Quietly, stealthily, board games have undergone subtle and significant changes.
The games many baby boomers grew up on, the megalomaniac bankruptcy of Monopoly and the world domination of Risk, are still around — popular as ever with new generations.
But a raft of newer games, many with open-ended play strategies that emphasize negotiation and cooperation, have emerged in the past decade, especially in the past three years, board game enthusiasts say.
“When I was a kid, it was Stratego or chess or Monopoly,” says Oliver Hochron, owner of The Encounter, an Allentown gaming emporium. “But today, board gamers have moved onto something that is more strategic.”
Many of the more popular games were first developed in Europe — Germany, in particular — and then exported to the United States. As a consequence, gamers refer to them as Euro-style or Eurogames, even if they were developed in the United States.
The variety of the new games is remarkable. Some are designed for two players, others for eight or more. Some can take 40 minutes to play, others typically run for hours.
Players of Settlers of Catan, one of the most popular of this new generation of board games, establish plantations on an island and can take a number of paths toward accumulating points. They can grow agricultural products and ship them to other lands; they can establish villages and towns, or they can do a combination of both strategies.
As with many of the newer games, there is no single, agreed- upon way of accumulating points. In more direct games, such as Monopoly, the goal is always to accumulate the most money and bankrupt the opposition, for example. The newer games are much more complex and nuanced.
The open-ended nature of the games appeals to players, many of whom also play console or computer games, says Karl Kemmerer, who owns a gaming store.
“The biggest difference between playing a computer and playing an actual person is that with an actual person, you can only guess what they might do. With a computer AI (artificial intelligence), obviously there are patterns. Human players are more adaptable.”
While some of the newer games have a wide appeal, the hard-core strategy player tends to be between 30 and 50, says Jim Carvin, who runs church game nights.
“For the teens, I think that the time commitment and, frankly, deeper strategy of some Eurogames doesn’t interest them greatly,” says Carvin.
“They tend to want fast and simple games such as crokinole, Settlers of Catan, Werewolf, Ticket to Ride, Formula De, Blokus, Trans america. Once the game crosses the one-hour threshold, they start to drift and get bored. So I try to steer them toward games I think they will like and try hard to keep the games moving.”
