Welcome to BoardGameGate

As previously noted, there is no white male space that SJWs will not seek to destroy:

In the continuing explosion of tabletop board gaming, there are numerous World War II games in which players get to be Nazis. There are American Civil War games in which players take the role of the Confederacy. Some of these games confront the victims of the Holocaust and enslaved people head on; most don’t, though of course they’re right there if players choose to look.

But even poorly designed games with war themes often get the benefit of the doubt. They are generally created and played by people deeply interested in history. They prize accuracy over fun. Most games in this genre are accompanied by extensive reading lists and explanations; players often treat them as a way to learn that is more engaging than just reading a book.

Scramble for Africa was a new strategy game — what is called a “eurogame,” to contrast the genre with war games and more confrontational luck-based American board games. In it, the player would “take the role of one of six European powers with an eye toward exploring the unknown interior of Africa, discovering land and natural resources,” as the game’s description put it.

And with that, Scramble for Africa became board gaming’s entree into the very particular, sometimes confusing and very of-the-moment culture wars of 2019….

Gene Billingsley, the owner of GMT Games, the game’s publisher, responded to the criticism by pulling the game, two months after its announcement. “It’s clear to me that the game is out of step with what most eurogame players want from us, in terms of both topic and treatment,” he wrote in an email to GMT customers….

The board game hobby — especially in the United States — is overwhelmingly white and male, though, anecdotally, that seems to be changing. Mr. Wehrle and Mr. Reuss said they see more women and people of color playing games and attending board game conventions.

It’s as if they are writing these pieces by rote from a very simple script. The moderately amusing thing is that the author of the article clearly doesn’t realize that there have been no less than four Scramble for Africa games published since 1973, and that doesn’t count games