Dead Theorists: A Card Game for Disillusioned ...
By: Michael Gibson-Light - Microcosm Publishing, $24.95
Description: In this turn-based card game, the ghosts of Simone De Beauvoir, W.E.B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault, and Karl Marx have returned from beyond the grave to complete a bit of unfinished business!
Become the specter of one of these four great (but deceased) thinkers as you seek to recruit your last great protege from the ranks of students on one college campus.
But you’ve encountered two challenges you didn’t expect: First, the forces of neoliberalism have been hard at work dismantling the education system. It will be tough to train your final pupil from within today’s profit-oriented university.
Second, you’ve got competition! Other spirits have also awoken and they’re dead set on halting your progress and advancing their own ghostly agendas. Can you train your protege in order to complete your unfinished business - and be the first one to do it?
Verdict: A satirical romp through academia’s best ideas, Dead Theorists: A Card Game for Disillusioned Philosophers and Aspiring Academics (a title I personally, albeit quickly, read completely wrong from the off, paused to consider how such a title could get into print, and then quickly realized I was a complete, illiterate idiot), is actually something wondrously new for all Covid-19, continual same-game-playing sufferers!
Satirical, educational, and a ton of fun for battle-hardened academics and philosophical novices alike, created for 2-4 players, running at about 30-45 minutes per game, and including 81 cards and the rules in an attractive, all-encompassing 5x5x2 inch box-set, from the off it was not hard to learn this new game and, it has to be said, once you are knee deep in it, you suddenly realize that this has to be brought out at the next game night!
Indeed, and what has already been called a love letter to sociology, Dead Theorists might well go all out to lampoon academia, but at the same time it has this sneaky component to it that at the same time you are playing, you are being educated!
Now, the one thing I will say is if you are expecting a huge, thin, long rectangle box to arrive, complete with a huge fold-out game board, and all that used to go with those old school games, once this package arrives you will be like, Wait, what now? Quite easily, and hands down the smallest game that I have ever had in my hands, the box itself is barely 5"x5"x2", but as they all say, it’s what’s inside that counts!
Suggested as being a card game for disillusioned philosophers, aspiring academics, oh and lovers of philosophy, burnt-out college students, game nerds, disenchanted professors, exhausted grad students, self-taught intellectuals, other ghosts (!) and everyone in between, upon each turn, players do what they can to find proof of their success in swaying a new pupil.
How much time do you have to complete this act? Who Knows! Will your unfinished business be completed within this game? Who Knows! Because, as with most all board games in life, it’s all about coming first and completing your objective!
About the Author: Michael Gibson-Light is a professor of sociology and criminology. He teaches classes on the sociology of pop culture, prison labor, research methods, social theory, and more. His research has appeared in The Washington Post, BBC, NPR, The Atlantic, The Guardian, USA Today, and over 100 other news agencies nationwide.
www.gibson-light.com
Official Game Box-Set Purchase Link
www.microcosmpublishing.com