive, that's relative to media designed for total absorption. This comic just wouldn't work for boardgames.

*Panels from a chapter in "The I Wonder Bookstore" by Shinsuke Yoshitake, maybe my fav children's book author (though this one's for grown-ups).

#boardgames Before we begin, please prove you’re a human by identifying which squares contain motorcycles.  If you named the three images in the right-hand column, congratulations!  You haven’t quite proved yo…

If you love semantic arguments as much as I do, check out my new series on the language of #boardgames!

This post kicks things off by looking at what naming and defining "boardgames" says about how we think and treat them.

btw, the Captcha is fake so don't bother clicking it.

I'd maybe call that meta rather than mechanism but it's interesting to think about how norms and conventions fit in here.

For sure! I might say something like:

Mechanisms are like operational or programming languages. They create gameworlds that determine what players can do.

Theme is like literary language. It creates a fictional world that determines how players imagine what they’re doing.

One quibble: thinking about mechanisms and theme as grammar and vocabulary is thought-provoking but tricky.

There's an insight here, but I can’t help thinking that theme is more like a grammar than a word bank (as the video’s discussion of literary themes as connective tissue shows).

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Design Diary: What Did I Just Sign Up For? Writing a book on Catan wasn’t my idea.  When Paul Booth and Aaron Trammell invited me to contribute a volume to a new book series on Tabletop Games, Catan just wasn’t the first thing that cam…

Fascinating speculation that Mayfair used colonial imagery because it might feel more peaceful to Americans.

This is a perfect example of the irony of detached design: pursuing peaceful feelings in ways that undermine genuine peace.

Wish I had this video when writing Unsettling Catan.

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Check this out if you’re interested in history in #boardgames!

I love how deeply Cole digs into Catan, a game sometimes exempted from discussions of historical games because of how hard it tries to be ahistorical.

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Design Diary: What Did I Just Sign Up For? Writing a book on Catan wasn’t my idea.  When Paul Booth and Aaron Trammell invited me to contribute a volume to a new book series on Tabletop Games, Catan just wasn’t the first thing that cam…

Don't worry, we've got you covered!

There are a few spoilers here although colonialism won't be directly discussed until the third entry: lookingglance.com/2025/06/01/d...

This is missing from the headline, but this is "to Brazil." This story is not about tariffs bringing boardgame manufacturing jobs to the US.

And yes, I just called Candyland a game!

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Cover of Candyland, a Little Golden Book

This is actually a solid adaptation because it understands that #boardgames aren't just about strategic choices or simulating systems.

Like the game, the characters just go from color to color marveling at how cool a candy world would be. Nothing wrong with that!

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A page from the Candyland book showing two characters at a crossroads with the text "We had a decision to make right away. To the left was a rainbow-colored trail. To the right, a sign pointed toward the Gingerbread Plum Trees."

Thoughts on the Candyland Little Golden Book:

1. It makes the rainbow shortcut a choice instead of pure luck.
2. The characters willfully choose the longer path because it seems more fun.
3. It's fine to choose a suboptimal path for thematic reasons. Kids know what's up.

#boardgames

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Well deserved!

Design Diary: What Did I Just Sign Up For? Writing a book on Catan wasn’t my idea.  When Paul Booth and Aaron Trammell invited me to contribute a volume to a new book series on Tabletop Games, Catan just wasn’t the first thing that cam…

Why would anyone write 150 pages on Catan?

If that seems as odd to you as it did to me, check out the first of three design diaries for Unsettling Catan, now available at lookingglance.com and bgg.

#boardgames #catan @pbooth81.bsky.social @aarontram.bsky.social @uofmpress.bsky.social

Ticket to Ride™ : An Unexpected Journey All aboard the journey of a lifetime! Ticket to Ride is an immensely popular board game where players test their skills in teamwork, strategy, and ...

Honestly wasn't expecting "neurodivergent kid makes connections" to be the crux of this story, but I'm there for it. 🚂

#tickettoride #boardgames @adriennekress.bsky.social

I sometimes wonder whether folks who appreciate the tactility of #boardgames are more likely to prefer physical books.

Unsettling Catan will be available as a free open access ebook, but if that sounds like you, 50% off is as good a price as you'll likely see: press.umich.edu/Books/U/Unse...

I'm not a designer, but I love to see these issues get more attention, especially the cognitive accessibility issue which I rarely see discussed.