Bloc by Bloc pits players against the authorities and aims to use a classic board game format to show the impact of gentrification and the power of protest

In Oakland’s commercial district, a diverse coalition of insurgents relieve shops of goods and light storefronts ablaze. Newly flush with fancy clothes, a group of workers evade marauding riot cops. Nearby, freed prisoners and neighboring citizens barricade the streets surrounding an occupied stadium. The military is expected to arrive in just a few days to decisively crush the rebellion.

This is one of the scenarios that plays out on the board of Bloc by Bloc, a cooperative tabletop strategy game that pits players against the authorities in a struggle to liberate the city. The “insurrection game”, as the creators, Rocket Lee and Tim Simons, bill it, is a not-for-profit project aimed, they say, at undermining imperialist themes in strategy games – and perhaps radicalizing unsuspecting players.

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The most popular games “really reinforce the worst elements of capitalism in our society: warfare, where you re-enact famous battles; colonization, where you conquer and dominate new territories; and industrial expansion, where you exploit for profit”, says Simons, while clutching dice. “When a riot escalates into a popular insurrection and begins to break down all types of social barriers – that’s what this game is about.”

Interest in Bloc by Bloc – which raised $49,000 from more than 800 supporters in a crowdfunding campaign earlier this year – so far seems evenly split between serious gamers and serious activists. Initial feedback, though mostly positive, includes worries about the looting. “The looting card says ‘popular expropriation’ on it,” Simons says. “The loot represents material resources needed in a popular insurrection, plus taking back what’s stolen from people in a repressive society.”

One reviewer declined to cover Bloc by Bloc because it wasn’t “family-friendly”. “That response was so fascinating,” Lee says. “This isn’t a violent game, really, but people are uncomfortable about who the protagonists are and who the enemies are. In Call of Duty, it’s American soldiers killing terrorists; here, it’s regular folks fighting the police. The so-called protectors are in the role of people to be challenged.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘To honor the politics of the game, it had to be available for free as well.’ Photograph: Out of Order Games

We were playing in their office in downtown Oakland, a city sometimes called the riot capital of the United States. The real-life streets outside the window had actually resembled gameplay only a couple of weeks prior to our game, when an estimated 10,000 people marched following the election of Donald Trump. As the night wore on, they responded to police teargas with fireworks and scattered flaming barricades throughout downtown.



That’s no coincidence. In Oakland in 2009, a public transit officer fatally shot Oscar Grant while he lay on his stomach, handcuffed. The ensuing marches, which foreshadowed the tactics and tone of the Black Lives Matter movement, struck Simons with their erosion of divisions between protesters. Bloc by Bloc’s collaborative gameplay, he explained, was directly inspired by that feeling of collective power in the rapidly gentrifying streets of Oakland.

Modular tiles representing discrete districts compose the cityscape. Up to four players represent allied groups: neighbors, students, prisoners, or workers. White wooden blocks represent the police. Simons and Lee spared few expenses producing the components – colorfully illustrated cards and attractive wood manufactured in the United States and Germany – but the source files are also available online. “To honor the politics of the game, it had to be available for free as well,” Simons says.

To reflect the infighting that characterizes uprisings, players may draw cards at the game’s outset that assign hidden agendas: vanguardist, nihilist, sectarian, or social. It’s possible that one player might seize power alone or otherwise betray solidarity. This wrench to the cooperative scenario, Lee explains, is partly about avoiding “quarterbacking”, a term for when players dictate actions to their peers.

“It’s a way to not re-enact power dynamics at the table,” says Lee, who focused on ethics in games as a graduate student at MIT. “You know, like when a white guy tells everyone what to do.”

Players’ key actions, determined by dice rolled and cards drawn, are based on what Lee and Simons consider the hallmarks of 20th-century urban rebellion: looting, barricading, marching, and improvising tools to clash with police.

A pamphlet inside the box recounts inspirational revolts from the last 10 years. There’s Athens, Greece, in 2008, when anarchists raged after police fatally shot a teenager in the countercultural hub of Exarcheia; and Cairo in 2011, when a popular uprising ousted the ruler Hosni Mubarak. “This new generation of insurrections draws its power from participatory, anti-authoritarian practices and a rejection of respectability politics,” Simons says. “Also, they’re all fundamentally anti-police.”

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Especially influential on Bloc by Bloc is Oaxaca City, Mexico. In 2006, teacher demonstrations led to a rejection of the local government and police. An isolated urban uprising, though, does not make a revolution. After six months of hard-earned municipal independence, federal forces violently descended on Oaxaca City. So, win or lose in Bloc by Bloc, the game’s conceit goes, the military arrives at the end. “Oaxaca is where we got the idea for the countdown,” Simons says.

Victory comes at the end of eight turns, each of which represents a day and a night, if players have occupied enough of the designated state districts. After that, in the words of the manual, “a tense stalemate ensues [between troops and insurgents]. The liberated zones of the insurrection remain autonomous and vibrant with potential. Suddenly, it seems anything is possible.”