Board games have long been used to simulate war, serving as an aspect of military training. But as researchers at the Rand Corporation would determine, the most effective simulations were not the most accurate depictions of war but the most traumatic experience of stakes. At the same time, the terms in which war has been re-created in games have subsequently shaped how actual war is mediated, conducted, and perceived.

Video games are not unique in their ability to anchor live streams that transform private acts into public spectacles. And there are many streamers who undertake the “work of play” as a way to share gameplay experience without any thought of compensation or growing spectator numbers. But under the auspices of centralized platforms like Twitch, the “work of play” will always become a numbers game unto itself

Framing the practice of history as science is a misleading, even dangerous, conception. At their best, historical works are upfront in the deliberate but subjective selection and evaluation of sources used to build narrative. At their worst, they obscure ideological forces influencing methodology and purport to make objective claims. Games cannot hide their subjective nature so easily, but their procedural nature and their apparent openness to chance may obscure how susceptible they too are to injections of ideological readings. The game can be “played fairly,” and this can suggest that the playing field is neutral.

Cards are played and dice are rolled, token markers are placed and subsequently taken away, all in service to a simulative model that offers quiet moments of contemplation rather than relentless stimuli and vicarious violence. But board games, no less than video games, are synthesized reflections of the society from which they spring. So also encoded in Labyrinth’s narratives are Western assumptions regarding the “true” nature of terrorism, and Western heuristics for understanding the cause-and-effect chain associated with terrorism are meant to be contemplated through play.