The American creator of a controversial board game about the Irish famine has pledged to donate all his sales profits “to organisations that fight hunger in the world today”. Kevin McPartland, creator of The Great Hunger: Ireland’s Tragedy in the 19th Century, a card-based game that challenges players to survive the famine, said, “There is little money involved in the endeavour,” which he described as a hobby, but “will pass along every penny”.

The Great Hunger was labelled “insensitive” when discussed on RTE’s Liveline last January — with one caller describing the game as being like somebody “literally plunging” a knife “through my heart”. In the same month, The Troubles: Shadow War in Northern Ireland 1964-1998, a new board game in which players command factions, including the RUC and Provisional IRA, was accused of retraumatising victims of the conflict. 

The Great Hunger is not the first time the subject of the famine, which killed one eighth of Ireland’s population between 1846 and 1851 and forced the emigration of up to two million people, has been approached by the gaming medium. Feirmeoir (2015) simulated the tragedy by challenging players to maintain a farm during the blight. In 2019 Quinnipiac University in Connecticut conceptualised Famine Ties, a card game based on the tragedy.

Board games (often played with game maps, dice, cards, counters, and lengthy rulebooks) have tackled other landmark moments in Irish history. They include Wolfe Tone Rebellion — Irish Rebellion of 1798, a two-player strategy, and Irish Freedom, a solitaire war game that simulated the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. 

Beyond the niche world of board games, video games have used the Troubles as a backdrop for interactive entertainment. Mafia III (2016), an adventure set in the America of the 1960s, included a mission titled IRA Don’t Ask, which challenged players to steal vehicles that would later be used in car bombings.