The Broken Promise of Inclusion: Why the Consultant Behind Puerto Rico 1897 Has Publicly Rejected the Game

The board game industry is currently undergoing a period of intense self-reflection. For years, the hobby was dominated by titles that treated historical atrocities as flavor text for optimized resource management and engine-building mechanics. At the center of this reckoning is Puerto Rico, a titan of the hobby since its 2002 release. However, the recent controversy surrounding its 2022 re-theming, Puerto Rico 1897, suggests that simply swapping a colonial narrative for a post-colonial one is not the "fix" many publishers hoped it would be.

Jason Perez, a prominent Puerto Rican board game critic and the cultural consultant brought on to steer the 1897 iteration, has publicly denounced the final product. His rejection of the game he helped create serves as a stark warning to the industry: superficial changes to themes do not constitute genuine inclusion.

A Legacy of Erasure: The Original Puerto Rico

To understand the gravity of the current situation, one must look at the source material. The original 2002 release of Puerto Rico is often cited as one of the best-designed board games in history. Players take on the role of colonial governors, harvesting crops like coffee, tobacco, and sugar to ship back to Europe.

However, the game’s mechanics rely on the exploitation of labor. The game uses brown wooden discs to represent laborers, euphemistically referred to as "colonists." In the context of 16th-to-19th-century Puerto Rican history, this is a sanitized version of the brutal reality. Following the arrival of Christopher Columbus, the indigenous Taíno population was decimated by forced labor, displacement, and European diseases. By the 16th century, the Spanish Empire introduced enslaved African people to bolster plantation output.

For two decades, Puerto Rico ignored these historical realities entirely, focusing purely on the "fun" of empire-building. The game became a lightning rod for criticism within the hobby, as players and critics pointed out that the game invited them to participate in a colonial fantasy while stripping away the human cost of that history.

The Pivot to Puerto Rico 1897

In an attempt to modernize the franchise, publisher Alea (a subsidiary of Ravensburger) commissioned a re-theming. Puerto Rico 1897 was designed to shift the focus away from Spanish colonial occupiers. The new narrative places players in the shoes of Puerto Rican farmers following the island’s independence from Spanish rule, navigating the challenges of building a new economy and infrastructure.

The intention was to turn a problematic classic into a story of resilience and local industry. To ensure cultural accuracy and sensitivity, the developers brought in Jason Perez, the creator of the Shelf Stories YouTube channel, to serve as a cultural consultant. For a time, it appeared that the industry had found a successful blueprint for reconciling problematic classics with modern sensibilities.

Chronology of a Failed Collaboration

The breakdown of this partnership became public in early May 2024, when Perez released a video titled, "I Created the Theme of Puerto Rico 1897. Now, I Reject It."

• 2022: Puerto Rico 1897 is released to general acclaim, with many outlets praising the "fix" to the theme.
• Early May 2024: Perez posts a video detailing his dissatisfaction with the development process, noting that he encountered "pit traps" of his own enthusiasm.
• May 9, 2024: Following a wave of public discourse and misinterpretation of his critique, Perez removes the video and issues a final, formal statement on the platform X (formerly Twitter).

Perez’s core complaint is not with the historical accuracy of the 1897 setting, but with the corporate environment and the philosophy of "inclusion" applied to the project. He noted that throughout the development, he felt his role as a consultant was sidelined and that the final product, while thematically different, lacked the depth and respect for the culture he intended to highlight.

The Meaning of "Real Inclusion"

The crux of the controversy lies in what constitutes "real inclusion" versus "performative correction." In his statement, Perez emphasized that the industry often views inclusion as a checklist: hire a consultant, change the name of the worker tokens, adjust the flavor text, and move on.

Perez argues that this "fixing" mentality is inherently flawed. By focusing solely on the end product—the game—the publishers failed to engage with the creators and the culture they were representing. He stated, "Real inclusion means uplifting creators, not just their creations." By severing the connection between the cultural consultant and the resulting product, the publisher effectively commodified his heritage while silencing his voice.

The industry’s tendency to label the game as "fixed" has become a source of frustration for Perez. He posits that when the community calls a game "fixed," they are often doing so to absolve themselves of the discomfort of playing a game that still carries the ghost of its colonial origins. It is a way to return to the status quo without doing the hard work of examining why the original was so problematic in the first place.

Industry Implications: Beyond the "Fix"

The case of Puerto Rico 1897 sends a ripple through the board game design community. It suggests that if publishers want to tackle sensitive historical topics, they cannot treat cultural consultants as mere aesthetic consultants or PR shields.

1. The Burden of the Consultant

Consultants are often brought into projects late in the game, when the core mechanics—the "fun" of the game—are already locked in. This forces them to work within a framework that may be fundamentally incompatible with the narrative they are trying to fix. For Puerto Rico, the game is inherently about exploitation. Changing the name of the workers does not change the fact that the engine of the game is the extraction of resources.

2. Performative vs. Structural Change

The industry must move away from "re-skinning." If a game’s mechanics are built on colonial extraction, simply changing the year and the names of the roles does not address the core issue. True inclusion would require a collaborative process where the consultant is involved from the ground up, perhaps even challenging whether the game should be remade in the first place, or if a completely new design is required to tell the story properly.

3. The Ethical Responsibility of the Publisher

Ravensburger and Alea are now under the spotlight to explain how the process failed. When a consultant as qualified as Perez speaks out, it suggests a systemic breakdown in communication and respect. If publishers continue to use consultants solely to "sanitize" their products for market consumption, they will continue to face backlash from the very communities they claim to represent.

Conclusion: A Long Way to Go

Jason Perez’s final statement, "Our industry has a long way to go," is a sobering reminder that board games are not just pieces of cardboard and plastic; they are cultural artifacts that shape how we understand history and power.

The rejection of Puerto Rico 1897 by its own cultural lead is a pivotal moment. It marks the end of an era where publishers could assume that a superficial coat of paint could cover the cracks of problematic design. Moving forward, the industry must decide if it wants to be a place where diverse voices are genuinely empowered, or if it will continue to prioritize the comfortable familiarity of colonial mechanics over the difficult, necessary work of authentic representation.

The conversation triggered by Perez has successfully pushed the community to look past the box art and examine the ethics of the design process itself. Whether the industry will listen remains to be seen, but the standard for "inclusion" has been raised, and the industry’s current performance is, by the estimation of those it seeks to include, failing.