Either way,the explanation is not nearly long enough,and as the game begins,you remain deeply confused by the arcane tasks required of you.
“It gets better!” the aficionados say,noticing your fumbling attempts to do anything.
“You just have to play a few times and figure out the strategy”.
When The Guy Who is Good at Board Games suggests you might watch a few YouTube videos of the game first,you realise,far too late,that your supposedly fun night came with homework.
By the time you start to figure out what you should be doing (a few hours in) the wine is finished,the brie eroded down to the rind,and The Guy Who is Good at Board Games has already won.
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After evenings like this,I’ve often wondered why we can’t bin the board games,keep the wine,and simply ... talk. Must social gatherings be organised around activities designed to distract wayward children? Do “friends” really have nothing to say to each other?
For all its wholesomeness,the beloved board game night is antithetical to the thing that gives any social interaction a feeling of magic,the thing we missed most during the worst years of the pandemic – a sense of spontaneity.
The whole undergirding principle – that “fun” must be rigidly structured and regimented,that discussion between friends can only play out according to a rulebook,leaves no room for the serendipitous.
There’s a kind of weird hyper-capitalist puritan logic to the whole thing. Even our social downtime must involve competitive tasks. The simple pleasure of a glass of wine with friends must be accompanied by something more wholesome and virtuous,a “productive” use of one’s brain.
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In a world where so much does follow a script,in a country as slavishly rule-obsessed as Australia,I want at least my social life to have a sense of freedom and chill to it. Getting my arse kicked by The Guy Who is Good at Board Games (who always takes things a bit too seriously) is anything but.
More troubling is the way board games,with their childish tasks,goofy visuals,and compulsive need for “rules,” sit as another example of a culture that encourages us to remain giant babies forever.
For reasons too complex and inscrutable for this brief rant,adulthood has become overwhelmed by a culture of infantilization. At some point in the last few years,grown men and women started being proud of doing and enjoying things once considered the domain of children.
Slowly,those childish interests began to become culturally dominant and commercially very lucrative. Consider the endless glut of superhero movies,and the once serious directors who’ve sold out to the Marvel coin.
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Consider also:the dominance of pop music by grown-up teen stars,the rise of meal prep kits,the Wiggles winning the Hottest 100,adults buying colouring books,adults wearing things called “oodies”,adults talking about Harry Potter,adults watching Bluey,adults playing video games,quoting too much from The Simpsons,you name it I could rant forever.
Look closely,and you start to see the infantilization of adulthood everywhere. And in that context,the unstoppable rise of board games,from a niche,quirky pastime that evoked innocent childhood nostalgia,to a rapacious multibillion-dollar industry that holds grown adults in thrall,makes perfect capitalistic sense.
There is no shame in resisting this. No matter how many nerds accuse you of hating “fun”.