Board Games to Put Families Back in Play

New York Times, Michelle Slatalla

November 10, 2005

A disturbing trend hit my household recently, when my husband got his hands on one of those new handheld video game players that destroy marriages.

We used to be a family. Now we are four women carrying heavy grocery bags past an unshaven man in an armchair who is staring intently at his thumbs. A bag rips. Cans of tuna roll across the floor. The man does not look up.

"I want you to stop this lunacy," I said.

"Not lunacy," he said. "Tennis."

I remember a time, not so long ago, when my husband made the extra effort to use verbs in conversation. In that golden era, I remember us as the sort of wholesome "Leave-It to Beaver" family that played board games like Scrabble and Monopoly at the kitchen table.

"Squinting at a little tiny screen for hours is not tennis," I said. "Tennis is a game. A game is something you play with other people."

"You're in my light," my husband said.

Drastic measures were called for. I picked up the cans of tuna and then went shopping online. On the Internet, I searched for games that existed in three dimensions, games that came with boards and pieces and dice, games that required multiple players, games that would lure my husband back to life.

That was how I ended up at Funagain.com, a site owned by a quirky store in Ashland, Ore., which started business eight years ago with the idea to sell recycled games. "In those days, we'd get a bunch of copies of an old game that people would donate, missing pieces and parts, and we'd take all those copies and make them into complete sets," said Nick Medinger, Funagain Games's marketing director. "We did that for a while, and then we basically caught on to the idea of offering something new to American consumers."

Now Funagain sells a comprehensive selection of about 2,000 board games from around the world, including cult favorites like Blokus and the Carcassonne series, which are both French, and the Scandinavian edition of Elfenland.

"All these games take just a few minutes to learn and 45 to 60 minutes to play," Mr. Medinger said. "You don't have to invest a whole day or learn complicated rules."

Many of Funagain.com's repeat customers are people who think of board gaming as a hobby. "They pay attention to news releases from companies and follow game series the way you might go see a sequel of a movie you liked or buy a new book in a series just because it's in that series," Mr. Medinger said.

By and large, the most consistently entertaining board games come from Germany, he said.

"We carry stuff from around the world, but the leaders in the industry are the German games," Mr. Medinger said. "In Germany, their view of board games in general is that it's something you do with the family. When you come home in the evening, instead of watching television, you pull out a board game and play it. There, you see entire families playing board games three or four times a week."

"I used to be in a family like that," I said wistfully.

"In America, we're so individualistic," Mr. Medinger said. "Everyone goes off to do their own thing."

"I'm trying to change that one household at a time," I said. "Can you help me?"

I told Mr. Medinger I was looking for three kinds of games. First, I needed a word game that would tempt my husband as surely as Scrabble used to.

"Get BuyWord," Mr. Medinger said without hesitating. "It's a great game for people who are Scrabbled to death. There was an American games designer - this is actually unusual - who had a big following and was named Sid Sackson. He passed away a couple of years ago, and there's a huge catalog of his older games that were never published or were out of print that are becoming available now. BuyWord is one that was published for the first time last year."

The mechanics of BuyWord ($21.60 at Funagain.com) are similar to those of Scrabble, with a bag full of little letter tiles worth varying amounts of points. The goal is to collect enough tiles to spell a high-point word and "sell" it back to the bank.

"O.K.," I said, putting BuyWord into my shopping cart as we spoke. "I also need a compelling game for five players, who range from an 8-year-old girl to a 48-year-old man with sore thumbs."

"Any game in the Carcassonne series," Mr. Medinger said.

I clicked to add the first Carcassonne game ($19.95) to my cart.

"Also, I need a game that my 8-year-old can figure out how to play with her friends on her own," I said.

"For how many players?"

"Say three or so," I said.

"Rat-a-Tat Cat," Mr. Medinger said. "It's a card game where players start by drawing four facedown cards. It's great for kids."

I bought Rat-a-Tat Cat too (for $8), figuring that with so many games I also was getting an early start on holiday shopping.

Other sites carry some of the same games. At Germangames.com, for instance, Elfenland was $37.95. At Areyougame.com, Rat-a-Tat Cat was $9.98. At Gamefest.com, Buyword was $19.95. But I stuck with Funagain.com, figuring a single order would save on shipping costs.

(While I was browsing at Areyougame.com, I did buy Do You Sudoku? ($20.98), University Games's brand-new board version of a simple yet ingenious game that everyone in my family loves and which was not available at Funagain.com. This addictive game requires players to place the numbers one through nine in empty spaces on a grid so that each appears once in a horizontal line, a vertical line and a box.)

The next day, I found my husband pretending to play tennis against a fake Roger Federer on the Sony Playstation Portable player (which costs $249.99 at Circuitcity.com).

"Does he always ace you like that?" I asked.

My husband looked up. "Want to try?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Go on," he said. He handed the player to me. I warmed up my thumbs on the buttons. Mr. Federer served. He aced me.

My husband held out his hand for the player.

"Just one more time," I said.

A few hours later, my husband came back to ask if I wanted a tuna sandwich for lunch. I said, "Get out of my light."