‘Board games bring people together’

Keystone-SDA

Christmas is just around the corner – along with the annual stress of finding the right presents for friends and family. A Swiss games researcher explains why traditional board games continue to fascinate us.

If you have no idea what presents to buy for your relatives and loved ones this Christmas, you should know that board games and Lego are extremely popular, for young and old, a survey by the Swiss Toy Association shows.

The association asked Swiss retailers such as Migros, Manor, Coop, Galaxus and Spielkiste about early Christmas trends. The results reveal that Lego is very popular, especially for adults. The same goes for soft toys and film-related merchandise, such as Disney’s Stitch character from the Lilo & Stitch franchise.

Surprisingly, board games are still among the most popular Christmas gifts, despite the growth of computer games. Why are board games still so popular?

“Board games are popular because they bring people together,” explains games researcher Rainer Buland. What’s also exciting, he says, is that adults and children are on an equal footing with these games, something that rarely happens in everyday life.

“For a daughter or son, it’s exciting to see how their father reacts when he’s not on familiar territory. With such games, he can’t say ‘you’re not allowed to do this or that’,” he explains.

Not just about winning

Board games are also great for friends. There are hardly any other areas where you get to know another person so quickly and intensely, says the researcher. “We always try to show off our best sides. But in games, we get to know other aspects of ourselves. How does our friend react when he loses and gets angry?”

Ultimately, the aim of a board game is still to win. The idea of a single winner remains paramount in the Western world, where we are very individualistic, he says. In other parts of the world, winning is not the main motivation, explains Buland, who is particularly interested in the 5,000-year-old culture of gambling.

“On the Pacific island of Samoa, people say ‘if we all play against each other and only one wins, everyone else will be frustrated. Why is that interesting?’” he explains. But in the West, particularly in democratic countries, there has been a tendency to play more cooperatively over the past 30 years, he adds.

Why we have an instinct to play

The play instinct has developed over the course of evolution because it fulfils an important function in learning, explains researcher Rainer Buland. “Animals like insects have fixed instincts and behavioural programmes that tell them what to do,” he explains.

Over time, evolution has developed a highly complex central nervous system, which is found mainly in mammals and birds. On the one hand, this larger brain volume allows for more flexible behaviour. “On the other hand, animals need to learn skills, and the best way to do that is to play. When two young lions fight while playing, they don’t really bite each other, because they have an inhibition to biting,” he explains. They don’t hurt each other but they learn the skills they need for hunting.

“That’s why evolution gave birth to play,” says Buland. Brain research also shows that it is easier and more effective to learn by having fun.

What has also changed in recent years is the age of players, as more adults also enjoy playing board games. This tendency to extend youth into adulthood has been with us for years, explains Buland.

“In the 1950s, a woman would get married after she came of age and would then have children; a man would go out to work. In those days, we used to say that when you reach adulthood, you work or you practise sport, but you don’t play. Such a clear-cut professional career no longer exists. Today, we are much freer. We have to constantly reinvent ourselves. And to do that, we need play and creativity,” he says.

Many adults also play on their smartphones or games consoles. However, fears in the 1990s that such games would supplant analogue board games have not been realised. And it should stay that way, says Buland.

“In the meantime, younger parents are also playing board games with their children. The more digital we become, the more interesting analogue games become,” he concludes.

Adapted from German with DeepL/sb