The real world we are living in, whether you choose to label it as late-capitalist, neo-liberal, post-postmodern society, is built to essentially remove connections between individuals and individuals, and/or between individuals and infrastructures. It is very difficult to imagine, let’s say, how a doctor and a hair designer might have a connection (service provider-client relationship). In this game, the challenge will be to use your imagination to the fullest to build a community where its members are densely, tightly, complexly interconnected.
The current capitalistic world especially views everything, including land and people, as commodities. It thrives on the destruction of community. Gentrification is one way such destruction of community works. Gentrification is essentially an appropriation of a place. It becomes commoditized and sold to a middle-class market that has no previous relationship with the place and merely sees it as another choice they can shop for. On the other hand, the people who created the ‘space’ into a ‘place’ are vilified. So they’re no longer necessary, thrown out. In conclusion, gentrification distances people and property from a certain context, or a web of Relationships that is the local community. This game’s core lies in building these "Relationships.” Using imagination to the maximum, the players explore how complex and unexpected such Relationships can be in order to fight against gentrification and following destruction of community. Explaining different kinds of Relationship properties can have to each other is the point of the game, as it is essentially a step forward imagining ‘properties’ not as ‘properties’ of a certain monetary value, but as a building block of a community.
In creating this game, we are indebted to the creators of Dungeons and Dragons, Choose Your Own Adventure and Geocaching, as well as the indie board games The Quiet Year and I’m Sorry Did You Say Street Magic, both led by the discussions players have among themselves and actively seek an alternative way of imagining the world we live in.
