The Art of Manliness - #600： What Board Games Teach Us About Life

00:00:00.000 I'm Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.520 Board games have long been a source of social activity and family entertainment, but my

00:00:15.360 guest today makes the case that board games can be more than just a way to while away

00:00:19.240 the time.

00:00:19.780 It can also offer insights about relationships, decision-making, and changing currents of

00:00:24.060 culture.

00:00:24.580 His name is Jonathan Kaye.

00:00:25.560 He's the co-author of the book, Your Move, What Board Games Can Teach Us About Life.

00:00:29.380 We begin our conversation discussing the board game renaissance that has taken place in

00:00:32.860 the past 20 years, and how today's board games are much more nuanced, complex, and arguably

00:00:37.200 more fun than the classic games you probably played as a kid.

00:00:40.340 Jonathan and I then discuss how the evolution of the board game life can teach us insights

00:00:44.180 to our culture's changing ideas of virtue, and how board games often reflect the attitudes

00:00:48.420 of a given time.

00:00:49.480 We then discuss what cooperative games like Pandemic tell us about how to handle overbearing

00:00:53.120 people, and how the game Dead of Winter highlights the way private interests often conflict with

00:00:57.460 group interests.

00:00:58.100 Jonathan then shares why Monopoly is such a divisive game and whether board games can

00:01:01.880 teach resilience.

00:01:02.940 At the end of the show, Jonathan gives his personal recommendations for board games to

00:01:05.900 check out that are way better than the chutes and ladders type games you played growing up.

00:01:10.400 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash boardgames.

00:01:23.420 Jonathan Kaye, welcome to the show.

00:01:25.460 Thanks for having me.

00:01:26.320 So you co-authored a book called Your Move, What Board Games Teach Us About Life.

00:01:32.580 So what was the impetus behind this book?

00:01:34.440 Have you been a longtime board gamer and you decided to bust this book out?

00:01:38.640 So I played a lot of games when I was in my teenage years, and then I had kids and work

00:01:46.160 and stuff like that.

00:01:47.120 And as my kids got older and I had a little bit more time, I came back to it, which is not

00:01:51.580 an uncommon pattern among gamers.

00:01:53.420 A lot of the most passionate gamers I know were huge gamers in college and then didn't

00:01:57.960 touch them for like 20 years.

00:01:59.780 And so sometimes you'll go and there'll be like tournaments, you'll see 50-year-olds

00:02:02.800 playing with sort of 25-year-olds who've just picked it up.

00:02:05.740 So you often see that sort of generational lag.

00:02:07.860 And as with many things that you come back to later in life, you become way more analytical

00:02:13.580 and passionate about it and you're telling everybody about it.

00:02:16.040 And after every game I'd play, I'd sort of hold forth and talk about all these social

00:02:21.480 implications of the game.

00:02:22.540 And I realized that these games I was playing were inspiring me to write, in my head at least,

00:02:28.460 sort of miniature essays about what these games said about the human condition.

00:02:31.580 And it was just a question of putting those down on paper.

00:02:34.860 Well, I mean, I think games are a really great way to explore these different human elements

00:02:38.340 or human issues because a lot of, I mean, if you think about it, if you take a step back,

00:02:42.140 a lot of what we do in life is like a game, right?

00:02:45.180 There are rules you have to follow in order for that thing to happen.

00:02:48.440 Like take like a courtroom, for example, right?

00:02:51.100 There are rules to that game that you have to follow in order for that trial to go as it's

00:02:54.780 supposed to go.

00:02:55.500 And a game, like a board game, allows you to do that with low stakes.

00:02:59.600 Yeah, it becomes like a testing ground for that sort of thing.

00:03:02.960 And it's also the case that the way the human brain works is when we become goal directed,

00:03:09.060 the same kind of synapses fire off regardless of how trivial the goal is.

00:03:13.760 So when people talk about making money or, you know, taking care of their family or, you

00:03:18.460 know, really important goals, sometimes your brain is activated in the same way when you're

00:03:23.000 playing a game because you've convinced yourself that it's really important to win this trivial

00:03:26.860 game.

00:03:27.300 And so you're able to study yourself in these situations of stress and competition, even

00:03:33.080 though the stakes are either, you know, low or non-existent, it's still this interesting

00:03:39.460 psychological laboratory.

00:03:41.220 And as we argue in the book, it's also a laboratory for organizations because some of the games

00:03:45.280 we talk about are cooperative games where you're all working together toward a goal.

00:03:49.020 But that cooperation is sometimes nominal as it is in many companies or media organizations

00:03:55.580 or government agencies, stuff like that.

00:03:58.560 So that's the kind of thing we explore in the book.

00:04:01.040 So for a lot of people who are listening to this podcast who aren't big gamers, when they

00:04:04.160 think of board games, they probably think of like the old standbys, Clue, Monopoly, the

00:04:08.740 game of life, Scrabble.

00:04:10.920 But as you guys start off in the book, in the probably like the past 20 years, there's

00:04:14.720 been this quiet renaissance going on.

00:04:17.500 It started in Europe.

00:04:18.840 Now it's taken hold in North America of board games coming out that are like new and they're

00:04:24.200 different and they're complex.

00:04:25.900 So tell us about this board game renaissance.

00:04:28.680 What kickstarted it and what are, how are these new games different from these old Milton

00:04:32.640 Bradley standbys?

00:04:34.580 So the history of board games to simplify it a little bit is that until roughly the 80s

00:04:39.700 and 90s, you had this, what people will remember if they're old enough like me from their rec

00:04:45.580 rooms in the subculture, it's called Ameritrash.

00:04:48.960 It's kind of a derisive name, but it's like, it's like games like Clue and Monopoly, Battleship,

00:04:54.020 Stratego, and these are like brightly colored pieces and they appeal to kids.

00:04:59.360 And there were, there weren't even that many of them, right?

00:05:01.980 In terms of the classics, it's like you keep hearing the same couple of dozen names when

00:05:05.820 people rhapsodize about the games they played in their youth.

00:05:09.060 And then there was those, and then there was this completely other echelon of hyper complex

00:05:13.960 war games with names like Panzerblitz and Arab Israeli Wars and Rise and Decline of the

00:05:18.980 Third Reich, which is really very complex and highly militaristic games played out on like 0.75

00:05:25.400 these vast hexagonal boards.

00:05:27.500 And so you had two ends of the spectrum.

00:05:29.840 You had like the battleship end, and then you had these, these hyper complex games.

00:05:34.680 And what you're seeing now is sort of a fusion of the two, something that's fun, like the

00:05:39.460 so-called Ameritrash and something that's also complex and strategic, like these old war

00:05:43.140 games.

00:05:43.360 And, and as you alluded to, it was the Europeans largely in the eighties and nineties who fused

00:05:49.560 the two into what is now called the Euro games.

00:05:52.100 So if anyone is familiar with like Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride, those are examples

00:05:58.060 of Euro games.

00:05:58.800 And as we, and as we, I think it's the second chapter, I argue that a lot of this is the

00:06:03.620 legacy of World War II because Europeans were kind of, I'm generalizing here, but a lot of

00:06:09.400 them were turned off by these hyper militaristic complicated games from the seventies, which

00:06:15.100 were all about war.

00:06:16.020 You know, this wasn't so long after the entire European continent was ravaged by World War

00:06:20.180 II.

00:06:21.100 And so they wanted that complexity and instead they created the genre of game that took that

00:06:25.320 complexity, but it's all about building things.

00:06:26.880 Like if you look at Settlers of Catan, which is now just called Catan, maybe listeners will

00:06:31.140 know it's about building settlements and cities or Ticket to Ride is about building railway

00:06:35.100 lines.

00:06:36.180 So this hobbyist Euro game craze that I guess, well, it's not really a craze.

00:06:40.900 It's been about 20 years now or 25 years.

00:06:43.240 It's really based on building.

00:06:45.000 It's more aesthetically appealing.

00:06:46.560 It's oriented more toward adults and it fuses some of the best features of the two extremes

00:06:52.200 that we saw way back in the seventies.

00:06:54.700 And as you mentioned, it takes out a lot of like the direct, like aggressive competition.

00:06:59.720 It's more of a, I mean, you're still competing, but it's not, it's not like risk, for example.

00:07:05.380 Right.

00:07:05.800 Yeah.

00:07:06.080 And if you look at Settlers of Catan, I keep going to that example because it's accessible

00:07:10.460 to people.

00:07:10.960 A lot of people have maybe at least seen it played.

00:07:13.600 And in Catan, there's no way to destroy the other person's settlement or city once it's

00:07:19.800 been constructed, at least not in the basic version of the game.

00:07:22.480 Same thing with some of these other games I've mentioned.

00:07:25.080 And so you're competing, but it's an indirect form of competition.

00:07:28.340 It's basically who can grow the most fastest.

00:07:32.440 And in that way, it takes away some of the bitterness that you got from the old games.

00:07:36.780 Like in Risk, you were actually destroying another person's army and taking over their territories.

00:07:42.340 And in Monopoly, you were bankrupting people.

00:07:45.820 And it's actually surprising these games were so popular because they, in some cases, they

00:07:51.700 really did destroy friendships.

00:07:53.040 People get mad when that happens.

00:07:54.800 And that kind of dynamic doesn't exist.

00:07:57.100 I mean, people are still competitive in Euro games, obviously, but you don't have these

00:08:01.760 metaphoric destruction of the enemy that you had in traditional games.

00:08:07.200 So I've heard of Catan.

00:08:08.740 I've never played it.

00:08:09.660 How long does a typical game last?

00:08:12.120 Is it pretty long?

00:08:13.780 So a Catan game, I think experienced, a four-player game of Catan, if you're an experienced

00:08:18.420 player and you don't have that one person who just takes forever for their turn and keeps

00:08:25.280 offering really long shot deals to everybody else, I'd say you could play Catan in 90 minutes

00:08:30.900 to two hours.

00:08:31.720 But the trend, by the way, is towards shorter games.

00:08:34.480 Like I've noticed in the last couple of years, there's more like 45-minute and 60-minute

00:08:39.500 games.

00:08:40.140 I think producers realize that, especially for couples and maybe people who have kids and

00:08:47.040 stuff like that, they might only have an hour or an hour and a half to play a game.

00:08:51.040 They're not going to play a game that they're not going to be able to finish before bedtime.

00:08:55.420 All right.

00:08:55.540 So these Euro games, there's sort of a passive competition.

00:09:01.200 The whole thing's about enjoying it a little bit more.

00:09:03.580 Then you also make this point, too, about how games can be used to explore a culture's

00:09:10.600 values that they have or they're trying to inculcate.

00:09:13.540 And you and your co-author use the example of life, the game of life.

00:09:17.520 Now, I'm sure everyone who's listening to this probably played life at one point in their

00:09:20.720 life.

00:09:20.900 They got the cool board with the hills and you get the car and you get a wife and you 0.62

00:09:25.640 get the...

00:09:26.160 Well, the original game was called the Checkered Game of Life.

00:09:29.500 And that game was made in the Victorian era in the 19th century.

00:09:33.180 And it was actually trying to teach virtues and values.

00:09:36.520 So tell us about the Checkered Game of Life, the original version, what it was trying to

00:09:41.220 do, teach, and how did that change in the 20th century?

00:09:44.900 Yeah.

00:09:45.140 So it's kind of interesting because even in the construction of some of these early games,

00:09:49.740 they didn't like dice because dice, it was associated with gambling.

00:09:55.460 But for some reason, you were allowed to create these things.

00:09:58.940 I think they're called T-totems.

00:10:00.620 That's like a spinner.

00:10:02.100 So even though they have the same effect as dice, it's basically a random number generator.

00:10:06.340 For some reason, that was considered acceptable, whereas dice were seen as sort of a gateway

00:10:11.660 object to a life of sin.

00:10:14.240 And I think that it's been retained in life.

00:10:17.660 They still have that spinner.

00:10:18.680 The original version, it was more like a snakes and ladders type game, and you would land

00:10:24.380 on a square.

00:10:26.080 It's kind of horrifying because the square would be, you know, you suffer a disgrace,

00:10:31.640 you know, go back five squares, or you lose all your money.

00:10:35.180 Like it was really like these moral pitfalls in life.

00:10:40.220 And it was all about, the lesson was that it's really easy to sin and to do wrong things in

00:10:47.540 life and to suffer a bad end, and that you had to avoid all these things.

00:10:52.340 It was about avoiding bad things.

00:10:54.120 It's a very Victorian mindset.

00:10:55.640 And then in the modern era, it just suddenly was all about making money.

00:10:59.580 And how much money can you get, what kind of job do you have, and how many kids do you have?

00:11:04.220 Almost like, you know, this is decades ago, but sort of this like very bright Facebook-style

00:11:09.120 image of what life is like, and very materialistic, and all the Victorian moralism is gone.

00:11:15.340 So it does roughly track the evolution of the way society has thought of what the purpose

00:11:21.300 of life is.

00:11:21.860 You know, it used to be, in a more religious era, it was avoiding sin.

00:11:26.320 And now it's more about materialism.

00:11:28.440 And you talk about those snakes and ladder type games.

00:11:30.520 Those are basically games where you spin something, draw a card, spin dice, and then you move

00:11:35.180 whatever it says.

00:11:36.280 Roll and move.

00:11:36.800 Roll and move, yeah.

00:11:37.600 There's really no skill to it whatsoever.

00:11:39.860 It's all just luck.

00:11:41.320 And I mean, even that idea that life is just luck, that can teach, that can kind of subtly

00:11:46.200 impart things to people who play those games.

00:11:47.860 So what's interesting is there's a philosophical argument about whether Snakes and Ladders is

00:11:53.780 actually a game, because it's totally deterministic, right?

00:11:56.440 Like, there's no free will.

00:11:57.920 You don't make decisions.

00:11:59.000 You go forward or backward, depending on the roll of the dice and what, you know, if there's

00:12:03.380 a, sometimes they call it chutes and ladders.

00:12:05.300 So, like, is that even a game?

00:12:06.920 It's kind of just this random, deterministic adventure that you have no control of.

00:12:13.560 And yet these games are, if you want to call them games, are strangely popular.

00:12:16.840 There's another game called Unicorn Glitter Luck, which is sort of a modern version of

00:12:22.560 Snakes and Ladders, but, you know, with slightly more updated atmospherics.

00:12:26.640 And I see people playing that all the time.

00:12:28.340 People like it.

00:12:29.220 People don't necessarily always want to make decisions or engage in any kind of strategy

00:12:34.580 when they play a game.

00:12:35.600 I think some people approach games almost like a TV show.

00:12:38.180 Like, they're just kind of, they want to see what happens, how it ends, even if they're

00:12:41.860 not actually making decisions about the game.

00:12:43.440 So, you know, every game has its own subculture and people come to different games with all

00:12:47.980 sorts of different psychological expectations.

00:12:50.860 Yeah.

00:12:50.940 The chutes and ladders games, like kids like them because they're easy.

00:12:53.820 They drive me bonkers.

00:12:54.860 So we had this game that was like big in our family for a bit.

00:12:57.860 It's called Uncle Wiggly.

00:12:59.340 Have you heard about Uncle Wiggly?

00:13:00.740 I don't know that one.

00:13:02.220 Okay.

00:13:02.480 It's hilarious.

00:13:03.360 So what happened, here's the backstory.

00:13:05.040 When we moved into our house, the previous owners loved a whole bunch of board games.

00:13:08.420 And one of them was like this 90s version of Uncle Wiggly.

00:13:10.740 It's about this rabbit who has rheumatism and he's trying to get the Dr. Possum to get

00:13:18.000 some rheumatism ointment.

00:13:20.160 And along the way, you meet these pitfalls and creatures.

00:13:23.580 Well, so we started playing it because like it was easy to play with our kids.

00:13:26.320 And then we, so my wife and I started looking into the history of it.

00:13:28.840 And apparently this thing started in like in the 1920s or 1910s.

00:13:32.020 So we tried to get like earlier versions of it.

00:13:35.040 And we got like this in like 1950s version of it.

00:13:37.400 And one of the interesting things we saw, we sort of seen the 1950s version compared

00:13:41.760 to the 1980s is like how it got dumbed down.

00:13:45.120 Like the 1950s, like you draw these cards and to be like these like really complicated poetic

00:13:49.340 couplets.

00:13:50.540 And then eventually by the 80s, it was just like move five spaces.

00:13:55.280 And that's it.

00:13:56.880 Yeah.

00:13:57.040 The theme was drawn.

00:13:57.700 Yeah.

00:13:58.820 And actually that was, I mean, there was, as with many things, I think the 60s, well,

00:14:04.480 70s probably was like a low point in some ways for board games because like half the

00:14:09.360 games that were released then were just these terrible knockoffs on TV shows.

00:14:14.920 So if you look in people's attics, it'll be like Happy Days, the board game, or like Laverne 0.95

00:14:18.940 and Shirley, the board game, it's just like these super terrible games that just take

00:14:23.760 some, you know, generic premise, like a roll and move premise and apply like some really

00:14:30.240 thin pretense of game theme of TV show theme to it.

00:14:34.620 And for many years, that's what making a game was.

00:14:36.980 So at least in the Victorian era and in the early 20th century, they did invest some moralism

00:14:43.180 into it.

00:14:43.960 I mean, the moralism seems old fashioned to us, but at least it was thematically interesting.

00:14:48.040 Whereas, yeah, as you say, around the early Cold War decades, it was, everything got

00:14:53.160 dumbed down.

00:14:53.860 I wonder what the Happy Days, like you draw a card and like the Fonz jumps a shark.

00:14:57.680 It was everything.

00:14:59.460 Like I remember when I was a kid, we had like Pink Panther, the board game, or, you know,

00:15:04.100 like it's probably Ninja Turtles board game.

00:15:06.200 There's probably a He-Man board game.

00:15:08.280 No, it was, it was like having a breakfast cereal.

00:15:10.220 You know, it was like, it was just part of the sponsorship thing.

00:15:13.160 And some guy was probably given like three weeks to create the game. 0.97

00:15:16.520 And, and yeah, they were super crap, but that was all we had. 0.59

00:15:20.300 We didn't have Euro games back then. 0.89

00:15:21.960 So, you know, and this was like in a four channel universe.

00:15:25.720 So people played bad games because there, there wasn't that much to compete with it.

00:15:30.100 One of the reasons games are better now is they're competing against Netflix.

00:15:33.280 And if you're competing against Netflix, you got to produce a better game.

00:15:36.120 All right.

00:15:36.200 So there's an example of how games can reflect a culture and how that, how that's changed

00:15:40.360 over the years.

00:15:40.840 Because you also devote a chapter to how games can be a way to explore negotiation.

00:15:46.560 Because there's these genre of Euro games where that's what you do.

00:15:49.420 You just negotiate.

00:15:50.380 And the ones you talk about, I've never played these before, but they sound really fun.

00:15:53.860 One's called Chinatown and the other one's No Things. 1.00

00:15:56.280 So what can, what can these games teach us about how we make decisions, particularly rational

00:16:01.360 or irrational decisions?

00:16:02.560 So that chapter, I wrote that chapter and it's one of the more technical chapters because

00:16:08.000 I get into something called the ultimatum game, which isn't actually, it isn't actually

00:16:13.620 a recreational game.

00:16:14.780 It's something that's used in social psychology to test whether people will cooperate with

00:16:20.580 other people or whether they'll be vindicative.

00:16:23.320 It's well known in the social science literature.

00:16:26.920 And I talk about how some of the social science implications of that are modeled in this game,

00:16:31.880 Chinatown.

00:16:32.340 I described Chinatown as like, if you like the negotiation aspect of Monopoly, but you 0.99

00:16:37.540 don't like the dice rolling and randomness and stuff like that, Chinatown is fantastic

00:16:42.440 because the pace of the game is that basically, it just drives you straight toward negotiation.

00:16:47.560 That's what like 90% of the game is.

00:16:49.900 And I related this anecdote involving my friend, where my friend gave me a deal, but then kind

00:16:58.680 of went back on it and still offered me like a bad version of the deal.

00:17:02.820 But the bad version of the deal he was offering me was better than no deal at all.

00:17:06.880 But I was mad at him because he changed the terms of it.

00:17:09.040 And I basically, I spited myself by saying no to the deal, even though I knew I would lose

00:17:18.060 the game as a result.

00:17:19.140 It was more important for me in that moment that he suffer and he lost the game too, but

00:17:25.240 it hurt both of us.

00:17:26.900 And I talk about like, what is the evolutionary psychological reason that people do that?

00:17:31.780 And what I conclude is like, because it isn't just that deal, right?

00:17:35.940 I'm looking at how I'm seen by the community.

00:17:40.320 This is a very abstract, of course, but it's about evolutionary psychology.

00:17:43.180 And if this guy can make me a sucker once, it might be worth the short-term pain of spiting

00:17:51.440 myself on that one deal so that the next hundred times people will realize that they shouldn't 0.84

00:17:57.400 shortchange me like that because I'm willing to spite myself to spite them.

00:18:02.700 And so I talk about the evolutionary psychology behind that.

00:18:05.500 And I think games like Chinatown and No Thanks, which is another simpler game that I talk about,

00:18:11.580 I really do a good job of modeling that.

00:18:14.320 So in the short term, it doesn't make sense.

00:18:16.660 But in the long term, it could make sense to spite yourself.

00:18:20.700 Yeah.

00:18:20.880 And I guess like the schoolyard version of that is the kid who's willing to fight the

00:18:26.440 bully, even if he thinks he'll lose, just because he doesn't want to be known as someone

00:18:30.260 who can get rolled. 0.79

00:18:31.500 That it's worth it to get a bloody nose just so it sends a message like, you know, you're

00:18:38.400 not going to get a free ride by trying to intimidate me.

00:18:40.880 You pay a short-term price as a reputation building tool, as a warning, but it only works

00:18:46.880 with repeat players.

00:18:47.720 Like, if you're just interacting with random strangers who you never see again, these instincts

00:18:53.280 unfortunately kick in, which is why people get into fistfights over parking spots and

00:18:56.860 stuff like that.

00:18:57.780 But even though it's completely irrational in that context, it goes to the evolutionary

00:19:02.940 wiring we have, which says that you can't just have a reputation as somebody who gets

00:19:08.660 rolled over.

00:19:09.720 You need to show people that you have some ability to fight back.

00:19:13.780 Well, this is all about honor.

00:19:14.740 That's what honor is, right?

00:19:15.980 Having a reputation.

00:19:17.040 I mean, that's why people would never, whenever they got called to a duel, like you, you always

00:19:21.660 said yes, because you had to have that reputation that you would, you would, you wouldn't get

00:19:26.040 rolled.

00:19:26.980 Yeah.

00:19:27.500 Well, that's true.

00:19:28.900 I think that's a related phenomenon.

00:19:30.660 Honor codes, which people talk about honor societies and honor codes.

00:19:34.180 They are often very elaborate extrapolations of the instinct I'm just describing, where honor

00:19:43.980 becomes a kind of cult.

00:19:45.640 And you do see that in many societies, unfortunately.

00:19:49.480 It can become a pathology if everybody's just going around challenging each other to duels and

00:19:54.580 stuff like that.

00:19:55.180 But it has its origins in, as I argue, an evolutionary instinct that is not completely irrational.

00:20:03.200 But like everything else in our brain, it can be taken to extremes.

00:20:06.480 Are there like honor cults in board games?

00:20:08.000 Well, you know, you do see people who get really upset and animated and they start fights.

00:20:20.500 Those people tend to fall into two categories.

00:20:23.360 They tend to be people who like make their living playing board games.

00:20:27.400 Like, you know, there are great chess players who are known to be really irascible.

00:20:31.500 And that's because this is their livelihood.

00:20:34.040 And so, you know, there's a reason they take it so seriously.

00:20:37.220 And then on the other extreme, it tends to be very new players who it's their first time

00:20:41.600 in the hobby.

00:20:42.660 It's not for them, but they don't realize it yet.

00:20:44.800 And they're just, their personality isn't right for it.

00:20:48.600 So it tends to be people who are either lifelong professional gamers in some board game subculture

00:20:54.220 or other, or people who are first timers and don't know the protocols of board games.

00:20:58.360 It's rarely the seasoned hobbyist because those people usually know where the boundaries

00:21:04.740 are in terms of behavior.

00:21:07.120 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:21:11.600 And now back to the show.

00:21:14.020 All right.

00:21:14.560 So there's a genre of board games, or there is a board game that deals with, it's called

00:21:19.880 pandemic.

00:21:20.660 And we're in the middle of a pandemic right now.

00:21:23.500 And this, what this game is, it's a, it's a group dynamic game.

00:21:26.260 Like it requires you to cooperate with other players for you to win this game.

00:21:31.140 So for those who aren't familiar with it, can you describe pandemic and sort of like

00:21:34.700 how it's like other games like this?

00:21:37.000 And what do you think you can teach people about group dynamics?

00:21:39.920 So pandemic, one of the reasons it's such a popular game is it was an early favorite

00:21:44.860 in a genre that's known as cooperative games.

00:21:47.600 And a cooperative game as distinct from a competitive game is a game where you all have the same

00:21:53.360 objective.

00:21:53.760 You either win or you lose together.

00:21:56.500 So in a typical competitive game, if I win, you lose.

00:22:00.020 In a cooperative game, we either win together or lose together.

00:22:04.040 And the theme in pandemic is that the world is being besieged by all these terrible plagues.

00:22:11.220 And, you know, one person is a doctor and another person is like a military officer and another

00:22:15.120 person is some kind of global leader.

00:22:17.060 And you have to cooperate in order to destroy the pandemic and save the world.

00:22:24.740 And as I say, you either win together or lose together.

00:22:28.180 I think one of the guys who might have been the creator of the game just wrote a piece

00:22:32.960 for the New York Times about the implications of the game in the modern world, because we

00:22:37.480 are living in that kind of society now.

00:22:39.520 What we talk about in our chapter is how cooperative games are fun, but there's a common pitfall.

00:22:46.160 And it's a common pitfall that applies to a lot of common projects in life, which is what

00:22:50.200 is known.

00:22:51.120 The term of art in board gaming is the alpha player problem.

00:22:54.800 And the alpha player problem is where it's nominally a cooperative game and it's a team game

00:22:59.960 and everyone's contributing.

00:23:00.720 But really what's happening is that one person who's more assertive or more experienced or

00:23:06.680 thinks he's more experienced and knowledgeable just tells everybody else what to do.

00:23:10.700 And so he or she is the only person who has agency and everyone else is just following his

00:23:16.160 or her orders.

00:23:17.100 And that has become a common problem in some of these cooperative games.

00:23:21.440 And you could also be like a freeloader problem, right?

00:23:24.040 Like you just have a guy that just doesn't even, he's not even doing anything and just lets

00:23:28.080 everyone else do all the work.

00:23:29.020 Yeah, I mean, you could have that.

00:23:31.500 That typically happens when you have somebody who didn't want to play in the first place,

00:23:36.420 right?

00:23:36.960 I think in economics, that problem is sometimes described as moral hazard or, you know, you

00:23:41.900 also have, I guess the inverse of it is tragedy of the commons.

00:23:45.500 However, when people are playing board games, it's unlike life in the sense that we don't

00:23:51.640 self-select into life, right?

00:23:52.880 We're born into this world and that's it.

00:23:54.880 We just, it's not our choice.

00:23:56.580 Board games are a little different because everyone who's playing a board game made the

00:23:59.000 conscious decision to say, I'm going to play this game.

00:24:01.140 And typically you don't play a game with the intention of not doing anything.

00:24:04.220 The more common problem in board gaming is that you want to play, but there's some guy

00:24:09.400 and unfortunately it's usually a guy is telling what to do and you're not getting a chance

00:24:14.660 to play.

00:24:14.960 So, I mean, this probably, we've probably seen this in other group dynamics where you

00:24:19.020 want to contribute, but some guy or some person just sucks all the air out of the room and

00:24:23.880 doesn't let you get in.

00:24:24.740 This happens all the time in MBA programs and other university programs where it's supposed

00:24:30.720 to be a group project and you show up on Monday and there's five people and it's 20%, 20%,

00:24:37.180 20%, 20%, 20%, 20% contributions.

00:24:40.440 And then by Tuesday, it's more like, you know, 30, 20, 20, 2010.

00:24:45.900 And then by Friday, it's like 60, 40, 0, 0, 0.

00:24:50.080 Like you just gradually, people start to get marginalized.

00:24:53.420 In those cases, sometimes it is because they're lazy, but often it's just because there's one

00:24:57.560 or two people who just take over the project.

00:24:59.320 You see this all the time in life.

00:25:00.900 So what's the solution?

00:25:01.540 Like what can gaming like pandemic teach us about overcoming that?

00:25:04.540 Yeah, well, this is why people have to buy the book.

00:25:07.100 We describe how modern game designers get around this alpha player problem by taking

00:25:12.620 away something from the alpha player.

00:25:14.920 So one thing you can take away from the alpha player is time.

00:25:17.900 So you have a game where there's time limit.

00:25:20.000 You actually have like, you're using your phone as a timer for each move and everyone

00:25:24.800 has to do different things.

00:25:26.060 And the alpha player might only have like 30 seconds to do his or her turn.

00:25:30.360 They don't have time to tell the other three players what they should be doing.

00:25:34.160 Everyone is racing around trying to do their own thing.

00:25:36.960 And this applies to organizations.

00:25:39.280 If you have an organization where a boss is micromanaging everybody, one reason that could

00:25:43.080 happen is because the boss doesn't have a lot of work to do.

00:25:45.940 And so micromanages everybody else.

00:25:47.940 You give that boss more actual work to do and you find the micromanagement stops.

00:25:53.020 Another thing you can do is take away trust, which sounds bad, which is bad in a real world

00:25:58.940 setting, but in a game makes more fun.

00:26:01.200 So one game we describe is called Dead of Winter.

00:26:04.120 My co-author loves that game and wrote a great chapter about it.

00:26:07.080 And in Dead of Winter, it's a zombie apocalypse game where you're a survivor of a zombie apocalypse

00:26:11.280 and you have this public objective, which is the cooperative objective where, you know,

00:26:16.820 the group has to survive.

00:26:18.240 But then each of you has the secret private objective, which often is at odds with the

00:26:23.560 public objective.

00:26:24.200 So there's no alpha player because to be an alpha player, you have to have all the information

00:26:30.860 everybody else does.

00:26:31.820 If they have their own agendas, you can't tell them what to do.

00:26:34.760 So it's a really interesting solution to the alpha player problem, albeit a solution that's

00:26:41.180 horrifying in real life because in real life, you want everybody to have the same mission.

00:26:46.340 But unfortunately, as in many organizations, there is a publicly professed universal objective,

00:26:50.980 but then everybody has their own little secret agenda that they're conniving at behind the

00:26:55.400 scenes.

00:26:56.040 Right.

00:26:56.220 When the chapter on Dead of Winter and the games where there's cooperative plus a private

00:26:59.940 personal goal, I was like, that sounds awesome because I just, I love the idea because it

00:27:04.140 sounds like true to life, right?

00:27:05.600 Like everyone, like you just said, like every organization has this stated public goal, but

00:27:09.440 every person in that group, while they are working for that public goal, they each have

00:27:14.380 their own thing going on that they're privately trying to do.

00:27:17.240 And I was like, that's like real life.

00:27:18.640 Yeah.

00:27:19.440 And it, unfortunately it is like real life.

00:27:22.220 And one point we make in the chapter is that if you go to a bookstore, there's lots of books

00:27:28.060 about managing conflict and, and that's an important skill, but cooperative board games

00:27:36.380 teach us that a lot of the dissatisfaction that people experience in organizations is not

00:27:43.300 really the result of outwardly expressed conflict because they all have the same objective, which

00:27:49.120 is, you know, make money, maintain the health of the organization, serve the customer, et cetera,

00:27:53.140 et cetera.

00:27:54.080 The real friction comes in these unstated, sometimes passively aggressive disputes where the common

00:28:05.740 objective masks the fact that everyone has their own little private agendas.

00:28:09.940 And sometimes the private agenda, it's just about, it goes back to the alpha player problem.

00:28:13.880 It's that they feel isolated in their desires to try and pursue the public objective.

00:28:19.360 Like they're just being marginalized because someone is taking all their work because they

00:28:22.460 don't trust them to do a good job or so board games, especially this cooperative genre of board

00:28:28.060 games, I feel it gives a really nuanced view into the way a lot of us experience the somewhat

00:28:34.940 unspoken stresses that occur within organizations, even when everybody has the same objective.

00:28:40.400 All right.

00:28:40.500 So Dead of Winter was the name of that game.

00:28:42.140 Dead of Winter.

00:28:42.620 Yeah.

00:28:42.880 Dead of Winter.

00:28:43.600 Yeah.

00:28:43.720 I'm going to, I'm going to go buy that.

00:28:44.820 That sounds awesome.

00:28:45.760 So we can't have a podcast about board games and not talk about the board game that people

00:28:51.200 either love or love to hate.

00:28:52.920 That's Monopoly.

00:28:54.060 Right.

00:28:54.260 So first of all, why do you think this game like causes such strident divisions amongst people

00:28:59.840 and game players?

00:29:00.620 Well, it's a, it's a paradox because as we argue, Monopoly would never be produced today.

00:29:10.280 It breaks so many rules of good board game design that it's a wonder that it's so popular.

00:29:16.300 And if somebody, if it didn't exist and someone came to a game producer and said, Hey, I've

00:29:20.760 got this great idea for a game.

00:29:21.900 It wouldn't be produced because it has a lot of problems with it.

00:29:25.280 The main problem with Monopoly, which you would never see with a modern Euro game is that

00:29:29.640 people get eliminated from the game.

00:29:32.080 So it might be a three hour game, but one guy gets eliminated after an hour and he just

00:29:37.140 spends the next two hours being pissed off at his friends.

00:29:40.440 And watching someone play Monopoly.

00:29:42.900 Yeah.

00:29:43.440 Which is not fun.

00:29:44.660 No, it's horrible.

00:29:45.940 Especially when you know you've been eliminated from that game.

00:29:48.700 And so like, you know, no matter how badly you do in Catan, you finish the game at exactly

00:29:55.380 the same time as the guy who wins.

00:29:57.460 And that's, that's true of all good modern board game designs.

00:30:00.940 So there's a rule right there.

00:30:02.200 The other problem with Monopoly is that it has the same problem as actually a lot of winner

00:30:08.200 take all economies and that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

00:30:11.520 And there's no mechanism for reversing that.

00:30:13.920 So as you know, in Monopoly, it's in engineering, we call this an unstable dynamical mechanism.

00:30:19.240 But you have a situation where when you land on someone's hotel, not only do you have to

00:30:24.560 give them your money, but you may have to mortgage your properties and sell off your

00:30:29.800 own houses and hotels at 50% value, because that's what the rules say.

00:30:34.420 And so you're not just making the other person richer, you're compromising your own value

00:30:37.840 to make money.

00:30:38.840 And the analogy here is that, you know, if you lose out to a competitor in real life in

00:30:43.500 your sector, you know, you may have to sell your car.

00:30:46.000 And when you sell your car, you can't run your business, or you lose your house, and

00:30:50.440 then, you know, you're homeless, and your life goes down in a sort of spiral, like there's

00:30:54.820 no safety net.

00:30:55.880 And Monopoly is a game with no safety net.

00:30:58.280 And there's very few mechanisms in the game that allow a person to get back into the game

00:31:03.860 when they're losing.

00:31:05.120 Whereas modern games have that, like in Catan, you have this thing called the robber, which

00:31:10.240 sounds bad, but I joke that it should be called the icon of social justice, because the

00:31:14.340 robber typically victimizes the player that's winning, because the other three players will

00:31:17.980 put it on that player's most productive property.

00:31:21.340 Whereas there's very little of that in Monopoly.

00:31:24.320 And the reason people stick money in free parking, which, by the way, is not in the rules, but

00:31:29.860 it's become this sort of folk rule that says, okay, we'll have all this big pot of money,

00:31:33.560 it'd be like a lottery.

00:31:34.280 The reason people do that is it allows people that are losing to get back in the game.

00:31:39.720 It's like people have created this folk solution to a problem in Monopoly, and we have collectively 0.96

00:31:48.100 decided that this is how we're going to solve that problem.

00:31:50.260 It's still a terrible game, and I don't like it, and I don't recommend it, but it's better

00:31:55.880 maybe with the lottery in the middle than without it.

00:31:59.660 Well, that's something you and your co-author talk about with some of these old standby

00:32:03.120 games, that people have actually modified the rules to make them more palatable, or make

00:32:07.760 them more fun and engaging, or just different.

00:32:10.820 I mean, so Monopoly, yeah, there's the free parking rule.

00:32:12.940 I think in life, you talk about people, like, they're selling kids, which is terrible.

00:32:17.160 You wouldn't do that in real life, but it's like, well, it's something different.

00:32:20.740 It's not, it adds some spice to the game, makes it a little bit more fun.

00:32:23.580 Well, the reason people sell kids to each other is it's such a great way of undermining

00:32:30.160 the bright and shiny bourgeois normalness that the game exudes, right?

00:32:36.760 Like, it's just, it's transgressive, and people like being transgressive.

00:32:43.520 By the way, life, I don't want to be a gaming snot, but life is not a game that serious gaming

00:32:48.620 hobbyists play.

00:32:49.340 If you're playing life, it's typically because you're out with your friends, you're having

00:32:52.320 a few drinks, or, you know, you're playing with your kids or something.

00:32:55.280 Like, it's a fun game to screw around with.

00:32:59.320 You know, you would never find this kind of customizing of rules on this casual basis done

00:33:06.700 in like, you know, among serious chess players, for instance, or serious backgammon players

00:33:11.940 or something like that, or even serious Scrabble players.

00:33:14.840 You know, this is a sort of screwing around you see in very casual gaming subcultures.

00:33:19.860 So, with these games, like, there are, there's, what makes a game fun is that there is an

00:33:25.100 element of failure to it.

00:33:26.280 Like, you, you, you can't win all the time.

00:33:29.200 And, you know, doing this for as long as you have, do you think your experience, like,

00:33:34.240 failing in board games, has it carried over to the rest of you?

00:33:36.820 Like, I mean, has it made, like, what I'm trying to say is, has, have board games sort

00:33:39.560 of been exercised for resiliency, or do you think that there's no crossover?

00:33:43.320 So, I think, yeah, resilience is, it's an important characteristic, especially when it

00:33:49.540 comes to kids.

00:33:50.200 It's something I try and teach my kids.

00:33:51.720 I think it's something everyone is now trying to teach their kids.

00:33:55.100 I think it depends on your personality, what you're going to get out of it.

00:33:58.400 In my case, one huge thing is because of the way board game subculture works, among hobbyists,

00:34:06.460 there is this, it's not required, but it happens a lot where you play the game.

00:34:11.560 And then as you're putting the pieces back in the box, you spend, like, 10 minutes analyzing

00:34:16.040 the game, and it's sort of like, ah, yeah, I thought I was going to win, but then you

00:34:19.800 got control of this space, and then I realized that I had to take this risk, and the risk

00:34:24.100 didn't go well, and then this, you know, and a lot of people hate that.

00:34:28.340 Like, when I play with, there are certain people I play with who are like, you know, John,

00:34:32.040 the game's over, like, let's talk about something else.

00:34:34.520 But there's other people who the discussion literally will sometimes go on almost as long as

00:34:40.200 the game itself.

00:34:41.560 And I'm that kind of person.

00:34:43.740 It is, I love the post-game analysis.

00:34:46.880 That habit of mind has totally influenced the way I live.

00:34:51.100 It's influenced the way I do my job.

00:34:52.560 It's influenced the way I parent, that if something doesn't go right, I try and ask myself, like,

00:34:57.820 say, hey, look, I wasn't snakes and ladders I was playing.

00:35:00.620 You know, I made decisions in that game.

00:35:02.480 What were the decisions I made that were good, and what were the decisions that were bad?

00:35:05.860 And because I play a lot of board games, and I'm in that habit, I now just do that in every

00:35:11.740 aspect of my life.

00:35:13.180 And it can be super annoying to others when you think out loud, like, you know, why could

00:35:17.980 I get ripped off at that supermarket?

00:35:19.320 Let's look at the 17 reasons.

00:35:20.320 But it can also lead you to get lessons from stuff that formerly would have just caused

00:35:27.380 you resentment and anger.

00:35:28.700 It sounds like the games, like, they give you a mental model to think about your life

00:35:32.600 or different situations in your life.

00:35:33.900 Yeah, and by the way, that model is not always reassuring.

00:35:38.060 Like, if you lose a game because of bad luck that you couldn't control, that can make you

00:35:43.160 fatalistic if you apply that to the rest of life.

00:35:46.140 Most of the time, though, when you lose a game, like a strategy game, the kind of game that maybe

00:35:51.560 we talk about more in the book, there's a reason.

00:35:55.800 And it's a reason that you had control of.

00:35:58.940 Now, you can take that too far and just, like, turn that into a cult of self-recrimination 1.00

00:36:03.220 and say, oh, I made those four mistakes, you know, stupid, stupid, stupid. 1.00

00:36:06.980 But that's not the way you want to approach it. 1.00

00:36:10.160 You want to say, hey, look, I'm glad those mistakes came in this game.

00:36:13.100 Games are fun.

00:36:13.920 There's, you know, no one got hurt and they're designed to be low stakes, low stakes.

00:36:19.160 My co-author has this metaphor that, you know, games are, they create this sort of circle.

00:36:28.500 The circle, and if you stand in that circle, you can experiment and you can have fun and you

00:36:32.280 can try new things and you know it's just a game.

00:36:36.100 And you're in this environment where, you know, you can try and be aggressive or passive

00:36:40.100 or fooling people.

00:36:41.340 You're not bound by all the same rules that govern your personality outside of that circle.

00:36:46.620 And if you're smart or if you're adventurous, you will use that experience to field test ideas

00:36:53.120 and strategies for dealing with life that you can then apply when the stakes are higher

00:36:57.620 in real life.

00:36:58.800 All right.

00:36:58.880 So a lot of people are stuck at home.

00:37:00.660 Are there any games for people who are just starting, who want to get started in this,

00:37:03.480 like this Euro game genre?

00:37:06.220 Any ones you recommend checking out that are, that are easy to learn and fun to play?

00:37:11.120 So I generally start people off with shorter games because if it's kind of like everything

00:37:19.080 else, it's kind of like going to the gym is you don't start people off with like a three

00:37:23.620 hour workout, right?

00:37:24.380 You might start them off with a 45 minute workout and there's a game called Splendor

00:37:29.000 that I really like.

00:37:29.920 It came out a few years ago.

00:37:31.540 It's not the greatest game in the world, but it's fairly short.

00:37:36.000 It's like 45 minutes and there's a lot of, it doesn't take up a lot of table space.

00:37:40.780 You can play with two or three players.

00:37:42.380 I think it's best with four.

00:37:43.800 It's a good game in that respect.

00:37:46.540 There's a game called Can't Stop, which is, has this very simple premise.

00:37:50.200 It's a dice game and it's so much fun.

00:37:52.420 It's an underplayed game.

00:37:53.820 That game is usually over in a half an hour.

00:37:56.260 Can't Stop is a really good one.

00:37:57.760 It has some Euro trashy elements, like it's plastic and it, you know, bright primary colors. 1.00

00:38:03.540 So the aesthetics are kind of like these games from the seventies, like Battleship, but it's,

00:38:07.900 it's a fun game and there's more strategy in it than people think.

00:38:11.860 There's a game called Azul, A-Z-U-L, which is in that 45 minute genre and has a very tactile

00:38:18.800 feel.

00:38:19.380 It has, it's almost like playing with tiles and mosaics, which click together in this

00:38:23.680 fun way.

00:38:24.220 A lot of people like the tactile element of the game.

00:38:27.440 Sagrada is another game in that category.

00:38:29.780 You're making stained glass windows, very visual.

00:38:32.500 Well, Jonathan, this has been a great conversation.

00:38:34.240 Where can people get to learn more about the book in your work?

00:38:36.200 So they can just Google the book, which is your move.

00:38:39.180 My name is Jonathan Kaye and my co-author's name is Joan Moriarty and the book's available

00:38:45.020 on Amazon and all the usual places.

00:38:47.860 My Twitter handle is J-O-N-K-A-Y.

00:38:51.080 I don't tweet that much about board games, but when people tweet at me for recommendations,

00:38:57.020 I always, always make a point of responding to them.

00:39:00.460 My DMs are open and I love talking about board games.

00:39:04.280 And then, well, Jonathan Kaye, thanks for your time.

00:39:05.540 It's been a pleasure.

00:39:06.580 Thank you.

00:39:07.380 My guest there is Jonathan Kaye.

00:39:08.620 He's the co-author of the book, Your Move.

00:39:10.700 It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:39:13.120 You can also check out our show notes at aom.is slash board games where you can find links

00:39:16.480 to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:39:25.920 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

00:39:28.680 Check out our website at artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives, as well

00:39:32.200 as thousands of articles we've written over the years about pretty much anything you can

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The Art of Manliness - April 08, 2020

#600： What Board Games Teach Us About Life

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