Last week I had the pleasure of having my parents over for the first time since I moved to Poland. During the day they went for their usual activities - visiting and enjoying life - so most of the time we spent together was in the evenings. So, what better thing to do in the evening that have a good chat over a glass of beer or water and... play a board game.
You must know my parents are not young anymore, they lived most of their lives in communism and the only games they played are chess and bridge (and one attempt at Warriors & Traders). They have no gamer friends and up to the point where I started NSKN they kept thinking that games are for kids alone.
I must admit that I was surprised and happy to hear my mom saying that she'd love to try a game, any game, maybe not to complicated. So I thought we could start with something light, just to add some spice to the conversation. We put Kingdom Builder on the table and after 10 minutes of explanations, we simply played. It took us about an hour to go though a 4-player game and I was thinking that the board games night is over. To my surprise (again) they both requested a re-match, now with full understanding of the rules. An hour later we had just finished our last match of the evening, with my mom having managed to win one game and my father coming second twice.
The next evening they wanted to try something different, maybe a bit more complicated, but still in the light game category. We went for Fresco with expansion and we had another pleasant evening. I think that the "virus" is slowly catching my parents and soon they will be interested in even more complex games.
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| Playing Fresco with my parents |
This was just another proof that gaming has no age limit. You don't have to start in primary school and go through the usual path (Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, etc), the door is always open, even when you're already retired. I am also happy that my parents understand better and better what I do for a living. It's hard to explain that for a whole week, 12 hours a day, I've done nothing more that work around an idea for a new game mechanism and it's still not ready. But with time and more games played, I think that it will slowly start to make sense.
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