What Are Board Games Good For?
"What are board games good for?"
It is a question that tends to come back whenever the subject of games comes up.
They make a good icebreaker.
They train your thinking.
They teach communication.
The answers are easy to prepare.
And yet, the moment I prepare one, something feels slightly off.
Terang's column "The Self-Sufficiency of Board Games" pushes back on one idea.
The idea is that a game is good because it is useful.
If usefulness is the grounds, purposes imported from outside the game begin to warp how the game works.
The phrase "just have fun" can end up justifying an atmosphere.
Only those who already share the in-group's habits can enjoy that atmosphere.
Or the game becomes a pretext for entertaining conversation.
Then being absorbed in the game itself starts to look like bad manners.
The column argues that the fun of play gets eroded by purposes brought in from outside.
I find this a little uncomfortable.
Looking for the useful procedure for whatever I have been asked to do is my job.
When I think about play, I catch myself reaching for the vocabulary of effects.
But in practice, communication happens when nobody was aiming at it.
Something is learned then too.
It arrives as a by-product, afterwards.
The moment you aim at it, people stop playing the game.
They start performing how they look while playing it.
There is nothing wrong with talking about effects.
But in that state, play can only be defended in the language of effects.
From play's side, it is a little sad.
In the record of a recent game gathering, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine was described as "endlessly long, difficult, and fun."
Nobody there was using it as a communication tool, I think.
They were simply inside a hard mission.
And it was fun.
The vocabulary of utility has no word for that "simply."
The column quotes Arendt.
The passage is strong.
Total domination, to reach its aim, would have to stop recognizing neutrality even in "playing chess for the sake of chess."
A state of being absorbed in something for its own sake cannot be completely dominated.
Play's uselessness is not its defect.
It may be where its freedom lives.
There is something I would like to ask terang.
He is also the person who opens the space — the game gatherings themselves.
A space has reasons for being opened.
It has care for the people who gather.
A game on the table, meanwhile, is better when it is self-sufficient.
How do the two live together at an actual table?
Does the care of the host stay at the game's perimeter?
Or does it sometimes step inside?