Difficult one this one, because when you’ve been playing games as long
as I have, you’ve played a lot of
games, and to find one that stands out as the exemplar of why you play games, not just a game that you like playing or that
you find interesting, but the example of why you play games, well, there’s only
one game it could be...
Ludo...
Wait a moment I hear you say, how can that be...?
Well, it’s fairly simple to be honest, Ludo is the game that
exemplifies why I play games, because it’s not really a game, it’s several
people rolling dice, with pure luck being the only reason you ever “win” at
it. It’s the reason why I play real
games, not what the world at large believes to be a game, and at the same time,
it’s the reason that most people don’t ever start with games in the first
place, because they see “games” like this, where their own skills and
intelligence, their own ability to make good judgement and plan ahead, can have
no effect whatsoever on the game that they’re playing, and they presume that
all games are the same...
And they never go near another one...
So yes, this is the game that exemplifies why I play games, because
when I look at a new game and the rules for it, the first question I ask is “Is
it Ludo...?” Is it a game that has no
way to influence the victory, no way to do things that will alter the course of
the game, and no way to win other than random chance...?
If so, I put it back down again and think nothing more of it...
For me, Ludo and games like it form the biggest obstacle to getting new
people into games and having them see that they’re not just for children who
don’t know any better. In Germany and
countries where the games culture stretches back years, the problem is far less of a problem than it is here in
England, because their older generations don’t think that the only games that
existed from twenty years ago were things like Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, and
the like, where random chance was the only decider in victory. In England, the generation above me has a few
people who know what real games are, but for the most part, they only know of
the random chance brigade, and it’s them that taught the next generation that
games were silly things, and that generation will teach their kids, and so on,
and son on...
Of course, there’s those that rebel against the status quo, and as more
and more people are introduced to the idea that games aren’t just throw dice
and hope, so games like these will steadily fade and I hope that one day they
will be little more than a footnote in the history of games, with everyone just
looking back with a puzzled expression on how anyone thought they could be fun.
And we’re not there yet...
But we’re getting there...
