I heard my mind discuss the following during this night:
Games are excellent but we now see that today’s kids don’t play board games as much as they play console games.Traditional board games like Risk, Checkers, Chess or Backgammon are somewhat considered difficult and are never taught to or even tried by potential players.Everybody wants to start playing right away and that’s why console shoot’em’up are so popular.You can play even if you suck at it at first, but you don’t really have to invest time in learning how to play it.Well, what makes those old games so different that they need extra time to learn?Obviously there are aspects of those games that one needs to grasp to be able to play.Usually games involve some (or all) of: counting, strategy, combinatorial, tactics, probabilities…This is an indication of what we have here.Although played on the board, these games are mainly a mental joy.It’s something that you solve inside your head. But so does sudoku!?Hm… you’re right! But the sudoku rules are very easy to explain when compared to other games…
So? Am I on to something? What do you think about board games? Are they destined to fade way from our houses in the future? Or are they just destined to be recovered and played by old people that seat on park benches and want to keep their minds sane?