![\"Waka](\"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Waka-topBoite.jpg\")
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Ceux qui suivent mes cr\u00e9ations depuis longtemps savent qu\u2019il y a un genre avec lequel je me sens assez \u00e0 l\u2019aise, et auquel je reviens fr\u00e9quemment – les petits jeux de cartes bas\u00e9s presque exclusivement sur le bluff. Ceux qui appr\u00e9cient le genre, ceux qui jouent \u00e0 mon Toc Toc Toc! ou au Poker des Cafards, ceux qui ont jou\u00e9 dans leur jeunesse au Menteur, ne seront pas d\u00e9pays\u00e9s par Waka Tanka, un jeu dans lequel on joue des cartes faces cach\u00e9es en essayant de les faire passer pour d\u2019autres.<\/p>\n
Cherchant un th\u00e8me amusant qui pourrait justifier le jeu d\u2019une carte face cach\u00e9e en pr\u00e9tendant que c\u2019en \u00e9tait une autre, j\u2019ai pens\u00e9 aux sacrifices d\u2019animaux, et \u00e0 des pr\u00eatres sacrifiant un animal \u00e0 la place d\u2019un autre, esp\u00e9rant que cela passerait inaper\u00e7u des hommes et peut-\u00eatre des dieux. J\u2019ai h\u00e9sit\u00e9 quelques temps entre les temples grecs et les sorciers indiens. Si J\u2019ai pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 les seconds, c\u2019est surtout parce que pumas, aigles et bisons avaient plus de gueule et me semblaient pouvoir donner lieu \u00e0 de plus jolis dessins que vaches, poules et cochons. C’est juste dommage que, apr\u00e8s rapide enqu\u00eate de mon \u00e9diteur – je n’avais pas v\u00e9rifi\u00e9 moi-m\u00eame – il se soit av\u00e9r\u00e9 que les indiens ne sacrifiaient pas les animaux, et se contentaient d’invoquer leurs esprits. Enfin, c’est un jeu familial, on ne pouvait de toute fa\u00e7on pas y tuer de gentils animaux.<\/p>\n
Nous avons donc des sorciers qui, comme dans les histoires d\u2019indiens et de cowboys de mon enfance, dansent autour des totems en chantant et remuant les bras. Bien s\u00fbr, si l’on veut faire venir l’esprit du bison, il faut faire l’incantation du bison et non de la souris, tout comme il vaut mieux \u00e9viter d’appeler un glouglou au lieu d’un aigle.<\/p>\n \u00c0 partir de l\u00e0, le jeu \u00e9tait presque fini, il n\u2019y avait plus qu\u2019\u00e0 mettre les totems en cercle au centre de la table, en regrettant un peu qu\u2019il n\u2019y en ait pas qu\u2019un seul, comme dans l\u2019imagerie du village indien des bandes dessin\u00e9es de mon enfance. L’\u00e9diteur a d\u00fb se faire la m\u00eame remarque, puisqu’il a ajout\u00e9 un joli totem central, purement d\u00e9coratif.<\/p>\n Donc, les joueurs ont en main des cartes repr\u00e9sentant des animaux, et doivent s\u2019en d\u00e9barrasser en les jouant, faces cach\u00e9es, devant les totems correspondants. Bien s\u00fbr, les endroits o\u00f9 l\u2019on peut jouer et les cartes que l\u2019on a en main ne correspondent pas toujours, et les autres sorciers ont tout int\u00e9r\u00eat \u00e0 prendre le tricheur la main dans le sac.<\/p>\n Il y a quelques mois, j\u2019ai publi\u00e9 sur ce blog un long article \u00ab d\u00e9coloniser Catan \u00bb<\/a> dans lequel je discutais de l\u2019usage particuli\u00e8rement fr\u00e9quent et caricatural des st\u00e9r\u00e9otypes historiques et culturels dans les jeux. Cet article m\u2019a valu de nombreux commentaires et a \u00e9t\u00e9, de tr\u00e8s loin, le plus visit\u00e9 de tous ceux que j\u2019ai jamais publi\u00e9 sur mon site. On peut donc \u00eatre surpris de voir, quelques mois plus tard, sortir un jeu exploitant de mani\u00e8re apparemment d\u00e9complex\u00e9e les st\u00e9r\u00e9otypes sur les Indiens d\u2019Am\u00e9rique. Il semblerait que Wakan Tanka soit un terme Lakota, et que les Lakotas aient des esprits mais pas de totems, mais qu\u2019importe – ce n\u2019est un jeu ni sur les Lakotas, ni sur les esprits, ni sur les totems, c\u2019est un jeu de bluff qui exploite l\u2019imagerie europ\u00e9enne du village indien.<\/p>\n Le contrat d\u2019\u00e9dition de Waka Tanka a \u00e9t\u00e9 sign\u00e9 bien avant que je ne r\u00e9fl\u00e9chisse s\u00e9rieusement au sujet de l\u2019exotisme dans les jeux et n\u2019\u00e9crive \u00ab\u00a0d\u00e9coloniser Catan\u00a0\u00bb. Si je devais d\u00e9velopper ce jeu aujourd\u2019hui, je me poserai certainement quelques questions, mais je ne choisirais peut-\u00eatre pas un autre th\u00e8me – en revanche, j’utiliserai certainement ce jeu comme exemple, en le mettant en pendant de Colt Express. Mon article sur l\u2019orientalisme dans les jeux de soci\u00e9t\u00e9 se contente en effet de constater une tendance, de l\u2019expliquer et de montrer ses ambigu\u00eft\u00e9s. C\u2019est d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9ment, et apr\u00e8s r\u00e9flexion, que je ne suis pas all\u00e9 jusqu\u2019\u00e0 une condamnation, et j\u2019ai d\u2019ailleurs pr\u00e9cis\u00e9 dans les commentaires, lorsque l\u2019on ma demand\u00e9 si je continuerai \u00e0 avoir recours \u00e0 l\u2019exotisme, que ce serait certainement le cas. Exotisme historique et orientalisme rel\u00e8vent certes toujours \u00e0 l\u2019origine d\u2019un processus d\u2019objectivation ou de simplification de l\u2019autre, mais les univers imaginaires qu\u2019ils cr\u00e9ent deviennent parfois des r\u00e9f\u00e9rences culturelles ayant leur propre coh\u00e9rence, plus ou moins ind\u00e9pendantes de leur sujet d\u2019origine. Bref, l\u2019univers de mon jeu n\u2019a rien de commun avec celui des indiens d\u2019Am\u00e9rique, dont je ne connais d\u2019ailleurs pas grand chose, et tout avec les bandes dessin\u00e9es de mon enfance, dont j\u2019ai un souvenir bien pr\u00e9cis, et qui donnaient d\u2019ailleurs des indiens d\u2019Am\u00e9rique une image certainement fausse, mais tr\u00e8s positive.<\/p>\n Il serait d\u2019ailleurs int\u00e9ressant de se demander pourquoi il n\u2019y a pas, en Europe et tout particuli\u00e8rement en France, de racisme \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9gard des indiens d\u2019Am\u00e9rique, dont nous avons une image tr\u00e8s caricaturale mais syst\u00e9matiquement positive, et ce depuis le XIX\u00e8me si\u00e8cle. Bien s\u00fbr, on peut r\u00e9pondre par une boutade en disant que c\u2019est parce que nous n\u2019avons pas d\u2019indiens, mais il y sans doute plus que cela. D\u2019une part, nous n\u2019avons pas vraiment conscience qu\u2019il y a encore des indiens en Am\u00e9rique, et ils sont donc per\u00e7us comme des figures historiques plus que comme des \u00e9trangers. Surtout, les indiens des Plaines tels qu\u2019ils ont \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9crits aux XVIII\u00e8me et XIX\u00e8me si\u00e8cles ont servi de mod\u00e8le, en France mais aussi en Allemagne, \u00e0 la mani\u00e8re dont nous avons construit l\u2019imaginaire fantasm\u00e9 de nos origines avant la conqu\u00eate romaine – les villages Gaulois des images d\u2019\u00c9pinal, comme celui d\u2019Ast\u00e9rix, avec leur chef et leur druide, ont \u00e9t\u00e9 construits sur le mod\u00e8le, \u00e9galement fantasm\u00e9, du village indien avec son chef et son sorcier. Les Indiens ont donc toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 pour nous les gentils, et les cow-boys les m\u00e9chants. Se moquer des Indiens, c\u2019est un peu se moquer de nos propres anc\u00eatres – quelque chose que l\u2019on fait volontiers, mais jamais m\u00e9chamment (voir sur ce point cet autre post, plus r\u00e9cent<\/a>)<\/p>\n Mon prototype s\u2019appelait Wakan Tanka, mot Lakota pour le grand esprit, mais le titre est devenu Waka Tanka pour \u00e9viter la confusion avec un autre excellent jeu, Wakanda, de mon ami Charles Chevalier. Les illustrations de Waka Tanka ont \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9alis\u00e9es par David Cochard, un ami avec qui je n\u2019avais plus travaill\u00e9 depuis Key Largo, et qui a fait un travail exceptionnel, surtout pour un petit jeu sans pr\u00e9tention comme celui-ci. J\u2019aime tout particuli\u00e8rement les cartes d\u2019incantation, avec les sombres silhouettes d\u2019animaux en arri\u00e8re plan. La mignonne petite souris, moins inqui\u00e9tante que les autres, est d\u2019ailleurs une id\u00e9e de David pour la carte maudite. Elle n\u2019a pas l\u2019air bien inqui\u00e9tante, mais c\u2019est la carte dont il est le plus difficile de se d\u00e9barrasser, car un shaman digne de ce nom n\u2019aurait pas bien l\u2019air s\u00e9rieux en invoquant, devant tout le village, l\u2019esprit d\u2019une ridicule petite souris.<\/p>\n Waka Tanka<\/strong><\/span> If you\u2019ve followed me for some time, you know there is a genre I like playing, and to which as a designer I am often coming back, light card games based only on bluff. If you have played my Knock Knock!, and may be Letters of Marque, or if you\u2019ve played Skull or Cockroach Poker, or even only if you\u2019ve played Bullshit as kid, you might enjoy Waka Tanka, another game in which cards are played face down and are not always what they pretend to be. <\/em><\/p>\n When I was thinking of fun themes for a bluffing game, I came upon the idea of animal sacrifice, and of priests slaughtering the wrong animal hoping that men and may be even gods, would not notice. I hesitated between ancient Greek temples and American Indian shamans. I choose the latter because cougars, eagles and bison are sexier than cows, hens and pigs, and would make for much nicer graphics. My publisher made a very fast enquiry and found out that Plains indians didn’t sacrifice animals, but only summoned their spirits – this makes the game’s theme a bit less fun, but anyway, we probably could not have killed cute animals in a light family game, no matter whether the sacrificer was Greek or Indian. So we have wizards who, like in the cow-boys and Indians comics I read as a teenager, dance around the totem pole and making ample arm gestures.Of course, since this is where the mechanics fit in the theme, a wizard lacking the right animal card might try to invoke a turkey cock instead of an eagle, a groundhog instead of a bear. Once I had this storyline, the game was almost done \u2013 I just had to chose six animals and place six totems in the center of the table, regretting a bit that there was not only one, like in my childhood\u2019s comics.The publisher must have though the same when he added a nice central cardboard totem, of no real use in the actual game. Anyway, players have animal cards in hand, and must discard them in front of the corresponding totems. Of course, the places where one can play and cards one has in hand don\u2019t always fit. Cheating is often the only way to get rid of cards, but the other sorcerers will try to catch the cheater red-handed.<\/em><\/p>\n A few months ago, I\u2019ve published on this blog a long article about \u201cpostcolonial Catan<\/a>\u201d in which I discussed the frequent and caricatural use of cultural and historical stereotypes in games. This article was much discussed, and is still, by far, the most visited on my website. Some might be surprised to see, a few months later, a game of mine making an apparently careless use of stereotypes about Native Americans, even choosing an exotic sounding name without trying to see what it exactly means. Wakan Tanka is a Lakota expression for a more or less unique great spirit, and\u00a0 Lakota have animal spirits but no totem poles \u2013 but anyway, this is not a game about Lakotas, about animal spirits or about totem poles \u2013 it\u2019s a light bluffing game using the very European image of the Indian village elaborated in comics from the sixties and seventies, whose meaning here is a bit different from what it is in the US. The publishing contract for Wakan Tanka was signed long before I started thinking seriously of exoticism in games and I wrote the postcolonial Catan blogpost. If I were to design this game today, I would probably think a bit more on the theme, but I\u2019m not sure I would change it. I would probably, on the other side, use it as an example and place its cover next to the one of Colt Express. My article on orientalism in boardgames notices the trend, tries to explain it and to show its ambiguities, but it doesn\u2019t go as far as condemning it. When asked about it, I answered in a comment that I will very probably keep on making use of all forms of exoticism in my game themes \u2013 I even sometimes think it\u2019s better to keep on using such themes just to remember what they mean rather than resigning with it and losing not only some humor, but also our knowledge of our intellectual history.<\/em><\/p>\n Anyway, if historical exoticism and orientalism always start with objectivation and simplification of the other, the imaginary world they create sometimes become cultural references more or less independent from their original object. The context of Waka Tanka is not native Americans culture, of which I know almost nothing, it\u2019s the Indian villages as described in French and Belgian comics from the sixties and seventies \u2013 which were giving of American Indian a simplistic but also very positive idea \u2013 and this is also worth discussing.<\/em><\/p>\n There\u2019s definitely much racism in Europe, but there\u2019s certainly no racial prejudice against American Indians. On the contrary, the image we have of them is a caricature, but unequivocally a very positive one. <\/em>Of course, we can explain this with the usual joke, saying it\u2019s because there are no native Americans in Europe, but I think there\u2019s more to it. Most Europeans don\u2019t really know there are still Native American people and living native American cultures \u2013 for us, American Indians are historical figures, not contemporary ones, and therefore cannot be really seen as \u201cforeigners\u201d. Also, in France and in Germany, Plain Indians as described in the late XVIIIth and XIXth century were used as the metaphoric basis when inventing a fantasized history of our origins, before the Roman conquest. The mythical Gallic village of old history books, and of comics as well, with its chief and its druid, is directly copied from the almost as mythical Indian village, with its chief and sorcerer. That\u2019s why Indians were always the good guys, and cow-boys the bad ones, and this from the XIX century. This means that gently mocking this image is also, in a way, a like mocking our own ancestors, something everybody does, but never in a really bad way. What makes this especially difficult to explain to US gameers is also the very American idea that caricature is inherently\u00a0disparaging – in Europe, and may be even specifically in France, it’s not the case, which I think is the way it should be (more about this in this more recent post).<\/a> \u00a0My prototype was called Wakan Tanka. The name was changed into Waka Tanka to avoid confusion with Charles Chevalier\u2019s recently published Wakanda, a great two players tactical game. The graphics for Waka Tanka were made by my friend David Cochard, with whom I had not worked since Key Largo, more or less ten years ago. I\u2019m really impressed by his work, which really gives life to Waka Tanka, which is basically a light and unpretentious game. I\u2019m most fond of the incantation cards, with the troubling dark shapes of animal spirits in the background. The cute little mouse is David\u2019s idea for the cursed card, the one you can’t play. It\u2019s not really frightening, but it\u2019s actually the worse card you can have in hand because a shaman worthy of its rank can\u2019t decently invoke the little mouse spirit in front of the whole village.<\/em><\/p>\n Waka Tanka<\/strong><\/span><\/em> The English language edition of Waka Tanka is due later this year.. Ceux qui suivent mes cr\u00e9ations depuis longtemps savent qu\u2019il y a un genre avec lequel je me sens assez \u00e0 l\u2019aise, et auquel je reviens fr\u00e9quemment – les petits jeux de cartes bas\u00e9s presque exclusivement sur le bluff. Ceux qui … Continue reading ![\"Waka](\"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/a1.jpg\")
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\n Un jeu de Bruno Faidutti<\/span>
\nIllustr\u00e9 par David Cochard<\/a>
\n3 \u00e0 5\u00a0 joueurs\u00a0 – <\/span>20 minutes<\/span>
\n Publi\u00e9 par Sweet November (2016)
\nTric Trac<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Ludovox<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Boardgamegeek<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n
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\n A game by Bruno Faidutti<\/span><\/em>
\n Art by David Cochard<\/a>
\n3 to 5 players\u00a0 – <\/span>20 minutes<\/span><\/em>
\n Published by Sweet November and Cool Mini or Not (2016)
\nBoardgamegeek<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
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