Modern board games appear in a variety of guises as well as locations. A genre no longer dominated by the old classics such as Monopoly, Cluedo or Risk; titles such as Pandemic, Gloomhaven and Catan evidence a widening of the thematic net. You can now find board games relating to virtually any topic – whether that be the psychological traumas of WW1 (The Grizzled), developing vineyards in pre-modern Tuscany (Viticulture), or defending an island home from colonising invaders (Spirit Island). If you have an interest in a certain topic then you’ll likely find there’s a board game that touches upon it.
But it’s not just the number of titles which have increased, it’s also the availability of such titles from the burgeoning game sections of Waterstones, supermarket stores and popular online shopping sites. Additionally, should you visit a local pub, bar or café it’s increasingly likely they’ll host a stack of board games (and even board game evening meet-ups) ready to welcome both casual and hobbyist gamers alike.
As a form of cultural media encouraging people and ideas to interact with each other, board games offer a window into the worldviews and perceptions of their designers, the cultural imagination that influences their work, and that of players themselves. They offer a unique way of looking at how representations of culture, people and history are reproduced, as well as a space for discussing and challenging such representations.
So what is Isle of Skye all about?
First published in 2015, Isle of Skye currently ranks at 255 out of over 125,600 board games on the authoritative board gaming website, BoardGameGeek. Created by two Austrian designers, it is a tile-laying game for two to five players where players take on the chieftain role of one of five Skye clans (MacLeod, MacDonald, MacNeacail, MacKinnon or MacInnes) each aiming to develop their individual areas of land in order to create the best kingdom and become sovereign of the island. Players have to negotiate and barter with each other for tiles to lay in their own land area, earning gold and victory points. Gold can only be gathered through the laying of tiles featuring a whisky cask. Victory points are earned through strategically placing tiles featuring sheep, cattle, brochs, lighthouses, farms and contiguous mountain areas. The game rests on tactical decision making and negotiation.
With critics commenting on its balanced and rich gameplay, Isle of Skye was awarded best board game of 2016 at the UK Games Expo as well as the Kennerspiel des Jahres award (‘expert game of the year’) by Spiel des Jahres (think Pulitzer Prize in the board gaming world). And mechanically it is a good game, but what other offerings does the game provide? What historical readings and interpretations of Skye does it actually produce?
A romanticised, misty-eyed and historically vague representation?
Whilst Isle of Skye takes as its theme Scotland’s clan-based past, it fails to situate itself within any definitive time period. Taking into consideration the dates of the emergence of the five playable named clans and the disintegration of the clanship system as a result of changing socio-economic circumstances across the 18th century, it’s possible to suggest a fairly wide temporal span between 1500 and the early 1700s. Add to this the plaids, brochs and whisky element (the first tax records appear in 1494) and the designers have cemented a very popular historical reading of Scotland and its ‘Scottishness’ (because of course whisky, and very likely illicit whisky, was the only valuable commodity of Scotland during this time!).
However, there is also an air of timelessness pervading the game, with its visually bucolic rural theming and depictions of tartan, bagpipes and happy sheep, easily embracing – and easily embraced by – contemporary stereotypes and enduring representations of both Skye’s (and by wider implication Scotland’s) past and present.
Of course, Isle of Skye is a game, designed to be entertaining and engaging, with a fairly low complexity rating in the realm of modern board games. And whilst the mechanics and tiles do perhaps offer a very faint echo of Skye’s geographical and historical features, it is but a superficial nod, a cursory aesthetic, that could benefit from incorporating more nuanced historical narratives and contexts for both the visual and mechanical elements of gameplay. In the here and now however, regardless of how well it does or does not represent historical imaginings and representations, it does offer an engaging and immersive experience for reflecting upon the histories and narratives it incorporates, allowing us to consider and challenge them in relation to our own knowledge and experiences.
So what? Why critical engagement matters
Whether a game such as Isle of Skye offers fair representation or not, it allows us to reflect on ourselves and others. It matters how people are represented, especially within a form of cultural media which is becoming increasingly and globally consumed. Research into cultural representation (including within literature, art, and on the screen) recognises the power that representational imagery and presented narratives can have on both passive and active audiences, shaping mindsets and beliefs in ways that can have very real and tangible consequences. Such imagery often repeats itself across and between different media types, reinforcing representations that are not always accurate or comprehensive. In this respect, Isle of Skye continues to add to a tapestry of representation that sees Scotland as an ahistorical land of tartan, whisky, sheep, castles and clans. And it’s the only game with a Scottish ‘theme’ within the top 2,000 games listed on BoardGameGeek. It doesn’t appear there’s much else to offer thematically when it comes to Scotland. Tartan ruled the day. But of course, there’s more, much more!
There are superbly rich archaeological records. There are the lives of everyday people and narratives of resistance to social and economic change. There are different geographies, languages, and histories spanning Scotland’s mainland and islands. There is so much material that could offer a different way of seeing, experiencing and learning about parts of Scotland’s past and present, as long as the pervading stereotypes are left behind. But even if games set within Scotland continue to be few and far between, by discussing existing representations it can be possible to challenge perceptions in a lively and engaging manner – around the table with friends and family, at board game meet-ups, through articles and podcasts. Board games should generally be enjoyable (although it’s true they aren’t always!), and our discussions around them have the capacity to be engaging and thought-provoking. Board games can contribute to and challenge our worldviews, including making us think more critically about the cultural representations and media that permeate our everyday lives.
But for now I confess I’m off to drink whisky, trade land with my neighbour and catch up with clan antics.
