Overview of Board Game culture at BASIS- Episode One of The BOG

The BOG podcast discusses student perspectives on board games. Most students enjoy strategy-based games like chess, poker, and Monopoly. Chess has become popular during the pandemic. Some students prefer luck-based or simpler games. Playing board games with family is common, but some students don't play with their families. Group compatibility and behavioral changes can affect game experiences. The podcast will explore other board games in future episodes. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and this is the BOG podcast. Today we are going to be talking about student perspectives on board games and how people interact with board games in a both student and outside setting. These are your hosts, Therese Booney and Anthony Aktor. So let's begin by talking about some of the student feedback from some of the questions we posed. We asked students questions along the lines of what their favorite board games were, what board games did they like, and did they play board games with their family? What was the response that you got, Therese? Okay, so I interviewed three groups. Two of them were 8th grader groups and one was a big junior group. So for what board games do you like? For one of my groups, I got Kinect 4 and my other two, but generally, I saw poker, monopoly, and chess as games they liked. I also saw similar results with some of my classmates talking about how much they liked chess. I had one classmate talk about how they liked operation, but in general, chess, poker, and variations of monopoly was the most popular. So yeah, those were definitely the biggest ones. Which makes sense because during finals and all the testing, you could just see people during their study halls or free days just playing poker. When I had the free days, I just saw so many people playing poker and I played a little too much poker as well. Yeah, chess has become a very popular board game recently. I've seen a lot of my friends and classmates play chess. It really started boosting, I would say, during that pandemic and people starting playing chess.com. But now people play over the board chess, online chess. It's all a very popular medium. I think it's the accessibility that allows board games like chess to become so popular and so ubiquitous and base this culture. Yeah, especially considering how much strategy you need for chess. I think that really appeals to basic students. And speaking of strategy, I've noticed that a lot of people, at least for the groups that I've interviewed, a lot of them like strategy-based games. So monopoly, chess, etc. I found similar results. I think strategy, it's very merit-based. For strategy-based games, you really have to think on your feet and outperform your classmates. It's not based on luck or some other derivative. It is based on your ability to outsmart your classmates. So I think that's what really draws people to strategy games, especially like chess. In later episodes, I might add, we will be diving into board games like chess, like poker, and like monopoly. And so stick around for that. Although I did note, although there's this one group, the group that I connect for said that they did not like strategy-based games and were leaning towards games more of luck or more simple games that are, for example, more advertised towards younger children. That was just one deviation I saw. Did you see any? No, actually. That's news to me. I did not know anyone who preferred luck-based games over strategy-based games. But that certainly is interesting. Moreover, I would like to point out that we actually had a lot of people's impact, like experience with playing board games, came from their family. I didn't find a single group during my research that did not play some board games to some degree with their family. Oh, really? Because in contrast, a lot of the groups that I interviewed mainly did not play any board games with their families. Like, of course, there were a few that did, but most of them did not. That's rather fascinating. Do you think there's a reason why some people are more likely to develop board game habits with their family and without? Maybe this is just more of a guess, but maybe just how different families spend their time or what they find as quality time. Some may find playing board games together as quality time, while others may find other activities as quality time. Yeah, that's rather intriguing. To my knowledge, for me personally, I've been playing board games with my family for my entire life. Games like Uno, Monopoly, and even Chess have been some of the games that I like to play with my family and friends. How about you, Therese? Yeah, so with my brother and my parents, I really like playing this strategy-based game called Sequence, where you try to get two rows, or two diagonal or straight, whatever you call them, and competing against each other. And then with my siblings, I really like playing Uno, Life, and such. Additionally, did you find any common genres that people enjoy playing, like genre of board games? Strategy-based games, if that's what you're talking about. Many people said that they liked strategy-based games. And I've also heard people say that they like multiplayer games, which is games with more than two people, so a game that you can play with a group. Yeah, I think group fun is a lot of the reason why people are attracted to board games on the onset. And so I think that's one of their main appeals, that you can play with a group of friends or a whole family and have fun with a board game. Yes. So when you were interviewing people, did they say anything about a particular game that they liked? I would say that particularly, there were many people who really liked Monopoly and were really into it. Yeah, I had the same results as well. A lot of people really liked Monopoly, and there was this one group that mentioned that they only liked the quote-unquote normal version or the one with the paper money. Did you hear anything about that or no? I did hear something similar about that. I think that's something about the exchanging of money, even if it's quite literally Monopoly money, that makes Monopoly such an intriguing game. And it combines that luck and skill-based component that attracts both groups of people. So I think that could be a reason why people are attracted to Monopoly. Okay, that's fair. There was this one group that I talked to, the big junior group, that said that although Monopoly was their favorite game, if they played it with this particular person, who I'm not mentioning, but if they played it with this particular person, it would be the worst game for them ever. I think group compatibility also comes into it, how people interact with games. I think that if you don't get along with someone, you're more likely to want to beat them in a game and maybe not even play board games with them at all. So group compatibility really comes into this, and I guess that also comes into the family component of it. Presumably you get along with your family, and so you're more likely to enjoy their company, and therefore the group compatibility component is there and it's present. And that ties to the behavioral changes of people. I did interview the groups about if they noticed any stark behavioral changes. And generally they did say that they weren't more irritable or more likely to get angry, but that's just general because there are some deviations. One of the people in the group that I was interviewing said that they did notice a lot of people getting mad, and it was also the fun of the game. It was making people mad. And funnily enough, when I was approaching one of the groups to interview them, I saw someone get up and yell angrily at the person during their game of Monopoly. Do you find yourself becoming more, I guess, competitive during board games? Is that something that happens to you? Because for me personally, I would say that I really like beating other people at board games, particularly my family members. And so the fact of destroying my siblings at a particular board game is one of the biggest appeals to them. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I really am, just generally speaking, I'm pretty competitive, and when it comes to board games, especially strategy-based ones, my competitiveness goes up by a lot. I completely agree. Was there anything else interesting that you found in your research? Let's see. No, not really. I think we have a lot of the same results. And so this is going to be the onset of the beginning of a short miniseries on Basis Outlooks on games, and hence the name, The Bog. So I hope you will join us later where we will devolve into other board games like poker, chess, and Monopoly. Thank you. Thank you.