Johns, Arkady

Johns, Arkady

Arkady Johns

8 December 2020Review

Dissent Games, 2019; £29 plus p&p. www.disarmthebase.com; dissentgames [at] gmail.com

From the household copy of Risk to the paintable figurines of Warhammer to the eternal Chess, war is a fixture of many boardgame genres. Why then should it be so surprising when a game designer subverts the expected formula of war games: lots of little men being pushed around a board and then falling over?

Jessica Metheringham’s Disarm The Base does just this.

The goal of the game is not to kill people but to disarm warplanes that will be used against…

1 June 2018Review

Verso, 2016; 320pp; £9.99

It used to be that, when someone told me about a way to increase my happiness, I would take it on board without thinking. This book has changed that.

Surveying a broad sweep of history – from the measurement of mood by economists in the 18th century, to our current state where information about individuals is stored on the assumption that it will be useful someday – Davies investigates how happiness has become both a political and an economic goal.

The anti-…