Síochán Leat, or how a game reminded me of who I am
This is my first post on this blog. I know that. I was working on a completely different first blog post, and then a thing happened: Brenda brought The Irish Game (technical name, Síochán Leat) to work today. This is going to seem like a post about the game, but really, it’s a post about me and why I do what I do, and who I am as a designer. I didn’t think it would be, but there you go.
If you’re not familiar with Brenda Garno Brathwaite’s series of board games, The Mechanic Is The Message, you should familiarize yourself. The most famous game, of course, is Train; the game where you put yellow pawns into train cars and send them around the board, only to discover that you’re sending Jews to concentration camps around WW2 Germany. It’s a game that’s shocking in its surprise, that makes you face what it means to be complicit in something of that scale and truly question what it means to follow orders. It is a game that makes people angry, sometimes. It makes people cry. People don’t react that way to Síochán Leat, a game about an invasion that happened to a small group of people in a small part of the world over 400 years ago. There’s no movie about it, no memorial wall. It’s more academic than personal, to most players.
Brenda asked me to help her set up Síochán Leat. She said she needed me “for something,” and that it would take fifteen minutes. A gentleman I work with offered to help us with the heavy box and retrieval of the game pieces; she graciously rebuffed him. “I’m sorry, but only Irish people can put this game together.”
I guess now is a good time to tell you: I am— my family is— Irish. Completely and fiercely and ridiculously Irish, in the way that only Americans can be. From what I understand, Brenda and I had very similar upbringings, and Síochán Leat is the story of her family’s history. Because of this, it is almost the story of my family’s history, too.
I say “almost” because while my family was also affected by the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, it’s not my mother’s rosary in the cheap burlap pillow that the game rests on, or the spoons I learned to play— they’re Brenda’s. Her family’s history, buried in the scratchy brown earth of the game. You can put your hands into the holes and feel it there; you can try to make out the shapes, like feeling for a broken bone. Tenderly, as if you’re waiting for the earth to cry out where it hurts.
It hurts everywhere.
Next we placed small pieces of knitted fabric that represented grass. Someone asked her how many there were; Brenda said “One for each county currently in Ireland.” She made eye contact with me. “I’ll knit more when Ireland is whole again.” We’d talked about growing up Irish American before, but never had she sounded so much like my mother.
Another guy I work with, also Irish, was helping us place the grass. Brenda mentioned that they say Ireland’s so green because of all of the Irishmen that lay beneath the soil. For some reason I ended up reciting the last verse I know of “The Wearing Of The Green:” Though I care not for the thistle and I care not for the rose, when gray winds ’round us whistle neither down nor crimson shows; but like hope to him that’s friendless, when no joy around is seen— O’er our grave with love that’s endless blooms our own immortal green.
When I was a kid, my mom used to put on records of Irish songs of rebellion every St. Patrick’s Day. There were even measures of drinking, crying, and dancing— but always admonishments to listen to the words, to never forget where we came from or what our ancestors endured. I was never allowed to forget that I stood on the shoulders of men who made Ireland green.
Setting up the board was a delicate affair; the pieces don’t all fit in the squares, which aren’t neat. Everything about this game (about the Troubles, about growing up this way) is messy. The orange blocks are the English. They spell out MINE.
My hands were shaking a little, but I was doing okay. Then Brenda said I should read the rules, and excused herself for an interview.
You should know that the rules are written in a mixture of equal parts English ink and Irish blood. I can’t tell you what they are; you need to read them and you need to play it. I will tell you two things: the English go first, and when I got to the line “And then you displace the Irish in that square” tears stung my eyes.
My grandfather was a millionaire, back when millions meant something. My grandparents were Irish— and Chicago Irish at that. My grandfather was shot on the steps of the Chicago Public Library; they never found who did it, but there’s a park named after him in Elmhurst. Whether it was his Irish political connections, the fact he was president of the Chicago Teamsters or a combination of both, we’ll never know. But the point is, my family had money and love and safety, and then they had none of it at all. My mom was shoveled off to boarding school, rarely to see my grandmother— who was distraught over my grandfather’s death and apparently never fully recovered. I don’t know. My mom doesn’t talk about it much.
But I know this, and staring at these rules, thinking of my family’s history and sacrifices, it came back to me. My mom has often said that, regardless of anything else she may have done, she will always respect and admire my grandmother for one reason: after my grandfather died and my family lost everything, my grandmother took my mom to sell my grandfather’s clothes— because they were the only things left to sell. And on the way to selling them, my grandmother made the whole excursion into a game. To keep my mother happy, to keep her from dwelling on the task at hand. The admiration and love in my mother’s voice as she tells this story can’t be described.
So I’m staring at this game, and thinking about every exquisitely painful part of it, and suddenly it all comes rushing at me: the beauty of this, the feeling of connection with my heritage and Ireland and this line of amazing women, this instinctive need to create games that alleviate or distract from suffering. The path I have chosen in my life, making games, has always seemed almost frivolous to me; my mother has been at times the head of a halfway house for alcoholic men, director of a humane society and animal shelter, a volunteer and an activist and an organizer. My grandparents lost everything for their beliefs. I make games.
But I guess we all make games. It’s in our souls. And my mother always said that I was standing on the shoulders of the people who came before me, but I had never felt them under my feet until that moment.
So. I’m Elizabeth, and I make games. And I guess now we both know why.
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I'm a former photographer, current indie RPG designer, and East Coast girl now living in California. My day job is designing social games with my three game-design heroes at a company called Loot Drop. I like transmedia, storytelling, creator-owned games and art, and love when the three all meet up together. I am kind of a feminist. And definitely trouble.
- Jamie Fristrom: Yep. Sid Meier's throwaway comment about games being a serie...
- Rafu: I feel inclined toward some silly piece of internet-culture ...
- ross cowman: this is so right on. thank you for giving voice to the secre...
- David Berg: Hmm, apparently my technical skills are insufficient to prop...
- David Berg: Interesting! Thanks for sharing that; it's a little counter...
- Elizabeth: Hi David, There's no link and my experience and conversatio...
Beautiful. I’m just a little upset with you for making me cry before work xoxo I love you!
I think I somehow knew something of the sort about you already, just by looking at the games you’ve created. Oh, sure… It’s Complicated is just fluffy TV dramedy stuff, with nothing real to be said in play. Or, you know, not. Even IC, easily the least obviously serious games I know of from you, is about messy relationships. Let’s not forget the game based on the 12-step program you once proposed, or Homecoming. I’ve always had the impression that you don’t design purely out of a love for games, but often from some place of pain. I think that very well may be one of the reasons I’ve still not played one of your games. I respect what you’re doing, and I consider it worthwhile, and I tell myself I want to play those sorts of games, but when it’s come down to it, I think I mostly want escapism from my gaming… Or maybe I just haven’t found anyone I trust enough to play those sorts of games with.
Yeah. You’re right of course, absolutely. I write what I know, and I’m not sure how to write anything else. Perhaps that makes be a bad writer? I’m okay with that.
As to the specific example of IC, it definitely comes from a personal place that I know well. But also, I think the things that are the most humorous have to come with a little bit of pain, as well.
Elizabeth, thank you for sharing that.
I’m also an Irish American, though growing up on the West Coast that seems to mean something rather different. We don’t have as long a history of “Irish need not apply” here. My family handwaved being Irish, I think because being Irish didn’t change them growing up. Or at least my grandfather never let on like it did. So while we were Irish in name — indeed Ryan Patrick Macklin is a pretty fuckin’ Irish name — I was never brought up with stories of my heritage.
(He did marry a Georgia woman of English descent, so that could also be part of it. I don’t really know.)
Sometime in my early twenties, I started absorbing more about my heritage, here and there in history books and essays. Anyway, I could ramble on, but I bring that up to say this:
A gentleman I work with offered to help us with the heavy box and retrieval of the game pieces; she graciously rebuffed him. “I’m sorry, but only Irish people can put this game together.”
And I don’t honestly know if I’d be allowed to put this game together. My eyes are welling up a bit at that.
So if just hearing about that can cause such an emotional reaction, I cannot imagine the reaction I’d have to playing it.
Thank you, again, for this post.
- Ryan
Yes, of course you can.
That means a lot to hear, as another person wondering whether my Irishness “counts”.
Well, that’s certainly a thing.
My father was born and raised in this country, but he’s an Irish citizen. My grandfather was there, a young boy, and saw people shot outside the General Post Office in the Easter Rising. But I don’t think I could set this game up—my family were, by and large, the little orange blocks, though they were never truly English, never coming closer to that than being Anglo-Irish.
And yet, the experience you describe is one that, to me, is very American Irish. My friends and family in Ireland still don’t, at this point, care much about a whole Ireland. Since the RoI started having a real economy, and started doing better than the North, it became a different issue, one of “give them a little time, they’ll come over of their own accord.”
The big exception to this was when I stayed with a family in Monaghan once, and heard the father talk about when he was younger, skipping over the border to steal some petrol. Let no one say that the Irish have short memories, whether things have been forgiven or not.
(Train gets at the other half of my heritage, but again, I’m the descendant of lucky people: my mom’s side of the family, the Jewish side of my ancestry, had already come to this country from Austria and Ukraine, for the most part, before the Holocaust.)
I want to thank you for that, but those words aren’t fierce enough. I did the math for a genealogy question Connor brought from school recently, and though Ireland is only a green 5/8th wedge on my pie, it dominated my upbringing in southeastern Wisconsin.
My birth name is Boyle, and the stamp of Donegal is on the features of my boys, as surely as it was on my grandfather; my maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Higgins, but her Irish identity was tainted by the “good-for-nothing bum of a father” who gave her that name but nothing else.
That a game could be so skillfully constructed–from materials to rules to the foregone conclusion–only reveals the truth about games: they’re a primal invention, as capable of conveying essential knowledge about humanity as any other art form. And surely, if a people could understand that, it would be the Irish, who bestowed kingdoms for a song, and held slander in poetry as dire a crime as rape.
Your Irish mother should be proud of you.
I have no idea what it’s like or what it means to be Irish, but I do get writing games inspired by where you came from.
I did grow up with an deep affinity for Irish and English folk music (for a black kid in the Dirty South). Clannad’s version of “Siúil a Rún” will always make me cry, and the album from which it came will always be one of my favorite albums. I love that games, music, folklore create experiential windows that can make my original statement a little less false.
This post has resonated with me, and I am not even Irish (as far as I know).
With one post, I must now follow and see what other beauty springs forth from such a place.
Yes.
That’s all I got really. Every word I’d this post makes me think yes.
I’m not Irish, nor brought up with much Irish influence – but I wanted to thank you for this post. I can’t help but note how it can serve as another example of how a person can hurt in a way that others can’t fully understand.
That was absolutely beautiful. Painful, but beautiful.
My paternal grandmother’s family were Irish immigrants to America, so my father was the first generation born here. Mine’s the second. This..I cried. I cried because it was like being surrounded by my family.
Thank you.
A gentleman I work with offered to help us with the heavy box and retrieval of the game pieces; she graciously rebuffed him. “I’m sorry, but only Irish people can put this game together.”
Ugh, this may be the first instance of active racial discrimination I’ve ever seen in a game before, and it sickens me. Like any form of culture, games are for anyone who wishes to experience them. The artist doesn’t get to choose her audience, and certainly not based on an arbitrary racial requirement. Which is sad, because it sounds like a powerful game. I just hope this isn’t a path our craft is willing to tread down.
It’s a political game, made to make people uncomfortable, so I get what you’re saying. It’s worth noting, though, that you don’t have to be Irish to play the game; it is an expression of Brenda’s history, and so she prefers that the setup happen with Irish hands. A friend of mine was visiting from England, and she actually welcomed him to play it.
When she set up Train today, she didn’t let anyone help her— not even someone whose father trained guerilla soldiers in WWII.
Wow.
@Elizabeth: Casual racism is still casual racism. It’d be one thing if she only wanted her knowledgable friends to set it up, or if she only wanted to set it up herself, but only people of a certain race are allowed to set it up? That’s…weird, and not at all right either.
I guess it’s cool that she’s willing to let people of all races play it, but it’s kind of depressing that even has to be clarified.
“The artist doesn’t get to choose her audience?” That just sounds bizarre to me. Sure, if you sell your game in thousands of Walmarts, you don’t get to choose your audience. But if you play a fiddle for small groups or individuals, you can choose who to play for; if you paint a painting, you can choose who to sell it to or show it to.
With Brenda’s unique and remarkable hand made boardgames, she certainly has every right to decide who sets them up and who plays them. I have those rights with my Monopoly set, and I didn’t even design it or build it. Surely she has those rights all the more for something she created with such love and effort and soul.
That was brilliant. I’m half-Irish, so I’ll just work on setting up my side of the table I suppose.
I work with games and fiction, while my wife is a social worker who serves as the homeless student liaison for her school district. I often joke that she’s out there saving the world while I’m just the dancing jester. We need those jesters sometimes though, and I love that there are games out there both to distract and to teach.
This was a powerful post. Thanks for sharing it.
Like others, though, I’m bothered by the “I’m sorry, but only Irish people can put this game together.” I understand it on an instinctive level, and she certainly has the right to have that preference, but I can’t agree with it.
Until more of us say, “I’m a human being, therefore this happened to my people,” we’ll keep causing the incidents that led to the making of this game.
I am going to print this post and save this for my children. They are Irish too, but until I read your post I didn’t understand what that meant. I knew Brenda was working on the game but because it didn’t get the press Train got, I knew very little about it.
In my family, the pain of being Irish has been swept under the rug. Danny Boy is banned in the house because it is too painful for my mother’s mother, who had to bury a young son after a freak medical death. My father’s father put IRA fundraisers up in his home, to the discomfort of my father’s mother, who pretended that she did not speak Gaelic and was offended by the lack of personal hygiene the IRA apparently displayed.
We are Boston Irish, which meant gangs, which meant Whitey Bulger, which meant you use that which has been used against you to take what isn’t yours, because what was yours is gone now too. My family diaspora’d across the country in what I always thought was a quest for self-discovery, but I found out recently was actually a quest for “making it no longer worth Whitey’s time to find you.”
But when we traveled to Ireland it was supposed to be anything but bittersweet. We were supposed to pretend that everything was good and tragedy was something that happened long ago, and was over, no longer mattered the way good Irish baking and natural wool sweaters matter. My father brags that his mother spoke Gaelic natively; he glosses over why she was ashamed of that. He wants to protect us.
My sister did some sort of homestay program for a few weeks. She heard about the Troubles that way. We learned on our own what our grandmothers and cousins had suffered. We learned why our families really lived in America (not actually because it’s the number one best country and everyone always wants to live here). They caught Whitey, and as our parents, aunts and uncles watched the news broadcasts we pieced together why everyone spread out in the eighties, why one uncle was in Chicago, one was in LA, one was in Virginia. It wasn’t just the Air Force.
My family still tries to carry this as a secret pain, as something that it will hurt more to talk about than to deny. And for some of them, it’s an excuse to continue to participate in other oppressions, this denial of the crimes our foremothers suffered.
So, thanks. Thanks for making the game, blogging, and Elizabeth, thanks for knowing our history better than I, I need to keep learning from you.
For those upset or uncomfortable with Brenda’s preference to have Irish people set up a game to give a taste of the Irish story, I offer this:
Do you want to have someone sincerely share their story with you? Or first, are you more interested in telling your own?
I think both are fine (somebody has to go first), but it seems like the opportunity of this game is to experience precisely someone else’s story; no matter how universal it may seem, the details still belong to someone else. I think that’s beautiful. I also felt my heart squeeze a little bit at the “Irish-only” set-up suggestion, but I think that is a good feeling, a real feeling, not one that I shouldn’t have to feel. I have a tiny fraction of Irish ancestry, but it’s not about identity politics; I don’t have any idea about the Irish story, and I’d love to hear it/play it/honor it.
yrs,
Willem
Elizabeth–
Thanks so much for writing this. It was great to hear more about Siochan Leat, and more about your story, too.