As a board-game aficionado from way back, I was shocked but unsurprised to see an article in The Boston Globe a few weeks ago noting that toy-maker Hasbro will be introducing "express" versions of Monopoly, Sorry, and Scrabble that will only take about 20 minutes to play. "Busy lives", the article said, "shorter attention spans."
Like most grown-ups who make the time in their busy lives to focus even a short bit of attention on the matter, I am concerned that children's lives are too busy, and their attention spans too short, to participate in a full-bore game of Monopoly, Sorry, or Scrabble. Depending on which way you look at it, I was the beneficiary or the victim of a non-programmed childhood, and I cherish the memories of all those hours spent playing Monopoly, Sorry, Clue, Parcheesi, Chutes and Ladders, Go to the Head of the Class, Yahtze, and any number of other mesmerizing board games that involved some combination of dice, markers, and movement.
Rather than speeding games up, which I suspect is just another term for dumbing them down, I would suggest that board games can be used to teach children focus and patience. Maybe these are characteristics that will no longer be needed in the techno era in which no one will ever have to wait in line with nothing to do, travel in a car that's not equipped with a DVD player, or spend time in a tent in the woods with no electricity and a run-down battery.
Perhaps it is paucity of imagination, however, that prevents me from actually imagining a world in which focus and patience will not matter. If nothing else, is it not likely that there will always be conversations in which attention actually has to be paid to the person speaking and what they are saying?
Do we not want the children of the present to grow in to young adults of the future who, if not interested in or capable of writing a letter, are still willing to do things the old-fashioned way and send their parents or grandparents an e-mail instead of an IM. (Think of how perplexed those poor grandparents would be on the receiving end of a text message that reads LOL U. "Gertrude, honey, do you think he means Lots-of-Love-to-You or I-Laugh-Out-Loud-At-You." Ah, all the difference a missing digit can make if it's significant.)
And don't we want children to grow up to be able to focus on something, stick with it, see it through?
Rather than Express versions of games, is it not possible to, suggest that, if there isn't time to complete a game, you can declare a winner - or a tie - pack it up and move on. Or, even, leave the game in situ and return to it later?
Although the article did mention a DVD-based version of Candy Land, it did not indicate whether an express version is in the works. Since Candy Land is one board game you can actually play with a very young child with an exceedingly limited attention span, I am surprised that the manufacturers haven't jumped on the bandwagon.
Perhaps it's because, as everyone knows, what you can do to speed up Candy Land is cheat. (The Globe article quoted a mother of two who confessed to cheating at CL. She is, of course, not alone.)
Let's face it, a two year old might not notice that you've stacked the deck and put the Molasses Swamp card where she'll pick it; a four year old might not care. (He'll just be happy he won.)
If you've got two close in age kids playing the game, and you don't want to let one win over the other, cheat to win for yourself. Sometimes adults win. Sometimes kids lose. Sometimes life is unfair. And sometimes, especially when it's getting near bedtime, life comes at you awfully fast. Lessons every bit as important as attention span and focus.
In any case, do we really need new versions of old games to tell us how to speed them up. Think about it for a moment.
Even without cheating, Candy Land can be sped up in any number of ways: Have each player draw three cards at once; institute a 'no-going-back' rule - even if you pick Peppermint Stick Forest; let kids play with a handicap (10 minus their age), so that each time they move they can add a few more squares.
In Parcheesi, start out in the space that's one-quarter closer to home. In Monopoly, do a random draw of a couple of deeds each before you start out.
Before you fork out twenty bucks for an express version of anything, make up your own. Use your creativity. Use your imagination. Think out of the rectangular, cardboard box the darn game came in.
Which is, of course, precisely what people are doing. The Globe article talked about one such imaginative game player:
Tracie Broom, a San Francisco writer, and her friends cannibalize Scrabble to play a quicker word game -- called alternately Anagram or Grab Scrabble. They put the Scrabble tiles face down, and flip them over one-by-one, calling out new words as they are formed, or stealing words from other players.
It takes 15 to 20 minutes to play.
That's the spirit, Tracie. Power to the game playing people!
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