It’s Only a Game

I recently heard of a new board game in development called “The Troubles: Shadow War” a strategy game where players take on the role of the IRA, the British Army or the RUC.

I haven’t played it, and neither has Kenny Donaldson MBE, as the game hasn’t actually been released yet. He has claimed that the game would trigger survivors and compared it to making a game about 9/11.

The game is being developed by a historical wargames company and currently has a 200 page rulebook, meaning that a lot of thought and research has gone into it and also that not a lot of people are actually going to play it.
I could understand him being upset if someone had just printed a deck of cards with Bernadette Devlin and Martin McGuiness on, but still, they’d just be a pack of cards. And there have been games made about 9/11 and the surrounding conflict.

He also says that he’s worried the game could “change the narrative” of the conflict, so maybe that’s what he’s really upset about.

He’s involved with various victims charities, but his impartiality has often been questioned.

Using victims as a way to avoid looking at a bigger picture is something our media does a lot, almost to point of having us self-police, only asking “what happened?” instead of “why did that happen?”
It’s been studied that victims also distort events they were involved in and people tend to believe a victim rather than seem insensitive and question the reasons why something or other happened.

This could be your mate whose lost his job, you feel bad for him and accept his reasoning “they had too many lads, they had to let me go” rather than asking “who said there too may lads? Why couldn’t they pay you?”

It could be supporting Palestine because you’ve seen news footage of a homeless family, not explaining why, just showing you something terrible.
It could be a film about the Holocaust funded by Israel.

We always need to ask why, otherwise we’ll just keep asking “what happened?”