https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2015/11/25/the-chess-set-where-form-follows-function/ My name is Jesper Juul, and I am a Ludologist [researcher of the design, meaning, culture, and politics of games]. This is my blog on game research and other important things. Thu, 26 Nov 2015 03:15:56 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2015/11/25/the-chess-set-where-form-follows-function/comment-page-1/#comment-109400 Thu, 26 Nov 2015 03:15:56 +0000 http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/?p=2177#comment-109400 It is fascinating! But I’m wondering: isn’t this just substituting a narrative with another narrative?
It seems to me that if we used to model conflict on politics and war (see the ancient chess pieces) now we tend to model conflicts on games themselves. It is the undeniable new prestige of games in our culture that leads to abandoning the ancient narrative, now indeed superfluous, for a new one. This chess set is telling us that today we recognise a value in playing games because of their nature of being games and therefore we are ready to represent games in our games.
We shouldn’t forget that these pieces are still sings of something, they are not a direct reflection of the rules (the idea that, say, an arrow is in some manner a more transparent sign that a letter is an illusion: an animal won’t be able understand neither of them), but they do symbolize the rules, in the exact same manner a queen used to symbolize a certain kind of political power.
In this sense, this chessboard is really interesting because it reflects our way of thinking about games, and our idea that games are ontologically important. =)

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