Is there an age for playing games?

There is not age to stop playing games at. There are games for all ages and all types of people. The only people who should not play are bad sports because they ruin it for everyone else.

I think the fellow who is selling his games because he wants to be a man will find that once he is a man he can start playing games again without feeling like a child.

It is unfortunate that your school administration views it in that vain; games are a very healthy way of interacting with others socially. They exercise the mind and some allow for the outlet of less healthy behaviors in a way that is not negative as well as teaching skills. I think there is a stigma against games in American culture; it is amazing how stuffy and uptight we can be about some bits of cardboard and plastic. My main gamming group meets in restaurants and coffee shops so that we are visible and most people are curious why a bunch of adults are playing games.

Don’t worry what others think and next time someone asks you what you do. Tell them proudly you are a game designer.

Yet many adults play or at least follow sports. Surely baseball, tennis, or bowling are just as "useless" and "childish" as board games. Yet I'll bet your college spends a lot of money on its sports teams, and your friend's conservative father would probably have no problem with his playing golf with his friends -- it's a good way to network, build relationships, sportsmanship, and even get some exercise (well, maybe not golf).

Logically, the only difference is that sports involve physical activity. I think that's the crux of the matter -- our society's ideal of masculinity is based largely on physical strength and ability rather than intellectual ability. So non-physical forms of recreation -- this also applies to, say, reading for pleasure, or music -- tend to be denigrated as "unmanly".

My friend, there's a loooooot of money to be made as a professional baseball player, tennis player, or (significantly less so) bowler. Ditto golf. While there are people that make their living playing board games professionally (Scrabble comes to mind... check out the doc "Word Wars", great flick) they are statistically negligible.

Also, the success of a school's athletes usually results in increased status and of course, alumni donations. A school can afford to spend money on its sports teams because money and prestige comes back in as a result, at least ideally.

Money money money. In a capitalist framework, if a pursuit doesn't generate cash, it is trivial and/or childish.

~Josh

Sure, but it's really only professional spectator sports that generate large amounts of cash. Yet it is perfectly socially acceptable to participate in amateur sports, whether it's a neighborhood softball team, bowling league, or an office golf foursome, even though everyone knows that the participants are not making any money from it and almost certainly never will. So why should board games be any less socially acceptable?

On a related note:

I play Ultimate Frisbee. A lot of people don't know exactly what that is. They know what a frisbee is, but don't realise there's a whole sport with it's own rules which uses one.

I can't tell you how often we frisbee players get asked things like " Ultimate Frisbee? So like, you have a dog?" Even people who have a clue that Ultimate exists often refer to it as 'Frisbee Football', 'Frisbee Golf', or think it's the same as freestyling (doing tricks with a frisbee - akin to juggling balls or using a hacky sack) or just playing catch.

So as jwarrend says, it'a lack of familiarity. Same with games. Oddly, when I tell my frisbee friends that I play Board Games, I feel as if they think "Board Games? What, like Monopoly?" - which in a way is hypocritical...

- Seth

P.S. Even those that know what Ultimate really is but don't play or watch often assume it's a bunch of hippies smoking pot and playing catch. Of all the assumptions I've listed, this is probably the closest approximation (heh), but it's really only stereotypical of one type of person in the frisbee community, and that type of person is not in the majority (anymore) by a long shot. Around here there are a lot of people in science - geology or physics - but it's different everywhere. The only sweeping generalization one can make about ultimate players might be that they're usually educated (most people start playing Ultimate in College, so that follows)

One : when I was in a plane with my friends and one of my friend see that I bring Lost Cities, he looks to me and smile and say something that means "you are such a little boy, please grow up"
Two : when my would be mom-in-law(my girlfriend's mom) knew from my girlfriend (my wife now) that I like games for the first time, she thinks that I still like to play with toys or a plastic guns (and the looks embarassed me, so I have to explain a LOT!!)

From my experience, since board/card game is not very popular (especially here, only 3 people so far registered in BGG from my country !!), people always thought that a game is just wasting of time, and a board game is just rolling a die and move your pawn somewhere (Monopoly and Snakes/Leaders are the most popular board games here).

I have to take and confince them to play some good game to make them know that these games use brain !! (then they will enjoy and they will beg for more heh heh heh)
(and I succeed on some of my friends, so I have two small game groups).
It's along way, but I will struggle

Long live games !
:)
Jack

I play Ultimate Frisbee. Of course most of the time I play it with my board-gaming group. For a while I thought it was a game my friends invented because I haven't heard much of it elsewhere.

Game playing isn't seen as childish in my extended family, in fact it is something all of the adults do, several of my uncles play Aquire (with 2 boards) whenever they can, and everybody loves Settlers of Catan & Puerto Rico. Maybe it has something about the large number of archetects, engineers, mathematians, computer programmers, and artists in the family.

I didn't say that people don't play board games because of capitalism. The casual link is one you made yourself.

What I DID say was that people (specifically colleges) don't INVEST in board gaming at the same level that people invest in sports, because there simply isn't the same potential for return in board gaming that there is in sports.

Why?

I don't know. Let's work it out. That's why we're here.

~Josh

(*a survey in the UK recently discovered that more women than men understood the off-side rule in football (soccer.) That doesn't stop you enjoying a match but may stop you appreciating the subtleties.)

(**meaning "board game players" not just designers)

I think that there's a sense in which the groupthink is going in the wrong direction. We, as game players and designers, don't need to convince the world, or even ourselves, that game playing is a better recreational activity than playing or watching sports, going to amusment parks, etc. We don't need to tear down other recreational activities, or the people that pursue them, to make the case that board games are a worthwhile pursuit. To do so would almost certainly be hypocritical, as many of us likely engage in some of those very activities that are being criticized. And for good reason -- playing sports can be fun! Watching sports can be fun! It's ok to like different things. To come down too hard on other activities is to come awfully close to snobbery, and that's not a good posture if we hope to win "converts" to this hobby.

I can understand the frustration with the state of affairs that other activities seem more popular, but does this affect us as game players in any tangible way? (Sure, some people think it's a stupid hobby, but who cares what other people think?) My view is that there are more good games being released each year than I could ever play, and I can buy them at reasonable prices and have them in hand in 2 days or less. So at an industry level, the game industry, even being relatively small, meets my needs just fine. I will note that if more people played games, it would be easier to find people to game with, so certainly growth of the hobby is something I'm in favor of, but I don't think we need to adopt an adversarial posture.

I don't agree with this analysis. Sports programs are very expensive, and I think the number of colleges that turn a profit on their sports programs (the entire program, not just one or two big ticket sports) is probably countable on a few hands. I think it's more the case that athletics and/or physical training have been viewed as an integral part of education for a very, very long time. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a college would invest in sports but not in boardgames; it's not clear what board gaming would bring to the table in terms of educational merit; the intellectual aspect is basically redundant in a college with even moderately rigorous coursework, and the social interaction can be achieved a lot of other ways. In other words, capitalism is not, in my opinion, the reason that board gaming is not more popular.

If you really want to complain about something that colleges don't offer but should, how about "how to change the oil in your car" or "how to repair a leaky pipe?" The real shortcoming of the educational system is that it doesn't impart practical knowledge of this sort. But that's a different conversation for a different day!

-Jeff