Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition - Crisis

It's tough, talking about the Terraforming Mars series. On the one hand, the Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition implementation is a way better game than the original. On the other hand it's FryxGames - and that has a problematic issues surrounding it, from transphobia and racism to the declaration of using AI in their game releases. So... yeah, it's a little rough to be covering this game. Let's put a pin on that for now and talk about the Crisis expansion for Ares Expedition.

Ares Expedition takes the Terraforming Mars formula and condenses it to be focused on the best part of it: the cards. Squeezing the original main board into just holding tracks and the ocean tiles, most of play revolves around player's own area of cards and tracks. The additional twist in Ares expedition is that the game is now simultaneous play: players will choose what phase they want to activate that round, all phases get executed in a set order with a bonus for the player's chosen phase. It borrows from Race for the Galaxy clearly, but the execution is still solid for a reason: little down time and high engagement.

Crisis switches the typical competitive side of Ares into a cooperative mode, with players having to deal with a Crisis deck that has events continually reduce progress on Mars' habitability. It's a very smooth addition to the normal core gameplay: at the start of the round you do some status checks and deal with the consequences if Mars has deteriorated too much, you suffer persistent events if you weren't able to get rid of them, and then you reveal a new crisis event to deal with. In some ways its very reminiscent of the event deck from Atlantis Rising - you don't fully know what will happen but you know it'll be bad.

So we come back to the problematic aspect of the developer. The news of this came well after the crowdfunding projects I had backed finished fulfillment, so it was quite a shock to me and a bit of a downer. There are those that take the measure of getting rid of all games they owned from FryxGames and I can understand the sentiment. In fact, I truly wouldn't be opposed to getting rid of the Big Box version of Terraforming Mars if I could get my money's worth for it - plus it's a popular enough game that it's possible, though I have to wonder if it being an older game how much of a loss I'd have to sell it as. I even got rid of the Dice Game version, but that was simply because it just didn't hold a candle to Ares Expedition.

I guess the conflict that I'm wrangling with is validity in choices and how I feel. It's easy enough to follow not supporting either the developer or publisher in future endeavors, though the completionist in me was pained having to pass up on Prelude 2 and seeing Utopia & Cimmeria at my local FLGS. There's plenty of other games and releases that I can readily support. But what about existing materials?

In many ways this is similar to my personal history and connection with the Harry Potter books and series. Sure, we definitely don't support anything of J.K. Rowling - but it hurts because of how meaningful the series was. Even now it sucks to "hold fast" and endure not playing Hogwarts Legacy, which even that I have mixed feelings on. Like, what degree of boundaries is appropriate here?

Ares Expedition is, from an objective evaluation, a solid design of a game and one that I've enjoyed. Even playing this cooperative version, I can see this being an enjoyable experience. How wrong is it to keep something after knowing how awful of a person the creator is? Is a disclaimer when bringing out this game to people enough? Similar to Pax Pamir: Second Edition where they at least removed the essay on colonialism that was originally in the first edition. Or is it just a poor excuse like how Tales of the Arabian Nights has this disclaimer in the rulebook:

The one design liberty taken was in the portrayal of women in the game. The female was definitely the lesser sex in medieval Arabia.
...
We have represented the female characters in the game as the best, bravest, and most fortunate of these heroines

And yet completely flops with an instance of transphobia and how the "curse" of the card "Sex-Changed" prevents a player from winning the game.

All this to just dance around the issue of keeping the game just with the right context. Anyways, I've rambled on enough. For me, I'll keep on avoiding these problematic developers/publishers and focus supporting those that aim to keep the hobby inclusive.