opinion | We wanted to play Bunny Kingdom. Gen Con wanted to talk about abortion.
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Timothy William Waters is a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law.
On August 5, Indiana’s legislature approved a nearly complete ban on abortion. Down the road, my son and I were playing the board game Bunny Kingdom. Unfortunately, these things are linked.
We were at the annual gaming convention Gen Con, where this year, over 50,000 people dressed up as Batman or Darth Vader or the same person they were in high school with — and that was fine.
Gen Con supports diverse identities: the convention badges “gamers” or sports ribbons listing the wearers’ pronouns. With many convention-goers dressed as elves, the welcome goes beyond the gender binary: Be that sexy vampire you’ve always wanted to be, or just the person you really are.
Which, for some hardcore geeks, means being conservative. They may like “games” and Donald Trump. They can celebrate the latest release of Magic: The Gathering and the Overturning of Row vs. Wade.
There’s no badge for that identification, and that was fine, but this year Gen Con President David Hope attacked the Indiana abortion bill and threatened to move future conventions elsewhere.
A day after the abortion law was passed, two of Indiana’s major employers, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and engine-maker Cummins, strongly criticized the law and said they would direct their plans for development to other states.
They are part of a trend. Companies are facing pressure to take a position on political issues unrelated to their business. Progressives who have long been skeptical of corporate politics now insist on it. Several corporate leaders have lined up: In 2016, American Airlines, Wells Fargo and the National Basketball Association protested a North Carolina “bathroom” law they deemed transphobic; Last year, hundreds of companies denounced voting restrictions in Georgia and elsewhere.
For organizations facing Twitter-empowered consumers and employees, keeping pace with their politics can be good business. For activists, pressurizing companies helps push their side.
Except not, really. We all lose, because turning markets into a political battleground damages our shared moral economy and damages the non-political spaces that help maintain a civilized, tolerant society.
The shared spaces of civil society loosen the boundaries of deep identities, allowing humans to escape tribal, religious or political isolation. This is true in markets open to all, or in universities that teach diverse ideas, or in places where people can play and learn that winning is not absolute and defeat is possible to co-exist.
Life is not a board game: Everything in our forever essential “now” seems political. But the push for ideological supremacy is self-defeating. Boycotts and corporate transfers can put pressure on legislators, but they can also isolate us from each other.
Despite his earlier threats, Gen Con said after the abortion law was passed that the convention would return at least next year. But if the organizers eventually run away, where will they go? South and Midwest will be mostly off limits. More likely, the convention will go into deep blue exile, leaving behind the Indiana Convention Center—the same hall where I attended the 2019 National Rifle Association convention. This month booths selling 20-sided dice were selling Glocks then. The NRA is returning to Indianapolis in 2023. How does politics improve if the elves leave Indiana to the orcs?
Companies doing politics make sense when there is a real connection to politics. Organizations naturally take positions on the social questions that affect their operations. But activists do truckloads of that excuse: In 2013, Indiana University protested a state constitutional amendment that went far beyond institutional concern by barring same-sex marriage. (Select: I’ve never seen a university object to anti-conservative faculty or students’ anti-laws.)
Gen Con also opposed that amendment and now opposes abortion legislation. Aside from saying that the law will “have a direct impact on our team and our community,” Gen Con does not pretend it is a business decision — ““It only treats the law as unjust.
Maybe it is, maybe not. I don’t know if the community of Gen Con agrees on abortion or something else: The guy playing Galaxy Trucker with us didn’t mention his voter registration.
But what about the women who support freedom of choice who may feel anxious in “The Handmaid’s Tale” Indiana? It’s Gen Con’s business to make them feel welcome – because it’s the convention’s duty to welcome every attendee, including gamers whose position on abortion has been declared inhumane by Gen Con.
The answer is to ensure that our shared space is not dominated by anyone’s priorities. Basic game design: Don’t fix the rules so that only your side can play. Politicizing everything ignores that lesson.
In Bunny Kingdom, players lead competing clans of rabbits that collect carrots. I hate to admit it, but when the game was postponed for the day and we went out in the summer of Indiana where the politics never stopped, my son was kicking me. But there was no card named “Boycott” or “Take Your Bunnies and Leave”. Winning is great, but the main thing is to keep playing.
Maybe next year’s convention includes a ribbon celebrating “General-Conservatives” too much to expect. But I’ll gladly wear one that says “Everyone’s welcome – let’s play.”
