How Puerto Rico 1897 Came to Be: An Interview with Jason Perez

The strategy game Puerto Rico from designer Andreas Seyfarth and publisher alea, a brand within Ravensburger, debuted in 2002 and rose in the BGG rankings to be the #1 ranked game from sometime in 2003 to August 2008 when Agricola claimed that spot. Puerto Rico regained the #1 position in 2010 before falling again, this time to Twilight Struggle, but in 2022 — two decades after the game's debut — the game still remains highly ranked.

But that doesn't mean it's perfect.

One issue that has bothered many people over the years is, to quote the BGG game description of Puerto Rico, "players assume the roles of colonial governors on the island of Puerto Rico" and "buildings and plantations do not work unless they are manned by colonists", with "colonists" being the word used to represent people who are brought to Puerto Rico on a ship, then drafted by the player governors to work on their properties.

As one BGG user wrote in 2006, "I broke the game out with some Puerto Rican friends and that was the first thing they commented on, 'oh, the little dark skinned slaves.' Working and trading slaves is definitely a prominent part of the game, there is no denying it, regardless of whether it's 'about' that or not. It may be historical, but not everybody wants to recreate that part of history."

Jason Perez, host of the YouTube channel Shelf Stories, who happens to be Puerto Rican, had a similar feeling after discovering Puerto Rico in 2005, but he noticed that whenever the slavery issue was brought up, the topic was often shut down by a camp of people who would push back and say, "It's just a game. The game is fine. We're in the new world. Let us play."

Ravensburger licensed the Puerto Rico design to publishers around the world and released multiple versions of the game on its own, such as the 2011 anniversary edition and the 2013 second edition, but the only relevant changes in these editions compared to the original game were with the artwork and game components and with the inclusion of expansions that had previously been released separately.

The setting of the game and your role as a plantation owner did not change, and neither did the comments from those who said it was no big deal, as in this 2014 review: "Stay away if any player gets hung up on the brown colonist/slave issue. It's just a game, but if someone in your group has the potential to elevate it to a sociopolitical debate, then you're better off playing something safe and politically correct like a wargame or Cards Against Humanity to break the ice first."

By 2020, Ravensburger had regained the rights to the game in English, rights that Rio Grande Games had held until that time, and it issued yet another version of the game (still titled Puerto Rico) to match the graphic look of its relaunched alea line, which started with Las Vegas Royale in 2019.

For this edition, some elements of the setting had changed, with "colonists" no longer entering the game on a ship, but instead being drafted from a tavern, with these tokens now being purple instead of brown, but otherwise the setting and feel of the game was the same — and as Jason Perez argues in this January 2021 video, the setting is based on a history that never existed (with the PR-specific elements starting at 7:40):

Perez included that video in a January 2021 BGG thread titled "The changes to address slavery and colonialism in this edition do not go far enough", and in an interview with me, Perez said, "André Maack from alea contacted me off of that video and said, 'Let's have a conversation.' He recognized the quality of the video. I said I don't just want to talk, but make a change. That's how I got involved originally."

In response to Maack reaching out, Perez created a new video in March 2021 titled "Puerto Rico 1897: A New Vision for the Board Game" detailing what he would change about the game. "I pretended it was a job interview", said Perez. "[Maack] didn't tell me that he wanted that, but it was apparently exactly what was needed... The key to life is to be over-prepared."

"What I wanted to do in Puerto Rico was not a new game, but a new theme, do something that even the pushbackers would be happy with", said Perez. "People want the tropical island, the history, and I wanted to give people what they wanted. Did people really want colonization? Can we keep what's good and chuck the bad? The bad came from the time period. That's it. The original game was designed with the new world in mind, and I can see how a German would want the new world. The game did all these other good things, so how do I bring out the history, the tropical aspect? Gamers get excited by historical tourism, by traveling to Rome and places like Puerto Rico, but I had to find a time period when that was possible."

In the end, two main things changed regarding the setting of Puerto Rico, with those changes carrying over into other aspects of the game, yet without any of the game mechanisms themselves being altered. Said Perez, "The time period has shifted from the new world of the 1500s to 1897, the reason being that you want to be able to tell independence stories", that is, you want to represent people who are responsible for the action taking place, with players in the role of those people.

The problem, though, said Perez, is "Puerto Rico doesn't have that. It has transitioned from Spain to America. The year 1897 was when we gained political autonomy, but Americans came in 1898. This year, 1897, is post-slavery, but not during American colonialism. I tried to hit that bullseye."

In addition to shifting in time, you are also shifting in perspective regarding your role in the game. "You're not a capitalist or a merchant, but rather an independent Puerto Rican farmer", said Perez. History is generally told from the perspective of presidents and leaders and explorers, which overlooks the experience of most humans who lived during that time. "The new Puerto Rico is people's history, people earning for themselves, taking care of their own, and doing what everybody does. Everybody participates in economic activity. Puerto Rico has a whole tradition of tobacco farmers who were independent. Tobacco was the poor man's crop, but by farming it you could live and make yourself part of industry." In Puerto Rico 1897, as the new edition of the game will be titled, tobacco is now the most valuable crop, representing its role within the economy of that time.

Aside from being a history buff himself, Perez gives a lot of credit for the details of Puerto Rico 1897 to Dr. Teresita Levy, author of the 2014 book Puerto Ricans in the Empire: Tobacco Growers and U.S. Colonialism, which covers the years 1898-1950.

Dr. Levy teaches at Lehman College in New York City, which is where Perez lives, so he met with her to talk about Puerto Rico, which she had never played. "When I showed her the game, and she saw the ship and the colonist tokens, I was embarrassed", says Perez. "People say you're just easily offended, but it's embarrassing to show this game to actual Puerto Ricans", especially to a scholar who knew the history of the island.

Sample building tiles in Puerto Rico 1897

Perez and Dr. Levy went through all the crops, all the buildings, all the details present in the various editions. "I wanted this project to have all the details right since the theme sometimes gets slapped on. The designers care about the details of the game mechanisms to ensure that those are right", says Perez, so why not take the same care with the details of the setting? Puerto Rico has no aqueducts, for example, and no gems, so therefore no jewelers, so why would you have those building tiles in the game? Perez says that those tiles are now based on local flavored buildings and the 10-point buildings now show landmarks from Puerto Rico. "They're Easter eggs. If you know, you know."

Aside from Dr. Levy, Perez says the other key person to Puerto Rico 1897 is artist Gabriel Ramos, himself a Puerto Rican. "When it comes to Puerto Rico," says Perez, "we have a story about ourselves, and we're a mixture of European, African, and Indian. I wanted that on the cover. I wanted this to be a local story and the cover [from Ramos] tells the multicultural story of Puerto Rico better than anything else."

Front cover of Puerto Rico 1897

Ramos also added more flavor to other game components. "The player boards in Puerto Rico are boring", says Perez. "They're just there." Perez asked Ramos to create ten characters that could be present on the double-sided player boards, characters of different ages and with different skin tones to better represent those who live on the island. "We had him on a call, and he asked, 'Do you want me to draw my family?' Yes! I want the variety in this game. I want different farmers. These aren't colonizers or merchants, but local people doing local things. Most people will be like, 'That's nice, whatever', but for people who do care, it's there for you."

The one change Perez wanted but didn't get was related to game mechanisms, something that would have changed the economy of the game and the nature of gameplay. "I wanted to pay the labor", he said. "That would have done more than anything to announce that this was not a slavery game any more. Right now, they never get tired. The old game was boss fantasy, but even slaves cost money."

Sample player board in Puerto Rico 1897

"Conversation around Puerto Rico started in 2019, with me and several other people across the global team coming to management and saying we don't think this is right", said Cassidy Werner, International Marketing Manager at Ravensburger North America. "They listened and allowed us to bring in people", but in the end the changes in the 2020 edition of Puerto Rico didn't go far enough: "We wanted to make players feel comfortable, but it didn't make the right people feel comfortable. It alienated people who didn't have to be alienated."

"This whole process has taught us as a company", said Werner, "and we've changed our development process to include a diversity and inclusivity committee. We now ask a series of questions on every game so that all perspectives are considered. Do we need a cultural consultant for this project? Do we need to find a representative artist? What are some pitfalls we might fall into about stereotyping? Are we representing someone who doesn't have a voice in the development process?"

Sample role cards in Puerto Rico 1897

Werner continued: "I'm not thrilled that it took the alienation of players to get here. People like Jason and Gabriel should be involved in the development of the game, and you do need to pay your cultural consultants. It's about taking care of your players and making them all feel welcome."

Ideally this change in time period and perspective will, as Perez said, "keep what's good" while bringing others to the table who have avoided the game in the past. "Gamers love the grand sweep of history", he said, "but in order to break the spell that all history is bad, maybe we can change the perspective, change the camera angle, go hyperlocal, and put the camera on the people. Make them look cool."

And to do that the right way, bring people aboard the production team who know the time period and setting of the game. "Whether you have them on a surface level to review a rulebook or whether you involve consultants earlier in the development cycle", said Perez, "the money you spend on a good consultant is money you'll save responding to bad press and backpedaling."

Puerto Rico 1897 is currently scheduled for release in October 2022.