Collapse! A Block Game About the Financial Crisis
Collapse! is a commemorative tabletop game that takes the global financial crisis, a serious and painful subject, and turns it into something a group can play around a table. It was described as a light-hearted way to look back at a period of tension, anxiety and second-guessing, when the world’s financial system turned out to rest on a shakier foundation than most people had realised. This site is an informational page about the game and its subject. It is not an online shop and does not take orders.
How the game works
The idea is borrowed from familiar block-stacking games. The set has 54 blocks, and each carries the name of a factor or event that fed the crisis or made it worse. The steps are simple:
- Stack the blocks into a tower, following the layout shown in the instructions.
- Take turns removing one block at a time and placing it on top.
- Keep going until the structure falls.
- Read the phrase printed on the block that brought it down, and talk about it.
Archived material described the blocks as stored in a slim wooden box that could also double as a display piece, which made the set a possible gift or collector’s item.
The message behind the blocks
The game’s main point is that the crisis did not have a single cause. It is common to name the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as the moment things broke, but the designers argue that a different sequence of events would have placed pressure elsewhere and put the blame on a different institution or person. Instead, a web of connected parties, products and decisions each played a part, from banks and complex securities to regulators and politicians. Pulling out any one block can bring the whole tower down, which is a neat picture of how interdependent the system had become.
Read more
The background pages below explain the topics that the blocks refer to: