Why some don't like Board Games

An observation about why some people don’t like board games

By Nick Bentley, 2013

As a hopeless board games nutcase, I have a hard time understanding how anyone, ANYONE, can avoid being compelled, as if by some behemoth unseen force, to spend every waking minute of their lives thinking about, playing, and designing table games. Being an inquisitive nutcase, about two years ago I began looking for people who claim not to like board games (as if that were possible hahaha no seriously that’s not possible) and asking them about why. I’ve learned some things which may be of interest to anyone keen to cultivate new game partners or expand the game market. Notably, there appears to be one dominant factor in turning people off board games. Ready for it?

Folks who dislike board games care more about board games than than the rest of us!

What I mean is, those who dislike board games invest themselves more heavily in their outcomes, to such an extent that their identities are affected. When they lose, they feel they’ve endured a public demonstration of their ineptitude. When they win, they feel they’ve subjected their opponents to the same. Game outcomes influence such folks’ sense of themselves, their social status, and the social status of others. That’s stressful. I call this Over-investment Syndrome and a strong majority of the haters I’ve spoken to have it, which has surprised me. But now that I’ve thought about it, it makes a tiny bit of sense. Board games may be the most intimate kind of games. The players are in the same room, at the same table, looking right at each other, as one eviscerates the others.

There appears to be two distinct types of sufferers:

Type 1: These sufferers dislike competition generally, in games and life, because it feels like a needless kind of one-upmanship, which inevitably and pointlessly makes someone feel bad. A lot of women seem to fall into this category.

Type 2: These sufferers (mostly men) are the opposite: they’re not opposed to competition, and even relish it, but they don’t want to unleash the competitive beast in an endeavor which seems to them unreal or unimportant. My dad is the canonical example: he’s one of the most competitive people on Earth, and secretly believes everyone is out to screw him and that his only recourse is vigorous preemptive screwing (which sounds bad but he’s actually awesome). He’s like “Why agonize over a mere game when I can go out and fight someone to the death in real life?”

How to cure Over-investment Syndrome?

Now, you may argue: “Why should you want to cure it? Let people do what they will. No one likes a missionary, especially one on a dumb mission” Or at least that’s what the hemisphere of my brain that’s always trying to save me from myself whispers just before I shut it down like I'm a dolphin. I’ve no idea why I should care but I do. Let’s roll with it.

First, it’s important to make sure your subject does in fact suffer from this malady. Although it’s a common problem, there are other reasons people fail to play board games, notably:

1. The subject has never played board games before and so doesn’t have any opinion about them at all, or maybe thinks they’re just for kids
2. The subject thinks there’s something unseemly about them. She suspects they’re a disreputable indulgence. I’m guessing this is a byproduct of the Protestant Ethic which has so greatly shaped our culture, and I’m not sure it’s wrong (I shudder to contemplate how much more I could do for the world if I spent as much time designing say, better solar panels, as I do designing games; alas I don’t know how to pick my obsessions)

So ask your subject questions about how playing games makes her feel. Maybe even present the three factors I’ve described. and ask which description fits her best (one thing I’ve learned, however, is you won’t always get an honest answer, because some people don’t want to cop to the embarrassing idea that game outcomes affect their sense of themselves. You’ll have to be subtle. The best option, if possible, is to try playing a game with your subject. If losing makes her agitated/sullen, you have your diagnosis).

Assuming your subject does suffer from Over-investment Syndrome, then what? Answers:

1. If strategy isn’t important to you, play party games.

2. If strategy is important to you, play co-operative games, like Pandemic, where everyone wins or loses together.

3. If strategy is important to you but you don’t like cooperative games, suggest a game which feels like “multiplayer solitaire”, like Fits.

All three genres avoid triggering Over-investment Syndrome to one extent or another (and I’ll wager that they all owe at least some of their popularity to that fact).

Note, you won’t be playing these kinds of games with your subject forever, and that shouldn’t be your goal. The best cure for Over-investment syndrome, in my experience, is simply to get someone to play games a lot. The more someone plays, the less invested she’ll feel in the outcome of any one play. She’ll realize that the outcome is insignificant and forgotten as soon as the next game starts. For hard cases, you might consider a progression: start with party games, move to cooperative games, then multiplayer solitaire, then whatever you want.

4. If you can get into a conversation about the nature of games and the appeal they hold for you, try telling your subject this: when you take your turn, don’t think of the purpose as to beat your opponent. The purpose is to present to your opponent an interesting, challenging puzzle for her to mull. You’re really taking turns gifting puzzles to each other.

5. Buy a game you think you will be terrible at, introduce it to your subject, and resolve to play it only with her and never anyone else. Handicap if necessary or otherwise set things up so that your opponent will win more than you. Losing is harder than winning and you, as a game-lover, don’t mind losing nearly as much as your game-resistant subject. So find a game where you will be forced to struggle and your opponent will thrive. Then be sure not to ever, ever get upset about losing. If you ever seem less than perfectly sanguine about losing, it’ll reinforce in your subject that idea that there’s something real at stake.

I have a brilliant friend with whom I played games early in my obsession, and for years, without telling me, he made it his goal not to win, but to lose as narrowly as possible without my discovering his intent. Nearly every play was a barn burner and I came out on top more often than not and I think I owe much of my obsession to that experience.

Of course I was a bit embarrassed when he later told me what he was up to, but he needn’t have told me, especially because as I improved it got to the point where he no longer needed to try to make it narrow. It just happened because we were evenly matched. He could have just seamlessly transitioned to playing with normal intent. That’s an ideal script for turning someone onto games and I urge you to give it a try.

6. Finally, whatever else you do, proceed slowly and never press your case. Again, no one likes a missionary.

Three Comments to Nick's writing

By diabhre

I have encountered several other “types":

The persons who consider table-top games (other than “gambling” or traditional card games) to be strictly a “nerd” activity and do not want to be associated with same. A game that requires sitting (except for racing) and is not associated with teams, tracks, and stadiums is somehow reserved for the “brainiacs.”

And speaking of brains, there are folks intimidated by the idea that they would be required to think, or claim not to be able to think, several moves ahead. My wife is one of these. She’s very intelligent, but seems to suffer deeply from Analysis Paralysis (sp?) even with the simplest roll-and-move. Purely tactical. And even in cooperative games, she prefers to do what she’s told and not actively influence the flow of the game.

And there are also those who are so ADHD that their attention drifts easily from any game that requires more than four or five turns to get to the end. A single round of blackjack is about all they can handle. They just want to share. Cards with words? Forget it.

And finally, I have invited some friends to play what gamers consider the “light gateway games” who get overwhelmed easily at the thought of “actions” and “turn order” and “special abilities.” These folks are satisfied with LCR and SlapJack (barely on the edge of the game spectrum, IMHO).

By Laura D

This is a huge, huge part of why I don’t like playing games — and this is coming from someone who grew up playing board games and spent a large part of college playing D&D. It’s just massively stressful for me during the game play to have to think through things. I’m also an introvert, so interacting with people is already sucking a lot of those thinking resources. It’s bad if it’s a new game or a new group of people and absolutely awful if it’s both. It’s not worth the stress for me, so the author would probably have to work pretty hard to get me to try something. Although games like apples to apples (or Cards Against Humanity) are not terrible because they maintain the player’s anonymity, so if I decide I just want to hang out and not invest too much in the game I can just pick a card and toss it in.

By Daggerheart

I believe loss aversion also plays a big part. Loss aversion refers to people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it's better to not lose $5 than to find $5. This is also the implication of risk aversion. What distinguishes loss aversion is that the utility of a monetary payoff depends on what was previously experienced or was expected to happen. Some studies have suggested that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. For people with extreme loss aversion the difference is even higher, at least 3:1.

As much as 80% of the humans are mildly loss averse, and about 20% got extreme loss aversion. Loss aversion is a human characteristic that describes how people are intrinsically afraid of losses. When compared against each other people dislike losing more than they like winning. Thus, losses loom larger than gains even though the value in monetary terms may be identical. Quantic Foundry released some of their data concerning the primary gaming motivations for men and women. Competition (14%) was ranked highest amongst men, but only at 8th place among women.

Some “facts” I believe is true about loss aversion:

• Loss aversion increases if there is a risk of feeling inferior or humiliated. Thus, the aversion decreases if a player is able hide his/her identity. Which is often the case in online gaming
• In general, a man feels stronger loss aversion vs another man than a woman
• Loss aversion decreases if random elements in a game gives “anybody” a chance of winning/getting a reward
• Loss aversion usually decreases if the person plays together with people he/she knows well
• Loss aversion decreases for members in a team (a loss is "shared" and thereby the feeling of loss is "reduced")
• Loss aversion decreases if a player has “come to terms” with his/her skill level in a game (through ELO rating or similar)
• Loss aversion decreases for people who possess the confidence to learn from losses. These people looks upon losing as the best/only way for potential victories/rewards in the future
• Loss aversion is reduced if there is a general acceptance that a new player will lose more often
• Games that feature player elimination are more likely to cause discomfort for people with loss aversion

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