Antony Funnell: Hello, welcome to Future Tense. Antony Funnell here. We're on location this week in the heart of suburbia. And in a few seconds we're going inside the building just behind me here to meet some of the members of a sub-culture that's been quietly spreading across the globe, largely unseen. This lot call themselves the League of Extraordinary Gamers. Yes, that's right, they're board game fanatics!

I've managed to infiltrate their coven, but before we meet them, let me answer the question I know you're thinking; what do board games—things of cardboard and paper—have to do with the future? Well, quite a lot as it turns out. But don't take it from me, let's talk to an expert.

Eric Zimmerman: For the first few decades of digital games, most computer games were things that one person played with a screen. In the last 15 years, multiplayer games have really come to have a much more increased presence in the landscape of digital games. Even though we like to play with systems today, we really want to play with each other, and digital technology can be isolating, despite the fact that we interact with each other on social networks, despite the fact that we're emailing with people all day long. I think that there is nothing that can replace the human presence as a social experience. And I think that there is an increased nostalgia for face-to-face interaction.

Antony Funnell: Let me introduce Eric Zimmerman from the Game Centre at New York University.

Eric Zimmerman: I see board games as fulfilling a number of needs. They can fulfil that nostalgia for face-to-face interaction. At the same time the rise of interest in games overall in our culture means that people are looking for leisure activities like games that let them solve problems. Rather than just lean back in a couch and watch someone tell you a story on television, people want to be actively involved with the media in which they are engaged. So I think that in a funny way, board games, they let us play with systems, but at the same time they let us play with each other in the most intimate and face-to-face way. And maybe there's some part of our monkey brains that really likes to be in a room with other people. From my own experience I certainly love playing board games, and if I think about the most fun that I have in general playing games, it's actually not with computer and video games, it's actually with playing board games with my friends.

Antony Funnell: The revival in popularity of board games across the Western world has to be seen in context. It's part of a broader retro-trend, like listening to vinyl records. So it's still niche, but that doesn't mean it's not significant.

Unless you're a board game player you may not be aware just how many board game clubs there are in places like Australia, the US and Europe. There are groups everywhere, and hundreds of new games are being developed every year.

But it isn't just about nostalgia. I know I used the word 'revival' just now, but in many ways board games, it seems, never really went away. And here's the interesting thing; most modern board game enthusiasts are also players of the digital variety.

Stewart Woods is an assistant professor of communications and media studies at the University of Western Australia.

Stewart Woods: The first form of hobby games were war games. They came out of the US in the post-war period because you have a large number of people, mostly male, who were over-educated. And from that sprung this niche hobby, which was the war gaming hobby, which was typically, as I say, over-educated white men who wanted to play at soldiers but on a more sophisticated level, so they want to simulate battles.

Following that in the early 1970s, the next genre of hobby gaming to appear would be role-playing games, with Dungeons & Dragons being the most famous of those, and that emerge directly out of war games. And again, appealing to a particular market, typically a well-educated market, but again, very much a subculture.

And then following that, collectable card games were the next big thing to arrive in about 1995. That happened with a game called Magic: The Gathering and was subsequently copied many times with many other different things. And then finally in the mid-1990s, Eurogames start to appear in English-speaking hobby gaming.

So whilst I wouldn't say the emergence was concurrent, certainly the impact of hobby games on the emergence of digital games was huge, because many of the people who were working with computers were also people who were interested in hobby games when personal computers first emerged in the 1970s. And so a lot of digital gaming took on a lot of traits from hobby games.

Antony Funnell: And is that connection still there?

Stewart Woods: Very much so. It is perhaps not visible in the AAA games that make it to the big consoles like the PS3 and the Xbox, but I speak to designers who are going over to the States and very much at video game design conferences, what happens after hours is all board game play, it's all table game play. And the people who are held in quite high esteem in those circles are the prolific board game designers. There's a particular art to designing a good board game. And obviously I think part of that is because designing a board game is very much...you have an auteur, you typically have one person who creates a beautiful system, whereas in the world of video games more typically you'd have a whole group of people working collaboratively.

Eric Zimmerman: I would make the argument that the 21st century is going to be a ludic century, is going to be a century of play and of games, 'ludic' being the Latin word for 'play'. If the 20th century was the century where the information revolution took hold and digital technology appeared in the form of computers, I would say that the moving image, film and television, were the dominant forms of cultural expression, I would say that things are changing as we enter the 21st century.

We are living in an age of systems, and if you think about how digital networks of information have so permeated our lives that the way that we work and we learn, the way that we communicate to each other, the way that we flirt and socialise and romance, the way that we connect to our governments, all of these very essential aspects of our lives are completely mediated by the internet and digital networks of information. We're living in an age of systems in industrialised countries today. And why is that relevant for games? Because in a certain sense, games are the cultural form of systems.

To play a game, to play a game against another player is to push and pull the inputs and outputs of a system, to actually try something out, to play with the machinery of cause and effect. And in that sense, games have a special relationship to systems. And if you agree that we're living in an age of systems, games have a special relationship to the age in which we are living now. Videogames are especially relevant, but board games are also becoming newly relevant as we enter this age of play.

Antony Funnell: Eric Zimmerman again. Before him, Stewart Woods. And now I reckon it's about time we head back to the suburbs and the League of Extraordinary Gamers. Here's Keith Done and Edward Crompton.

Keith Done: I would say we're from all ages and all demographics. We've got people who are boilermakers/welders, through to lawyers and academics from universities, and everyone just gets together and has fun playing games. Equal playing field as well. We have some people who are disabled as well and it's a great...we run things for multiple sclerosis, so you've got basically an even playing field when you're playing a lot of games.

Antony Funnell: It will surprise some people to hear that board games are so popular around the world, because board games are meant to be a thing of the past, aren't they?

Keith Done: I myself and especially my wife plays a lot of online games, but I think what is lacking there and what people are turning back to and finding is the social side of gaming. Usually if you're playing online you can't see or really communicate with the people. I know there are lots of emoticons and things like that, but you can't see the expression on someone's face when they're playing, if they're winning, or their look if they're losing and that type of thing. That's what you miss when you're playing games with people, the actual social interaction.

Antony Funnell: Is there a connection between digital games and traditional board games?

Keith Done: I find them crossing over at the moment. Like originally you had board games out there and the board games have translated into...I've seen games on people's apps on their phones that I've been playing for 15 years. And we've also seen computer games that have been designed, and they've translated into board games with pieces. Some people here are playing World of Warcraft on a table with plastic figures today.

Antony Funnell: And the board games that people play today, what sort of games are we talking about?

Keith Done: Every type of topic imaginable for the game. I'll give you a couple of examples of ones that are being played here today, one is a mediaeval farm game, some people are playing Battlestar Galactica, which is based of course on a TV show, right through to games like Settlers of Catan which was the original hit game that started off the revolution of gaming, which is about settling in Ireland, building roads, building villages on the island.

Edward Crompton: I've heard the term 'renaissance' before. I think it is more a realisation that the board games are there and that the board games have always been popular, it's just that more and more were trying to push the knowledge of the board games to the people who wouldn't actually turn to board games as a source of entertainment.

Antony Funnell: And what is it about board games that attracts you and also the members of this club?

Edward Crompton: Myself, two things. Sometimes it's the challenge. I like going into a game where I know I'm going to be challenged, and my friends know that, so sometimes we can have some quite vicious games against each other. But also some other people go and I go as well just for the entertainment value of sitting down with some friends, having a good time, having a laugh, and also enjoying an experience, a bit of fun with different board games or a new board game or visiting an old classic. So just a chance, and excuse really to get away from it all and sit down with some friends.

Antony Funnell: So what do you get from a board game that you don't, say, get from a multiplayer game online?

Edward Crompton: I find it is the interaction with your friends, either friends or people you haven't met before. The club encourages that sort of thing; if you haven't met people before, sit down and have a board game. And just introducing yourself to people who have a similar interest. After a while on a video game, you don't know who you're talking to on the other end, it's just a name. But you actually get to look at somebody and see their reaction, and also sometimes play little games with them. When you're having a challenge you can see how they're going to react to what you've done in a game and they also might be able to read your face. You don't get that in a computer game.

Antony Funnell: Board games might be increasing in popularity across the western world, as we've heard, but the engine room of board game development isn't the United States as one might suspect, but Germany. The Germans are the innovation leaders.

Lorien Green is a US game enthusiast and the director of a TV documentary about board games called Going Cardboard. She explains why:

Lorien Green: Back about 30 or more years ago, the German press decided to start handing out this annual award for game of the year, the Spiel des Jahres Award, and that was an incentive to people because any game that won that award would have a lot of copies sold after that just because they won the award. That was an incentive to continue to make better games. And so that's why they evolved. In the States we didn't have that, we didn't have any specific awards, there was no reason to evolve. So we were just going along and making different versions of Monopoly because that's what everybody was used to.

But they had to innovate over on the other side because there was competition, and any system that has competition is going to weed out the bad and just raise the level of everything to the good. So in Germany that's why I think those games are better. As to why they are just part of the culture, it also plays a role because if the main press is covering it then it just becomes mainstream and everybody knows about it. That also hadn't really been happening in the States. So it's just a completely different approach. They live and breathe board games the way we live and breathe videogames in the United States. So it's just the way the two cultures evolved, and it's really interesting.

Antony Funnell: Lorien Green, tell us about the Essen Convention in Germany, which has been described as the Mecca for board games. Give us a sense of what happens there.

Lorien Green: In the United States we have these videogame conventions, and it's just throngs and throngs of people going to the different stands and playing the games and whatever, and it's very laser lights and cool electronic stuff and big screens and lots of noise and loud booming sound systems. Essen is maybe three times as big as any of those conventions, and it's almost all board games. So it is light and bright, but the people are just as enthusiastic. It's like the same group of people, you have throngs massing around just like you do at the videogame conventions, but these guys are there to play board games.

And they release 600 or more board games at this Essen Convention, brand-new board games, every single year. So there's just a massive amount. And they're all very excited, you know, they've read up on what the hot game is that they want. So as soon as the doors open they make a beeline for those stalls and get their special game, and they just sit down and start playing it. So it's just crazy enthusiastic board gaming, and I've never seen anything like it, it was just amazing. It really is Mecca.

Melissa Rogerson: I'm Melissa Rogerson, the co-chair of BoardGames Australia. I think what we see in Germany as a culture and as a country is that games are much more mainstream in Germany. So I was talking with a German woman recently about a board game, and she was saying, 'I didn't even know that that game was available in English.'

And the reason she didn't know it was available in English is that in Australia, to get those specialist hobby board games you go to a specialist hobby shop, and it's the same in most other countries in the world. But in Germany you can walk into your local department store and you will see, alongside those classics that we all know that have been available for 50 years, you'll also see these newer niche board games, these hobby board games. And in Germany they're much more mainstream.

So the Spiel des Jahres Award, the game of the year award, which was started in 1979 in Germany, it's become a real imprimatur, a stamp of quality. And so whereas here when somebody goes looking for a board game, they might think about trying something new but they'll usually end up leaving with something that they've played before and played as a child. In Germany if you see that little red shape on the box, that stamp of approval, you know it's going to be a good game. And so you get families trying new games all the time.

Antony Funnell: Melissa Rogerson, and we'll hear more from her shortly.

Stewart Woods from the University of Western Australia also believes it's important to take cultural issues into account when trying to understand the Germans' domination of the high-end board game market, but he believes you have to go way back to get a full understanding, back, in fact, to the middle part of last century.

Stewart Woods: Eurogames comes out of Germany, and the reason that they emerged in that particular sort of space is, again, to do with the influences of the Second World War. Following the Second World War, whilst in America and England there was this rise of hobby gaming culture which was mostly concerned with developing war games, obviously in Germany that wasn't the first thing on their mind, to play games about war following World War II. In fact of course there were legal prohibitions there in terms of war related toys. And there was also a kind of cultural stigma in Germany around anything that was themed or related directly to war.

At the same time there was a very strong gaming culture in Germany, a very strong culture of the idea that playing games with your family and with your friends was an important quality way to spend time. And so the German games market really had to come up with an alternative to the conflict-driven model of games that was typical in Anglo-American games.

And so you had a whole generation of designers who were working in game design and they created a movement in game design which was games that were designed to be played with the family, that had predictable and short playing times, so typically around an hour, high-quality production, typically wood and quality graphics to lend the games an air of quality, and they tended not to have player elimination in them, and they were themed in very family-friendly ways.

So they tended to be about...not only in theme but in mechanics...not about breaking other people down like, say, a war game or a game of Monopoly which is all about grinding the other player into the dust, but far more about building up your own things, whatever they might be, whether it's a palace or a garden or a farm, and comparing those things with other players at the end of the game. So, a game design movement that produced a different aesthetic.

Antony Funnell: And you believe they're now transitioning from being niche to more mainstream. Why is that, why is that transitioning happening?

Stewart Woods: I think there are a few reasons for that. The first one is one that I just mentioned really, which is that these are games...although they first caught the attention of hobby gamers in English-speaking countries, they were very much originally designed to be played by families. And so consequently the themes are not the kind of themes that are normally associated with niche, hobby, subcultural gaming. So they are not typically about aliens or space marines or dragons, they're easily accessible themes, whether that's farming or running a palace or whatever it might be.

Secondly, I think that we're in a culture where, thanks to digital games and what's been termed the 'casual revolution' over the last 10 years, that it's very rare now to meet people who don't play digital games. And so people I think are far more interested in the idea of having games in their life, even if that's on the level of a game of Draw Something on one's smart phone, or Farmville, culture is far more accepting of play for adults as a legitimate way to spend time.

And then finally I think the fact that play is more ubiquitous now, that there is play all around us, tempered by the fact that the vast majority of that play occurs on screens. That's not to say there's anything wrong with that, I love playing videogames as much as the next person and I spend way too much time on my phone playing digital games. But I think there's a looking-back there. So having taken that enjoyment of play to something that is more tactile, that's more social. So because we're more accepting of it, there is a kind of...I guess I would compare it to the idea of getting back to the earth or the slow food movement, this desire in a culture where everything appears to be mediated through a screen, to take play back and put it on the table.

Antony Funnell: It's almost impossible to talk about Eurogames without talking about Settlers of Catan. Why has that become such a popular game? What is it about Settlers of Catan that attracts people?

Stewart Woods: I wish I knew, I could package it and sell it! I don't know. The German game design movement had been slowly evolving from the mid to late '70s, and the designs had been getting better and better and becoming more distinctive and cleverer over a period of time, and I think Klaus Teuber just hit on something that was...he just hit on the right mesh of luck and skill and social interaction, which is what Settlers is wonderful for, it really is a game that promotes sitting around and chatting with your friends and trying to manipulate them and trying to spot their weaknesses, and at the same time trying to play your friends to your advantage, but in a pleasant way. And also I think really the gaming world was ready for a big change.

Antony Funnell: Okay, let's go back to Melissa Rogerson for a look at the production side of the industry. Because unlike digital games where big companies tend to dominate game development, in the board game world there is still a healthy independent sector which sits alongside the major publishers.

Melissa Rogerson: There are a lot of indie game publishers. One of the interesting websites that has come into being in the last couple of years is a site called Kickstarter, and on Kickstarter (you might be familiar with it, your listeners probably are) you can actually propose a project and get people to buy in and support it before you go ahead with the project. And of course what that means is that if I have a fantastic idea for a game and I've developed a fantastic prototype for a game but it's going to cost me a certain amount of money to produce it and I just don't have it, I can go out, I can put that game on Kickstarter, I can actually collect money from people willing to buy the game on spec, maybe from reading the rules or seeing a video demonstration of it, and then actually supplying me with the money that I need to go ahead and produce the game and then ship it out to them wherever they live in the world.

Antony Funnell: It's a nice blend of the old and the new, isn't it, there, with a traditional board game but using online crowd funding to fund its development.

Melissa Rogerson: Absolutely, yes, and we're seeing a real growth in that at the moment, it's becoming quite common to see those games coming out on Kickstarter.

Antony Funnell: There are groups, there are clubs involved in board games. Tell us about those and the way they link up nationally and internationally.

Melissa Rogerson: One of the things that we have on the Board games Australia website is actually a directory of clubs, and I had a look at it this morning, and it's nice to go to a club to meet other people and to share ideas, get recommendations of other games as well. That's a real-world thing. I'm in Melbourne, there's three clubs here in Melbourne. There are also websites, blogs obviously, places where you can go online to discuss games. And there are a number of websites where you can actually play board games online. So it's not like playing a video game or a computer game, it's actually playing an online implementation of a game, but they've built in that social side of things too, that you can talk to people while you're playing.

One of the lovely things about this hobby is that that then gives you an opportunity to make friends in other countries, and potentially meet up with them later, and that's certainly something I've done. Last night I was chatting online with a friend in Europe, and in the middle of the conversation we said, oh, that would make a really good game. Within 45 minutes we had a skeleton set of rules developed for the game to the point that I was able to actually make a prototype of the game today and test it with one of my kids. So there is that new media I suppose coming in to enable us to collaborate with one another and share ideas and experiences.

Antony Funnell: And just finally, tell us about BoardGames Australia and the way in which your organisation helps promote the development of board games.

Melissa Rogerson: We founded BoardGames Australia in 2007 with the goal of really stimulating the growth of board gaming in Australia and also raising the profile. We're aiming to increase sales of quality games to develop the industry, and that means the publishers and the game designers and the retailers. So each year we give out a set of three awards: one for the best Australian game which is designed or published by an Australian; one for the best children's game, we're thinking there of kids up to about eight; and one for the best international game, which generally has that family feel to it, that it's something that families will enjoy playing.

And we've run some forums on the use of games in education over the years, and we've also run a number of forums for designers, where people who are looking to design a game can come along and can meet with other game designers and share their ideas and talk about them. And of course they can also do that on our website through the online forums as well.

Antony Funnell: Melissa Rogerson there, and we've pretty much covered everything there is to cover on this topic. Except, that is, for one thing:

It's pretty clear to me from the documentary Going Cardboard and from talking to gamers personally, that one other curious aspect of board game culture is…how should I put this?…a desire to hoard.

[Excerpt from Going Cardboard documentary]

Antony Funnell: And, of course, with hundreds and hundreds of new games being developed every year, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that players also like to collect.

Documentary maker Lorien Green:

Lorien Green: Yes, with that many coming out it's really hard to resist doing it, and they are all so beautiful and the components are so pretty, it is really hard not to be a collector. But yes, there are people with thousands of s in their collection. There is overlap, there are the game players and then there are collectors, and some people are really heavy into doing both, but the couple that I interviewed in my film, the wife was really focused on the collecting, and that was her thing, that's what she likes to do, she liked the hunt, she liked looking through flea markets and stuff and finding games that they were after. And a husband just liked playing games. And she would play them too, but it was a really good fit because they amassed this massive collection because she was a collector and she knew where they all were and he was the gamer.

Antony Funnell: And is there a cupboard in your house full of games?

Lorien Green: Definitely. We converted the basement to the game room, and yes, we've got a lot. We tried to get rid of them, you know, if we're not playing them we try and get rid of them, but then a couple of times that's come back to haunt us, and we've been, like, we really wish we still had that one. So we stopped doing that. We're just, like, if we buy it, we're just going to keep it.

Antony Funnell: How many is a lot?

Lorien Green: I would say we have around 200.

Antony Funnell: Okay, that's a lot!

Lorien Green: Relatively speaking it's not that much, and people always tend to demure about their game collection, you know, 'I don't have that many', but to the non-gamer it seems like a large number, yes.

A board game is non-intimidating. People can sit down and play it, and I think that's the most wonderful thing to me about them, it's just that it brings together all kinds of different people, and it's almost like you're an instant friend, just because you have this common bond of the board game. That is just amazing.

Antony Funnell: Well, that's all the time we have this week. Thanks to my co-producer Andrew Davies and technical producer Jim Ussher.

Incidentally, this show is program number 21 in our 2012 series. We've already covered a lot of ground this year, and don't forget all of our back editions are available as audio from the Future Tense website. You'll also find transcripts there. Just search the words RN and Future Tense.

You can send us an email anytime or talk with us on Twitter where our name is RNFutureTense, all one word. We're always happy for your comments and suggestions.

I'm Antony Funnell. I shall return. Until then, bye for now.