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.

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)

Netrunner: 1HN Jettisoned Cargo

From my pre-teen years to my college years, I was a collector. At first, I collected baseball cards, but those companies flooded the card market with overprinted sets, so collectors (who believed the hype of the increased collectibility of baseball cards) bought mass amounts of cards only to watch the value of those cards plummet. I then collected comic books, specifically X-Men derived titles; I really enjoyed those stories, but comic book publishers failed to learn from the mistakes of the baseball card companies, oversaturated the market, and values dropped greatly. After that came a relatively new kind of collectible: the collectible card game. Magic: The Gathering was one of the forerunners and not much needs to be said right now about that game (which I may write more about later), but another game came out of the same publisher as Magic called Netrunner.

For the unitiated, Netrunner was a collectible card game with a cyberpunk theme and what was a novel approach at the time: one player plays as the "Runner," a hacker-like individual whose sole purpose is to extract information from the Corporation, which is played by the other player. The Corporate has its own agendas, literally: the Corporation's goal is to score points by completing agendas while resisting the incursions of the Runner. Both sides have cards that are specific to their roles: Runners can use Hardware, Resource, and Icebreaker cards to assist them in penetrating the Ice, Nodes, and Upgrades of the Corporation. It was first released in 1996 and only one expansion was ever released widely for it. Netrunner was the hot game among card gamers until 1999 or so when Wizards of the Coast (the publisher of Magic: The Gathering) stopped producing it.

As I write this review, it surprises me how Netrunner is still strongly supported even 17 years after its initial release. In 1996, I purchased a few double-deck packs and several Limited and Proteus boosters. Being the collector that I was, I bought enough cards to amass almost 700 cards. But, over time, I packed the cards away and forgot about them... Until three years ago, when I unearthed my Netrunner and Magic cards. Then and now, many "professional" reviewers have pointed at Netrunner as the most well-balanced, well-designed collectible card game out there; no one card is so powerful that it tilts the game in one player's favor and is abused en masse. Based on my observations and readings, I believe that is true. I never got to play against a human opponent (I only playtested decks against myself), but I read enough of the rules and strategy guides out there to see how much more balanced cards are (despite rarity) than Magic cards are and how much more diversity there is with deck strategies than there are with Magic decks.

All of this said, an interesting thing happened regarding the first release of this review. A few weeks ago, I published this review here and at Board Game Geek, stating the following in what was the initial part of my concluding paragraph:

"As a Christian, I rid myself of Magic cards because the motif and imagery was not compatible with my convictions, despite the wonderfully complex rules, strategies, and interactions involved with Magic: The Gathering. Netrunner has a comparable level of complexity, but with only a few objectionable images and even more equality among deck designs, even with a much smaller inventory of existing cards."

After I published this review, I got quite a few replies, even some just criticisms, about my views on Netrunner vis-a-vis Magic: The Gathering and how it seemed like I found corporate espionage and murder acceptable, but not the occult imagery of Magic. I thought about it and realized that those critics were right -- my opinion of Netrunner were inconsistent with my convictions regarding the possible negative influences of games. Thus, I sold my cards, perhaps to someone who does not have the convictions I have (I had already sold off/thrown away my Magic cards).

Many people can compartmentalize their own convictions related to games because they are at peace with the notion that those games are "just games." However, for me, I feel compelled to act on my convictions, which is to say that I don't believe that playing Netrunner or any game is inherently sinful (i.e. fracturing one's relationship with God), but the themes and actions taken in a game must be considered, as well as the intent of those actions, when choosing which game to play and, more importantly, in determining what possible influences that game may have. This process of analyzing the benefits and detriments of each game is an ongoing one and there aren't many firm rules, but I do have some, such as no violence with villainous intent. As I get older and I watch my boys get older, I often ask myself, "Is any particular game something I'd want to see my boys play now?" As I seriously considered Netrunner, I concluded that I wouldn't want my boys playing this game because much of the moral decisions one makes in the game are relativistic at best; for example, as one commenter pointed out, the game glorifies hacking, which is normally a criminal activity (except for "white" hacking, which serves the purpose of testing a company's network and data security). I surmised that I did not want to convey the message to my boys that computer theft was acceptable, which led me to the overdue conclusion that Netrunner was not a game for me or my family. That said, if you, the reader, are an adult and your conscience is clear concerning Netrunner, then you should exercise your freedom to play. If anything, playing Netrunner may allow you to connect with people who would never play games with a Christian otherwise.