Elizabeth Joslyn joins PAXsims as a Research Associate

We are pleased to announce that Elizabeth “Betsy” Joslyn has joined PAXsims as a Research Associate for 2023-34.

Betsy is a research associate for the Joint Advanced Warfighting Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses and designer of the microgame Turning Tides, which features competing interests between powers to reduce global greenhouse gases at a geopolitical level. She previously served as a wargaming team lead for a national security think tank in DC, as a congressional liaison for the Department of Transportation, and as a rural aquaculture specialist in Zambia as a Peace Corps volunteer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Chemistry from Bridgewater College and a Masters in Science in Terrorism and Homeland Security Policy from American University. Her fields of interest include cooperation and competition between hegemonic powers, historical wargames, and wargaming for the next generation.

Votes for Women: Growing (war)gaming with new themes

The following article is written by Elizabeth “Betsy” Joslyn, a Research Associate for the Joint Advanced Warfighting Division for the Institute for Defense Analysis. Her game research and design has largely focused on great power competition, mis/disinformation, and risk literacy. She received a Master of Science in Terrorism and Homeland Security Policy at American University’s School of Public Affairs. In addition, Betsy served in the Peace Corps in Zambia working as an aquaculture specialist. She recently joined PAXsims as a Research Associate. 

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In the last decade, the boardgame industry has had an unprecedented surge. The global boardgame market value is currently estimated between $11 billion and $13.4 billion and is projected to grow in just the next 5 years.^[1]

One of the driving elements of this surge is connected to the rewarding sense of community and fun that gameplay elicits. In addition, many of us find ourselves slowly crawling out of Gollum’s COVID-cave blinded by excessive computer screen lighting and desperate for some human interaction. Board games have come to the rescue. 

To match the demand, there has been an explosion of new games from not only seasoned game designers like Volko Ruhnke and Jamey Stegmaier, but also of new game designers such as Kevin Bertram, founder of Fort Circle Games and Tory Brown, who was empowered by Fort Circles to design the game Votes for Women.

A historical view of wargames and traditional table top games shows us that many of these games were made by men for men and usually feature topics, characters and strategies represented in gendered ways.^[2] The recent uptick in game design and game play has given way to more categories and themes, prettier boxes and higher quality game pieces. In many cases, the rules are simpler and there are more offerings that focus on cooperation rather than competition.^[3] The result of these significant additions has opened the gaming community, expanding the player base and inspiring topics and themes within the genre of gaming that have not yet been tapped. Despite the bigger game table, your average gaming organization, club, and community still seem to be male dominated.  

In a recent review of gender dynamics in boardgames, Tanya Pobuda, found that 92.6 per cent of the designers of the 400 top-ranked board games on BoardGameGeek were men. After reviewing 1,974 figures from board game cover art analyses, Pobuda’s analysis showed that male imagery was predominant. Images of men and boys represented 76.8 per cent of the human representation on covers, or 647 images in games such as Great Western Trail (2016) and War of the Ring: Second Edition (2012), compared to 23.2 per cent of the images of women and girls, which represented only 195 of the images counted as seen in games with more gender representation like Arkham Horror: The Card Game (2016) and Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015).^[4]

All this say, there are still more men sitting at the table than there are women. I recently had the opportunity to interview Tory Brown to discuss her game that was publicly released in December 2022. Votes for Women, a card driven game on the ratification of the 19^th Amendment, captures and celebrates the struggle by inviting players to join the suffrage movement, organize support, and campaign for victory across the 48 states in 1919-1920. Tory’s game is highly relevant to the centennial celebration of Women’s Suffrage Movement, but another significant biproduct of a game on women’s rights has appropriately inspired more women to play games.^[5]

During our conversation, Tory noted that “for many people, gaming is an escape. It’s a reprieve from day to day responsibilities; an activity to do with friends and peers. In terms of wargaming, it is not a usually a family activity. However, there are many gamers who want to include their loved ones in an activity they love so much. That being said, their wives and daughters might not be as interested in battling (or sometimes playing) Nazis as much as they are.” Rather than using trickery to get new players to the table, it is so much more effective and rewarding to coax new players with a story that they can resonate with and connect with. 

“People see Votes for a Women as an entry point,” Tory commented. “Dads especially want to play this game with their wives, with their daughters, with their loved ones. In this way, Votes for Women has become the vehicle that men are using to bring the women in their lives to the gaming table as it hits a sweet spot for people that want to play something a little more complicated than Monopoly and want to play a game on an issue that retains some salience or resonance for them. Votes for Women will expose players to core ideas, concepts, and mechanics in a way that can make other games, like Twilight Struggle by Jason Matthew, more approachable and easier to understand because you’ve already mastered these elements at an entry level.” 

Bringing more women into gaming is crucial for two reasons. The first being that diverse players enrich gameplay by bringing different perspectives, and thus creative strategies, to the table. Divergent viewpoints encourage players to challenge biases.^[6] Tory added “being tied to tradition creates a bias that can stifle innovation; yet, there is a language to game play and game design.” Tory’s expertise highlights that understanding that language can unlock the ability to take stories that resonate with people resonate and create an educational and engaged experience via games. In theme with the game, a fresh perspective on game design seems to fall perfectly in line with the vision of the suffrage movement in breaking traditional biases and showcasing the benefit of diverse representation. 

The second benefit is that a diverse gaming demand will inspire more diverse game designs. As mentioned earlier, one of the reasons we see more male game players is typically because many of these boardgames have been made for men by men. As the player base becomes more diverse, the demand for more diverse games will increase, prompting even more games that cover and address topics and themes that have seldom been explored and that deeply resonate with society.

Votes for Women is so much more than an excellent historical and artistic review of a crucial moment in history. It is so much more than an extremely relevant and educational lesson on campaigning strategies and ratification challenges. This is a story that men, women, gamers, and the gamers to be have joined so that the boardgame torch can be carrying to new heights. If it’s not on your shelf, it should be.

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^[1] Jesse Maida, “Board Games Market Value is Set to Grow by USD 3.02 Billion from 2021 to 2026, Increasing Digitization of Board Games to be the Premium Trend,” Technavio, 8 March 2022.  

^[2] Matt Shoemaker, An Overview of the History and Design of Tabletop Wargames in Relation to Gender: From Tactics to Strategy, (Routledge, 2019).

^[3] Jaclyn Peiser, “We’re in a golden age of board games. It might be here to stay. Despite our addiction to screens, the card and table top games industry is thriving,” Washington Post, 24 December 2022.

^[4] Tanya Pobuda, “Why Is Board Gaming So White And Male? I’m Trying To Figure That Out,” Kotaku, 21 May 2022.  

^[5] Tory Brown, Votes for Women (Fort Circle Games, 2022). Fort Circle Games itself is one of the cosponsors of the Derby House Principles on diversity and inclusion in professional wargaming.

^[6] D. van Knippenberg, D., C. K. W De Dreu, and A.C. Homan, “Work Group Diversity and Group Performance: An Integrative Model and Research Agenda,” Journal of Applied Psychology 89, 6 (2004), 1008–1022.