In this blog series Drs. Michael Toomey, Andrew Judge, and Jenny Morrison (all University of Glasgow) explore how board games can be used as effective pedagogical tools to bring abstract concepts to life in the classroom. Each entry focuses on a specific game, outlining its mechanics, practical classroom applications, and any possible adaptions or limitations to its use within a standard seminar set up. In examining individual games, they aim to provide a support resource for educators seeking to experiment with games as part of their classroom activities, as well as engage critically with when and why we might use games within teaching. This month the series continues with Jenny Morrison’s review of Billionaires and Guillotines.
How does it work:
Billionaires and Guillotines is a game designed by Max Haiven, social theorist and Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University and published in 2026 by Pluto Press. Haiven developed the game with the aim of exploring how capitalism’s contradictions generate crises, and why those crises cannot be solved from within the system itself. The game features illustrations by artist Amanda Priebe and is available to purchase from Pluto in physical form or can be downloaded as a free print-and-play beta version online.
For two to five players[1], Billionaires and Guillotines asks each participant to take on the role of a rival billionaire – the media baron, the property speculator, the war profiteer, the aristocrat, the tech overlord – competing to accumulate extravagant luxury assets (for example a mega-yacht, gang of lawyers, or celebrity spouse) before their collective greed triggers a revolution. Rather than a traditional board, participants have a small card associated with their billionaire while using Uno-esque playing cards to buy or invest.
The game is structured across four levels of increasing complexity. At the basic level, players compete to acquire assets. At the second level, the billionaires excesses begin to have consequences: political and ecological crises – floods, collapsing infrastructure, imperialist intervention and war – grow further out of control with each round of the game, spawning rebellions which risk a revolution which ends the game for the billionaires. The billionaires must decide whether to collaborate to suppress the revolts, or gamble on their competitors losing first. These first two stages model the overarching class interest binding the capitalist class, while also demonstrating their very real intra-competition, tensions and differing short term goals.
Level three introduces secret roles granting special powers (the banker who cheats or the celebrity who wins by outlasting their rivals) and the option to flee to a private disaster bunker. The fourth level allows players to bribe and lobby the government to shape policy in their favour or to sabotage opponents. While the player guide claims the game can be played through in 90 minutes, in practice we have found for new players it needs around 60-90 minutes to play through the first two levels – those critical for modelling the essence of the capitalist system.
Applications for Teaching:
Billionaires and Guillotines is a game designed with teaching in mind. Haiven states the game was partly inspired by Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of crisis in The Accumulation of Capital and is most directly suited to classes on Marxist economics, political economy, or class though might be used in any course which asks students to engage with the structural nature of capitalism[2]. The levelled design allows educators to introduce the game and add layers of complexity in future sessions. For example, the first two levels of the game might be used to illustrate the core workings of capitalism. Students could then play levels three and four later in a course to highlight how the state or representative democracy work – or fail to work – within capitalism.
The game is explicitly satirical in nature, and the creator has highlighted the value of playing cartoonish capitalist villains as a vehicle for understanding capitalism’s structural logic[3]. This makes the game a lot of fun to play, with the early stages intentionally designed to reward players behaving in over-the-top and self-interested ways. Indeed, the instructions advise players to be reckless and take risks – after all, you are a billionaire who can buy your way out of trouble.
While this mirrors the incentive structure of capitalism, it may risk reinforcing conspiratorial views of capitalism. The emphasis is sometimes on billionaires cheating the system which can obscure that the system is deliberately designed to favour capitalists. Little focus is given to the crises which limits how useful the game is for teaching about imperialism, war, or ecological disaster beyond that they are rooted in capitalism. Additionally, the working classes are rendered without agency, faceless rebels who accumulate mechanically in response to crisis. Nonetheless, as with all games, limitations can be generative as they offer opportunity for class discussion. Asking what is missing, simplified or inaccurate can draw out questions, misunderstandings or deeper knowledge among students.
Adaptions and Set Up:
The card-based modular format makes the game easy to transport while setting up the cards takes no more than a couple of minutes. Each game pack comes with a clear tiered instruction manual which students could follow independently. However, players generally get into playing quicker if the teacher acts as an MC guiding students through the initial game play. This teacher-led approach can also offset anxiety or inaccessibility for students who may struggle to read instructions under pressure. However, it requires a higher level of teacher familiarity with the rules of play and will become more complicated for larger groups with multiple games which naturally progress at different rates.
While the game itself is not obviously directly adaptable, the levelled nature allows educators an easy way to stop and start the game to integrate classroom exercises which expand on elements they want to explore. For example, students might play through to the crisis level of the game before stopping to do a separate in-class exercise on the nature of these crises or how capitalism generates crisis. Students can then return to the game to play through the consequences of crisis for the capitalist system. Similarly, students could be asked to design additional levels to the game to explore how imperialism operates or to incorporate experiences of the Global South.
Conclusion:
Billionaires and Guillotines is an excellent example of a game which teaches political theory by showing how it matters in the ‘real world’. The game brings theory – often seen as dense or dull by students – to life while illustrating why educators continue to insist they read texts from the 19th or early 20th century. Finally, it highlights how older texts can be actively applied, but also reinterpreted and updated, in the contemporary moment illuminating how theories evolve and develop over time.
[1] An expansion pack called Reform or Revolution? Is available which adds a 6th player.
[2] Haiven, M. 2025. Radical Gaming. Tribune. Accessed 5 May 2026: https://tribunemag.co.uk/2025/04/radical-gaming
[3] Haiven, M. 2025. Billionaires and Guillotines. Interview with Pluto Press. Accessed 28 April 2026: https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/billionaires-guillotines/