For those of you interested, I think there are a few vital components to a great family game. The most obvious is that it must be playable by multiple generations (i.e., Cross-Generational Appeal); specifically, a great family game is one that can be enjoyed by the kids, the adults, or the seniors, and most importantly, by everyone at the same time. There is a natural social barrier between youngsters and oldsters that a great game will help break down, sometimes by allowing kids to show sophisticated strategy or a demonstration of knowledge, and sometimes by allowing grandpa to cut loose, relax, and laugh. Or vice-verse.

The barrier is there between even closer generations, but the right game will instantly melt that barrier in one of two ways, which I will refer to as Bonding Elements: when the game features witty components or the opportunity for players to engage their own wits, funny situations or references arise that everyone can laugh at – and nothing bonds like sharing a good laugh. Team games are often great ways to pair up people from different generations, and the anxiety and exhilaration brought on by game situations has a way of cementing relationships. In either case, the players are emotionally involved, at the same time and at the same targets.

Games that are suitable for family play must be relatively free from racy content, such as can be found in many party games (i.e., Family Friendly). Even if the kids are old enough to deal with certain topics, older generations often feel embarrassed to find out about it. On the other hand, there isn’t much less comfortable than when the content is definitely inappropriate for a child who is present and either bewildered or, even worse, starts asking what it means.

Finally, the rules and strategy of the game must be simple enough for the most intellectually challenged person to follow (Simplicity). This kind of goes without saying, but it becomes a critical feature when deciding whether Great Uncle Joe can sit down with the nieces and nephews at the table and still have a good time. That being said, of course games that are too simple are just not that fun for older kids or adults. I wouldn’t recommend a rousing game of Go Fish for holiday post-meal fun! The best games have simple rules but retain enough of a challenge to be interesting to everyone playing, and everyone that plays should actually have the ability to affect the outcome of the game (and not just by accident!).

So in my opinion, a great family game has Cross-generational Appeal, Bonding Elements, Family Friendliness, and Simplicity. This is my top ten list of family games, at least for now, in no particular order:

Yours truly...crawling with advisors

1. Uno
2. Sequence
3. Encore
4. Fluxx
5. Scotland Yard
6. Apples to Apples
7. Blokus
8. Imaginiff
9. Cornerstone
10. Pit

Contact me if you think I’ve left out a criterion, or if you think another game deserves to be in this top ten – but you must then tell me what game should be removed! Not only that, you have to make a decent argument for it. Calling a game “lame” or “no fun” won’t just do; I’ll think you either lack the capacity to enjoy it, or else just didn’t play with the right crowd.

One last note: some readers will no doubt notice that many of the classic Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley games are not on this list. That’s because as beloved and as classic as they might be, I don’t think they measure up to the games I have chosen in terms of enjoyment for the entire family (at once!).  Ditto for the original board games, such as chess, checkers, backgammon, and mancala.

So there it is. Let me know what you think!

Left shelf: Antique games (top left), card and dice games (bottom left), Avalon Hill and 3M Bookshelf games (top center and right), Kids games (10 and under; center and right)

Left: Avalon Hill, cont'd, RPG's, TCG's, and games for older kids (10 +); Center left: "featured" games, eurogames, high strategy, etc; Center right: Trivia, Music, Geography, Sports, Bible, Ancient classics; Right: Party and Word games

Same as above, from angle; bottom units large enough for over-sized boxes

"Featured" games; most aesthetically pleasing, and many of my favorites

This concludes the tour; thank you for your interest. (what you didn't see was the small bookshelf with a lot of the smallest kids games, two closets in kids' rooms each with about 20 definite kids games (cootie, candyland, etc), and a stack of about 15 elsewhere in the room.

These are the pics I took a little less than a year ago of my game collection, including the cabinet I designed specifically for holding all varieties of games. As noted above, they aren’t big enough to hold everything, but it makes enough sense to put all the youngest kids games in their own closets; they’re pulled out less and less in favor of the games in this room.

As I write this, in January of 2011, I own 1,140 games. There are quite a few duplicate titles, and it’s interesting to see how they differ. Some are very different games, such as “Billionaire,” one from Parker Brothers, 1973, and one from Crown and Andrews, 2000.

Some are the same game, published years apart by different companies, such as Yahtzee (Lowe, 1956, and Milton Bradley, 1982). Some are the same game, from the same company, but different editions (with different artwork, fonts, etc), such as Clue, from Parker Brothers (I have 1956, 1972, and 1986).

There are also games with many expansions (Carcassonne, of which I own five) and games with many variations (Scrabble, of which I own ten), and some have expansions and variations, such as Trivial Pursuit (I own 19 titles). I do not include multiple copies of the same edition of a game on the list; I keep the copy that is in better shape, making sure it is complete in terms of pieces and instructions, and then offer the duplicate as a prize for a game night hero. Not all of them are coveted…

I’m not in the financial position to just buy games whenever I feel like it; more than I can estimate have come from garage sales and goodwill stores, but as long as they are complete and in decent shape, they’re worth it. As soon as I acquire a game I check out the components to make sure they are complete and accurate (too often, the game will have pawns or dice from another game! Grrr!), and then add it to my excel spreadsheet/database.

Some games are very hard to find any data on; sometimes, especially on older games, neither the box nor the rules sheets have any dates on them, so I have to research them and, occasionally, estimate the year and/or manufacturer. There are a few that are still mysteries, in fact, and I would welcome any input from readers:

Bible Challenge, Youth Edition: no manufacturer, no year; small red box the size of trivial pursuit expansions. “A card set for use with the original Bible Challenge game” (which was self-published in 1984 by Mr James Babineau). Includes two smaller boxes, one for beginners (“From what country did Ruth come?” “Moab!” what a ridiculously easy question that was!) and one for intermediates (“What is the 5th commandment?” “Honor thy father and mother.”) (Wait, that was intermediate and Moab was beginner? I would suck at this game).

White Hunter: no manufacturer, no year; large, flat box with plain white bottom, primarily green lid, with black and white lettering. “The big game of big game hunting” – “Go on safari for wild beasts of Africa!” The object of the game is for the White Hunter to take 5 of the 12 animals before they escape from the jungle clearing. The board is an odd-shaped grid of squares on a simple jungle-background, and the pieces (one White Hunter, 12 hapless Wild Beasts!) are small tiles, roughly the size of scrabble tiles but thicker. Players spin the spinner to move animals to try to escape, while the hunter tries to kill. What a great way to introduce children (aged 7-14) to killing innocent animals for trophies!

I don’t really have an end goal in mind regarding my collection; at one point it was interesting to see if I could play every game, beginning to end, just once, but that is no longer feasible. I’d love to talk more about the more obscure or interesting games I have come across, such as “An Income of Her Own,” or “Mr. Ree.” But in the mean time, I’m hosting monthly game nights and changing themes so that we have a better chance of playing different games every time. Perhaps some night we’ll have to pull out White Hunter or Youth Bible Challenge, or even An Income of Her Own. We’ll see. If we do, I will try my best to report on it!

What kind of a game, for example, is Sequence? Is it a card game, or a board game? If you were (or are) in charge of a game store, where would you stock it? Maybe under Family games? Parlor games? Boardgamegeek.com lists it as both a family game and as an abstract game. If you own it, where do you keep it? Is there any order to your collection, or do you put them wherever they will fit (Box size and shape might be another way to categorize…).

So what are you, a splitter or a lumper? Many will say they’re neither – and that I’m a “lumper” for imposing such a distinction in the first place. But I didn’t make this up – I just see the same issues that I first became acquainted with as a student of Animal Behavior.

My educational background is in Biology, one subdivision of which is Taxonomics – or in modern parlance, “Cladistics.” Taxonomists and Cladists take on the awesome task of describing the family tree of life; awesome because, among other things, no one knows (nor can they agree on) how many living species there are on the planet (see Livescience.com for a nice discussion: http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070803_gm_numberspecies.html).

Scientists can’t agree on how many species there are, because the definition of species is, itself, a difficult one that is still being debated. There are species who look different and live apart, but can still interbreed (African and Asian elephants, for example), and there are species who live in the same geographic area but because of behavioral differences, do not interbreed (e.g., Baltimore Oriole vs Bullock’s Oriole). Some argue that the ability to interbreed makes them the same species, while others (perhaps the majority) say that they must typically interbreed in nature in order to be a species. The debate is fundamental in a semantic sense – depending on the precise definition of a species, the family tree will have a different branching pattern – but it does not undermine the underlying basis for understanding biology and evolution; it merely affects the final details. So the debate goes on.

Back to board games. As a former retailer and a current collector, and perhaps owing to my analytic yet playful mind, I think about this all the time. I now own over 1,050 games, and have to decide how to organize them. Since I host game events, I need to be able to find what I’m looking for, when I need it. There are a variety of ways to do it, and available space has something to do with it, but I still want to have some organizational scheme that is related to what the games actually are.

Alphabetical categorization won’t do. Abalone is in a hexagonal box, about 12″ across, and it would not fit well on top of, or next to, Axis and Allies in its rectangular, long, thick box. And so on. Strictly spatial categorization won’t do, either – I won’t put Uncle Wiggily next to Clue.

Then again, several of my larger categories are spatial. I keep all of the small-boxed card games for ages 12+ in one place, where there is a small shelving area and they won’t bury each other, and all the other small-boxed card games for kids on another stand-alone book shelf. I do put all of the Monopoly-sized games together, because there are so many, and I can make subcategories within them (in my case, I have them arranged by age range – because they do tend to be primarily kids games). I have a long row of 3M and Avalon Hill bookshelf games, arranged by category (war games, word games, abstract strategy games, etc). So a portion of my collection is organized spatially, but the rest is organized by function.

Kids games are in the same area as the large Monopoly-style boxes. Games for older kids and young adults get their own space (much of the abstract strategy is included here), and the remaining categories get their own space, too: knowledge-based games (geography, words, general trivia, music, arts/entertainment, sports, bible), party games, war games, casino-type games. I have two more categories, as well – Antique games get their own space (even though many belong in other categories), and I have one area set up as “featured” games. This is where I put my favorite games (History of the World, Titan: The Arena, Empire Builder, etc.), as well as games that are beautifully done (Wadjet, Palenque, Age of Renaissance, etc.). Most of the Euro-games go here.

But space is limited in just about any house. I was able to build a cabinet and customize it, but now my collection is too big. I want to know, if space wasn’t limited, how would you categorize your games? www.boardgamegeek.com lists 79 categories, but they also list 44 different game mechanics. Would you use them, or maybe combine some of them to make fewer major categories? www.funagain.com lists 9 major categories: Kids, Family, Strategy, Party, 2-Player, Card, Word, and War. This is perhaps most similar to what I have seen in stores, but they also list themes and genres as further types of categorization. www.boardgamecentral.com list 15 different categories of board games, plus other lists.

Online retailers have the advantage of being able to cross-list games in several categories without confusing customers or intensively training employees. Brick-and-mortar stores, however, pay a premium for space, so they can’t get away with putting a game like Settlers of Catan in each of the sections where it might belong (Strategy, Family, Modular board, City-building, Eurogames, etc).

So my big question really is: Is there a way to categorize board (and card) games so that categories are all-inclusive (every game has a home) and mutually exclusive (no game has more than one home)? I doubt it, but I’m still thinking about it and I would welcome any input, and I imagine the more realistic question is not whether that is possible, but given all the possible ways of splitting and lumping game features, which one makes the most sense, and why?

jh

P.S. I’ll take some pics soon and post them, to show you the way I have categorized my games. I’m pretty proud of the set up because I have also maximized storage and use of space – but when I get new games, my organization sometimes goes out the window!

Game manufacturers submit games to Mind Games, where game-loving Mensans spend over 40 hours (Friday to Sunday) and get very little sleep to play them. The games are rated, and each Mensan votes on his or her top seven. The top five games are awarded the coveted Mensa Select sticker to adhere to their games, and many, many shoppers have learned that the sticker means there is a great game underneath.

Here are the top five for 2010:

Dizios (Mindware):

Players alternate adding square heavy cardboard tiles to the ever-increasing tabletop grid. The tiles have 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 dots in their center, and are decorated with a single or multiple-colored swirling pattern such that each tile edge consists of either one or two colors. Tiles must be laid so that edge colors match exactly, and points awarded are equivalent to the total number of dots in any previously laid tiles (which may of course be from one to four tiles). The tiles were very attractive, which I think had a lot to do with this game winning. My own opinion is that it was a nice little game, but not terribly stimulating – not any more engaging than regular dominoes, at least, because one’s options on each turn are very limited. It is effectively just a matching game, at least initially. Just like dominoes, however, once a player understands which tiles are still not on the table (they are systematically coded in terms of dots and color patterns), one can strategize more. I think this game won because it was a unique take on an old idea, it was visually appealing, and one didn’t have to work hard to understand how to play.

Yikerz (Wiggles 3D):

Up to four players alternate placing tumbled, flat-sided, magnetic, hematite stones onto an arrangement of four pads, with the goal of being the first to place their final stone. The four pads are basically thin mouse pads cut in half diagonally, and can be arranged into different patterns to make the stone placement more or less challenging. The challenge is to place each stone without attracting other stones, or pushing them (via magnetic repulsion) into other stones. Any stones caused to attract have to be picked up into that player’s hand. This game was a surprise, because even after reading my explanation it doesn’t seem like a winner. At first it didn’t look appealing, and the name wasn’t appealing (to me, that is, but I know several others who felt the same way); it just looked kind of gimmicky. But the magnets are strong and when they attract, they move quickly and meet with a sharp snap! One also quickly learns that one can use the magnetic repulsion to move the other, existing magnets out of the way in order to make a spot to place a magnet. This was a pleasant surprise for me.

Anomia (Michael Innes; self-published):

Players each have a single card in front of them, and there is a common draw pile; cards have symbols and categories. On their turn, a player quickly flips a card onto their own pile – if the symbol matches any other player’s symbol a quick face-off ensues in which one has to name something from the other’s category. The first to blurt out an acceptable answer wins the other’s card – revealing a buried card that might precipitate another face-off. Wild cards are played in the middle and show two different symbols, so when any two players have those symbols they also have a face-off.

I think this game won because it blends fast-paced multi-tasking with categorical knowledge, and every player is constantly involved. it certainly was among the loudest and most exciting tables at Mind Games this year.

Forbidden Island (Gamewright):

Players compose a cooperative team of adventurers, racing against time to retrieve four treasures from a sinking island, and then escape before the water rises. Each player takes on a different role, each having a special (but not outrageously powerful) ability, which aids in the three main tasks – getting around the island, “shoring up” the island (undoing the effects of rising water), and moving/claiming treasure. The island itself consists of tiles laid out randomly  in a cross-shaped grid. Some tiles are labeled as places to claim treasure, and some are labeled with pawns, and serve as starting places for that player (pawn colors correspond to the identity and special ability of that player). Players alternate, performing three actions per turn, from this list: Move to an adjacent tile, Shore up a tile that has been flooded (i.e., unflood it), Give a treasure card to another player, or Claim a treasure (use four treasure cards to claim an actual treasure by being on the appropriately labeled tile). After the actions are taken, players draw two treasure cards – one of which might actually be one of three “Waters Rise” cards in the deck. At that point, “Flood Cards” are drawn, revealing which tiles will be flooded. Those tiles are physically inverted, or, if they had already been inverted, they are GONE from the game. Yikes! As the game progresses, water levels only get higher, so more cards are drawn, and hence more tiles flooded, when the Waters Rise cards are drawn. To make matters worse, when the Waters Rise cards is drawn, all the flood cards previously drawn are reshuffled and placed on top of the draw pile, so they are the first to be drawn again.

Word on the Street (Out of the Box):

Players form two teams, and have 30 seconds to name, and spell, something from a given category (as determined by a drawn card). Sounds fun, no?

There is more to it, of course. The board is long and thin, and consists of two, two-lane roads separated by a median. Most letters of the alphabet (no vowels and no J Q, X, or Z) occupy the median in a long column from B to Y. As the words are spelled, one of the spelling team members moves the appropriate letter into the roads from the median, toward the edge of the board. Then the other team does the same, with a new category. The result is a sort of alphabet tug-of-war. When a team manages to use a letter enough to move it off of their side of the board, they win it. The first to win 8 letters, wins!

I expected this to be a winner. It’s exciting, it’s nice to be able to form teams, and it’s especially great for people who are fond of words with repeated consonants…(peppermint, Guggenheim, Mississippi, etc).