Heritage, Memory and Identity in Postcolonial Board Games

Michał Mochocki, PhD in Literature and Dr. habil in Culture and Religion Studies, explores storyworlds, narratives and role-plays in games, reenactment, and fiction from the angles of transmedia narratology and heritage studies. His recent book is Role-play as a Heritage Practice (Routledge, 2021). With grant funding from the National Science Center in Poland, he currently runs a research project on historical settings as transmedia storyworlds across literature and games. Outside the Academia, he was a writer and designer of historical larps and tabletop RPG, and a board game design educator with Rebel.pl. Now he works in video games with the False Prophet studio as a game writer, historical consultant, and R&D project manager.

1. An Introduction to Board Games in Postcolonial Game Studies; 2. "Two, Three… Many Vietnams". Anti-Colonial Struggle, Postcolonialism and Counterinsurgency in Historical Board Games; 3. Design Elements in Postcolonial Commercial Historical Board Wargames; 4. Colonialist and Anti-Colonialist Play in Spirit Island: A Ludo-Textual Analysis; 5. Unearthing Ancient Roots? Recognizing and Redefining Mexican Identity through Board Games; 6. The Brazilian (Gamer) Culture through the Lenses of Nostalgia: An Analysis of Brazil: Imperial; 7. Heritagisation and Heritage Conflict: The Finnish Afrikan tähti Board Game and its Change to Contested Heritage, 1951–2021; 8. No Meeples for Scramble for Africa. Online Debates on Playing Historical Trauma