Why Families Need Board Games, Part III: Isolation, Assimilation, and Resonance

In this article, I continue a bit on the necessity of personal contact in board games, but from a different, somewhat inverse angle: isolation. I'm sure that all people have faced and felt isolation at one point in their lives -- that unmistakable feeling of an invisible barrier having been erected, making the outside world fade away behind a translucent haze with voices muffled and hearts hidden. Sometimes, our ever-increasing fascination with the hyper-reality of computers and audiovisual technology has the odd side-effect of separating us from others, but isolation starts from within us. It isn't the "world" that isolates us as much as it is we who isolate ourselves, and it all starts with a preoccupying thought:

"Do I belong?"

That sense of wanting to belong is integral to humanity. It's a thought that occurs to anyone who moves to a new city, attends a new church, gets a new job, or even runs with a new group of acquaintances. As one struggles to assimilate, one has to fight the feelings of being an outsider. These are diametrically-opposed forces: assimilation and isolation. These are forces that people should recognize, and people should also recognize the factors that affect each force. I believe that the desire to assimilate to God-given as we are commanded to love our God and love our neighbor; in many ways, to assimilate to our neighbor is natural. However, in the face of absorbing technology without balance, isolation is more commonplace, but there are so many more factors to consider, specifically divergent ideologies. Differences of faith (or lack of it) are easy to identify and tend to, regrettably, cloister us, but even in groups of like beliefs there are differences that threaten to divide.

To combat isolation (and to borrow from Star Trek technobabble), we must achieve resonance when two or more parties resonate at the same frequency. When we begin to understand each other's faults, yet reach a mindset in which those faults don't matter, we adapt and accept each other. We start to establish common ground. Common ground doesn't have means we compromise our beliefs or acquiesce; it means that, despite the gulf that divides, ties of friendship and love can bind us.

Have you ever asked a new acquaintance family from whom you sense something negative? Maybe, they were friendly at first but then they started to act strangely... Distant, perhaps. We isolate ourselves, but we must resonate at all costs. It doesn't have to be hard to resonate; if people don't have common faith, common ideologies, or even common ways of driving or ironing clothes, they can at least sit at a table and play board games.

Why Families Need Board Games, Part I

A few weeks ago, my wife, my sons, and I led a Board Game night for several families. To start the Board Game night, I presented 15 minutes of game information and etiquette for everyone, to which the adults politely listened while the children squirmed and squawked (note: PowerPoint presentations and children don't mix well). After my hastily-concluded presentation, my wife, my sons, and I led four different game sessions to introduce new games to the families there: my wife led a game of Dixit, my oldest son led a game of Carcassonne, my youngest son led a game of Fluxx (which is NOT a board game, but it didn't really matter), and I guided youngsters through a game of Balloon Lagoon.

As we all conducted our individual games, I found time to patrol the tables and monitor how people were adapting to the new games. I was pleasantly surprised to see that many of the parents and children were learning the games quickly and engrossing themselves in the nuances of each one. The little ones at my Balloon Lagoon tables were especially eager to play a second round, which I certainly allowed them to do. Another child had even taken it upon himself to start another group game of Ticket to Ride, which he had brought to teach others. Thus, the first round of gaming ended well as we all headed into a break, which was when I observed and realized an "inconvenient truth..."

The plan for the evening was to conduct a second round of gaming during which some of the young ones would teach their own favorite board games to the adults. However, as Round 2 was set to commence, it was painfully clear that almost all of the children no longer had any interest in playing board games. Some of them migrated to another room to play with Beyblades; a few boys went upstairs to pillow fight; and several other children seemed to wander around shooting Nerf guns. It was then that I grasped a basic notion: most kids have short attention spans. This wasn't an earth-shattering discovery, but what struck me was that while my sons were open to the idea of more board games, the other kids were not so eager, which led to the earth-shattering discovery:

Many people today have trouble with board games!

Why is that? I pondered the reasons for these children (and adults) not being eager to dive into another round of more profound strategic thinking and discovery. Maybe, it's because people are used to the audiovisual splendor and attention-sapping energy of video games; maybe, it's because board games take time to set up and play; maybe, it's because people are just too busy or distracted to play board games. It could even be because people are too "plugged into" their mobile devices and tablets to shut them off and actually touch tangible game elements. These reasons and others have swirled around in my head for some time after that game meeting, and I contend that all of the reasons I listed are acceptable ones.Yet, I have a better, more over-arching reason for why many kids (and even adults) cannot sit for an extended period of time and play a board game even though those same people can sit and play video or computer games for hours:

The "world" wants us to be plugged in and reliant on technology for entertainment, business, and our very livelihoods.

The "world" is corporations that want to sell us goods with built-in obsolescence so that we buy more in three to five years. The "world" is the entertainment industry (Hollywood, if you will) that wants us to buy its mind-numbing, non-life-affirming movies, its vapid, insipid popular music, and its haughtily amoral television shows. The "world" is video and computer game makers that only seek to satiate and enthrall while promoting sexuality, violence, and unimaginative, profane abuses of language. The "world" tells us we are not smart enough to think on our own, to conduct daily life without technology, and the "world" tells us that we must always be having its brand of "fun" or else life is awful. We are all being shaped by this "world" and the incursions and invasions this "world" has masterminded against our psyches are methodically reshaping us into thrill-seeking, attention-lacking, over-multi-tasked consumers sans a moral compass.

How do we stop the "world" from transforming us into lemmings? One way is through board games.

(To be continued)

Max Headroom: 1HN Dystopian Portent

Whenever I mention the name "Max Headroom" to people my age, they often remember the old Coca-Cola commercials of the mid-80s or the Max Headroom show on Cinemax, but most people do not remember that for parts of two seasons, there was an ABC network show called Max Headroom (for those uber-nerds out there, I am well aware that Max Headroom debuted in Great Britain with a different pilot and mostly a different cast, but I'm focusing on the US version). To those people who recognized the name, I would tell them about that show and their eyes would glaze over. Then, I would move the conversation quickly in another direction...

Max Headroom took place in the future; "20 minutes in the future" as the opening tagline of the show stated. The series revolved around Edison Carter (played convincingly by Matt Frewer), a passionate, temperamental news reporter/cameraman, and his digital alter ego, Max Headroom, who was capricious, fun-loving, and unpredictable. Each episode involved Edison Carter attempting to investigate, at great risk to himself, a news story while aided by his trusty controller Theora Jones (Amanda Pays), his gruff, but sympathetic editor Murray (Jeffrey Tambor), and a boy genius named Bryce Lynch (Chris Young). All of the aforementioned people worked for Network 23, which was one of the most influential networks in the world. All the while, Max Headroom zoomed from TV screen to TV screen, wreaking havoc and yet assisting Edison and Theora whenever he happened to want to help.

Max Headroom was a character-driven science-fiction show that featured many fine acting performances, but what stood out was the dystopian, somewhat Blade Runner-type (but less foreboding, at least superficially) future that served as the stark backdrop for all of the episodes with crumbling ruins and towering, monolithic skyscrapers coexisting in close proximity and the poor living in ruins with nothing more than their clothes and a TV. In the future, everyone owns a TV and it has to be kept on and active and people seem to watch addictively. It is a future when networks devise advertising strategies to control people's minds and manipulate them psychologically and physically (as seen in the pilot episode during which "blipvert" three-second advertisements cause a large, slothful man to explode). Networks and massive corporations rule the landscape, the rich are indeed richer, and the poor are numerous, but never without a TV (which are handed out freely by the prevailing government). Ultimately, ratings are king, establishing a network's political and social clout with "two-way sampling" truly meaning that people watch TV and the networks watch them. In these ways, the future is almost like a main character in each episode, working for or against the intrepid Edison Carter and his trusty crew.

At the same time, there is a retro look to the future: keyboards are like clunky typewriters, cars are modeled after Packards and Tuckers (old cars from the 40s and 50s), and fashion seems to reflect a timeless sensibility wisely removed from 80s fashion... mostly. If anything, Max Headroom more resembles the film Brazil (which was released to theaters before Max Headroom was on TV; was Max Headroom influenced by Brazil?). Particularly, the character of Edison Carter is a Lone Ranger, standing against corporate and network injustice. Yet, he is also employed by a network, so he is often at odds with his own employers. Nonetheless, the never-anachronistic value of liberty over governement control is apparent in every episode.

Looking back at Max Headroom, what was especially striking about the show (besides the digitally stuttery delivery of the titular character) was that it was a view of the future that wasn't off the mark. Consider that Max Headroom was on the air 25 years ago, and yet the show foretold the ubiquity of TVs, how addictive and essential TV and video screens in general would become for people, and how much sway advertising and social media would have on people. Max Headroom was also portentous in its exposition of consumerism, which was assumed to be rampant in the future when people consume to make themselves happy and find fulfillment. Sure, discussing the rise of consumerism isn't an impressive prediction considering how consumerism was rampant in the 80s, but the satire is biting nonetheless. Moreover, the show also introduced a counter-cultural idea that is becoming more prevalent today: the idea of living off the grid, disconnected from mainstream media and utilities. These "blanks" in Max Headroom are much like the much-derided off-the-gridders of today that decry modern dependencies and favor a more wide-open, unfettered existence. It won't be long before "blanks" become more and more common today as people tire of everyone knowing everything about them and of our dependence on public utilities and foreign-grown produce.

What is more disquieting about the show in hindsight from a Christian standpoint is that the show (perhaps inadvertently) displays an End Times-type of future in which people are microchipped (at least, Metro cops are microchipped), religion is portrayed as flummery, and a global world order (ruled by TV) is suggested with corporations and ratings virtually governing people's actions. In this way, besides the principal characters, people are generally portrayed as "sheeple" who are more interested in the next TV show than in the welfare of others. Today, we are not far off from this future; we may not have flying cars (a la Blade Runner) or electromorphic AI like Max Headroom, but TV and, more alarmingly, smartphones have become essential for many. Screens of all kinds seem to hypnotize and anesthetize us as we walk around with our heads down or with our noses touching our screens.

Slowly, quietly, people are being blinded. Thirty years ago, even though I wasn't a believer in Christ, I knew about general End Times predictions. I used to scoff at the idea of microchips (aka "The Mark of the Beast") being implanted in people because I assumed that people would also know about those same End Times prediction and would avoid microchips like the plague. I used to think that someone would stop the rise of a "new world order" and deny the emergence of a leader that would herald himself as a modern savior, but would then turn against humanity. Nowadays, I'm not sure they wouldn't welcome the convenience of having their credit information and personal history implanted in their bodies; after all, it would beat carrying cash or having to carry or lose a wallet. I'm also not sure that people wouldn't welcome a unified global government with a leader that dictates our actions from on high; as long as we are entertained and given smartphones and our fair share of food and handouts, we won't want to rebel.

In summation, Max Headroom was an outstanding show that was indeed ahead of its time with predictions that are currently being played out now. The acting was top-notch and the veiled satire in each storyline was on par with the social commentary of the Twilight Zone and the original Star Trek series (which was actually a vehicle for social commentary, despite the wonderfully amusing histrionics of William Shatner). It is no wonder that this show was moved from time slot to time slot and eventually cancelled; much like Edison Carter, Max Headroom represented too much of a seering jab at TV and modern society to stick around. When I watch Max Headroom now, I am compelled to open my eyes to see a somewhat frightening world, the horrors of which are often obfuscated by "entertainment" and the self-gratification that comes with video games and constant Internet connectivity. I am reminded that people should stand up against the tyranny of our screens and resist being enfolded into a system that shall eventually monitor our every move once we surrender our freedom to be individuals. Already, Facebook and other social media sites retain our personal information and have been known to share it. Indeed, "20 minutes in the future" is now.