Game Lab

Lecturer Mikael Jakobsson, Rosa Colón Guerra (a resident at MIT’s Visiting Artists program), and graduate student Aziria Rodríguez Arce have created a new board game, called Promesa, that more accurately reflects the reality of Puerto Rico’s history and people, reports Maria Parazo Rose for Popular Science. “The game is based on the real-life PROMESA act, which was established by the US government in 2016 in response to the island’s debt crisis, putting American lawmakers in charge of the country’s finances,” explains Rose. “To win, you must settle Puerto Rico’s bills and build up the country’s infrastructure, education, and social services.” 

Rik Eberhardt of the MIT Game Lab speaks with Popular Science reporter Matt Hongoltz-Hetling about efforts to preserve the traditional games of Indigenous people around the world. Eberhardt, who has been providing input on the Open Digital Library on Traditional Games, notes that: “Most games have the biases of the colonizers. They almost never take the view of the colonized.”