History of the game....
Back in 2003, we were shouting at the TV. We weren't drunk and confused (actually, that's maybe a lie), we were incredulous and angry.
The invasion of Iraq was imminent and in preparing the public for a war of dubious legality, various government representatives from both sides of the Atlantic were mentioning 'terrorists' and 'Iraq' in the same sentence. It was increasingly evident that 'terrorism' was a handy and powerful tag that any world leader could place on a troublesome spot and ensure the rest of the world would then line up behind them.
A bizarre and macabre game where lying, duplicity and inconsistent morals are the instruments of winning...
No one mentioned how one-time allies can turn into terrorists overnight simply because they stop playing ball. It felt like a game. A bizarre and macabre game where lying, duplicity and inconsistent morals are the instruments of winning and the rules made up by those in the lead.
Wouldn't it be funny, we thought, to make a game based on the War on Terror. We didn't actually think it would be that funny until we had a vision of the Axis of Evil being a spinner in the middle of the board. This summed up perfectly for us the arbitrary labelling of 'bad' and tactical finger-pointing that underpinned world politics. War on Terror, the boardgame was born...
[The Axis of Evil prototype.]
We didn't actually start making a prototype until 2004, but in the summer of that year, we had a working model, rules about 16 pages long and a willing guinea pig (official War on Terror illustrator, Tom Morgan-Jones) to test it on.
That first game had to be called to a halt at four in the morning after 9 hours of continuous play and the end no where in sight. Tom wanted to carry on. We knew we had something pretty special, we just had to make sure it could be finished in an evening. Easier said than done; the following year was agonising...
I'd like to meet:
anyone with an open mind who likes to have fun...
