CHI68: DESIGNER DIARY (Copy)
Hi everyone, Yoni Goldstein here, the designer of CHICAGO ‘68. In this first entry I’ll discuss the design and its points of origin. In an upcoming installment our developer, Joe Dewhurt, will weigh in on the nuts and bolts of the card play and how it captures the ideological positions of the various player factions.
CHICAGO ‘68 is a game about the 1968 Democratic Convention riots and political spectacle in the time of electoral crisis.
To set the scene: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr.. and Robert F Kennedy just months prior, along with the unfolding catastrophe of the Vietnam War, set the stage for a turbulent atmosphere in the lead-up to that year’s presidential election. The party bosses had hand picked Vice President Hubert Humphrey to run as their presumptive nominee. Meanwhile, the dovish Senator Eugene McCarthy, a professorial, slightly embarrassed candidate, was struggling to gain traction against the political machine.
For Americans who dreamt of a more just and peaceful world, politics as usual felt untenable and unpredictable (and from our vantage point ahead of the 2024 election, that feeling is certainly pervasive). Of course they weren’t alone; numerous uprisings would erupt that year in Paris, Tokyo, Prague, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and many others. Later historians would call this period the “Global 1968.”
I’ve always been interested in how world historical forces produce transformative social movements. How and what motivates people to imagine political possibilities beyond the reach of institutional ideology? The underlying questions that this design process posed were born in the summer of 2020, when our neighborhoods in Chicago were once again convulsing with improvised demonstrations, riot police (wearing those same powder blue helmets), and the National Guard. This time it was sparked by the George Floyd / BLM protests. But even then, we could all sense the shadow memory of 1968.
It was around that time that I was browsing BGG for games that could express something about our city’s political history. There weren’t many, but I came across Jim Dunningan’s “Chicago - Chicago! (or “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow Where Were You When We Really Needed You”). A design conceived just after the actual event, as much a political thought experiment and reportage as a non-war war game. I was very excited by what felt like a dialogue with the past. In the doldrums of Covid lockdown, I began iterating and personalizing the game. At first it was a tribute to Dunnigan’s work, but then the design took on its own life…
I began by adding a political dimension to the conflict. While the game only covers a three-day span of “convention week”, it does allow for the possibility of a more cooperative organizing effort between the McCarthy campaign and the demonstrators. Done effectively, this may have pushed antiwar Kennedy delegates into a “peace vote,” possibly even a win for McCarthy had it gone to a second ballot. The counter-ballast, of course, has to be Chicago’s notorious “machine politics.” The Establishment can grease palms and manipulate the nomination process (already tipped in its favor) by focusing its dominance on the delegate track. This became one of the two “victory” conditions.
Street riots have a way of producing historical evidence. What drove the public narrative surrounding the DNC riots that summer was an overflow of media. This defines the second victory track: Exposure. Player actions represent decisions that lasted in the historical record, say a particularly effectual sweep of arrests, a memorable speech at a rally, or even a rousing musical performance. All these dynamic events garnered media exposure and influenced sympathies in the public imagination. Likewise, in CHICAGO ‘68 the challenge is not the number of confrontations you successfully resolve, but rather how and when you position yourself for favorable exposure. (In the next installment, Joe will expand how the card system models conflict and exposure points).
I designed CHICAGO ‘68 around the dynamics of these two theaters of conflict. It was my way of thinking through the protests of 2020, the political violence of our era, and the ongoing tensions with the student antiwar movement and the US Presidential campaigns today.
