Important: before you read what follows, if you don’t like board games, I’d be grateful if you told me why in this 2-question survey. I make games for a living and I want to understand how to make games less hate-able.

As a board games nutcase, I have a hard time understanding how anyone, ANYONE, can avoid being compelled, as if by some unseen force, to spend every waking minute thinking about, playing, and designing board games.

But I’m a curious nutcase, so years ago I began asking people who don’t like them (as if that were possible hahaha no seriously that’s not possible) about why. I’ve learned some things. Notably, there appears to be a dominant factor in turning people off board games. If you hate board games, maybe it applies to you? Here it is:

Many people who dislike board games care too much about them.

What I mean is: those who dislike board games often care so much about who wins and loses, their identities are affected. When they lose, they feel they’ve endured a public humiliation. When they win, they feel they’ve subjected their opponents to the same. That’s stressful.

I call this Over-Investment Syndrome and a majority of the haters I’ve spoken to have it, which has surprised me.

There appears to be two distinct types of sufferers:

Type 1: these sufferers dislike competition generally, in games and life, because it feels like a needless kind of one-upmanship, which pointlessly makes someone feel bad. A lot of women seem to fall into this category.

Type 2: these sufferers (mostly men) are the opposite: they’re not opposed to competition, but they don’t want to unleash the competitive beast in an activity which seems unreal or unimportant.

Why try to cure Over-Investment Syndrome?

I was once an over-investor, and I’m grateful I am no longer, because games changed my life: they taught me how to learn. Board games, I’m convinced, are one of the most mentally, socially, and even spiritually nourishing entertainments in our world. I would hate to have missed that, and I don’t want others to miss it.

How to cure Over-investment Syndrome?

First, it’s important to make sure you’re actually an over-investor. Although it’s a common problem, there are other reasons people don’t like board games, notably:

You’ve never played board games before, so you don’t have any opinion about them, or maybe you think they’re just for kids, and you don’t understand what the fuss is about. You feel they’re an unseemly indulgence. I’m guessing this is a byproduct of the Protestant Ethic which has so shaped our culture.

Think about how playing games makes you feel. Does losing make you feel sullen? If so, you’re an Over-Investor. If you are, here are my prescriptions:

Make your goal not to win, but to learn. Think of each turn as an experiment, a hypothesis test, because it is. Games are learning accelerators. Realizing this changed my life. The answers are there, and games teach you to keep testing until you find them. It’s true in games and it’s true in life. It’s such an important lesson, I optimize all the games I design for learning: they have ultra-simple rules and no luck, to make pinpointing mistakes faster and simpler, which in turn makes learning more pleasurable. Try this one, for example. Give cool puzzles. If games are really about learning, then on each turn, not only are you testing a hypothesis, you’re posing an interesting problem for your opponent to learn how to solve. You’re gifting a puzzle. Make it a beautiful puzzle. If both players do this, a game becomes a wonderful gift exchange. Don’t play with other Over-Investors. You’ll reinforce each other until it seems like something real is at stake. I have a brilliant friend with whom I played games when I was younger. For years, without telling me, he made it his goal not to win, but to lose narrowly without my knowing. I learned a lot from him. That’s the kind of person you want to play with. Play party games. Good party games are about laughter and socializing and are designed to keep you from being invested in their outcomes. But what if you want to strategize? In that case: Play co-operative games, like Pandemic. A co-operative game is one where everyone wins or loses together, against the game itself. It’s less demoralizing to lose as a group. Play “multiplayer solitaire” games, like Fits. Multiplayer solitaire is a style of game where the other players can’t interfere with whatever you’re trying to do, which reduces frustration in those prone to it. Such games tend to be non-confrontational – there are fewer “feel bad” moments. Play enough that you stop caring. A reliable cure for Over-investment syndrome is just to play games a lot. The more you play, the less invested you’ll feel in the outcome of any one play. You’ll realize that the outcome is insignificant and forgotten as soon as the next game starts.

For what it’s worth.