From warzones to lockdown, board games can give a sense of control amid chaos

During the pandemic, Tim Clare was sitting in his “miser’s cave” of board games, when he realized there was something missing from his life.

“My first moment of real sort of panic was, Oh my goodness, when am I going to get to play games again?” Clare told The Sunday Magazine guest host Nora Young. 

“I’d sort of taken them so much for granted until that point, it had never occurred to me how much of the fabric of my life they were.”

Clare is a board game journalist and author of Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human. He’s travelled the world talking to people about games, and has found that there’s something special about what a game like Catan or Parcheesi can do. 

He says board games like Monopoly or Wingspan are more than just a fun thing to do on a rainy summer day. They can give people a chance to take control of their circumstances, especially during chaotic times, and make choices in a situation that likely won’t affect your life one way or another.

Board games in a crisis

Clare says board games can be especially important during times of crisis. He says that during the First World War, soldiers were playing Parcheesi in the trenches.  

“There’s a reason they were doing that, and I think it’s because it provides a really, really important thing that humans need, which is relief and escape and freedom,” said Clare.

And there are more recent examples too. Clare recently spoke with a Ukrainian soldier stationed on the front lines of the war with Russia, while his son was in the Netherlands as a refugee. 

Despite being apart, the two connected online to play a board game called Blood Bowl, a fantasy football game featuring teams of elves, dwarves and goblins from Games Workshop’s Warhammer universe.

“It was a game that they played together when they were together, and that they were continuing in each other’s absence as a way of staying connected,” said Clare. 

“There’s literal bombs falling out of the sky and someone’s taking the time to set up all these little models…. I think it should tell you something about how important that this is, that that was one of his priorities.”

Scott Preston says during the COVID-19 pandemic, people who were stuck inside with their family dusted off old copies of games in their basement or found a way to play online with friends. 

“They just had lots of time to sit and play with each other,” said Preston, an associate professor who teaches and researches board game design and history at the University of New Brunswick.

So much time, in fact, that it created a board game boom. 

“The whole industry saw an explosion of sales and interest and new people coming into the hobby during COVID,” said Preston.

Making choices

Preston says board games are set apart from movies and books, or other hobbies that can distract you from life’s problems, because they give you a level of choice, depending on what you play. 

“Games, because they are an interactive medium, you do have a different sense of control over what happens,” said Preston. “Games give you the sense that … you are making decisions and have some control over your fate.” 

It’s even different than video games, which are also interactive and similarly enjoyed an industry boom during the pandemic, he says.

“Board games still give us something that we can’t get from video games, that sitting down at a table across from people in a physical space and interacting with them. And that’s a very powerful social benefit,” said Preston.

Clare says it also allows you to tackle social situations that you may not in real life, such as a conquering army in Risk or a shrewd negotiator in Monopoly.

“Every game is a form of role play. Every game, even if you’re playing checkers, to a certain extent, you’re getting into the role of being an adversary against your friend who’s sitting across from you in the cabin,” he said. “Like, you don’t really want to defeat them on this battlefield.”

Part of the fun, and why you’re able to take on these kind of roles, is because the outcome just doesn’t matter. 

When you compare that with the frequent, sometimes weighty decisions a person makes in their life every day, deciding whether you should build a hotel on Park Place in a game of Monopoly doesn’t seem like so big of a deal. 

For the same reason, the uncertainty that comes with many games is also freeing. 

“When so much seems of such huge import, giving ourselves permission to spend half an hour, an hour, doing something where the outcome, whether we do well or badly, is not going to be hugely disastrous, I think it’s an important refuelling place,” said Clare.