On Sunday, February 8, 2026, the lecture and board game session titled Max Haiven: Billionaires & Guillotines will take place in the basis reading room.
 

18:00 Lecture: “We’re being played: Fascist billionaires and the gamification of capitalism (and resistance).”
19:30 - ca 12:30 board game play session: Billionaires & Guillotines - The billionaire simulator you and your friends have been waiting for!
(The Event is in English)

Join writer and game designer Max Haiven to learn how to play his newest board game Billionaires & Guillotines
In the game, 2–5 players take on the roles of rival plutocrats, competing to accumulate the world’s wealth before their actions trigger a revolution — and they all lose… a lot more than their assets. But watch out: as you gobble up ever more resources, crises cascade out of control. Will you collaborate to put down the rebellions, or escape into your luxury bunker? The game is played in under 90 minutes and is fun for all kinds of players. Billionaires & Guillotines

Before the game, Max gives the talk “We’re being played”, in which he dives deeper into the connection of fascist billionaires and the gamification of capitalism. Behind the promises to make our lives easier, more fun, and more connected lies a grim corporate infrastructure, concentrated in the hands of game-inspired billionaires for whom most of us are little more than disposable NPCs (non-player characters). How have games shaped 21st-century capitalism and its ideologies of violence? And how are social movements using games to fight back?

Dr. Max Haiven is a writer, game designer, and educator at the Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University. He is the author of many books, including the forthcoming The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st Century Fascism (MIT 2026).

The event is hosted by the Club of What If – A club of shared imagination and roleplaying games, in cooperation with NODE Forum for Digital Arts and basis.