Board games are GOOOOD times.

We sat riveted and sweating. We had just purchased a bunch of houses for our orange stretch of Tennessee, New York and St. James and were, as they say in the business, over-extended. I looked at Mike and he looked right on back at me. Our little Scotty was surrounded by a handful of blaring red hotels on Kentucky and other red properties along with a scattering of green houses on damned Marvin Gardens, Ventnor and Atlantic.

We were definitely in the danger zone and there was no Maverick in sight to whisk us to our little Baltic/Mediterranean slumlord empire on the other side of the board.

“Go man, go,” Mike said in between sips of  beer as his eyes stayed glued to the board.

It was hard to hear him over the din of 10 people negotiating for property, collecting money from the bank, and collecting rent from unlucky counterparts. The everyday conversation of the evening had faded to hard edged mortgage trading and energetic strategizing (if we can negotiate a deal for Boardwalk and walk away with a grand we’ll be set!). We were all mini-Trumps and lovin’ it.

That’s when I rolled snake-eyes. One, two. Yikes – suddenly I wasn’t lovin it anymore. Scotty had just found himself smack dab in the middle of what felt like a week long stay at the Hilton. We looked down at our meagre cash reserves at just about the same time our new landlords realized the magnanimity of our dice roll. A loud shout came from the other side of the table at just about the same time as we collapsed into a heap of bankruptcy reminiscent of February of this year during the height of the sub-prime collapse.

The Family Board Game: Not such a common site these days.

This was the first time I’d played Monopoly in what felt like (and probably was) decades. It had been too long. That night I was reminded of just how much fun and value can be found in getting a group of friends or family together to play a board game. Tense, exciting, convivial, uproarious are all words I identify with that evening.

Unfortunately, the board games’s golden age seems to have passed – at least for young people. Since the computer and game consoles revolutionized gaming and allowed people to play increasingly complex games, often without the need of having their team-mates in the same room, the draw of old fashioned “sit around the table games” like Clue, Monopoly, the Game of Life, or Risk have slipped in popularity (at least among many young people). New games like Cranium and Settlers of Caatan have found great success, but tend to cater to an older demographic.

While I’ve written in the past about the value of the online community created by these computer games, I can’t help but feel pangs of disapointment at the same time for the effects online gaming have had on the board gaming in youth culture.

Not only do board games build community by bringing together people, they also engage them in a game that usually requires teamwork, collaboration, and competition. In fact, most classic games integrate collaboration with competition giving an edge to the player who successfully blends both to their benefit. Best of all, board games automatically tend to engender conversation among players in a free wheeling easy way that’s difficult for online gaming to provoke (at least not while the actual game is going on…). This conversation is almost as valuable to me as the actual game playing.

Ultimately, I find that as I grow older, I’m drifting increasingly towards the board games I abandoned when young in preference of Diablo or Starcraft. I guess I’m just coming full circle – how about you?