Board Games Holding Up in Interactive World

Richmond Times - Dispatch

The Reichel kids are never at a loss for something to do.

The four, ranging in age from 9 to 15, have busy lives full of school work, sports and music lessons.

When they're home, they can easily fall into the contemporary trap of isolated entertainment in video games. But what really gets them going -- and keeps them together -- is neatly stacked in their Henrico County home.

In this age of digital everything, old-fashioned board games still reign supreme for Hannah, Rebecca, Noah and Nathan.

The Reichels aren't alone. According to industry figures, in the past year, board-game sales have risen while computer-game sales have dropped by 30 percent or more. Some of it is pure economics -- when you're out of work, it's hard to justify expensive computer games -- and some of it is social. There's just something about a family sitting around a board that can't be replicated on a screen.

"It's the interaction," said Tammi Reichel, mother of the children and a translator and part-time German instructor at the University of Richmond. "It really is a social thing for us."

In the Reichel house, the games are abundant. They're in the living room, in cabinets, on shelves, on the mantel, under one table and on top of another. They're on a table in the kitchen, too, out in the open for anyone to grab and play. Dozens and dozens of games, from classics such as Monopoly and Sorry! to rare German choices from the time when Martin Reichel worked for a German game company.

"It teaches them great lessons," Tammi said. "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you have to compromise."

"These are things they need to know in life," said Martin, director of the German and Arabic language studies program at UR.

During one game the children played recently, they needed to know basic geography. And fast.

While Nathan, a 10th-grader at Douglas Freeman High School, looked on from behind, Hannah (fourth grade, Springfield Park Elementary School), Rebecca (seventh grade, Moody Middle School) and Noah (eighth grade, Our Lady of Lourdes School) spread out across the floor to play Mad Dash!

Each player got a map of the United States, and a deck of state cards was divided among them. When the timer started, the players turned over their cards and pieced together the longest routes they could of contiguous states.

"The graphics on video can be great, but after the novelty wears off, who are you talking to? said David A. Miller, an editor on the board game news Web site purplepawn.com. "Who are you interacting with?"

Miller said adults who dismiss board games as relics of childhood are missing the point, whether they have children or not.

"There have been great advancements in games," he said. "I know that makes it sound high-tech, but it's not."

He said a good game is engaging and entertaining and, perhaps most important, can be played in a reasonable amount of time.

Even with dealing and sorting out routes afterward, Mad Dash! was about a 15-minute affair for the Reichels. They wrapped it up, played once more and moved on to the next game.

Ticket to Ride, in which players create train routes across the country, has been a favorite for the Reichels for about three years, since Nathan got a copy for Christmas.

Not that board games are pushing aside video games in the Reichel household.

Tammi Reichel made it clear both had a place.

"I don't want you getting the idea that all we do is play board games," she said. "That's not the case. But we do like them."

Plenty of people, though, prefer playing online.

While online gaming is often considered a solitary activity, Celia Pearce, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech in the digital media program and the director of the school's experimental game lab, said that is a misconception.

Pearce has discovered in her research that multi-player computer games are becoming more popular, even diversions such as Sudoko and card games, which many people consider as noninteractive.

"I see it as a return to what games are supposed to be, which is social," Pearce said.

During her student labs, Pearce often observes her students as they play video games and has found that 75 percent of the time, the kids are playing together, even if it's a single-player game.

The social aspect of games was apparent this month when the freshman class at Maggie L. Walker Governor's School spent a night "locked in" together. It was a decidedly old-fashioned affair, with plenty of games and not much TV.

"Computer games are so solo," said Helena Barth, a 14-year-old freshman from Henrico. "It's about social interaction. It's a good way of getting to know people."

She said she played Candyland and Apples to Apples, among other games, with a revolving group of people that included friends and strangers alike.

But kids playing board games isn't what's splashed on TV.

One popular gaming group activity exploded a little over a year ago when the basic premise of karaoke was spiffed up and brought into homes. And this year, the Rock Band franchise, developed by Harmonix Music Systems and MTV Games, passed 1 billion in sales, just 15 months after its initial release.

"[When] I was in the UK in October, they had an eight-hour long Lego Rock Band marathon," Pearce said. "People got on stage, had names for their bands and they played this game as a performance. Rock Band, Wii Tennis -- these games show a return to the social generational gaming environment."

However, while millions might still enjoy pressing the buttons on a plastic guitar to Beatles tunes while a friend or relative yelps the words to "Helter Skelter," there are indications that the novelty of playing fake instruments to favorite songs might be waning.

Analyst Doug Creutz of Cowan and Company recently told Web site http://www.gamesindustry.biz that demand for the new DJ Hero, Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero, released last month by Harmonix rival Activision, is much lower than expected. Creutz reduced his combined sales expectations from $408 million to $199 million for 2009.

That's good news for someone such as Marshall Chrein, CEO and founder of Mindlogic, a board game development company.

Chrein's 2008 creation Consensus won the Top Toy of 2009 award from Tdmonthly.com, a toy and game industry trade magazine.

Although Consensus, which is available at several retailers, also has a Facebook version, Chrein believes that the beauty of the physical version is that it's a social game.

"Online, you don't have that social experience. I put it [on Facebook] to create buzz about the game, but in the end, my consensus, if you will, is that it's nice to have it on there, but this game works really well when people are face to face. There is no strategy, no trivia, it's simply a game for people to get to know one another," he said, explaining Consensus' premise of choosing random word cards that all of the players eventually vote on to choose the most essential.

In talking to hundreds of retailers to promote Consensus, Chrein found that many of them have expanded the area allotted for board games because they've been selling so well.

"Board games in the past year have taken off because of the economy. It's much cheaper to entertain a family with a $25 board game. People are staying home more for their entertainment, and with so many people being laid off, these games are really a way for families to bond," Chrein said. "You read so many things about Facebook and texting making things anti-social. Maybe the pendulum has swung too far and it's swinging back a little bit."

According to a survey from the NPD Group, sales of board games increased from $1.08 billion to $1.1 billion between October 2008 and 2009, an increase of 2 percent. In that same time period, revenue from connected Web play dropped from $527 million to $377 million, a decrease of 28 percent.

"It's a different experience," said Miller, the Web site editor. "There's something very communal about [board games] because it's such a social experience."

Board games should always have a place, no matter how cool video games are, Miller said.

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