Opinion | We wanted to play Bunny Kingdom. Gen Con wanted to talk about abortion.

July 15, 2024

Timothy William Waters is a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law.

On Aug. 5, Indiana’s legislature approved a near-total ban on abortion. Down the street, my son and I were playing the board game Bunny Kingdom. Unfortunately, these things are connected.

We were at Gen Con, the annual gaming convention where, this year, more than 50,000 people walked around dressed as Batman or Darth Vader or the same person they were in high school — and it was just fine.

Gen Con supports diverse identities: Convention badges sport ribbons saying “Gaymer” or listing wearers’ pronouns. With many convention-goers dressed as elves, the welcome goes way beyond the gender binary: Become the sexy vampire you’ve always wanted to be, or just the person you actually are.

Which, for some hardcore geeks, means being conservative. They might like “gaymes” and Donald Trump. They might celebrate the latest release from Magic: The Gathering and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

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There’s no badge for that identity, and that had been fine, too, but this year Gen Con President David Hoppe attacked the Indiana abortion bill and threatened to move future conventions elsewhere.

The day after the abortion legislation was passed, two major Indiana employers, the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and engine-maker Cummins, strongly criticized the law and said they would direct their plans for growth to other states.

They’re part of a trend. Companies increasingly face pressure to take positions on political issues unrelated to their business. Progressives long suspicious of corporate politicking now insist on it. Many corporate leaders have fallen in line: In 2016, American Airlines, Wells Fargo and the National Basketball Association opposed a North Carolina “bathroom” law they considered transphobic; last year, hundreds of companies denounced voting restrictions in Georgia and elsewhere.

For organizations facing Twitter-empowered consumers and employees, it can be good business to align with their politics. For activists, pressuring companies helps their side prevail.

Except it doesn’t, really. We all lose, because turning markets into a political battleground harms our shared moral economy and damages the apolitical spaces that help preserve a decent, tolerant society.

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Shared spaces of civil society relax the boundaries of entrenched identity, allowing humans to escape tribal, religious or political isolation. That’s true in markets open to everyone, or universities teaching diverse ideas, or places where people can play and learn that victory is not absolute and coexistence is possible in defeat.

Life isn’t a board game: Everything feels political in our eternally urgent “now.” But the push for ideological supremacy is self-defeating. Boycotts and corporate relocations might pressure legislators, but they also sever us from each other.

Despite its earlier threats, Gen Con said after the abortion legislation passed that the convention would return at least next year. But if organizers eventually flee, where would they go? The South and Midwest would be mostly off-limits. More likely, the convention would go into deep-blue exile, leaving behind the Indiana Convention Center — the same hall where I attended the 2019 National Rifle Association convention. Booths that sold 20-sided dice this month were selling Glocks then. The NRA is returning to Indianapolis in 2023. How are politics improved if the elves abandon Indiana to the orcs?

Politicizing companies makes sense when there’s a real link to the politics. Organizations naturally take positions on social questions that affect their operations. But activists drive truckloads of preferences through that pretext: In 2013, Indiana University opposed a state constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage on grounds that went far beyond institutional concern. (Selectively: I’ve never seen a university object to laws antithetical to conservative faculty or students.)

Gen Con opposed that amendment, too, and now opposes the abortion law. Apart from saying the legislation would “have a direct impact on our team and our community,” Gen Con doesn’t pretend that’s a business decision — “hurt, angry, and frustrated,” it simply considers the law unjust.

Maybe it is, maybe not. I don’t know if Gen Con’s community agrees on abortion or anything else: The man playing Galaxy Trucker with us didn’t mention his voter registration.

But what about the women who support freedom of choice who might feel alarmed in “The Handmaid’s Tale” Indiana? It is Gen Con’s business to make them feel welcome — as it is the convention’s duty to make every attendee feel welcome, including gamers whose position on abortion Gen Con declared inhumane.

The answer is to make sure no one’s preferences dominate our shared space. Basic game design: Don’t fix the rules so only your side can play. Politicizing everything ignores that lesson.

In Bunny Kingdom, players lead competing clans of rabbits gathering carrots. I hate to admit it, but when play was suspended for the day and we walked outside into an Indiana summer where politics never stopped, my son was beating me. But there was no card called “Boycott” or “Take Your Bunnies and Leave.” Winning is great, but the main thing is to keep playing.

Maybe it’s too much to expect next year’s convention to include a ribbon celebrating “Gen-Conservatives.” But I’d gladly wear one that says “Everyone’s Welcome — Let’s Play.”

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