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Humour: The perils of game night
It’s a fight to the finish between the chronically bored and the ultra-competitive
A game of Pictionary is in progress. The counter stops on an All Play word. The two designated artists sketch the word for their respective teammates. “Paree!” shouts the Italian, seeing a hurried caricature of the Eiffel Tower. “Paris!” screams someone from the other side a second later and claims victory for her team. “But I said Paree first!” screams the indignant Italian. “But we’re playing in English,” replies the implacable local. Because that’s what happens on game night. Meanness is mandatory.
All on board
I’ve spent much of my adult years waiting to collect £200 on account of a bank error, that memorable Monopoly bounty. Instead, some merchant remittance to the tune of a rupee comes into my bewildered account every now and then, mocking my childhood dream. And that ‘Get out of jail free’ card – I could use a few. Monopoly taught me one thing: board games are overrated. But at least there was that thrill of having and spending colourful bank notes. They’ve taken that away in the newer versions: there’s plastic money here, too.
Cluedo, where you had to guess the murderer from among a few classic whodunit suspects, was a real test of patience. And Ludo – I cannot for the life of me see the charm of a game where you reach four counters home to safety while knocking off rival counters along the way. I so want to be the kind of person who finds this game engaging, played with family on a languid Sunday afternoon to a soundtrack of good-natured chuckles. Instead, the rolling of the dice and the moving of the counters gives me about as much joy as trying to figure whether an avocado has ripened.
Fringe pleasures
There is, however, fun to be extracted from Taboo. Yelling out word clues, while avoiding taboo words, is a game tailor-made for language junkies desperate to break into violent shouting without being judged. Scrabble, the more cerebral of word games, reveals more about people than just the strength of their vocabularies. It’s more a game of strategy, not expertise. As someone who naively opens up triple-word scores for shark-like opponents, I’ve never quite warmed to it. The real fun is to make little word jokes on my own stand of word tiles, spelling such phrases as ‘Or Pasta’ at lunchtime. You might not look good on the scorecard, but see how well you’ve filled up the gaps between the high-scoring words of the hard-nosed wordsmiths.
My taste and patience cannot abide Cards Against Humanity, the game woke millennials swear by in so many ways. Which leaves us with a pack of cards in hand. Once again, there’s the tyranny of numbers and symbols, the scourge of childhood. The intrepid have even tried to teach me poker, and I’ve shaken my head insincerely while concocting emergency escape excuses. But my poker face is so bad, I’d never succeed.
Organised fun
While kids play for the sake of it, equally enjoying the camaraderie and the contest and moving on with their lives once the game is done, things look a lot different when grown-ups reclaim the space with their fragile egos and complicated politics. We are now in the era of ‘game night’ (as if ‘date night’, ‘girls’ night’ and ‘movie night’ weren’t enough), an invention born out of friends’ need to meet but not really chat. Nothing takes the fun out of games than a hawk-like focus on their enjoyment. I receive messages that ask me to arrive for a game night after dinner, instantly deflating any interest I might have had in the affair. Between curling up with a book and meeting up with a group of ultra-competitive nocturnal friends who think arguing about cheating is cute, the choice isn’t hard.
In case I sound like a mean-spirited, high-minded bore, let me put forth a modest proposal: I imagine a world where game enthusiasts and atheists can socialise together without being judged for being either juvenile or cantankerous. And if integration is your mission, then might I suggest constructing your game night around an elaborate meal. Post-dinner invitations need enticements that are way more tempting than board games.
From HT Brunch, March 1, 2020
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