Why Families Need Board Games, Part II: Reinforcing Personal Contact

My wife told me an intriguing story. During her visit to the dentist, she overheard a young girl asking her father if she could play a game on his cellular phone. My wife described the girl as being "whiny," which seems to be the chosen tone of many children. At the same time, my youngest son devoured 11 chapters of a book. Upon first hearing this story, one may not find anything that intriguing, but to me this story reinforces the importance of disconnecting from the digital and connecting to others and with concrete objects in the "real." Indeed, personal contact is one way in which board games will save the world, but the strongest impediment might be games of another kind...

The most salient trend in gaming is how games become more and more intricate and engrossing for the player: games are now more complex, more visually appealing, and more portable than ever. Games look sharper and crisper, and set the challenge bar high enough with less cheese than in the past; with games like Plague or Bad Piggies, players benefit from engaging graphics, top-notch sound effects, and enough detail and complication to occupy even the most jaded gamer. Also, gone are the days of needing a Game Gear or Game Boy or even having to pay money for cartridges; just get a smartphone or a tablet, download a free game app, and one can play most games anywhere and only have to tolerate the periodic advertisement. People can play everything from first-person shooters to virtual board games; one of my gaming buddies even played Ticket to Ride for the first time... on an iPad! No longer do you need game realia (such as game pieces or dice), console, cartridges, or even opponents; the computer can provide an opponent or opponents anytime, anywhere.

Considering the convenience of computer games now, plugging into the digital world is somewhat more appealing than whipping out a game board or game books, and finding "experienced" players is easier now that computer intelligence and game programming can frustrate veteran players without the skulduggery inherent to old video games, such as spotty hit detection. However, people are now, more than ever, tempted to disconnect from others. Many video game and computer game players may now be less apt to challenge live opponents, let alone engage a human being in conversation. Sure, people that play online RPGs can connect with players through a chat window or by audiovisual communication, but it all happens in a world disjointed from reality. 

We are becoming more isolated and separated, but this is one trend that board games can restrict. By taking out a board, some pieces, and some cards, one is required to find human opponents. Once one finds human opponents, one has to communicate with these opponents, whether it be friendly conversation or playful, competitive banter. One has to move pieces, read rules, and manipulate realia to make the game happen. People's brains take back the role computers have stolen from our unsuspecting grasps; their brains make the "graphics" move, our eyes ingest and admire the game pieces, and our hands carry these items from game table to game table. Board games anchor people in reality, while stimulating conversations, compelling players to match wits with organic foes, and even driving us to go out and find those foes.

As the "world" pulls us farther and further apart, seducing us with a hyper-reality of bright colors and endless opponents whom we would never have to befriend, it creates the illusion of interconnection with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and deceives us into believing in our self-reliance. We buy into the idea that we don't need other people; we just need a computer. Yet, people are alone in their offices, chatting with each other through screens. It all seems so (William) Gibsonesque a la Neuromancer, but we need to touch each other; we need to touch this world. So, next time, instead of playing Ticket to Ride on a tablet, or asking Daddy for his smartphone, take the board game with you. Play Yahtzee in the doctor's office or Fluxx on the train. Invite your friends or even ask friendly passengers around you to play. We need personal contact; the "world" cannot overwhelm us if we (dare I say) stick together.

Advance to Boardwalk: 1HN High-Rise Unit Builder

Whenever I go to a retailer like Target or Wal-Mart, I am surprised at the board games I find and how they've stood the test of time. Some games, in my estimation, are worthy of their longevity: Monopoly (in which the outside-the-game-rules negotiations are more fun than the game itself), Stratego, Clue, and Scrabble come to mind. Conversely, there are some games that shouldn't have lasted this long, particularly Risk, which I loathe immensely; I can't count how many times my massive armies have been defeated by "lucky" defense die rolls. Also, games like Sorry! and Trouble seem to make new fans of children every generation because of their tactile in-game elements (like the dice popper in Trouble) and simple rules.

But, some games have come and gone, much to my chagrin. One of those games was Advance to Boardwalk, which Parker Brothers published in the 1980s. It was spun off from the Monopoly universe with Uncle Moneybags prominently included on the packaging and on the in-game cards. The premise of Advance to Boardwalk was deceptively simple: amass more wealth than your opponents by building up units (which are like floors in a skyscraper) that comprise high-priced hotels along a beachfront boardwalk. In the game, you roll a color-coded die to determine which area of properties on which you can build, and another two dice (I think) to determine the total dollar value of units you can build on that color. As gameplay progresses, you can build units on top of other players' units; if your units outnumber an opponent's units, you gain control of the property, which means you move up the boardwalk (which is marked with dollar amounts) and your opponent moves down the boardwalk. Each property has different inherent values, so some properties are more favorable yet more difficult on which to build because a higher rolled amount is required to be able to build on those properties. Along the way, there are "Fortune" cards that either allow a player to gain an advantage (such as "Windfall" cards that provide an infusion of capital for building) or create obstacles for opponents (such as "Hurricane" cards that can wipe the units off a property). Gameplay ends when one player has used up all of his or her units (you get 15-17 units with which to build at the start of gameplay).

As I write this blog entry, I am not aware of the publishing history of Advance to Boardwalk except of what I know personally, but I can safely say that the game was available in the 1980s, but then faded into obscurity. It was only during a recent clearing of my grandma's rafters that I found this game amidst a treasure trove of my old packed games (which included several Nintendo and Colecovision cartridges). I unearthed it, dusted it off, and played a round with my family, who were sadly unimpressed by the game. I suppose that equating units of building to money value isn't as direct or exciting as acquiring a group of properties and then building houses (a la Monopoly). However, I find Advance to Boardwalk to be more rewarding and less time-consuming than Monopoly. Unlike Monopoly, you can gain (and lose) properties each turn; and you can rise and fall so quickly in Advance to Boardwalk, while you tend to amass wealth slowly in Monopoly and then crush opponents quite suddenly until there are two people who own the entire board. Then, it's only a few turns before one player loses his shirt paying the other player an exorbitant amount of rent. While Monopoly games can seem interminable, Advance to Boardwalk can be played in 30-45 minutes and can result in numerous grudges and vows of vengeance, which may spur another game right after it. Okay, I'm joking about the vows of vengeance, but I can see that it would be hard to NOT have a grudge after you watch your opponent build two or three units on your property and usurp the $7 million of value, putting him or her seven spaces up and you seven spaces down -- a 14-space swing!

Anyway, Advance to Boardwalk should've gotten more of a chance at becoming a classic because it really is a fun, addictive game with a deeper layer of strategy than Monopoly, which relies much on dice rolls. In Advance to Boardwark, you do roll to determine how much "money" you have to build, as well as the color of properties on which you build, but you also have to decide (assuming you roll a "10," for instance) if you want to build two units on the $5-million-dollar property (which would move you up five spaces on the board) or two units on the $3-million-dollar one and one unit on the $4-million-dollar one (which would move you up seven spaces). There are many lead changes in the game and, often, it can take one play to reverse your fortunes and win the game, even if you spent most of the game in the back of the pack. If you can find it, I recommend Advance to Boardwalk; challenge even your hard-core gamer friends and let me know how much fun you have from a once-mainstream game.