Inclusive Board Game Commercialisation Project

Tabletop gaming and neo-Victorianism have seen a resurgence within popular culture, as represented by the exponential growth of the board games market and the popularity of films and television shows inspired by the nineteenth century, such as Poor Things (2023) and The Artful Dodger (2023-). Against this context, disability remains underrepresented in tabletop gaming. In the few games where disability is portrayed (such as Cyberpunk Red [2019]) it is often rendered in ableist ways.

Furthermore, many board games are also inaccessible to disabled people. Those that are adapted for disabled people are often prohibitively expensive. For example, Large Print Scrabble (2005) is sold on Amazon for £58.85, £36.86 more than the original version.

The "Legless in London" Commercialisation Project (LiLCP) will exploit the current popularity of board games and neo-Victorianism while addressing the need for more accessible games and games that represent disability in more nuanced ways. The LiLCP will seed fund the commercialisation of the board game "Legless in London" (LiL), which has been developed through the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account-funded Inclusive Board Game Project (IBGP) at Swansea University (25/08/2023-25/08/2024).

The IBGP funded Ryan Sweet (RS), the games company Focus Games Ltd. (FG), and a focus group of members of the disabled community (including a member of Disability Arts Cymru) to develop an accessible board game inspired by RS's 2022 book Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture. The result of this collaboration is a prototype for the game LiL.

In this game, all players play as a lower-limb amputee and attempt to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by nineteenth-century London. Characters have individual victory conditions that need to be fulfilled by engaging with different aspects of Victorian society, including work, the marriage market, and the prosthesis industry. The first player to achieve two of their character's victory conditions wins!

The game's accessibility features include QR-code-linked resources, large print, and Easy Read instructions.

Taking LiL to market will benefit disabled people interested in games as they will have access to an inclusive product that speaks to their history and represents disability in an affirming way. The amputee characters players role-play in LiL are not objects of pity, subjects of "inspiration porn", or dehumanised villains but rather varied people with aspirations, choices, opportunities, and barriers to negotiate.

More broadly, board gamers and those interested in Victorian culture will benefit from having a new game that represents an aspect of Victorian life seldom explored in popular culture. The LiLCP will also confer societal benefits as through playing LiL non-disabled players will be encouraged to empathise with disabled people and to reflect on the social barriers that they faced in the past and today.

Importantly, it will also help players to consider disability in positive and layered ways. Finally, the board games industry will benefit from having a new model for inclusivity, in terms of both accessibility features and disability content. The inclusive aspects of the game will be promoted by RS and FG at trade events and conferences.