Games Britannia: "Monopolies & Mergers"

Monopolies and Mergers is one of the Three-part series presented by ‘historian Benjamin Woolley’ about popular games in Britain which ware from the Iron Age to the Information Age, in which he unravels how an apparently trivial pursuit is a rich and entertaining source of cultural and social history.

In this episode out of the three, Woolley traces the impact that board games have had on Britain over the last 200 years. It was the British who developed the idea of the board game as an instrument of moral instruction and slowly made its way to America.

This crusading element in board games is perhaps best exemplified by the best-selling game in history, Monopoly which celebrated wealth and avarice in the wake of the Great Depression.

Now in the information age, board games have evolved to include fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. The British continue to produce niche political games like War on Terror which plays on satire, but mainstream British games designers have moved on to video games.

I watched the episode here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pf0rr