Dana and I had decided that we would start this experiment, thirty days of board games, just after the 4th of July, 2010.
The only problem with that schedule is that her grandmother died on the last day of June.
Normally, a grandparent’s death doesn’t require too much involvement. The generation of difference—and, one hopes, the advanced age—make the passing sad and unwelcome but a little distant. You mourn. You offer love and support, but you’re not expected to take up the burdens and responsibilities that family and society require. Grandma Allen, though, followed her husband by a short six months, and their house and other property hadn’t been given a final disposition. So Dana took off on the first of July back to Ohio to help her mom and wrangle with relatives as they unpacked the house and untangled the issues. This will take her at least ten days.
Thirty days of games would have to start…differently.
While Dana was gone with our daughter, I straightened the game shelves a bit. Did a little tidying up of individual games as well. We own several games that we picked up at yard sales and thrift stores. These games are not in the best shape, usually, and it’s part of the hobby aspect of my interest in board games to restore the boxes and pieces. It’s the thing I can do when nobody else is around. Because that’s the dilemma: board games are social, they leverage our human drive to be around other people. The games add a variety of other elements, what those elements are depend on the game, but at their heart games work with our social drive by giving that drive some focus and structure.
But on the Fourth of July 2010, I’m sitting on our couch, contemplating which games to work on (I have a small group of old wargames that need some attention) and listening to firecrackers and rain. Dana and Wendy are in Ohio, making their way to her grandmother’s house.
I need to get some games ready for us to explore when she gets home, as well as for the game day I’ll be hosting this coming weekend. It will come as a surprise, I think, that someone would spend time reading game rules and then playing the game with dummy hands to see how the thing works. But you can think of it as chess, go, or bridge puzzles. Some of the games aren’t especially complicated. Others, though, have thick rulebooks. Where’s the fun in that? It’s hard to explain, but I think the fun comes from the same place that solving a tricky problem comes from.
This focus on a problem, the peering at it from different angles, attempting different approaches to the solution, I’ve heard all this described as the kind of attitude among humans that developed into science. We experiment with our world, with the objects and ideas in our world, and this exploration applies to artists as well. Trying out plots, sonnet structure, material for color and sculpture, these all reveal the same impulse and drive.
One of the beautiful things about games is that they let you explore that impulse while being social. The particular neat trick being worked out is how this combination plays into gender dynamics. If we can assume that men are at least more socially constructed to be linear problem solvers and women are socially constructed to be more socially aware, then games have the potential to bring both of those skill sets to bear. As I spend more time with this project, I hope to spend a little more time with the issue of gender in gaming. From artwork, to storylines, to gameshops, gaming conventions, local players, and considering other cultural settings for games (bridge clubs, bingo, casual online games), I’m curious about how playing games breaks down by gender—and race. But it's a long project. We'll see how this all plays out.
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