Yesterday I got into an argument on twitter that ate up a lot of my time & energy, and kinda soured my whole mood. It was an argument about the staid art in 18xx games, and here's the thing: I don't even like the 18xx games that much, and I'm not a huge fan of the art. 1/10

I like it well enough, but as you can tell from Hollandspiele cube rail releases like The Soo Line and the upcoming Dual Gauge, we prefer a very different direction, personally. 2/10

I think some 18xx games are purdy - even while being utilitarian and functional - but again, it wasn't any particular fondness for the games or their art style that got my dander up.

It was the use of the word "accessibility". 3/10

It was the argument that the plain-jane art of what have traditionally been hand-made, amateur games made them "inaccessible", that more broadly appealing art would make them more "accessible", and that it was "problematic" to prefer the "inaccessible" art. 4/10

When I hear "accessible" and "inaccessible" - and especially when accessibility is put forth as a moral imperative, and inaccessibility is problematic - I think in terms of disability and advocacy. Where it is indeed a moral imperative. 5/10

This world we live in is profoundly ableist. An inaccessible society is an unjust society and a cruel one. Making it more accessible, and pushing back against the cultural norms that ignore or minimize disabled voices, is moral and necessary. 6/10

Inaccessibility is a form of systemic oppression. You know what's not a form of systemic oppression? The art for a damn board game.

And, yes, there's another definition of "accessibility" to mean "broadly-appealing to a wider & more popular market". But here's the problem. 7/10

You can't talk about that kind of accessibility/inaccessibility (market appeal), and then conflate it with the context of disability-access. You don't get to go around calling it "problematic" and "gatekeeping" b/c people likes different art than you do. 8/10

That's not even getting into how screwed up it is to contextualize "more appealing" & "sells more copies" as having some kind of inherent moral value, and anything against that is "problematic", when we are all of us living in the hellscape that is late-stage capitalism! 9/10

More I think about this, the angrier I get. You *really* think that a game not being pretty enough & not selling enough copies is problematic, that it stifles diversity?

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you might be mistaken. 10/10