Can tabletop games reshape the government?

"Play The Game of War," says the monotone voice, as footage of a silver board topped with jagged counters fades into view, "and you will learn how to transform the enclosed lands of spectacular capitalism into the participatory playgrounds of cybernetic communism."

A pair of disembodied hands move three golden cubes into a battle formation. Scattered across the grid are pieces shaped like castles, flags and mountain ranges. As futuristic visions from The Matrix dissolve into a quote, I skim the phrases "proletarian revolution" and "the autonomy of place". The video later explores the theory of "libidinous combat", and it's everything it promises to be.

I am on the website for Class Wargames, an organisation which declares itself an "avant-garde movement of artists, activists and theoreticians." The group has reproduced Guy Debord's board game Le Jeu de la Guerre or The Game Of War - no easy feat considering its creator had all copies of it reduced to pulp shortly before he killed himself in 1994. A short film created by the organisation about the game holds prominent place on the homepage.