Art Restoration in Board Gaming
In my most recent depression binge, I went back to one of my old YouTube stomping grounds: Baumgartner Restoration. If you’ve ever seen one of those videos of a guy restoring a painting, he is the guy who restores paintings. He has one of the largest subscriber counts in all of YouTube, more or less in the art restoration world. Part of his success is the video content itself, with people loving the mastery on display and the patience and restraint he has for his profession. Part of the success is the audio ASMR, both of hearing the work being done, but also his deeper-than-average, dulcet way of narration. The part that always sticks out to me, though, is his theming.
Each video he has a different thesis in order to frame (get it?) the video within the confines of the artwork being restored or within a philosophical dilemma he’s facing for that job: a dive into the morals of compromise within the art restoration work is paired with a painting that is not being “fully restored” due to the compromises that the owner of the piece isn’t willing to make.
And this pairing is what brought me here today: I want to pair a talk about art restoration within the board gaming space, while also discussing a beautiful piece of work that recently restored itself: Bruxelles 1893. My gears really got turning when I saw the sequel and repacking of Bruxelles 1893, Bruxelles 1893: Belle Époque. In its bigger box, with gold lettering on the box, with a custom insert, and with new, very showy art all around, it’s hard not to see it as, if nothing else, a glow-up. But is this a restoration? Does a “second edition” of a game, with or without new content, count as restoring an older title?
First, there’s quite a few definitions to catch up with before we get too deep. First, what is the connotative definition of restoration with the world of still art? According to the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, there’s two distinct components to restoration: emergency upkeep, and dealing with degradation. Emergency upkeep is anything that a painting could deal with in its lifespan: weakened canvas, tears, or water, fire, or insect damage. Degradation, on the other hand, is a much grayer area. What is often addressed when talking about the degradation of a painting is with the original varnish yellowing overtime, and the parts of the paint withering away.
And this is where the politics begin.
All art restoration is an art within itself. Not only is the physical skill and knowledge required an incredibly high bar, but having the grace to navigate the culture around art restoration is a skill few could ever possess. The most conservative conservators would make the argument that any changes ruin a painting, even if it is simply removing and replacing the final varnish. The most liberal ones, within the realms I’ve seen, is that tastefully touching up the paint is appropriate.
And I completely understand both sides. The conservative mindset seems to take what a painting is completely literally and say “this physical item in front of us is the painting, and therefore this exact physical item needs to exist in its current form forever.” The liberal mindset seems to boil down to “the art is the painting, and making the art look to us how it looked when the painting was finished is what restoration is truly about.”
And it is within this framework that we can begin discussing if restoration happens in the board gaming space at all, more or less if it has happened with Bruxelles 1893.
To start, let’s not beat around any bushes: board games are art. If you don’t subscribe to this ideology, I’m a bit confused on how you got here in the first place. But outside of the entire game being art, I think it’s easier to discuss each aspect of a board game separately, to review its validity as restorable individually. So, let’s start with the most obvious choice: the artwork itself.
This, too, can be broken down into two different categories: functional art, meaning the symbols on the cards, action space designs, etc.; and fluff art, the pieces of work that litter the board and cards to add character and/or theme, but serve no gameplay purposes. The functional art of Belle Époque has been moderately changed: most symbols are redrawn, yes, but they are essentially the same as they were. Some symbols were changed entirely, like the shields in-between the Art Nouveau action spaces are now irises to help further distinguish between the area majority scoring symbol and the Crown Track.
The fluff art is entirely different. The original game felt cold and industrious, whereas Belle Époque feels warm and romantic. The human illustrations feel more like Hab & Gut and less like rejected New Yorker illustrations. The game itself is literally about the creation of a new art movement: Art Nouveau. According to the game’s manual, “Art Nouveau is characterized by elements like light, curvatures inspired by plants and flowers, ironwork, mosaics, frescoes, and stained glass.” This art, in my opinion, encapsulates this theme much stronger simply by having lighter line work and more dynamic coloring.
But, as a piece of art restoration, does any of this make sense? In a game specifically about an entire art movement, is it moral to say this is a restorative piece even though it literally reuses none of the original artwork?
Let’s take another step back into the art world and talk about exclusivity and adaptability. If I owned Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, I would own the copy of Nighthawks. Many others could own a reproduction of the painting, but I would be the one to own the only painting that Hopper actually painted. Its exclusivity to me is why it, or any other painting, has such value. Its image can be shared anywhere (at least nowadays), but still, only one copy remains.
Consequently, as it is one piece of work and untouchable by the artist once it’s sold and seen, the piece cannot change. Now, certain painters are known to be iterative, but the fact remains that each one of their paintings are wholly original. Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and Bathers at Asnières are both paintings featuring listless people enjoying life, but they are definitely unique pieces. And whether the artist in question is iterative or not, painters would change their style or subject matter solely for marketability: one cannot continue in the profession without making a living out of it.
Board gaming is entirely different. Board games are (largely) commercial art meant for consumption. They’re completely reproducible and meant to be exactly the same from copy to copy. They also “age out” quite quickly. Because of the speed of new titles being released in this young hobby, what’s in vogue changes weekly. This extends, obviously, to titles, but it also includes entire mechanisms going from being the most popular thing in the industry to being nothing in six months.
In order for the gems, the absolute best-of-the-best titles to be saved and preserved over time, they must go through some level of restoration. In the hobby it’s usually referred to differently: Second Edition, Revised Edition, Ultimate Edition, Essential Edition, etc. But for all intents and purposes, it’s the same. Belle Époque and its artwork differences are not literal restorations, but transformative restorations: restorations that happen specifically so the game can continue to be enjoyed in the same way it was ten years ago. By bringing the artstyle up to the standards and practices of today, players new to the game will be able to enjoy the entire package of the game and not have to justify its outdated artwork.
Which brings us to the most conservative part of the restoration of Bruxelles 1893: the mechanics. Exactly two systems were touched with the new edition. One was based on usability, replacing tiny tiles with cards. This feels odd to point out because it’s such a minor change, but an entire component is missing from the new edition, so it feels bigger than it actually is. The other is only a minor rule change where in the original title there was a component that was randomly drawn, and now in Belle Époque you can choose what you want.
What I love most about these changes is that they are simultaneously already part of the game’s identity, and yet entirely ignorable. Choosing instead of drawing the supposed randomly drawn component was always a hot debate topic, and was already a popular house rule. By incorporating that into the game, it’s making official a rule most people already had attached to the identity of the ruleset in the first place. And for the sake of restoration, I’m glad these rule changes can be ignored. You can’t really add tiles back in, sure, but the mechanic is still entirely intact. For the randomized component, if one really insisted, they could randomize the component!
In the end, new editions of new games come out all the time. Most are component upgrades for a quick cash grab, a thinly veiled retheme… the horror stories continue to pile up. So when I came across one of the absolute best second editions I’ve ever had the privilege to play, I knew I had to give Belle Époque a shoutout. To call it one of the only pieces of board game art that’s been professionally restored should not be taken lightly. Check this game out for both its artistic merits, and its mechanical brilliance.
Just ignore the original edition. It’s old and smelly now.
Further Reading and References:
Changes between Editions of Bruxelles 1893
The Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute: What Does It Mean to Have a Painting Restored?
