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In search of 'gateway' games

                It’s a question that’s rarely asked in the field of competitive sports.

What kind of player are you?

Whether it be Pop Warner, high school, college or professional football, for example, they all play the same game. Its level of complexity might increase and specialize as a player moves up the ranks toward the encyclopedic playbooks of college and the professionals, but when you get right down to it, the basics don’t change. Four downs to make 10 yards, six points for a touchdown, three for a field goal, two for a safety and one for a PAT. Team with the most points at the end of a defined amount of time, wins the game. End of basic rules story.

Board games (and we’ll throw in non-standard deck card games, as well) are different. There is no set ‘game.’ Each one is different and asking someone what kind of board game player they are is likely to elicit a wide variety of responses, dependent on the individual and the kind of games you’re asking about. The person who admits to enjoying the occasional game of Trivial Pursuit, for example, is not necessarily the type of person willing to sit still for the two or three hours it might take to play a game of Risk.

There are a lot, and I mean a LOT more people who play the former game, than the latter. Without actual figures at my fingertips, I’d bet the house that there are more copies of Trivial Pursuit purchased in a single month than copies of Puerto Rico (as a random example) sold in an entire year.

Board gamers who enjoy a high level of complexity and mental gymnastics in their choice of games are forever on a quest to introduce non-gamer friends into the joys of their hobby (myself, included). It is generally an uphill battle, for a variety of reasons. The first is historic.

Another house bet I’d make would be that if you play a word association game with 10 people, chosen at random from a collection of friends, family and/or acquaintances (excluding any of these who are known to be regular board game hobbyists), and say ‘board games,’ all 10 are going to respond with Monopoly, which was invented in 1935. Some would argue that it’s such a popular game because, first and foremost, it’s a good game, a classic board game. Others, particularly among today’s legions of board game hobbyists, would argue back that it’s popularity has more to do with its familiarity, marketing and presentation than any true value it possesses as a board game.

Monopoly’s ‘mechanics,’ those physical things that you do to play the game, have been around since Jesus Christ was four years old. He might have even played Parcheesi, itself a predecessor of backgammon, reportedly invented around 200 A.D. Basically, you have a board, generally square or rectangular in shape, with spaces laid out in a circular pattern around the board. One, or a number of playing pieces are situated at some sort of start space (‘home’ in Parcheesi, ‘Go’ in Monopoly) and a pair of dice are rolled. The piece or pieces are moved around the board the number of spaces delineated by the dice roll and upon arrival at a new space, something happens. With Parcheesi (and its hybrid, Sorry, invented in 1934), that something is the next player’s turn. In Monopoly, of course, you buy property, or pay rent, or a fine, or draw a card. You can find this ‘mechanic’ in a wide variety of games. In Candyland (like Sorry, invented in 1934), you move your piece along the rainbow path through the peppermint stick forest, the gingerbread plum tree and the gumdrop mountain. Charles Darrow, Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips and George S. Parker, who are credited with the invention of Monopoly, turned that into Connecticut Ave., The Short Line and Boardwalk and added some things to do when your piece arrived at its new space.

What’s significant about this time-honored mechanic is that the games that employ it are, by definition, centered on luck; the randomness of the dice roll (or dial spin or turn of a card). This is fine, as far as it goes, but where has it been written that it’s the only way to play a board game?

Die-hard board game hobbyists would argue that a truly great board game is one in which the element of luck plays a minimal role in the outcome, if at all. In game theory, the purest types of these are known as ‘perfect information’ games, in which everything that’s going on in the game is known to all players as they proceed. In chess, for example, all moves and board positions relative to game play are known to both players. In Monopoly, no one playing has any idea whatsoever what will happen when the dice roll.

Many people prefer to steer clear of ‘perfect information’ games because so much of what goes on is dependent on their willingness and/or ability to make appropriate decisions. Many people, especially in our modern, hectic world, just do not like to think when it comes time to choose a form of entertainment and it’s this barrier that separates most non-gamers from the world of board game hobbyists.

Thus, the never-ending search for a game or games which addresses a non-gamer’s preference for enjoyment; that doesn’t entail the burning of too many brain cells, while at the same time, offering a fun, socially interactive experience.

There is a debate going on (and arguably, has been going on since Jesus, maybe, sat down for a game of Parcheesi), as to which games in the available market are appropriate to introduce to your basic non-gamer friends; what are known as ‘gateway’ games. The object is to steer these non-gamer friends toward more (though not strictly) ‘perfect information’ game systems, while slowly weaning them away from ‘dice fests,’ party games and/or video games.

This is not going to happen if you start by bringing a modern game like Agricola (Z-Man Games, 2008) to the table. Though currently ranked # 1 on the BoardGame Geek Web site (www.boardgamegeek.com; on the basis of 6,385 people who ranked it on a scale of 1 through 10, 10 being best), Agricola is a game that entails more than your average burn of brain cells to play effectively. On the other hand, Dominion (Rio Grande Games, 2008), which is currently ranked # 6 on the basis of 3,241 ratings, is something of a ‘perfect information’ game that burns far fewer brain cells and yet, is an enjoyable experience for newcomer and hard-core gamer alike. It even bears resemblance to another form of gameplay altogether, called collectible card games, or CCGs, which makes it something of a gateway game between traditional, tabletop board games and die-hard fans of games like Magic: The Gathering (Wizards of the Coast, 1993). The ‘building’ of a personal deck of cards and how you play them is key to winning both. Monopoly, by the way, is ranked #5006, on the basis of nearly 6,000 ratings.

So let’s go interactive here. Add a comment to this post and recommend to the legions of non-gamer types a good ‘gateway’ game. Perhaps we can reach a consensus on a list of games that’ll sway our non-gamer friends to the ‘force’ and away from the ‘dark side’ of boring or repetitive game play, inherent in so much of what passes for board games at your local discount outlet.