I love computer games. For the better part of my 28 years, I’ve lost more hours than I can count to computer games: playing them, reading about them, researching them. From Day of the Tentacle to X-Com to Fallout to Starcraft to Half-Life, I’ve been playing games ever since I could get onto a computer and waste time.
So it should be no surprise to say that as a huge consumer of computer games, I am the one of the first and most enthusiastic proponent of the computer game medium as both an educational tool and as an unparalleled way to interactively tell a story. Couple this with the fact that computer games -- all video games -- are still barely being scratched in terms of its potential in narrative and story, and you have a medium with a very bright future. I’m excited to be a computer gamer.
But what does this have to do with board games? What does this have to do with a medium of gaming that is, in contrast, far, far older -- perhaps thousands of years old? I bring up computer games, because they are, in stark contrast to the vast majority of other mediums of entertainment out there -- such as television, books, movies -- far superior in their ability to transport and enrapture its viewer/reader into a narrative or world than a board game could ever hope to, and a computer game is a highly interactive medium. Yet, despite all this, a board game has something on computer gaming that has existed and will always exist: the ability to provide the experience of community and camaraderie. Where computer games are primarily avenues for individual entertainment, board games are a social activity, a way for families, friends, and even strangers to grow close and bond in ways that no other media can. This, in of itself is remarkable: a properly played and regulated board game can offer the kind of bonding and interactions that no other form of “indoor” entertainment (short of a party) can. That, to me, is amazing.
Take this story for example: My parents are the kind of folks who’d rather sit in front of the computer, in total solitude, than make small talk or watch a movie as a family or talk about a book. They are the kind of parents who, in all my youth, I could count on one hand the number of times we as a unit sat down and played a game together or went to the park or out for a walk. It simply wasn’t a part of our familial culture, and even nowadays, the idea of doing something together, with my parents, is something foreign at best.
Enter board games. One night for dinner at my parents’, at my wife’s urging, I took along a copy of the board game Modern Art, with the slim hope of breaking it out and attempting to convince my folks (who I had never, ever seen play a single board game in my life, much less a euro-based board game) to play for a little bit. But, to my surprise, we ended up playing not one, but two whole games until about midnight. There was my mom, laughing, my dad ribbing her for not managing her money well, my wife, taking pictures. I was astonished, so much so that the night somehow felt like a gigantic trick I had managed to pull on my parents; like I had somehow conned them into doing something they didn’t want to do. They had played games, had laughed, joked, and had fun. I had never seen them in that capacity before. This is the beauty of board games. It wasn’t necessarily Modern Art that was the salve to our sometimes awkward family dynamics. Rather, it was Modern Art -- or board games, to be specific -- that provided a gateway, an opportunity to break down social walls and facilitate meaningful interaction.
This, to me, is what board games can do. With the right board game, with the right crowd, it can feel like something much greater than its individual parts -- just cardboard and wooden bits, really -- and create something magical, something fun.
