10 Reasons Board Games Are Better Now

if you grew up in the 90s then you probably played these board games and if you grew up in the 80s and in the 70s and the 60s but in the last 30 years board games have undergone a transformation it's not just that they look better these new games are simply more fun to play because they've been made following a new formula for what makes a good board game there are clear-cut reasons why Monopoly makes people angry and the game of life feels unfair and modern games have come up with solutions to all of those

problems and more it sounds crazy board games have been around for longer than Christianity they're just some rules and Bits of Paper but right now you're living through a board gaming Renaissance board games are better than they've ever been and I'm gonna give you 10 reasons why now I'm not saying all old games are bad and I'm certainly not saying all new games are good but there's been a huge shift in how games are designed and I think it's for the better let's get into it foreign we've all been there you start a game of

Monopoly one afternoon and then end up having to leave it out overnight because you couldn't finish it before bedtime games are like friends no matter how much fun they are at eight o'clock you just want them to leave you alone by 2AM modern games know that you've got your yoga class to get to in the morning and they're all designed to not outstay their welcome in Carcassonne you take it in turns to place a tile on the map when you run out of tiles the game is over so there's always 84 turns it's reliable it

means you know you can fit in a game of it before you attend the Opera at seven or get to the gallery opening before they run out of hors d'oeuvres honestly I don't know what you people do with your evenings but you seem classy in Ticket to Ride the game ends when someone runs out of trains and that predictability is a vital part of your strategy knowing roughly how long is left and whether there's time to complete your grand plan or whether you need to change tack it's a pressure that gives the game game and

exciting tension can you get it all done in time other games like Katan are a race to be the first player to reach a certain number of points the end of the game is the goal so every move takes you closer to it which gives the game a crescendo and crucially the points you gain are fixed in Monopoly and risk you can feel close to winning then suffer huge losses setting you back which is not only Soul destroying but can take you further away from the Game ending it's like being at the cinema and they

rewind the film by 20 minutes in Catan your progress is safe you can only March forwards towards an inevitable end and we're all familiar with that and modern games value the time they get to spend with you by making every turn fun which is just not the case in older games includer you roll the dice on your turn and you move that many spaces but if you can't get to a room you don't get to ask a question your turn is over the other players are running around solving a murder and you're left role-playing as

the dead body a modern game like pandemic will never let you have a dull turn you can treat diseases and use your cards to fly around the board there's always something worth doing and every player is equal everyone gets four actions on their turn rather than having your productivity governed by dice which is the equivalent of being unable to walk to work because Mercury is in retrograde even worse is when games like Monopoly make you skip your turn entirely because there's nothing quite like playing a board game as not playing a board game remember this

is fun brought to you by the people who talk children by putting dunce hats on them and hitting them with canes Mr turn goes straight to jail don't pass go don't collect 200 pounds old games are obsessed with you not playing them and hey I'm okay with that that's not to say modern games aren't punishing I love when a game hits me around the face and calls me stupid in High Society you play as Rich socialite splashing cash on luxury items to get the most points each card is auctioned off to the highest bidder the

catch is that if you've spent the most money at the end of the game you instantly lose a rich socialite without any money is an oxymoron instead of just a it's punishment for being Reckless with your spending the crucial distinction is that it's Justified Monopoly dishes out its punishment at random sending you to prison for nothing in High Society you knew the rules and you did it anyway you can't be mad that you got caught a fun game encourages you to gamble by Dan a carrot juicy enough to make you want to risk it all

in heat pedal to the metal you can make your car go faster by heating up your engine but if you risk it too often you'll cause your car to spin out you can choose to be cautious not take any risks and you won't be punished but if you never chase that dangling carrot you'll never meet your full potential whereas Monopoly hits you with a stick no matter what you choose you know when you play football with your friends and then halfway through the game the worst player is forced to leave and everyone else plays on

without them no yeah that would be miserable so why does it happen in Monopoly and risk even poker it's called player elimination and if modern board games had a Geneva Convention this would be a reason to send in NATO it's just weird you've come over for game night to play a game with your friends and now you're sitting there waiting for them to finish as punishment for being bad at the game you're not only a loser but a loser with the next hour to think about it modern games solve the problem of player elimination by

not eliminating players it's a revelation much in the same way that I consider myself a modern man because I don't go around punching people in the face werewolf is a game from the 80s that has become so popular that it's played by the England football team between training sessions and by Hollywood actors waiting around on set it's a bluffing game some players are secretly werewolves and the others have to guess who the werewolves are to win the game it's a a lot of fun lying to each other and accusing people of being a werewolf but

what's less fun is that every round the werewolf will kill one of the players eliminating them from the game if that happens to you in the first round you just have to sit there for an hour and watch everyone else have fun even if I'm still in the game it's a buzz kill knowing that someone else in the room is having a bad time that makes me a bad host which is why I would never play werewolf but I would play the resistance or Avalon or any number of other hidden traitor Games inspired by werewolf

that fix that problem by not eliminating players in the resistance you still have werewolf type players that must hide in plain sight and convince others they're Innocent but instead of killing good players they win by sabotaging missions it gives you all the same feelings you get from werewolf of lying and arguing with each other but no one gets left out and that's what we want lying and arguing for all and that's why I support same-sex marriage it's not the only reason player elimination was a crude way to put players out of their misery no one

wants to keep playing a game they have no chance of winning it's demeaning if you've ever played someone that's good at Scrabble you'll know what it feels like to be a hundred points behind it's what the generation who repressed all their emotions would call character building I don't want a character I want your five bedroom house modern games will spare you from that embarrassment in a few ways first scores are less wildly far apart the best player wins of course but not by such a landslide that you need to skip town and change your name

one way games are balanced is with a catch-up mechanism which works like the blue shell in Mario Kart only given to the players at the back of the race which they use to attack the car at the front to hold them back in Isle of Skye players gain income at the start of every round which they use to buy new tiles to add to their Scottish Island and to help those lagging behind the game gives you extra money for every player ahead of you on points having more money will help you outbid the other players

so you can buy the best tiles and try to catch up it's a benefit scheme that helps the struggling players stay in the game because poverty is a downward spiral and it's no fun watching yourself get further away from the leader with every round that's how Monopoly plays out the rich get richer if you come into some early luck you can spend that money to buy more properties to make even more money leaving everyone else powerless to catch up and yes I know it's intentional that doesn't mean it's fun if you love accuracy so much

go play an economics textbook modern games give players hope that they can still win at any point even if that isn't necessarily true some do it by keeping the scores hazy so you don't know you're losing until the game is over it's some harmless gaslighting and you told me you love gaslighting remember in Ticket to Ride you keep your goals secret so you don't know how many points the other players have until the end of the game you might be miles behind but you're oblivious to it so you keep plugging away ignorance is bliss and

it makes for a better finale because no one knows who the winner is it's like you're at the Oscars waiting for them to read your name out and you deserve an Oscar for that brave face you put on every time you lose and this is why I don't play chess because if I play against someone who knows chess I lose every time it's the same reason I stopped arm wrestling against Henry Cavill and because he wouldn't shut up about Warhammer and I don't want to be on the other side destroying my opponent every time because

that's not funny either where's the challenge the winner of a game of chess is usually the player who was played and studied chess the most and that's because the board and the pieces start out in the same way every time you play it modern games can't be mastered with such Precision because they're different every time you play them in Catan the island is set up randomly at the start of the game that means there can never be a common strategy each arrangement will create a unique dynamic in one game a sheep will be scarce and

worth loads in another they'll be worth nothing you'll never play the same game twice and part of the fun is in exploring this instance of the Katan Multiverse learning how it works and using that to plan your strategy then once the game is over letting it Drift from your mind because none of it really matters and next time you get to start afresh unencumbered by your previous lives it's called variable setup and it gives each player of a game its own character with chess you get one game that plays the same way every time with

something like onitama your pieces move in a different way every time you play giving you a hundred different variations an experienced player will still have an advantage but a newbie has less of a mountain to climb to reach their level the problem with so many older games is that you never feel in control of your destiny in The Game of Life you will land on a spot that tells you you've lost your job or had a baby or won some money it just happens to you you don't have any say in it it's like when

your older brother would hand you a PlayStation controller that isn't plugged in and tell you you're playing the game modern board games give you agency every turn you make a decision that directly affects your success in Sniper Elite the board game one player is secretly moving around the map trying to avoid getting caught you have full control over where you go if you want to walk right in front of the guard's noses you can if you want to Sprint which makes noise and gives away your position you can you'll get yourself killed but you did

it your way that's the joy of being in control is that you own that loss you can look back at the end of the game and pinpoint where you went wrong it makes you want to go back and try again whereas if your failure was caused by luck what would be the point of trying to improve and if you win it feels more satisfying you got the job not because you're the best looking or related to the boss but because you made the best choices in a world where it can feel like you have no

control over anything where life like the game happens to you modern board games offer an escape to a place that makes sense where you're in command of your destiny and it's a world with options in Monopoly you roll the dice and land on a space and you can either buy it or not two options and one of them is doing nothing it's like being a kid and for dinner you can either eat your parents cooking or you can go hungry a modern game hands you a menu every turn full of delicious options that are impossible

to choose between in Cascadia you're building a North American Wilderness and filling it with Wildlife each turn you pick from four options but then you have to decide where to place them so there's over a hundred different ways to take your turn but it's never over overwhelming because just like going to a restaurant you had something in mind before you saw the menu if you're in the mood for fish you order the salmon it might seem like the answer to making games fairer and giving players more control is to remove luck entirely from games and

yes there's a whole genre of games like that the most famous being chess and go but it creates a specific type of experience that if you've played chess you'll know an intense battle of wits and those games are more prone to make players overthink their turns slowing the game down in what's called analysis paralysis they also tend to only work as two player games so they're not suitable for groups the truth is luck is an important part of modern board games it creates drama and excitement but to be willfully confusing for a second there's good

luck and bad luck in Risk you send your troops into battle then roll the dice to see if you win if you keep rolling low numbers you'll lose and it can be really frustrating because it doesn't feel fair you're supposed to be a military tactician you've planned your assault of australasia meticulously but your guns keepness firing what's the point in planning a strategy if luck renders it pointless dice are like a bad friend you never know which side of them you're going to get they will let you down time and time again but when they

do occasionally treat you well they make you feel special a deck of cards is like a box of chocolates and let's be clear here Forrest Gump you have an idea of what you're gonna get it's written on the back in Clank you're venturing into a dungeon to steal treasure to move through the map you're hoping to draw an explore card but you don't always get what you want sometimes you'll draw a stumble card instead which makes noise and risks you being attacked by the dragon luck plays a part but there's a predictability to your deck

you know both cards are in there and they'll both come out at some point and that gives you confidence in what you're doing which means you get more invested in the game but dice themselves aren't bad it's how a game uses them the biggest change with modern games is when luck affects you in Risk you make your decision then roll the dice and see what mood your bad friend is in but in most modern games you'll dealt your luck first and then decide how to act in the zombie apocalypse game dead of winter you roll

your dice and then work out how to spend them if you roll low numbers you can't kill any zombies this turn but at least you didn't waste an action trying and failing instead you do something simpler like searching for food it's like the game giving you a forecast that your bad friend is going to be a nightmare so you cancel your trip to the zoo and wait for a day when they're behaving themselves luck can still hold you back but it's not so heartbreaking [Music] the real reason board games are better now than they used

to be is in a roundabout way thanks to World War II in post-war West Germany board games became an integral part of family life no longer a hobby only for children they were embraced by adults who treated them as an art form reviewing them in newspapers alongside films and books and they were given Awards such as the spildajara's game of the year award which was started in 1978 and it gave publicity to the best games which encouraged good game design tabletop games were also growing in popularity elsewhere with Dungeons and Dragons in the US as

well as access and allies a simulation of World War II meanwhile in the UK Games Workshop introduced Warhammer all huge success stories and all focused on fighting and War and for obvious reasons the Germans weren't so interested in playing games about war and this inspired German board game designers to think differently creating games that avoid Direct conflict between players such as Settlers of Catan that was published in 1995 designed by Klaus toiber he was inspired by the history of Vikings settling the uninhabited land of Iceland and in the game you play as rival tribes building

towns cities and roads by harvesting natural resources and Rivals you may be but you can't attack the other players you can't destroy each other's settlements in fact you have to work together trading Resources with each other to get what you need it's still a competition but if you don't trade with the others you won't Prosper Catan wasn't the first great German game but it struck a chord like no other it embodied Decades of progress in game design in an approachable and appealing package and to the rest of the world who were used to luck heavy

complex combative games it was a breath of fresh air thanks to the early internet word of the game traveled fast and it was soon printed in America and coined along with other German games at the time Euro games it was the start of a board gaming Renaissance and those early Euro Games inspired every modern board game that has come since the big success stories carcass on Ticket to Ride pandemic Azul Cascadia all share the same ancestors and they're all friendlier than the games we grew up with Monopoly and risk and chess are aggressive games in

which you tear your neighbor down it's not enough to score the most points you have to bankrupt your opponents or wipe them off the map and that's not exactly conducive to a pleasant Sunday with friends and family is it the biggest shift with modern board games is in how friendly they are now you can't directly attack your fellow players and you can't destroy their hard work but they're still competitive you can get in their way and steal points that they were hoping for you can take the last slice of cake and you can rub their

face in it you just can't rub their face in it and even when you do screw them over it's never personal in Ticket to Ride you're racing to complete train routes on the board and if I put a route down from Barcelona to Marseille that might ruin someone else's plans but it wasn't intentional we're all fighting over the same space and I didn't even know they wanted it my focus is always on getting the most points for myself like an act actor takes all the roles they can get and that will hurt other actors but

they don't do it to spite them except James Corden the point of it isn't just to protect people's feelings but to keep them invested if you're putting thought into a game weighing up the decisions each turn and then someone comes along and pisses all over it you question the point of it all why bother pruning the perfect hedge if your neighbor's gonna reverse their car into it and some games take it even further giving each player their own personal bubble to exist in in Sagrada you're each building a stained glass window by arranging colored dice

on a personal board the gameplay is a delicate puzzle that requires a lot of planning it wouldn't work if other players could influence your board and even if you lose you get a sense of accomplishment from having built this thing in front of you it's your own personal Sagrada Familia incomplete not the best cathedral but still beautiful another huge shift with modern board games is the rise of the Cooperative game in which all players work together to win the most famous is pandemic a game of trying to prevent diseases from spreading across the globe you

have to coordinate your movements to stop cities from outbreaking whilst trying to find a cure to win the game and save the world the joy of Cooperative games is in how they bring you all together United against a common foe they get you talking more than other games because you all need to be on the same page to have any chance of winning and the feeling you get when you pull off a victory is incredible if you've ever played an escape room you know what it feels like that's not to say there aren't aggressive games

around anymore there are more options than ever you see the best thing about modern board games is there's something for everyone you know when you're at a party and you're attract to someone you don't know and they declare that they don't watch films or read books and you shiver because you realize you're talking to a psychopath well the same applies to people who don't play games board games are no different from films or books they're something everyone can enjoy in some form or other but one man's dude wears my car is another man Schindler's List

if you hate Catan don't worry you don't hate modern board games you just hate Catan there are so many different types of games available now imagine any setting you want and there's a game about it you can pull off a bank heist they're on a camel race Survivor deserted island be an outlaw in the wild west and for any situation if you just want something simple to play with your partner there are some incredible two-player games or if you like playing in a big group even modern party games are light years ahead of Pictionary and

Trivial Pursuit this is spieltug a yearly Convention held in Essen Germany where Publishers from all over the world show off their games and over a thousand new board games are released there every year in fact there are so many to choose from on that you'll need a guide to point you towards the best ones so it's probably best you click subscribe and I've put some links to my most helpful videos in the description below those are my 10 reasons why board games are better than they used to be what are your reasons let me know

in the comments and I want to give a mention to this book It's All a Game by Tristan Donovan which inspired parts of this video I've not been sponsored it's just a really good book and worth reading if you want to know more about the history of board games old and new this video was funded by viewers so if you enjoyed it you can support me making more by becoming a patron of the channel at patreon.com forward slash actual I'm John perkis thanks for watching [Music]