CHG's first blog!
I was talking to someone the other day about finding more people to play games with. I asked if the person tossed dice with his wife or co-workers.
“Ahhh, no. And no way.”
The stigma attached to games is disappearing. With the advent of X-Box-this and Sony-that it’s not uncommon to hear folks grokking about underclocked hardware. But, unplugged games are still taboo? You’ve got to be kidding.
Everyone is a gamer. They just haven’t found the right game yet. (You may have heard me say this at the store once or a billion times!)
The idea is to create a comfortable atmosphere (no black lights with red dripping candles!) for social interaction. Because games are going more mainstream (Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne are on X-Box Live!) it’s important to treat them no differently than plugging into a computer. Do you have house parties? Dinner parties? Hang out parties? All of these occasions can be enhanced by a good game.
Here are list of games for said occasions…
House Party: Cash & Guns, Redneck Life, Martinis & Men
Dinner Party: Ticket to Ride, Blokus, High School Drama!, Qwelf
Hanging Out: Bang!, Tsuro, Killer Bunnies
My brother (doctor), his wife (teacher), my mom (teacher) and my dad (school principal) are all traditional gamers. We played Monopoly and Crazy 8s when I was a kid.
I introduced them all (they were my guinea pigs, really) one night at my house to Ticket to Ride. Everyone played along and let me show them how to play. I had to strong arm them slightly to try it. The next thing you know its 4 a.m. and we’re on our fifth or sixth game of the night. I called it quits before the last game started among my family members.
A door had been opened for them. They had no idea board games had come this far (or gotten this good!). If you are still unsure about introducing someone to games bring them by the store Oct. 10th. We’re trying a ‘Girls Night Out’. We’re running High School Drama! and Martinis & Men. If they don’t like these…there are more games out there!
posted by crithit @ 7:26 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Girls night out?! Sounds like fun, sorry I missed it. High school drama sounds like a game I need to have. If only I had friends to play with.
I take my figs to work on Saturdays to get some modeling done. I also spend time between calls reviewing game mags and rule books. I get a few questions, but no one has ever been anything but genuinely interested in my hobbies. Take my advice: Eschew convention.
To get non-gamers into 'real' gaming, keep it simple to start with.
For example, most 'normal' people have played UNO and like it pretty well. It's a short hop to Fluxx, which has similar mechanics.
Think about Scrabble, Monopoly, and other popular games, and see if you can draw parallels with other games you'd like to sell to your family and friends. The more complicated the games they've played and liked, the easier it's going to be for you. If they've played chess or Risk and liked it, you're in. But you can sell a lot of gamer's games as 'simpler than Monopoly' because they are. (Monopoly is really a pretty complex game.) Just use the familiar as your jumping off point to the unfamiliar, pick relatively easy and FUN games to start with, and you should find some success.
If nothing else, agree to play THEIR choice of games. I've ended up playing Connect Four this way, but at least it got us playing games and talking about what's 'fun' in a game. It's a start.
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