Battlestar Galactica and Spimatic Meaning in Games - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 76

identity as a Cylon sleeper agent. Roslin looks around the board at her colleagues,
people who were once her friends but are now her worst enemies.…
Each of these games is based on a diferent television series named
Battlestar Galactica, and each relects a changing perception of space, time,
and performance as they manifest in paratextual board games. Parker Brothers'
1978 Battlestar Galactica ( BSG78 ) is based on the original 1978 television series.
It is a relatively simple game, aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 14,
and with a suggested playtime of 30 minutes. Developed as a family-friendly
game, BSG78 couldn't be more diferent from the complex gameplay mechanics
and rules that must be learned to master Cory Konieczka's Battlestar Galactica:
he Board Game ( BSG08 ), a thoroughly immersive, narratively rich game that
is based on the 2003 Battlestar Galactica remake. Involving player deception,
cooperative action, and simulated combat, BSG08 is expansive and expressive.
A quick comparison of the rule topics helps illuminate the contrast between the
games: Parker Brothers' 1978 Battlestar Galactica rule “book” is a pamphlet, one
double-sided piece of paper. Konieczka's Battlestar Galactica: he Board Game 's
rule book is a 32-page-long tome, augmented with online frequently asked
questions, rulebook expansions, and errata corrections.
It is somewhat misleading, therefore, to directly compare these two games,
as each is designed for diferent audiences, at diferent historical moments.
However, examining each game for its paratextual connection to its antecedent
text reveals much about the way paratextual games have developed into speciic
sites of performative mediation. In the irst section of this topic, I explored how
Salen and Zimmerman's three primary schemas for understanding the critical
impact of games—rules, play, and culture—manifest within and are complicated
by paratextual board games. In this section, I look at speciic characteristics that
help to deepen our understanding of paratextuality in the contemporary media
environment. I want to look not just at some primary schema for critiquing games,
but also at the widely diverse array of contemporary game characteristics that
help explain the contemporary playful media landscape. 1 To that end, this chapter
focuses on two additional principles of paratextual board games as they manifest
within the comparison between the two Battlestar Galactica board games.
Principle 7: Just as a media text takes place within a speciic spatial-temporal
environment, paratextual board games mirror this space/time amalgam via the
board and the pacing of the game play.
Games transport players, giving them a diferent “sense of time and space”:
both BSG series highlight the unique spatial and temporal elements of outer