So, How do you
describe table top
games to others?
I was recently faced with the unenviable choice of either sitting in silence on a 6 hour car ride or making conversation with an opinionated family member. Interspersed between ideological sparring on the politics of the day we had little bits of small talk about nothing in particular. In one of these conversation troughs, my fascination with board games came up. And not in a very organic way either. It was along the lines of “So why do you keep buying all these games?”
The query felt like a tired bit of observational comedy about the mundane minutiae of Manhattan.
“So what’s the deal with all these board games? I think you would be BORED of games by now!”
Cue the canned laugh track.
I refrained from shouting “Ok Boomer!” and instead tried to start with some common ground. I asked what their favorite movie was. They immediately rattled off a few of their favorites. So then i asked if they had a favorite game.
“I don’t have a favorite game, they are all pretty much the same
because they don’t really matter.”
I restated their response a different way. “I don’t really have a favorite movie, they all are pretty much the same because they don’t matter.” They snickered.
I took it a step further by vocalizing my opinion that I don’t think there are gamers and non-gamers, I think “non-gamers” just haven’t found their favorite game yet. They laughed again as if to say “you millennials need to grow up.”
​
This is the idea I hope to shed light on. The belief that having fun is something you will grow out of. That games are either made for children or mentally stunted man-children. That an evening at home can consist of watching a movie, having a drink with friends, or reading a good book, but never a childish board game.
Now to be clear I don’t plan on simply shouting the loudest and shaming “non-gamers” into submission of this "games for all" idea. Many people simply haven’t given any thought to the idea that a board game industry could make billions of dollars. Yes with a B!
If you have never been exposed to anything past Operation and Candy Land you get a pass for thinking games are trivial nonsense, best suited to toddlers. Similarly, if your upbringing is scarred by the big bucks war-games of old, like Monopoly or Battleship then you too get a pass for being hesitant of a board game's ability to bring out the best in people.
To overcome this lifelong aversion to the idea of gaming I will be introducing several games to replace the old guard. Hopefully keeping the positive forces and retooling the dark sides to end up with a form of entertainment more widely enjoyed than the ever-expanding Star Wars cinematic universe.
So where to start?