Getting There…And Going Back…Is Half the Fun

When I play with Lauren and Amelia, any game is fun.  For a while, anyway.  We all seem to get tired of games that don’t require the player to actually DO anything.  Take an old standby, like Chutes and Ladders.  You spin the wheel.  You move your piece.  Sometimes you go down a chute.  Sometimes you go up a ladder.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

The game is so devoid of decision or excitement that riding the longest chute (square 84) or the highest ladder (square 28…I play this too often) is preferable to actually WINNING THE GAME.  That’s Chutes and Ladders right – Amelia pouts when she is about to land on square 100 and win the game, because it means there is no chance of sliding up or down the game board.

Maybe that’s why the game has been popular with small children since the Bronze Age: kids just like the random possibility of something happening that is both different and pointless at the same time.  Adults prefer games that require either strategy and decision-making (like chess) or have real consequences based on random chance (like roulette).

Chutes and Ladders has neither.  Like the proverbial itsy-bitsy spider, players climb up, slowly or rapidly, until they fall down, or the game ends.  Nothing else happens.  It’s just like King of the Hill, minus the bruises and grass stains.

To me, Lauren and Amelia’s relative boredom with is a sign of progress; they are becoming more clever, and more social, as they enjoy games of increasing difficulty and variation. 

Can We All Get Along?

When I was a kid, every game involved inter-player competition, whether it be a race to the finish (like Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land), or a struggle for resources (like Monopoly) or a zero-sum strategy game (like Battleship).  Every game had a winner and a loser (or losers).

That seems to be changing.  More and more board games are based on cooperative play, rather than competition between players.  Games like Busytown, Lost Puppies, or Count Your Chickens (don’t worry…I had never heard of them either) require players to work together, or at least in parallel, towards an objective.  If the objective is reached, everybody wins.  If not, try again.

Some might decry this trend as more touchy-feely, P.C. nonsense; I’m not so sure.  Learning to work together and be mutually supportive are great skills for young kids to develop.  And the results – less fighting, more fun – speak for themselves.

Yet I wonder if we lose something in practicing real sportsmanship – how you treat another person in competition.  The thrill of relying on your own strategy, your own decisions, or your own skills is a unique experience.  So is learning to cope when your best efforts don’t always achieve the outcome you want.

And so today’s Count Your Chickens ally is tomorrow’s Connect Four adversary.  Maybe there’s a good lesson in that, too.