Draw your battle lines, don your skinny jeans, arm yourself with your craft brew of choice — coffee, beer, or kombucha — and charge: this is “Settlers of Brooklyn,” the deliciously knowing satirical board game in which rapid gentrification is the key to social domination in New York City. Check out the provocative promo video below…
After the brilliant Monopoly parody “Austerity” offered a game-based commentary on the growing rich/poor divide, comedy video producers Above Average have applied their brand of dark humor to the outright colonization of certain urban areas within our cities. Based on classic strategy game “The Settlers of Catan,” players assume the role of “young adults with wealthy parents,” tasked with transforming a Brooklyn neighborhood into a hipster paradise — complete with “used record stores, food trucks, and Urban Outfitters.”
The themes of aggressive colonization and imperialism associated with Catan were not lost on makers of the Brooklyn rendition. A terrifyingly cheerful voice-over explains how the “realtor piece” can be used to move existing residents out of the neighborhood, and local homes are shown being flicked nonchalantly off the playing surface.
The game takes a delightfully passive-aggressive swing at the phenomenon of gentrification in one of New York’s fastest changing districts, and its expansion packs for Harlem and Astoria are indicative of the widening concern over socioeconomic upheaval in the Big Apple. Further additions to the range are surely imminent — San Francisco’s Mission District and Shoreditch in London would also make territory ripe for takeover…
Yours invasively,
The Angry Architect