Topic of the Week: Nostalgia & the next generation of gamers

[yashima]

I am not sure if we have discussed this previously, bits and pieces have been mentioned but I could not find a consolidated thread.

So this is a question / topic in 2 parts:

1. What was your early gaming life like as a child or teen? Which games did you play and with whom? Any games you have particularly strong nostalgia for? Any games you still own or regret no longer owning? What are some local traditional games you learned? Any particularly memorable experiences?

2. What kind of gaming have you engaged / are engaging with with the next generation of gamers? If you have them: your children. If you don’t have them: your nieces, nephews, friends’ children… or if you aren’t playing with children/teens at all, you might still imagine what you would be playing or recommend …

Bonus Question: What do you think is the biggest change?

[RogerBW]

Definite phases of gaming for me.

Childhood - we didn’t have many of the “family games” at home, though there was Chess and occasional Monopoly (which nobody really liked but it was a game that one “should” like). Also two that I haven’t seen since: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2974/scoop and I think probably https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12236/cargoes .(Not suggesting anyone goes on a hunt for these.)
Teenagerhood and the next few years: discovered role-playing, mostly did that. Did play some of the wargames of the day that were role-playing adjacent: Car Wars, Battletech.
200x demonstrating GURPS for Steve Jackson Games, which led into demonstrating some of their other games too. I also started branching out a little: Tsuro, for example.
201x: branching out a lot and the SJ Games demo programme got me to Essen, but gradually retreated to the continental US. But by this time I was playing a lot of other games. Joined BGG in 2012, as far as I remember to find out more about Flash Point. Firefly, Onitama, etc.
202x: less buying, more consolidation and more playing games I already have.

Since I started paying attention to game design in probably 2010 or thereabouts I’ve noticed definite mechanical improvements: for example it’s very rare to see player elimination now, and games in which you have to keep track of which of your units have already moved by memory rather than some sort of status indicator are now rare. And since I wasn’t playing “German games” in the early 2000s when they were called that, I don’t have nostalgia for that era. I do fondly remember being able to find other people who wanted to play social deduction games though.

There are no regular children in my life but I do sometimes demo to them at shows. My basic approach is to treat them like anyone else: explain the game, answer questions, show how it works. They mostly seem to like it. That does mean I’m not recommending games for them, though.

[Whistle_Pig]

@RogerBW

Also two that I haven’t seen since: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2974/scoop

I’ve played Scoop! Specifically, this version. My grandparents had a copy

[yashima]

I have many memories of playing boardgames during my childhood. Certainly a reason I brought up this topic

The Past

My childhood gaming is probably just the 80s and probably pretty typical for the types of games available in Germany at the time.

• My grandma taught me Mühle (Nine Men’s Morris), Halma, Chess, Checkers and most importantly Skat and Bubenskat / Bauernskat a 2 player variant. Other ‘classics’ I learned either from grandparents or parents were Rommé, Canasta and Backgammon.
• Somewhat late in the 80s my dad tried to teach me Doppelkopf, a game he had a regular gamenight for, but I never grokked it.
• Early SdJ games I have fond memories of:
  • Sagaland
  • Dampfross–not my copy, I would never have let go of that one
  • Heimlich & Co (Wolfgang Kramer)
  • Auf Achse (Wolfgang Kramer)
  • Barbarossa (Klaus Teuber)
  • Scotland Yard–a friend had it
• Other games that left an impression:
  • Monopoly
  • Scrabble
  • Deutschlandreise (1935 – I had no idea it was so old)
  • Uno – though I never quite understood why we weren’t playing Maumau
  • Hotel (I adored the finished game with all the cardboard buildings set up)
  • Mastermind
  • Die Unendliche Geschichte – after the Michael Ende novel. The first ever IP based game I played and the first story-telling game. We loved it. Shortly after I discovered choose-your-own-adventure books.
  • Das verrückte Labyrinth–not my own copies though. Lots of friends had it however.

Those are what I remember from my 80s gaming. I played with my sister, friends, with our parents and grandparents. It was certainly tradition to get a boardgame for Christmas. And my grandmas especially were always playing with us kids.

• I still have Uno and Monopoly somewhere and 2 copies of Scrabble (German and English).
• I wish I had owned a copy of Dampfross.
• I really wished for someone to modernize Auf Achse rules instead of the theme (Leylines)
• I have contemplated the last anniversary edition of Scotland Yard.
• And though I know it would bore me now, I almost bought a new Heimlich & Co a few years back

The next phase in my gaming life was a mix of RPGs and MtG when I started university in 1996.

Boardgames I encountered during that phase that left distinct impressions

• Catan
• Risk
• Ursuppe
• Die Macher
• Robo Rally
• Cults Across America
• Chez Geek
• Munchkin
• Carcassonne
• El Grande
• Alhambra
• Die Fürsten von Florenz
• Bohnanza (I almost forgot that one. It’s legendary)

I went to SPIEL once or twice during my Uni years. I asked the wrong people for recommendations and came away with an early Splotter called “Cannes” that is now rotting somewhere on a shelf at my sister’s.

I began going to SPIEL every year in 2008. But my actual hobby gaming phase began when I first heard about Terra Mystica being published by this new publisher called Feuerland just before SPIEL 2012 and preordered it because it sounded awesome. In 2012 after SPIEL I also backed my first Kickstarter: Zombicide Season 2.

Present

Since I have no kids of my own, my next-generation gaming opportunities mostly arise from friends’ and various relatives’ kids. I mostly avoid typical kids games like memory. I tend to have a go as soon as they are old enough to play games like King of Tokyo or Goblins Inc (certain gamer friends took their 8 yo to SPIEL and it was incredible)

Games I’ve played with kids successfully:

• King of Tokyo
• Coatl
• Goblins Inc (that crazy boy has his own collection now and finished Gloomhaven and probably Forsthaven by now)
• Cascadia (but the adult version please, the girl in question was bored by the family variant and is already at 7 or possibly 8 now, giving her dad a hard time at many games)
• Hey That’s my Fish
• Rhino Hero Super Battle
• Cockroach Salad and Dodelido
• Just One
• That’s not a Hat
• The Gang (okay those kids were all 10+ at the time)
• Kingdomino
• Carcassonne
• Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck (also known as Pickomino)
• 7 Wonders
• Ticket 2 Ride

Now with the gamers I am surrounded by it is not super surprising that kids are introduced to more complex games at an early age as parents either want to quickly get to playing the games they are interested in themselves or as kids just want to emulate the adults.

Even Robo Rally appears to work for kids (I haven’t played but seen pics of them playing at 6 and 8 years old).

What changed?

There is now 3 different types of SdJ.
Kids I know get exposed to hobby gaming (I am partly to blame) much earlier.
When I was so young nobody I knew was “hobby gaming” unless they were regularly playing classic card games like Skat or Doppelkopf.
Games have spread out from toy-stores are sold at all kinds of shops now. Availability of international games has increased massively. But I don’t think the amount of quality games for kids being published has increased as much. SdJ has since the 80s showed parents where to find good games And it still does.

Oh my this got long. Many games needed mentioning

[yashima]

@RogerBW

two that I haven’t seen since: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2974/scoop and I think probably https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/12236/cargoes .(Not suggesting anyone goes on a hunt for these.)

I would probably have enjoyed Cargoes

[felix]

We definitely played games. I mostly remember Scrabble, Cluedo and trick taking games with a standard deck of cards. But I don’t think I found them formational or anything compared to discovering modern board games later on.
Before getting into board games I played some Dungeons & Dragons which was more of a gateway.
As for modern games people will be nostalgic for, I imagine it will be the bestselling ones. Unless you have parents who are into board games then, in the UK at least, you’re most likely going to encounter Chess, Monopoly, Scrabble etc. just because of their ubiquity. I think that will probably change over as board games have become much more mainstream, but I think takes at least a generation or two of people who think of board games as broader than the canon of family games in order to pass that on. If I had to predict I think eventually we’ll see a variety and mainstream appeal that mirrors the video game landscape eventually, with big hits that are fresher but still stick around for a long time.
I imagine we’re many years behind Germany in that timeline!

[yashima]

@felix

Cluedo

A I forgot that one. It was not super common around me but I did play it.

@felix

I imagine we’re many years behind Germany in that timeline!

I tend to blame SdJ for the “modern” tendencies. The first one was 1979 as far as I know.
But I think SdJ was born from a culture that was already into games.

• Germans are were (now we have doomscrolling like everyone else) always trying to do something “valuable” with their time, no sitting around lazing about. Games are considered a “vernünftige” (sensible) way to spend your time
• Also it is a nice way to spend time at home with the family and instead of fighting over … stuff … you can play Mensch Ärger Dich Nicht and fight over games.
• Old publishers like Ravensburger, Kosmos and Schmidt exist and have provided a steady output
• Games are a pretty cheap way to spend time, too. And people weren’t exactly rich in the 50s and 60s. We’re not talking kickstarters and game collecting money, but having a few games that are played over and over and over… I inherited my German scrabble from my dad, I think it was printed in the 1950s.
• And don’t underestimate the “educational” thing. So many games trying to teach something in addition to entertainment… see my first point about “vernünftig” …

[yashima]

My partner has a few additional games he’d like to mention

• Mankomania (Go for broke)–I also played this.
• He also had a copy of Hotel (that one we actually have) and they made their own additional rules for it
• Spiel des Wissens which reminds me that we played Trivial Pursuit (German edition obviously) a lot. (see… educational games)
• They also had the classic Spielesammlung (that includes Nine Mens’ Morris, Checkers, Halma, Mensch Ärger Dich nicht, Chess and in their case Scrabble?)
• Many card games played with standard decks of cards especially Rommé

And because he is of Hungarian descent, he played a crazy monopoly variant that involved player boards representing your apartment and instead of streets you bought stuff to put in your apartment: Gazdálkodj Okosan! (1960)

It’s crazy the kind of stuff BGG knows…

[lalunaverde]

I was mostly a Chess player and a “2 player card game” player when I was young. IMO, I am a much better Chess player now than back when I was pre-teen or teenager.

This seems to carry on today as I often love abstract games - while a lot of people don’t. I also didn’t care much about how “ugly” train games look - Exhibit A. This production is completely fine with me.

In my teens, my friends and I got into Yu-Gi-Oh. This is in the Philippines so the cards are all counterfeit and won’t be accepted in official tournaments.

There’s Monopoly too but eh. I don’t miss it.

I don’t have a nostalgia for any of these. Games like Ashes or Netrunner I felt are way better. Chess remains timeless. And, again, I feel like I know more about it than I used to.

[SteveB_uk]

1. What was your early gaming life like as a child or teen? … Any games you have particularly strong nostalgia for?

Early games: Cluedo, Monopoly, Chess, Scrabble, Othello, because they were in the house.
(70s UK version of Cluedo, Dublin version of Monopoly).

Then lots of UK 70s and 80s kids games: Hungry Hippos, Mousetrap, Connect 4, Guess Who, Operation, Buckaroo, Ghost Castle, Go For Broke, probably loads more. Also Yahtzee and Mastermind.

Influential games: going to a friend’s house to play Heroquest. Which then got me onto Space Crusade, Advanced Heroquest, Advanced Space Crusade and all kinds of battle games. The Dragonlance one, Battle Masters, Crossbows and Catapults, Stratego.

Which do I regret getting rid of? Heroquest / Advanced Heroquest, and Warhammer fantasy battle 4th edition box.

2. What kind of gaming have you engaged / are engaging with with the next generation of gamers? … Bonus Question: What do you think is the biggest change?

Just entirely different games. Cascadia as a general opener. Almost nothing pre-2000, unless it’s Chess etc. Can you imagine sitting today’s kids down to play “Game of Life” or something? Hopeless.

[Brattyjedi]

I grew up playing the American staples: uno, clue, monopoly, connect 4, battleship, yahtzee, etc. The kind of stuff that has been in the toy aisle of Walmart for decades.

The real “gaming” in my house was when you were old enough for all the card games the grownups played at family get togethers. Things like pitch, spades, hearts, pinochle, canasta, etc.

I was the one who got into “modern” gaming and introduced various games to my family.

My husband and I currently have a 6-year-old foster child. We have played some of the old staples with him - connect 4, memory, Sorry/parcheesi/ludo, uno, etc. He is too young for much beyond that.

We have introduced him to some more modern games. We tried Outfoxed and he hated it. He loves the Sneaky Squirrel game (really a OT gip practice activity disguised as a game). We have played Carcassonne without farmers/fields and he had fun but no real understanding of scoring and strategy. The biggest hit has been easier cooperative games. He loves superheroes, especially Spider-Man, so we have Marvel United. He loves it and it gives us the ability to work with him on strategy. He also likes the Disney Chronicles of Light: Darkness Falls coop game.

We are next debating teaching him Battleship with one of us on his team against the other grown up for the first couple plays. I think doing that a couple times and he would be able to do it on his own.

[COMaestro]

1. I always remember playing games with my family growing up, and also with my grandma when she would stay with us for a stretch. Yahtzee, Uno, Clue, Go Fish, and Aggravation were the main ones, but I also had Electronic Battleship which I would play with friends.

As I got older, I would play Monopoly with one friend when I spent the night at his house, also one he had called Game of the States, which was a pick up and deliver style game. We also got into D&D, Top Secret S.I., and then AD&D 2nd ed. and the Star Wars RPG by West End Games.

I joined this same friend in attending a high school that was further away from my home, but it had a long established gaming club. The teacher who ran it had a giant cabinet stuffed full of games. Here I was exposed to a plethora of games such as Axis and Allies, Fortress America, Talisman, Space Hulk, Battle Masters, Nuclear War, Fury of Dracula (1st ed), Quest for the Magic Ring, and many other games. This same teacher also arranged club trips to a couple of gaming conventions, just the dealer’s hall, but one of those trips ended up with my buying something called Magic the Gathering. This would have been Unlimited/Revised era. Legends and Antiquities sets had just finished up and the Dark was the newest set. This actually was the kick off for interest in the game for the club, and by the next school year we were all playing it.

I quit after Fallen Empires, moving to the Star Wars CCG by Decipher, but still played Magic with the cards I had.

Moving on to college, I went out of state, so had no friends from before, but eventually made some gaming friends, learning Star Fleet Battles, and getting into the White Wolf RPGs of Vampire and Werewolf. Kind of hit a gaming drought after college though as I drifted apart from those gaming friends. It wasn’t until I reconnected with a couple of them that I started to play the occasional game, board or RPG.

2. Unfortunately when it comes to teaching them games, my own children are very disabled, and while they are smart and clever in their own way, they do not have the attention to learn rules to a game, nor the impulse control to prevent them from ripping or throwing things suddenly if the thought suddenly enters their heads.

Our friends have a daughter and we have been slowly incorporating her in our games when she is interested. So far that has been Sushi Go, and she also joined our one play of Hot Streak. I think she will likely continue to join in our games as she gets older, but that depends on her interest in them.

[Simfers]

Barely any gaming when I was a child. Some card games, Rummy, Rook, stuff like that… The board game I remember the most vividly was called Dynamite. It was fun, but I don’t think it’d hold up today, LOL. Didn’t become any kind of non-video gamer until I started playing D&D in the 1990s. About to start that again with some friends, too!

Didn’t get really into board games until my wife and I started buying some. Our first were Patchwork and 7 Wonders Duel. The former is STILL a fixture.

We’ve been playing with our nieces (on my wife’s side) when our nephew’s at hockey, mostly Carcassonne, though they really like Flip 7 and the kids’ version of TTR (First Journey?). Also been giving our nephew (on my side) board games for the past two years now. He’s got kids’ versions of Splendoe, Cascadia, Quacks of Quedlinburg and TTR.

We’re building the new generation!

[RogerBW]

@RogerBW

There are no regular children in my life

However, I did chat with stepgrandson when they were visiting my wife for Christmas. He’s recently got into D&D. I think he was pleasantly mind-blown to discover a grown-up who actually knew about RPGs and could talk about them sensibly.

[raged_norm]

I think I’ve covered my youth gaming here before but in brief, the usual childhood fare followed by the Games Workshop Era™ where I played Blood Bowl weekly before I had to get a Saturday job to pay for the Blood Bowl habit.

The games are pretty much terrible, but I still have a soft spot for Games Workshop

Fast forward to now, where my nine year old loves playing games with me. I think I made a culture where it’s tome away from screens and I’ve been willing to coach him through more complex games. As a result I struggle when people ask me for games recommendations for kids. Some of his favourite games are 7 Wonders Duel, Gang of Dice, Glass Road, Race for the Galaxy, Hot Streak,L.A.M.A., Pipoca, Skulls of Sedlec, New Frontiers, Quest for El Dorado and Pokemon: Splendor. Generally, something where you build and exploit a combo.

My more general observation is kids are much more accepting of any hobby these days. For me it was weird I didn’t Sport much, but today every hobby is great. My daughter likes to crochet and her friends thinks it’s cool whereas any kid doing that in my youth would be mocked. I like this future.

[Griffster77]

My parents didn’t really game (although Dad liked card games like Cribbage which we played a fair bit) so it was mainly desultory games of Monopoly, Go For Broke and Game of Life with my brothers. Tell a lie, Dad also liked the odd game of Chess.

It was in late childhood/teens that I started getting into Games Workshop stuff - started off with things like Chainsaw Massacre, Warlock of Firetop Mountain then onto Talisman, Block Mania and then BloodBowl (I also did Warhammer Battle but was never massively into it).

Then I mainly played RPGs until about 10 years ago when I went round to some friends and they were gaming - it was the original Zombiecide. I went regularly to a games night with them and the interest has grown since.

I’m trying to introduce the kids to boardgames - the eldest (11) is a killer at Ghost Blitz and the younger (9) has just played Ticket to Ride London and said they enjoyed it. We tried them with the kiddie version of Carcasson and Ticket to Ride but they were never interested!

So fingers crossed they will continue their interest.

[Griffster77]

My parents didn’t really game (although Dad liked card games like Cribbage which we played a fair bit) so it was mainly desultory games of Monopoly, Go For Broke and Game of Life with my brothers. Tell a lie, Dad also liked the odd game of Chess.

It was in late childhood/teens that I started getting into Games Workshop stuff - started off with things like Chainsaw Massacre, Warlock of Firetop Mountain then onto Talisman, Block Mania and then BloodBowl (I also did Warhammer Battle but was never massively into it).

Then I mainly played RPGs until about 10 years ago when I went round to some friends and they were gaming - it was the original Zombiecide. I went regularly to a games night with them and the interest has grown since.

I’m trying to introduce the kids to boardgames - the eldest (11) is a killer at Ghost Blitz and the younger (9) has just played Ticket to Ride London and said they enjoyed it. We tried them with the kiddie version of Carcasson and Ticket to Ride but they were never interested!

So fingers crossed they will continue their interest.

[Griffster77]

I still have a lot of nostalgia for Block Mania - would love to be able to afford to buy the reboot but can’t really justify the cost for something I’ll realistically probably only play once.

[gmwhite999]

Like others, I’m sure I’ve written something similar to this before, but here goes.

Childhood Years (to 1983/84)

I got into boardgames pretty early on, as my father liked boardgames and I have a slightly brother, so growing up in the late 70s and early 80s we were often playing games together when we weren’t playing with other toys. We went through most of the mainstream childhood/family staples - Chess, Draughts, Snakes and Ladders, Ludo, Monopoly, Connect 4 - and lots of popular games of the era too, including Buckaroo, Buccaneer, Game of Life, Go for Broke!, Pacman, Subbuteo and Wembley. A few I particularly remember playing and enjoying from that era were:

• Bruce Jenner’s Decathlon
• Game of Dracula
• Scotland Yard
• Survive

We also started playing a few of my father’s boardgames too, most memorably:

• Blitzkreig
• The Business Game (Mine a Million)
• Campaign
• Exploration (a particular favourite)
• Gettysburg
• Regatta

Teenage Years (to 1990/91)

My later childhood and teenage years saw a big development in my tabletop gaming, on several fronts and includes some of my favourite games of all time. For my 10th birthday, my godfather bought me the magenta Dungeons & Dragons Basic Box Set, and that set me quickly down the roleplaying path, which was a major aspect of my gaming life in my teens. But I still bought and played many boardgames during that time. Probably through the D&D connections, I started getting into Games Workshop titles heavily, starting with Talisman First Edition in 1983/84 which I think a school friend owned. With my school friends we probably played most of the GW titles released from the mid 1980s to early 1990s, and were especially fond of:

• Battlecars
• Blood Bowl
• Dark Future
• The Fury of Dracula
• Heroquest
• Man O’War
• Rogue Trooper
• Space Hulk
• Warrior Knights

We also played a lot of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000, and bit the miniature and diorama landscape bug hard.

Other games did get a look in too, some more socially with older family friends as well such as Outburst! and Trivial Pursuit, and with school friends we also played Kingmaker, Shogun and Statis Pro Football, and near the end of this era we got more into card games as we drifted away from board games and roleplaying.

University/UK Work Years (to 2009/10)

University life was pretty barren for gaming, other than a few social games of Outburst! and Trivial Pursuit, some card games and a brief summer of Chess against two flatmates who were strong players. While I kept most of my roleplaying games, a lot of the boardgames were sold after I finished university and began working life, with a few exceptions. Statis Pro Football was a favourite with one particular friend from university who was still living nearby, so we played that every week or so, and had a brief dabble in some CCGs, starting with Magic: the Gathering although I never enjoyed them enough to buy more than starter sets.

I started to get back into boardgaming a little more in the late 2000s, mostly from having more time and money on my hands after redundancy. Starting to look into games more, one of the first that sparked interest was Last Night on Earth which I bought and enjoyed even though I rarely got to play it with anyone else and had to create solo house rules to play it myself.

Spanish Years (2010 onwards)

My early years in Spain didn’t see much gaming as I was doing other things while adjusting to life here, but I got back into gaming through curiosity of the latest version of Dungeons & Dragons after playing some online D&D computer games with my brother to keep in touch with him. Watching a few streamers at the time led to me discovering Tabletop and researching more into newer titles. Most of my first purchases of this era were games that appeared in Tabletop episodes, specifically Eldritch Horror, Fortune and Glory, Legendary: Marvel, Pandemic and Tiny Epic Galaxies, and, as a few titles to start playing socially with others, Carcassonne, Cards Against Humanity and Mysterium. From there, my love for boardgames returned strongly, as did a renewed interest in RPGs.

The Next Generation (onwards?)

I don’t have children and - as childlike as they can be - my cats don’t make good gaming partners, especially when oldest cat Roy (in my avatar) likes running off with a plastic mini in his mouth, so I’ve yet to play anything much with a younger generation other than a brief evening babysitting my nephews and trying to teach the youngest one Star Realms. I know a few 20-somethings locally who liked roleplaying though, so that may be an avenue to explore in some way, especially as I’ve had an idea for a while now to find more local gamers (who want to play in English) or start regular sessions. We’ll see how that develops in the autumn or next year when I finally have the time to try to get started on the concept.

[felix]

I remembered something that I did enjoy as a child:
High Wire Harry is a sort of Mouse Trap-like game as spectacle. You have a little plastic guy on a little wheel on a wire, and you stack things on the little stand he’s carrying. Each turn you have to place a new thing, then use a lever to lower one end of the wire, making him slowly and unevenly roll down to the other end of the wire, without dropping anything. If he goes too fast he’ll hit the end so you end up sort of wiggling the lever, making him jolt along and trying to not let him go too fast.

Here’s some images from BGG. Feels very of-its-time.