Thursday - December 19th
12.00 - 13.00
From Slavery to Wage Slaves in Settler-Colonialist Board Games in Anglo-America
Mikael Jakobsson
Mikael Jakobsson returns to Tampere University with a report from the Western Empire. He will talk about how board games dealing with settler colonialism in Anglo-America put players in roles to enact mechanics of expansion and exploitation while concealing humanitarian atrocities and indigenous othering. He will offer an interaction critique of a few of the hundreds of games that he and his colleague Richard Eberhardt have played for this study that expands on themes from the recent book Playing Oppression (Flanagan & Jakobsson 2023).
Dr. Mikael Jakobsson conducts research at the intersection of game design and game culture. With a foundation in interaction design, he often approaches research questions through a combination of methods including design exploration, interaction criticism, and participatory design with the objective of strengthening the voices of underprivileged stakeholders. His research often involves collaboration with the game development community. As Research Coordinator for the MIT Game Lab, he is responsible for leveraging the academic research aspect of their projects and collaborations, whether it involves traditional academic knowledge dissemination, educational efforts involving students and practitioners, or non-traditional efforts to influence and impact significant actors. He also teaches classes on undergraduate and graduate level in game studies, game design, and interaction design at MIT and Harvard. He has thirty years of experience in teaching, course development, research project management, collaboration with external funders and stakeholders, as well as mentoring and advising students and professional practitioners.
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