Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-9rk55 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-22T12:03:30.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Theme Is Not Meaning

Who Decides What a Game Is About?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

Constance Steinkuehler
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Kurt Squire
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Sasha Barab
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
Get access

Summary

At first glance, the popular board game Ticket to Ride seemsto be another link in the great chain of rail baron games, such asAge of Steam, Eurorails, and the1830 series. During the game, the player draws uniqueroute challenges to connect certain pairs of cities – New York to SanFrancisco, Miami to Chicago, and so on.

To complete them, the player must claim a series of tracks that connectadjacent cities while also trying to block opponents from finishing theirown challenges. There are subgoals too, such as having the longestcontiguous rail line and completing one’s network first, which endsthe game for everyone.

Thus most players would describe Ticket to Ride as a gameabout building the best rail service by grabbing choice routes and cuttingoff the competition. However, the Introduction in the rules tells adifferent story:

On a blustery autumn evening i ve old friends met in the backroom of oneof the city’s oldest and most private clubs. Each had traveled along distance – from all corners of the world – to meet on this veryspecific day . . . October 2, 1900 – twenty-eight years to the day thatLondon eccentric Phileas Fogg accepted and then won a £20,000 bet thathe could travel Around the World in 80 Days.

Each succeeding year, they met to celebrate the anniversary and paytribute to Fogg. And each year a new expedition (always more difi cult)was proposed. Now at the dawn of the century it was time for a newimpossible journey. The stakes: $1 million in a winner-takes-allcompetition. The objective: to see which of them could travel by rail tothe most cities in North America – in just seven days.

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
Games, Learning, and Society
Learning and Meaning in the Digital Age
, pp. 32 - 39
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×