More Time for Board Games?

How we manage our leisure time has definitely changed over the years. This I guess isn’t new news, so to speak. We are all aware of the Netflix phenomenon and boxsets and series binging. In fact, it feels like if you can’t have the whole series now, all at once, it causes a frustrated condition that I’m sure they’ll name at some point as a medical condition. I recently started watching Picard on Amazon and actually quite like only having one episode to look forward to a week. But at the same time it is nice to have all the episodes available especially for the Expanse! And even if we have only one episode to watch a week we can watch it when we want.

But there is so much choice how can you run out! I hear people saying yet I think another effect of having everything at your fingertips is we become fussier. I have little patience for a series that doesn’t grip me straight away, which I’m not sure how I feel about. This is another reason why we run out of things to watch, creating the aforementioned space in our leisure time.

Classic Talisman from the 1980's

So what can we do with this opening in our schedules? Bring in a board game why not! Let’s face it there are more options than ever for confining ourselves with more screen time. Potentially board games could help us regain some of our social skills? Learn to interact with other people? I have years of experience teaching teenagers and it is very apparent to me that there is a key shift change in what they talk about. A lot of them are finding that one of the main things they have to talk about are television programs. There is less conversation about going out, less about family, less about friendship. I believe that other than a whole load of fun, board games can bring you friendship, unless of course you’re playing Monopoly that you might end up with enemies. Just kidding, Monopoly is a great game.

Faced with this though what game do you play? If you have an hour how many games are there out to play within that time scale. You need a decent amount of time to play a game like Talisman or Monopoly. I think we can say that patience levels have shortened and that people feel daunted by longer more complex games or are too tired after work to learn the rules. I do feel that this is the new optimum time, an hour. It’s where I will be aiming my new game, which will shortly be going live at Kickstarter. More to follow.