Board games have been making a return to popularity as a more social face-to-face alternative.
Despite the increase in digital and online media, all around the Chicago area board game shops and bars are beginning to pop up and are surging in popularity. Most allow patrons to sit back and play a few games with others, making it a fantastic way to meet new people for those finding themselves a little lonely in the Windy City. Or it can be used as a way to relax from studies.
Kevin Gilmore, a graduate mathematics major, attends board game nights at the Near South Side location of The Dice Dojo held on Mondays.
“Board games are a great way to meet new people or just unwind,” Gilmore said. “One game that I love to play with other people is easily The Resistance.”
In The Resistance, which roughly takes 30 to 45 minutes to play, the goal is to go five missions without failing three of them to players working as spies. The deceptive and confrontational nature of the game works as an icebreaker as the group attempts to root out the stealthy group of spies trying to make the rest of the team lose the game.
“You have to strategize if you’re a spy player to ensure that the other spies don’t give away their identities, all while sending the resistance team into a frenzy trying to figure out who was the one that failed the round,” Gilmore said.
With shops like The Dice Dojo offering board game nights, and bars like Guthrie’s Tavern allowing patrons to enjoy a round of drinks with a round of the old time favorite Candy Land, are board games entering prominence in pop culture once more?
Tommy Cottin, night manager at Chicagoland Games: The Dice Dojo, thinks so.
“Other mediums are stagnating in some ways,” Cottin said. “Video games have large budgets, but you usually see the same games released with few differences like a new “Assassin’s Creed” or a new “Call of Duty.” You can only explore so much in a video gaming world.
“Board games, however, offer a menagerie of new concepts coupled with a social aspect you don’t get from video games or watching movies with others.”
Often times when customers first visit The Dice Dojo, located at 5550 N. Broadway Ave. just off the Red Line’s Bryn Mawr stop, Cottin says he hears their surprise at the variety of games available in the store not just for purchase, but for free play.
“It’s usually a, ‘Oh my god, there are so many board games!’ level of surprise,” Cottin said.
At the store’s board game night events held weekly on Wednesdays, many people visit from around the city to enjoy any sort of board game, from Battlestar Galactica, Betrayal: House on the Hill and more. But standing in the buzzing side room, the real attraction goes to the social interactions the players are having with one another.
“People just want entertaining ways to play,” Cottin said.
Board games go beyond the well-known kinds like Monopoly or Scrabble (games the store’s staff jokingly call “Muggle Games”), and incorporate story elements. Such as Betrayal: House on the Hill, where players explore a mysterious mansion generated by drawn tiles. It seems similar to Clue, but the whole game changes when a supernatural event causes one of the players to turn on the others or something happens to the house.
“I once had this story where the mansion was picked up by a giant bird, so the players had to escape by parachute,” Cottin said. “However, there were only two of them in the house. So I stabbed one of the characters in the back when he got one, and tried to escape. Sadly, my character wasn’t very smart and couldn’t operate the parachute, and in that time, another player came up and shot me in the back.”
Other games include simple words games like Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity; cooperative endeavors like Space Alert, where a group of players are tasked with defending a ship from all sorts of cosmic menaces like giant space octopi or raging singularities; as well as simple, quick games like Star Realms or Love Letter.
“There is something for everyone,” Cottin said.
DePaul’s Fundamental Research in Academic Gaming, or DeFRAG, offers multiple events including board game nights or their signature Geek Til Dawn event throughout the school year at the College of Computing and Digital Media building. The group lists future events on their Facebook page.
