What is the general opinion about "Controversial" game themes?

seems to have some fans.

Any time you get something controversial in a bad way, you'll just be limiting your audience, but if it's clever enough, you might get free advertising out of it which will attract the minority you're trying to sell to.

However, it seems like a poor choice if your goal is to expose a lot of people to a good game. A good game is probably good because it has good mechanics. Good mechanics can probably be re-themed at least a little bit (I can't imagine a terrorist strike game that couldn't just be an anti-terrorist commando unit, or something, for example.) So turning people off the game on purpose will only diminish your exposure in the end. Bad idea if you're looking to convince people what an awesome game designer you are.

If the intent in confronting controversy is artistic, you might not be worried too much about all that, though. I'm a punk rocker and love bratty artists shoving controversial things in society's face. Walmart doesn't agree with me, however.

As mentioned above, the fictional route might be a very good bet. Orcish slaves and Elven rebels infiltrating and destroying a Human castle, or a revolt on the Moon (I'd play ' The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: the Board Game!') would probably sell pretty well . . .

:)

It's not worth it to make it a particularly controversial game/theme. It probably IS worth it to abstractify and re-theme, maybe putting the political concepts into a psuedo-civil war theme?

I doubt you're much of an outlier. There are enough people who bring up points like that when any game comes out :)

I do think the comparison is a little bit off in this case, though, as modern day terrorists have not yet developed the romanticism or mystique that many previous acts of violence have since been shrouded in. Nobody wants to slaughter Jews, but lots of people would love to drive a Tiger Tank. At some point those two things became separate.

I don't think the majority of people are there yet when it comes to--for example-- Muslim Extremists, but of course that's coming from someone who spends their time in America.

I'm not so sure all cultures are so accepting of playing as Nazi's, also. I don't think it's an accident that games with piles of plastic Germans holding guns are now labeled "Ameritrash," while "German" has becomes synonymous with building cities and farms.

:)

The mafia theme is seeming popular in social web games, TV shows and the like. What are your opinions on which mafia sub-topics would be out of bounds for a board game? I am quite certain slave and child trafficking is inappropriate but, what is the view on arms dealings, drug trafficking and assassinations? How does the view differ in parts of the world? Money laundering and gambling, I assume are ok?

I actually created and published a game about mafia, called Kingpin (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/57037/kingpin). The theme is not really suggestive. For example there is no real violence. The girls appearance may be a little provocative, but that is all... We also have this idea for a prison break game, where you play the bad guys (a murderer, a thief, a drug dealer), and none of the people we asked considered this controversial.

I guess boardgames follow the same rules that apply to TV shows. You can use any theme you like, as long as it is tasteful, and as long as it sells ;)

... so why are they consistently not regarded as such? OP's question is very valid, but it would appear absurd in a "songwriter's forum" or a "budding author's forum". Why are people so hung up about board games that intrude on reality? Every other creative medium draws inspiration from the world around us - the good and the bad. I believe it's high time that board games do the same.

As you can probably tell, I have no problem with controversial themes; the execution is all. And I disagree (to a certain extent) about the 'limiting your market' responses above. It's true that publishers are mostly commercial entities and that a controversial subject will have more hurdles in getting to market and thus you narrow your potential choice of publishers. That said, in an industry that is flooded with games, where few ever make a mark, that same controversial subject might just set you apart - and you might find the publisher who recognises this. Or that may be the push you need to go it alone. We self-published 'War on Terror' because we had no other option - and I've never for a moment wished we could have done otherwise.

I'm not advocating the use of controversy as a marketing tactic - setting out deliberately on this path is almost certainly a recipe for failure. However, if you have a good theme idea and a game that explores that theme well - and it just so happens that this theme is controversial... well don't let that put you off for a *second*. And certainly don't - if you have any creative integrity whatsoever - 'dumb it down' as "moonrats vs. space dolphins" or whatever.

Face it, chances of success are incredibly slim. Why compromise the only thing that you have total control over (the creative input) just to potentially raise those chances from "incredibly" to "very" slim?

How controversial is controversial? "Controversial" literally means that there is active, heated disagreement over something (usually because some group finds it offensive). Under this definition, all violent computer games are controversial and possibly all violent boardgames too. Certainly all boardgames with any depiction of the Swastika anywhere on their pieces or in their manuals would class as controversial, since present-day Germans have such a horror of the symbol that they have made it illegal to sell products which contain the Nazi symbol. All fantasy games which involve performing sorcery are offensive to certain religious fundamentalists, and so on...

There are probably even a few people who find "Monopoly" offensive because of its profiteering ideology, or "Scrabble" offensive because it allows 17th Century Scots dialectal words but not the newest hip hop slang.

Personally, I think it's flat-out wrong to make a game with a potentially offensive theme if:
* You don't have a personal conviction that the theme is actually OK, or
* You are deliberately doing it to offend people, or
* You aren't willing to take responsibility for any offence caused

Beyond that, my opinion is going to depend very much on whether *I* find the theme offensive or not (i.e. which side of the controversy I am on).

Specifically in regard to terrorism, I personally think people are by and large pretty inconsistent in what they choose to call terrorism and what they don't. We currently have anti-terrorism laws in the UK which would have made it illegal to support the ANC's struggle against apartheid in South Africa - but I would be OK with playing a game set in apartheid-era South Africa whose point was to plan a bombing operation on a Bureau of Special Security headquarters (example of BOSS methods: torturing a 15-year-old girl to make her give up information on her activist parents).

I'd be less keen on playing the same game if the point was to plan a bombing operation on a major hospital in Pakistan (example of hospital methods: giving sick people antibiotics to stop them dying).

And as another poster observed, hardly anyone would object to a game about planning a bombing operation on a gravity superconcentrator on Titan (example of Titan Megacorp methods: operating graviton reactors, causing wormhole pollution throughout the rest of the Solar System).

Thanks for the response truekid :-)

The original poster seemed to be inviting moral opinions as well as practical ones. I'd say that there is no area of human life which is immune to considerations about how to behave decently, and this includes making board games...

I stick by my opinion, which can be expressed as generic moral principles applicable to any domain:
* If you're going to do something which you know someone else is convinced is morally wrong, you ought to have thought about it and decided that it isn't morally wrong
* Causing offence for the sake of it is not a morally acceptable aim
* Take full responsibility for your choices
* (Otherwise, whether action X is morally wrong depends on what X is)

Wow, what a brilliant, brilliant piece of work on so many levels!

But I wouldn't say the intention was to offend. In a sense "Train" is there to make the player feel that their own thoughtless actions are morally wrong. By contrast, in causing offence, the offended feels that the offender's actions are morally wrong. It looks like "Train" fails in its mission when it offends a player.

(If "Train" was understood as a boardgame for playing and having fun, with the twist revealed at the start, I would consider it morally wrong to sell, buy or play it.)

I don't agree with this view! :-)
If I eat the last biscuit, someone else WILL not get it. But if I don't even really want the biscuit, and eat it deliberately to spite someone else, that's a whole different moral ballgame. My intention matters.

Does that make sense?

. . . that's a good stance. :)

There's enough people who get worked up over things like that, though, that it's an important consideration, especially for a new designer. Do you want a BGG thread titled "This game gruesomely and abhorrently portrays and encourages the exploitation of minorities!" on the front page?

Some might say that any press is good press. Some might not. I probably wouldn't mind!

:D

I have a couple of blog posts about this here on Train, and here and here on King Phillip's war, a game set in colonial America around clashes between Native Americans and European colonists, which some in the Native American community have found offensive.

My basic take is that unless you're deliberately trying to make a statement or provoke a response (e.g. Train), then it's better to avoid offensive topics, just as you'd avoid them in other areas of creative work, particularly if you're trying to attract an audience, which most of us want to do as game designers. However, so many topics, especially those based in history, are unexpectedly offensive, or terribly offensive to a small group, so it's tricky to walk through the minefield.

At some level, of course, controversy helps sales even if it causes consternation. But making use of that depends on how cynical you are.