I Guess The Only Winning Move Isn't 'Not To Play' After All...

An increasing number of prominent board game industry and community members have pulled out of an upcoming show over The Game Manufacturers Association’s (GAMA)...

Prices? Unsafe venue? Demand for contributors' first born child to sacrifice to Beelzebub to ensure success of the venture?

...continued silence over Black Lives Matter.

 Oh. *rolls eyes*

...those listed, and loads more, have withdrawn from the show over GAMA’s inability, when even the least sanctimonious corporations and sporting leagues on the planet have managed some kind of message, to make even the most basic statement of support for the Black Lives Matter protests that have been sweeping the United States since the beginning of the month.

Because no-one can fail to genuflect in front of these activists' demands, or it might make some of the others wonder why they did.

You, like some people reacting to this news in the board game scene already have, might wonder why the absence of a statement would constitute such actions.

Well, yes, most of us would, if we hadn't seen corporation after corporation cowering before the mob...

But their silence is more than silence. It’s a refusal to support some of their most important and vulnerable members, who have long had to deal with all kinds of shit just for existing in the board game space, which as you might imagine has (and is still having) more than its fair share of problems with bigoted and hateful community members.

Because it's made of of people.

And people are good, hateful, kind, funny, bitter, peaceful, aggressive, shy, and obsequious. Games reflect life, and there's bigots and haters in games just as sure as they are in life. Of all races. Not just one.

But of course, in today's climate, no corporation or venture will stand against them for long:

UPDATE 6:53am, June 11: GAMA has since released a statement on their Facebook page, cancelled Origins Online and offered to “match, dollar for dollar, any exhibitor, sponsor, advertiser, or vendor who donates the amounts they are owed for Origins Online” to a number of listed organisations.

Perhaps they never devised a game where you paid the Danegeld and found you never got rid of the Dane? They might have learned something...