Kanban EV Review - Full Spoilers (for the film Christopher Robin)

[Music] if you're watching this video then the name beetle asserted either means nothing or it says everything you need to know if you're the former welcome to the world of the unrelentingly overbearing heavy euro games a sub genre of board gaming that takes dry efficiency puzzles and asks the question what if they're so complicated that understanding how to play is the play if you're a fan of losers work you already know exactly what you're getting kanban ev is just a re-implementation of a game you already own but with a new lick of paint and if you're not you already know what you're avoiding a headache in a box so instead of talking about all of that convolution let's today try and answer the question what do these mechanisms actually represent kanban ev is a simulation of the best humanity can ever achieve being middle management in a car factory to some this setting is a nightmarish depiction of humanity's hubris to others it is just a tuesday i want to begin with something that i generally avoid doing showcasing a kickstarter exclusive component the kanban ev kickstarter campaign came with an optional purchase of a set of metal cars to replace the wooden ones these are chunky more detailed and pleasing to hold cars are big metal and heavy and these are big metal and heavy it makes sense they come in this plastic tray stacked next to one another and obviously because of the metal nature it made the paint chip how odd i thought what a poorly engineered production flaw but in hindsight it is the total encapsulation of what kanban eb stands for i mentioned that laserdisc games are complicated but i don't think i quite got across how complicated out of nearly 100 000 board games listed on board game geek on mars for example is the fifth heaviest entry half being a colloquialism for complexity if you discount war games and multiple editions of the same game it is the second heaviest entry complexity is obviously subjective vitel himself argues that lich boa is his most complicated title and some people find kanban more difficult than on mars even though its weight on bgg is higher point being that we're talking about slim margins here if you adopt this box it won't be an easy ride i'm so sorry i am getting a phone call it's from not that complicated dude hello oh oh i see not that complicated you say really well thank you for your phone call thank you thank you what's wrong with these people i really enjoyed kanban when it came out originally in 2014 but i think that says more about my taste at the time than about the game i was itching to review it and then again in 2018 with the driver's edition re-release which was the daftest subtitle because at no point in this game do you actually drive a car kanban ev ev standing for electric vehicle is once again the same game but this time with an artistic retooling get it because because the arts done by ian o'toole i have a creative writing degree i'm glad i never reviewed this game i would have gotten it so wrong the discourse around heavy euro games in reviews was pretty much is this too heavy i think it's too heavy games should not be this heavy or nah it's not too heavy i like it i like heavy what about all these cool mechanisms i am of course oversimplifying but i know i'm not wrong because i've done this myself but lucerne's games were never just mechanisms and i'd be doing our past collective reviewers seeing selves a disservice if i said people weren't aware of that we looked at it we mentioned it and we even talked about it it's just that the conversation ended and look at all these mechanisms what do things like in the real world that's neat and or overbearing it's like alan partridge visiting an art gallery ever since i revisited kanban i couldn't help but marvel at just how many things this box holds that just sat there on the edge of my periphery for years i could feel them but i couldn't quite put them into words so let's try this time in kanban eevee you play a middle manager working in a car factory that's being run in the kanban management style since i spent a grand total of one day working in an office in my life i had to look up what kanban was according to wikipedia kanban is a lean method to manage and improve work across human systems this approach aims to manage work by balancing demands with available capacity and by improving the handling of system level bottlenecks and now that none of us understand it we can move right on ostensibly kanban ev is about making cars you're in a car factory you move car parts about develop new car designs move little car pieces around a race track it's all there in 2021 cars are a bit gauche so this new version has electric cars because that's environmentally friendly and there's nothing wrong with that side of the industry except that's obviously a lie the game's called kanban not carban carbon carbon emissions the game's called kanban not yay cars it's set in a car factory because the idea for the management style was initially developed by toyota so it's an homage but the cars don't actually matter this could be a factory that made anything if it make computers these would be ram sticks processors these would be computer design ideas these would be little playstations and xboxes on a conveyor belt and that's where they go to race around the track which is a joke that becomes a lot less silly if you consider how much money people make just by benchmarking computers kanban has very little to say about cars but it does have a lot to say about labor and you the middle manager are the star of the show in the game you are represented by a wooden figure of your player color each turn you will visit one of the game's five departments and do some work at the start you're equally inept at any of the tasks yet you're giving the keys to the factory and can do almost anything you like want to develop a new car design go ahead want to produce a car on the conveyor belt sure press some buttons you'll be fine you approach kanban with the overconfidence in your own self that's only possible in the corporate world naturally you're also rewarded for it each round of kanban is split into two phases the board is divided by a corridor in the middle that connects all the departments in phase one you'll take your figure and move it to another department and in phase two you'll do some work there the space you land on denotes how many shifts a work you get each shift is the equivalent of one action in that department so if for example you land on the free shift space in the design department that means you can spend three actions either taking new designs or training yourself in the department you can spend additional bank shifts to work more if you got them but never more than four because according to the game's iconography that would be more time than exists on the clock you can be over ambitious but not to the point it breaks the space-time continuum why would you ever go on a space that gives you fewer shifts well maybe somebody already took the space that gives you more shifts in the design department or maybe there's a particular design that you really want and you don't want anyone to steal it landing on the space that gives you fewer shifts lets you act first and join the design critical to your strategy plus sandra is always watching more on her later if you noticed a streak of competitive nature you're in for a treat working with people doesn't mean liking them and in this game you get to properly hate on your co-workers the co-part obviously standing in for competitors despite working in the same factory and having the same goals that being more cars and more productivity at no point are you actually deliberately helping each other but because you do work in the same factory the results of your work will be beneficial to others the game is framed by you getting more production points have the most at the end of the game and you win not a factory not the other players you'll win you'll manipulate outcomes in a byzantine structure you'll weave complex strategies you'll outsmart and outpace your opponents all in the name of yourself let me give you a broader picture of what you do in kanban as i mentioned there are five departments in the factory four of them are unique and then there's administration where spaces provide fewer shifts but let you work in any department of your choosing a universal copy space we've briefly gone over the design department where you go and pick up new car designs each of them depict one of the game's six types of cars that being concept suv city truck and sports and are then paired with one of the game's six car parts that being engine autopilot system battery drivetrain body and electronics talking of car parts let's pivot to the logistics department here you can pick up your engine autopilot system battery drivetrain body and electronics now you have a car design and or a car part what do you do with them well make cars obviously except making cars in this game is neither obvious or simple it's a multi-step process where you make cars in the assembly department by spending a car part and then once again spend a design you picked up earlier in the design department to take a car that rolled off of assembly into r d to put into your garage this car is now complete or is it it's not upgraded yet bizarrely whilst in r d you can also spend a design you picked up earlier to improve a part on a type of car both of which must match the ones in the design and then if you have upgraded a car part for the type of car you have in your garage that's the goal the dream and the productivity points i am grossly oversimplifying this for the purpose of clarity there are many interlocking interweaving little steps and nuances that make the gaming parts of this system shine but i think i got the picture across take designs take parts make cars upgrade cars have an uber car in your garage get points win in season one of the tv show the expanse the character amos burton says we're just caught in the churn that's all the only game survival when the jungle tears itself down and builds itself into something new guys like you and me we end up dead it doesn't really mean anything or if we happen to live through it well that doesn't mean anything either this is a cynical view of the universe but it suits the character of amos well he recognizes that in the grand scheme of things he does not matter he'll play the game because playing the game is the only way to survive but his choices and the outcomes of his choices don't affect anything on the universal scale or the human scale the churn tears through everything in its wake nowhere else is this better exemplified than in kanban especially in sandra who crashes from department to department destroying and reshaping everything like a tidal wave sandra is your boss and she gives neither one nor two hoots about you she just cares about what you've done in the service of the greater good the greater good being the factory of course your first introduction to sandra is in the rule book it reads so you're what i've been sent to work with huh i am sandra the factory manager and you will be answering to me for as long as you remain employed here she goes on like that for a while equal parts corny and ominous switching between insult to motivation in a manner where it's easy to conflate the two you'll next encounter her on the factory floor just like you she is a wooden piece in the game and just like you she travels from department to department you cannot interact with her directly but she can definitely interact with you worth noting that sandra is named after vito lacerda's wife and i'm sincerely not sure how i should feel about that she'll visit each department in sequential order starting with r d and going downwards all the way to administration she takes turns in corridor order just like you do except on her turn she'll reshape the state of each department she is in and then she will evaluate you all of you when you start a game of kanban you can choose whether sandra is mean or nice by default the 2014 version had sandra as nice now she is mean unless you select the nice sandra variant i think it's very telling that this choice matters very little she will respond in different ways to different things but ultimately punishment will be extolled to those unproductive if sandra is mean she'll check the person or person's least trained in her department and punish them via point reduction if sandra is nice she'll check the person or person's most trained and bestow them with a point increase either way the gap widens and someone gets punished and someone gets rewarded once you learn the ropes of kanban you begin to understand how you can manipulate sandra if you get to choose a space before she does you can make her skip an entire department oh don't mind me sandra i'm just catching up on some very important work in the uh what is this this is the assembly department why don't you go over here to logistics where you can see that i'm also doing great on and on it goes in these moments kanban is a mad bureaucratic shuffle no one quite knows what they're doing but they'll sure look good doing it because the churn is coming and if we live or die through it that doesn't really mean anything [Music] a common criticism of games as art is that any message it's trying to relay is rendered meaningless because players have agency and make choices and those choices might not correspond to that message film uses framing as a tool for expression on a basic level everything you need to see is in the frame if you're looking at me and i am talking to you then your attention is drawn to me and what i'm saying but you don't see anything to the left or the right of me there could be a drunken pantiless clown doing cartwheels you wouldn't know it you certainly don't see behind the shot either because the cameras and the lighting rigs and the elaine directing it would ruin your suspension of disbelief but you also don't need to your brain does an adequate job of filling in the rest to subvert that sometimes the important stuff happens outside of the frame you don't see it but that's the point board games almost always use framing the combination of boards cards and pieces is your stage a singular snapshot encapsulating the totality of the story from beginning to end the players then are the actors and the audience the story is being told to them and by them at the same time but there is a problem because in this scenario how do you maintain a consistent meaningful message some games are made with that in mind the message is that you could do anything within the framework of the rules some games argue that they have no stories in them there is a setting but it doesn't matter it's just there to make the process of mechanical consumption go down easy a lubricant kanban is different not only is the setting important but also it manages to tell a cohesive story no matter what you do the factory has no name no face apart from sandra nothing exists outside of it and it itself has no sense of place you're just in a factory doesn't matter what its name is just that you're here and you have a job to do this will be a jarring pivot but i promise you'll make more sense as the video goes on i'd like to talk a little bit about christopher robin the 2018 film starring ewan mcgregor yes you heard me right as in winnie the pooh christopher robin but older now in this version christopher robin has relegated his childhood adventures to fantasies he must have conjured failing to accept them as real and abandoning them to the dusty old box of forgotten toys in the corner of his mind he now works as a middle manager in a suitcase factory trading precious hours of family time for overtime to satisfy the incompetence of his inept boss we're never explicitly told what happened to christopher robin what made him lose his innocence and childlike wonder and become this shell of a man a suitcase if you will the film is made by disney and marketable families but at the beginning there's brief mention of christopher robin going to world war ii and i'll let you draw your own conclusions here most of the film's plot revolves around christopher robin having a simultaneous crisis both at work and at home the two axes of his life crash and so he unwillingly retreats away from both of them only to find out that winnie piglet owl and so on are indeed very much real and this isn't a breakdown this is him rediscovering his lost self and then right at the very end of the film all the loose threads weave together into a hole christopher was tasked with coming up with a new business proposal something to save the failing suitcase industry throughout the film he tries yet never succeeds to put anything together he clings to his paperwork to save his job and the jobs of everyone he manages yet we as the audience know that the paperwork will never save him because there's nothing there he arrives at the meeting with nothing to show for himself and that's when he finally gets it none of it matters he rediscovered himself not whilst at work but was having a break a holiday and what do people need when they go on holiday suitcases impromptu he pitches a new plan don't fire anyone in fact give them a holiday also slash the cost of the suitcases the factory makes make them out of cheaper material more people will go on holiday more people will be able to afford suitcases and your own workers who make the suitcases will buy the suitcases the end if this sounds familiar that's because it actually happened not winnie the pooh obviously but this particular business plan in 1914 henry ford in a controversial move increased the minimum daily wage in his factories from 2 dollars 34 cents to 5 and then again in 1926 he established the five-day 40-hour working week that we're so familiar with many of you probably know that ford wasn't exactly what one would call a stand-up guy hitler was famously a fan of his and had a life-sized picture of him in his office henry ford was outspokenly anti-semitic and also he wasn't much concerned with the welfare of his workers to the point where he created a fake union just to get his workers to join to think that they are in a union a trap within a trap so a move like that might seem uncharacteristically progressive of him getting paid a bare minimum of five bucks was a much better gig than anywhere else in detroit getting holiday time on top of that was just gravy why work anywhere else henry ford attracted the best of the best in terms of labor and more importantly they were loyal to him and what did these loyal employees do with their spare time and money when on holiday in full cars that they bought putting the money they earned from ford back into ford it was a circular loop a closed economy this ending to christopher robin dislodged something inside of me i couldn't reconcile how a film about winnie the pooh and healing of trauma could tie itself with a conclusion that was ford propaganda in a trench coat the cgi was just a coat of paint scratched away and something else lurks inside there is no reason for you to make these cars there's no reason for this factory to make these cars because they never leave there's no outside market that buys them just put them in your garage and there they said you never get paid in kanban nor is there any actual economy your only rewards are productivity points that being your measure in the eyes of the factory or training manuals which help productivity or bank shifts which just lets you work more toil is rewarded with more toil there is no outside of this factory no outside of this frame you can bounce and bob between complex strategies and machinations but the end result is always the same cars get made more and more you get the sense that your own greed your will are not there to help you survive and navigate the churn they are the things that power it it's not so much a system it's an engine and the fuel in this engine the only thing that's needed to keep it going is you you have been accounted for your ambition predicted you cannot escape this frame you cannot escape kanban you could say that this is just my interpretation of it that i extracted meaning from the mechanisms and this isn't a scathing critique of latter-day capitalism by a winding rat maze you could say that this is just a pull-face simulation of the kanban management style that accidentally blunders into a comprehensive critique of itself you could do that and it might even be true but you'd be weakening this game as a whole and more importantly does that even matter should we even be concerned with authorial intent does that make the setting of this game more interesting i look at the game's r the new art from ian o'toole not the french mime who crashed into a paint shop version from 2014 and i think there's no way any of this is a coincidence the colors are clean clinical sterile that's how i imagine a modern corporate lobby looking like something that says hey we're playful we've got style but we're clearly dead inside i probed ian a little bit about this when i mentioned how sandra looms over everyone in meetings with you literally represented as faceless he remarked yep that's mostly because i had to attend design production meetings every wednesday for six years and i hated it but in an irish accent so on some level both me and ian see this game as the same but not all of it there's no way our interpretations are identical but i'll tell you what though my interpretation and i'll bet his as well became much richer after we talked to each other about it oh and meetings how could i forget meetings another award you get in the game on top of bank shifts and training manuals are speech bubbles this is the only way you're allowed to express yourself your only vocal contribution is hey look at me i did this two or three times in any given game meetings will happen this is where you'll play cards that depict things you have or haven't achieved and if you have achieved them and you have a speech bubble you can pipe up about it and get more points crucially once a meeting is finished you can even pitch a new card towards the next meeting this will be something that everyone is evaluated against in a four player game these cards will be solely contributed by all players that's neat a source of agency together our will is steering this monolithic beast and then you go back to making cars again you're not steering this you're just earning productivity points and the factory keeps being a factory it makes cars so yeah i do think a lot of this is intentional some coincidental and some probably just me reading into it too much which is great i love that kanban has the scope for me to read into too much not many games do and then even if so much of this is deliberate were the cars purposely placed in this plastic container so they would chip against themselves if yes that is some next level mr lasada i do think kanban is meant to pose a question though what does work mean to you what are you getting out of it are the rewards worth it if you expect an answer from this video or from kanban then you are barking up the wrong tree neither i nor this game can anticipate what work means to you it depends on so many factors and very few of them take your happiness into account if your work is meaningful to you congratulations you are either blissfully unaware or you achieved that which so many of us seek either way a success but even then you can probably recall a past moment in your life that kanban reflects even then kanban can ask you what do you get out of work is it money because there's none in this game is it a moral reward because you're making cars for a world that doesn't need or ask for more i can't escape the fact that i'm a board game reviewer and despite my best efforts to shun convention i still have to return to one of our troops people watch me for purchasing advice and i can sure imagine some of you watching this video and going wow this sounds amazing i sure would like to experience it for myself great that will be 120 pounds and if you recall somewhere at the start of this video i call this a headache in a box it is mind-numbingly intricate purposely labyrinthine and simulationist to a fault if you don't mind spending that much money to own an r installation that says one thing and one thing only then go right ahead my friend go right ahead just remember if you find yourself experiencing something overly long laboriously elaborate and windingly circular maybe just maybe that was the point all along [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 49,045

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, npi, boardgames, boardgamegeeks, brettspiel, brettspiele, jeuxdesociete, tabletop, games, juego de mesa, gamenight, kanban, kanban ev, lacerda, vital, heavy, euro game, eurogame, complex, complicated

Id: aq3fl0VCpHg

Length: 31min 10sec (1870 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021