August 18, 2026 • 28 mins
Tim Clare, award-winning writer, poet, and podcaster, discusses why we play games as humans, why board gaming for adults has become popular over the past 25 years, and why it's okay to just have fun. Tim's new book is Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Greetings and welcome to the Eric Korman Show. I am
on a journey to learn from superhumans, people who have
done remarkable things or have remarkable ideas to share, so
that I can be the best dad I can for
my son AJ. Tim Clare is an award winning writer,
poet and podcaster. He is the author of We Can't
(00:22):
All Be Astronauts and Coward and the novels The Honors and.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
The Ice House.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
He has performed his work at festivals and clubs across
the world and on BBC TV and radio.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Tim has also.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Written for The Guardian, The Times, The Independent and Big Issue,
and hosts the creative writing podcast Death of one Thousand Cuts.
Tim's new book is Across the Board How Games Make
Us Human. Follow Tim on Instagram at Tim dot Claire
dot fifty and Claire is spelled Clare on x at
(00:59):
Tim Claire Poet, and on Blue Sky at Tim Claire
dot b Sky. That's Social. Coming up, we'll talk about
why we play games as humans. White board gaming for
adults has become so popular over the past twenty five years,
and why it's okay to just have fun.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Something is happening to how we conceive of childhood and
play and joy. If we're getting so anxious that we
see a train set and say saying it's fun, it
will bring your child joy. We're saying this is going
to help their cognitive development and their social development because
they'll talk to other kids. All of that may be true,
but one odd set of priorities that we have.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But first tim what is a game?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, that is a harder question to answer than you'd
think it would be because I guess for all of us,
if you ask somebody the question do you know what
a game is? We go yeah, right, Like I don't
think there's a human alive who wouldn't say that. Who
has the power of speech. Isn't a baby, right, they'd say, yeah,
I know what a game is. You ask a child
of three or four with the power of speech, do
(02:08):
you know what a game is? They go, yeah, sure,
do you want to play a game? They can answer that.
So we all have like this intuitive sense of what
a game is. We all think that, and yet when
you get down to asking someone, okay, so what is
a game? As you've just done this apparently simple question,
so intuitive that we probably wouldn't ever question it. You know,
(02:29):
we wouldn't say, Gosh, I'm not sure I know what
the answer is to that. When you start getting down
to it, and I'm not the first person to have
thought about this, it can get a little bit tricky. Now,
no lesser authority than Ludwig of Wittgenstein spill a great dealibink,
actually using the example of what is a game as
a demonstration of the fact that you can't really pin
(02:51):
down a tight definition of a game. You can't explain
what a game is. Witgenstein didn't really care about games
per se, using as an example for categories that appear
all across language, but specifically with games. He was saying, look,
there's no definition you can give that includes everything that
is a game and excludes everything that isn't a game. Rather,
(03:13):
you'll have this kind of loose territory of game like things,
and as you go further and further out into the
wilderness around that territory, you'll get sort of mysterious things
that seem a bit like games and not quite games. Okay,
so I've given you all that word salad explaining that
we can't quite pin down games. But rather Rickenstein would
(03:35):
have said, they've got family resemblances. All the best we
can do is point to some things going on, you know,
like chess, football, but maybe also things like I don't know,
two people on a date, or politics. These things and
things like them are games. We can point to them
and do that. That's what he thought the best we
could do. Now, not everyone agrees with that. There's a
(03:57):
great philosopher called Bernard Suits who really vehemently disagreed with
Bickenstein and said, you're not trying hard enough. You need
to look properly. And his pocket definition of a game
was that a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome
unnecessary obstacles. If you're at work, you're at the office
(04:19):
and someone says, hey, can you throw this piece of
paper away for me, that's a job. That's a task. Yep.
If someone hands you a scrunched up piece of paper
and says, hey, do you think you can get it
from your seat? Throw it into the waste paper basket
over there, that is a game.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I love that, and I think about like golf, for example,
that's not what you're right about in the book, but
having a club on a very long stick and having
to hit a ball hundreds of yards that's very difficult.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
We could have just picked up.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
The balls and thrown them instead of using this club
at the end of a very long stick. That would
have been a lot easier. That makes sense what you
just said. And in your book you'd talk specifically about
table talk games, and why is it that you wanted
to focus on those.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Well, the one practical reason is I had to draw
a line somewhere because otherwise, and this is just simply
how my brain works, I would have been spiraling out
like I did in my description of what a game is.
I would have been spiraling out and saying is this
a game? Is this a game? And I would have
been talking about all sorts of things. So it was
an arbitrary line that I drew. Because I love playing
(05:27):
board games, I love playing card games. I knew this
was an area that I had genuine investment in. Not
that I don't admire people who enjoy sports, but I
just knew this is something that I know I can
write about with passion and interest. Also, I just think
that there's something about tabletop games, by which I mean
games you play in person round not necessarily a table,
(05:49):
but you know, in a physical space. Then they don't
involve feats of strength generally, or they can involve some dexterity.
I was just kind of interested because they seemed to
me to be something that has happened all throughout human history,
and yet when you actually come to look at people
writing about them and evidence for them that's written down,
(06:12):
they're kind of everywhere and nowhere. They crop up in
people's accounts of something else. A Roman centurion walking through
Rome might mention that there are people playing games, but
he wasn't writing about those games. They're just something that
in the texture of human life. And so there's something
that simultaneously everywhere like extraordinary by being around us everywhere
(06:34):
in every civilization, and yet also it completely mundane in
a way that makes us miss them, I think a
lot of the time. So I wanted to kind of
turn people's attention towards this thing that surrounds us all
the time and say, hey, we're taking this so granted,
let's look at it again and see if there's something
there that maybe we missed.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I love games. My son loves games. It's a way
that our family has connected and stayed connected over the years.
My parents love games, my grandparents, I mean it is
so intergenerational. Why do we play games as humans?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I want to share with you first that some people,
when I ask them that question reacted with kind of annoyance.
They were like, because it's fun, and that was kind
of the end of the conversation for them. It's like, again,
it's something that's so obvious because to pass the time,
because games are fun, end of conversation, let's move on, right.
But for me, that's just kicking the can down the road, right,
(07:43):
because the next question is, well, what is fun? And
why do human beings sometimes want fun? And why do
we sometimes feel guilty about having fun? Why do we
sometimes think that fun is a thing that's okay for
children but maybe not for serious adults or only under
certain conditions. And then you only have to ask like
four or five questions, and you're at what is a
(08:04):
good life? What is the purpose of human life? And
you're at this deep, profound, philosophical existential question. So games
to me seem like as good a place as any
to start asking those questions. I've got some theories because
I don't have a final answer on what is the
meaning of life? I'm afraid I can't answer that totally.
(08:25):
But my feeling is there's a lot of things that
games bring to us in the same way as like
why do we exercise? You could come at that from
a bunch of different angles, but one really good one
for games for me is that games there are a
form of kind of thinking that you can touch. They
are a form of conversation you can touch. They're a
(08:47):
way of speaking without words, They're a way of connecting
with other people. They're kind of Each game is its
own language, as anyone who speaks multiple languages, and I
don't write in this book. What made me feel very
guilty is maybe try to start learning languages, actually, because
I realized how much I missed that. But like every game,
(09:07):
if you speak multiple languages, you'll know that some ideas
are easier to express in one language than in another.
There are some really, really interesting, I think, profound and
beautiful things that humans can express either personally and inter
personally with one another through this abstract, strange but deeply
human language of games. So for me, connection is a
(09:28):
profound one. Of course. Just want to say, because some
people might say, well, there are some games that are
solo games, right, Not every game is played with a
human beings, so they can't all be about connection. And
I would say that some of those solo games are
like a form of meditation, and the connection is with
oneself and the world.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
I would agree, at least that's how I've seen it
play out. The other thing that I find interesting about
games is how it is sort of like a rehearsal
for real life experiences or real life dilemmas. Some of
the strategy game, for example, fall into that category, like
chess for example, Like if you get to be good
at chess, then handling negotiations in the future seems to
(10:09):
be a lot easier. Is that potentially one of the
benefits of gaming.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Well, it's interesting you should say this. I've got a
potentially contentious view on this, which I'm going to express
hopefully while still being amiable, and that is that there's
a tendency for us to look at games and start
to get slightly anxious that we need to find some
(10:36):
way of justifying our enjoyment, right, and so we kind
of go, hey, this is going to make you very intellectual.
Maybe it's going to help you. I see children's toys
for five year olds advertised now, and they'll say helps
cognitive development aids normal social development, and it will be
through a train set. I kind of feel like something
(10:57):
is happening to how we can see of childhood and
play and joy. If we're getting so anxious that we
see a train set and instead of saying it's fun,
it will bring your child joy, we're saying this is
going to help their cognitive development and their social development
because they'll talk to other kids. All of that may
be true, but one odd set of priorities that we
(11:19):
have now, the fact is with chess, if you actually
look at that, there was a study done that began
in the nineteen twenties on chess players across a whole
range of cognitive problem solving measures. Were these chess masters geniuses?
You know? Were they better or were they just better
than the average person at these tests? And the answer
(11:40):
was yes, they were better at a whole bunch of
cognitive tests as long as those tests were to do
with chess. As soon as they weren't to do with chess,
they scored no better than average the average person. And
in fact, you know, in terms of like being able
to negotiate, there's a lot of chess masters throughout history
who famously have really struggled with existing in the real
(12:01):
world talking to other human beings. They've had profound difficulties
negotiating the world as a human being, but been really
good at chess. So, of course, like the ability to
think about in a negotiation game. It can be a
really good model for like how an economy works, how
(12:21):
to talk to somebody and get them to work with
you when maybe ultimately one of you is going to
be the winner and one of you is going to
be the loser. You know, it's a really interesting thing
in a game. I want this property, I'm going to
give you some money, but you know I'm trying to
beat you later on. This is a zero s game.
One interesting dilemma. But the people generally who make the
(12:42):
most deals round the table will do better than the
people who are not involved in those deals. So that's
a really interesting dilemma. You can build your math skills.
All these things can happen in a game. And I
don't deny that games can be educational. You can have
historical games that can teach you so much about the world.
That's not necessarily the best way to spend your time.
(13:02):
If you just wanted the educational benefits, right, It's not
necessarily the best way to spend your time if you
want the emotional benefits either. Frankly, for people who want
to bond with other people and companionship and socialization, you
don't need a board between you necessarily. I agree with
and affirm the spirit of what you're saying there, but
I would say that there is something behind it all
(13:25):
that is nothing to do with that. If they exist
their fringe benefits as far as I'm concerned, going.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Back to that idea of just fun for fun's sake,
that is a certain draw. And I've noticed over the
past i don't know, ten fifteen years, that there has
been this resurgence of tabletop gaming among adults, because that
used to be a thing that was found upon. Adults
did not play games. They might get together historically once
(13:59):
a week and play Bridge or Peanut Gol or another
card game with other adults, but board gaming in its
current form did not exist. And that's been a recent change.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And why do you think about it? Well, twenty five
years ago, I can give you the classic answer, but
it also happens to be one that I think is true,
which is that twenty five years ago this year, Settlers
of Katan was released. It's a game of people arrive
on this empty island and you start setting up a
civilization there and you trade with each other. It's relatively simple,
(14:32):
but there's that lovely negotiation that I think he's always
been people's favorite bit of monopoly. Whatever their relationship with
that game, a few people wouldn't say that one of
the most compelling things about it is the ability to
do deals to buy and sell. Katan offers that there's
negotiation and trading as well as a bit of luck.
And this game has now sold over forty million copies.
(14:55):
I want to say, so it's sold more than like
say Sergeant Pepper or any individ you're one of the
Beatles albums. It's sold more than in terms so that
you think about its cultural impact of something like this.
That game was a massive success and continues to be
a massive success to this day. And in its train
came games like Ticket to Ride and Carkason, which is
(15:20):
a game where you're building a map. These games that
I think are a little bit more complex than say
the games that we were getting in the eighties and nineties.
They would just be what are called like roll and
move games like Candyland kind of thing where you're rolling
a dice and you're moving around a board. Now, don't
get me wrong, I love snakes and that is I've
got no but I think I think it's actually an
(15:40):
excellently designed game. So I'm not doing those down. But
there was just this new level of engagement and strategy.
But you can pick them up quite easily. I think
Ticket to Ride is accessible for children for adults, is
very compelling. It's good fun, it's dramatic, and you have
these well designed boards now that have a kind of
table presence. I think, like, you go past these games
(16:03):
and you stop and you look. So for me, those
games are the beginning of a revolution in people getting
into games, and they coincide with the Internet allowing say,
new models of economics. Like A very boring part of
it is that like Kickstarter appears, crowdfunding site appears, and
designers are able to put games up and say, look,
(16:26):
I want to make this. No conventional publishers necessarily understands this,
but can I connect with people who like the look
of this? And loads of people started backing games, and
now games routinely find hundreds of thousands, even millions of
dollars on crowdfunding sites, and that has just allowed people
to find each other and get excited about these games.
(16:50):
In its train has come a revolution in design, Like
the games are much better in the last twenty five
years than they've ever been in human history.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Oh yeah, I think about a game like Violaded Imperium,
for example, and that'll show you, like how much gaming
that I do. I don't play Twilight Imperium all the
time because it takes at least twelve hours. Yes, there's
so much into a game like that where it's you explore,
you extract, and there's some other thing and then you
exterminate it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I mean, it's just crazy four X games. Yeah, And
I think a game like that, the idea of getting
together and spending twelve hours or longer playing a big
game where you're all gathered around a table with your friends.
I mean, that is the kind of human experience that
twenty five years ago people were saying wouldn't happen anymore.
(17:38):
You know, the idea that you essentially you get together
with your friends, there's no screens, and you're like, we're
going to sit round a table together, and what is
keeping us occupied is that we're all having an experience together,
we're all creating this story. I think that's something quite
beautiful about that, right, and I think it maybe possibly
(17:58):
speaks to a little bit of as much as I
love technology as much as the next person, I enjoy
living in the future, I think we do suffer a
little bit from screen fatigue, and I think balanced with
the kind of like increased role of screens in our lives,
we kind of crave the chance to put them down
sometimes and be with each other and be in a
(18:20):
space where that's not happening. We can sit over a
massive map with spaceships and space everywhere and imagine we're
guiding our armada like like they do in Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Right at the beginning of your book, you talk about
it's a historical fact about maps and other things being
smuggled into German pow camps so that the British prisoners
got information to help them escape from the camps. And
(18:53):
you say that every game had an escape kit built in,
like whether it was a map on the back of
a plane card or hidden in some other component of
the game. Because the Germans didn't know they thought, oh well,
if the prisoners have games they won't try to escape. Ironically,
you say that every game then had an escape kit contained,
(19:15):
and now you say that every game period is an
escape kit because it takes us to these foreign worlds
and mythological places and so on. And you're implying too
that they are escape kits because they let us escape
from our screens.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah. I think that that's definitely true, and I want
to make it clear I'm not anti screen. You know,
a screen is just a medium, Okay, like a screen
is just a medium, like anything else you can see.
It's often been a mind expanding thing for me. I
get to speak to people all around the world via screens.
(19:50):
I get to watch amazing documentaries and movies that bond
me with my daughter. When we're watching them together, we
come away from it going wow. It lets me keep
in touch with my family who don't live near me.
So I'm not against screens per se. But I think
there is something lovely about being able to mix things up.
And I think all of us have experienced that fatigue
(20:11):
if you have to work as part of your job
with a screen, of just coming away from it and
wanting something else, wanting to be able to escape from it.
Board games, as evidenced by their huge popularity at the moment,
you would think that video games would have just wiped
the floor with them, right, because they can do so
many things that maybe board games once asparred to do
(20:34):
much better in terms of graphics, moving images. They can
take all the math right, and the computer can do
that for you. You don't have to do any admin
in a video game. But it turns out that there's
a bunch of things that games can do, including just
let you pick up a bunch of dice and throw
them right that you do not get on the screen.
And so I think there's always going to be space
(20:56):
for both of those things in our lives.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
How do you out to your daughter about games? So
what are the games that you play? And how do
you imagine you're in your daughter's relationship evolving with games.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I took her to a small games convention in my
home city, Norwich yesterday. I must admit you'll have had this,
but sometimes you want to take your kid to something
and they're not that keen to go, and you think,
am I just doing this for me? Or am I
genuinely because I've lived a bit longer and I can
imagine the future maybe a bit better than them. I
(21:31):
think they're going to enjoy this, and I need to
kind of nudge them through their reluctance. Or is it
just that I love games and I'm being selfish? And
so I wrestled with that a bit, But we went
and she had the time of her life, and I
was so thrilled. When we sit down to play games,
I'll often be because I'm a games reviewer, because my
house is absolutely rammed to the rafters with game boxes,
(21:54):
I've always got new ones to show her. Whereas the
thing I try to be mindful of is that often
she'll want to play when we've all he played to
gain that sense of mastery and familiarity, Whereas I'm just like, yeah,
but I want to show you this. I want to
show you this, I want to move you on to this.
What I tried to do when I'm playing with her
is I tell her how much I'm enjoy playing games
(22:16):
with her. I think I just emphasized that I'm really
enjoying it. The weird thing is the thing that you
think you would have to have the conversation with a child, right,
which is how to cope with losing, oddly has not
been an issue with her. She's reasonably philosophical about taking
a loss in a way that I was not at
(22:37):
her age at all. I mean, my dad tells me
I was a good loser. That is not my memory.
My memory is of having full blown meltdowns and tantrums
if I felt I'd been hard done by right, So
I don't think she got that from me. Yesterday when
we went to the convention, she got a really really
great teach from a female game design who was showing
(23:00):
her games there. And it was just amazing to see
this person take her in hand, speak to her with
respect and interest, say what kind of game would you
like to play? Why do you feel that about this?
And just ask her this series. It was an incredible
show of expertise in empathic listening, really listening to what
(23:22):
my daughter was saying. Because she was clearly nervous about
sitting down and learning a new game. She thought she
wouldn't be able to do it. Maybe she was worried
about reading the rules on the cards. And the person
said we're going to sit down, we're going to start playing.
I think you'll be all right, but would you like
to be on my team. You can read the cards
and make the decisions. If at any point you're not
enjoying yourself, we can stop. Is that okay? I was
(23:44):
watching just in Awe and my daughter kind of came
out of her shell and was great. She sat with
them through the game, and whenever she was making a decision,
the person would the designer would explain the options and
then say what do you think would be best for us?
And my daughter would, now empowered, would give an opinion,
and then the designer would say, yeah, I think you're right.
(24:06):
That's a great idea, good idea. I was so amazed
at how she was able to basically empower my daughter
to make her own decisions, hand it back to her
and really listen. And I was like, oh, wow, this
is great because I can often sort of breeze past
worries and say you'll be fine, You'll be fine. Of course,
we're doing that because we're trying to not make a
(24:26):
mountain out of a molehill. But this person just really
listens to my daughter and really got to the bottom
of what her concerns were. I just saw her grow.
That's something that I'm not as good at as the
person I saw doing that, but something that I aspire
to do.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
What a wonderful example of how to give an eight
year old agency. Yeah, and that's the one thing that
I always appreciated playing games with my son, that he
could make his own decisions, and games giving the ability
to fail with minimal or no consequences. That's the thing
that I always appreciated from them, whether or not they're
something that'll make you smarter or better at this or
(25:11):
that life skill, but just the ability to fail, even
to die with no consequence. Could that possibly be the
biggest benefit of gaming that we can figure our on
mortality and walk away from it.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I think there's definitely having that kind of laboratory space
where you can do wild things right and see the
consequences play out in a game engine, and sometimes maybe
even take huge risks deliberately to see how it feels,
you know, and to feel that like a game can
(25:45):
make you feel regret, which is odd for a piece
of art. Normally, you read a novel and it can
give you all sorts of experiences, but you don't feel
implicated in any of the decisions the character makes. In
a game, you can, and you can go and no,
I shouldn't have done that. And if it's a role
playing game, maybe you do feel like there's a story
based reason why you feel terrible. But also I think
(26:08):
you know you were talking about agency and that ability
to do things safely. It also allows for kind of
safe conflict. I always remember when I went up to
Glasgow years and years ago now to stay with a
family who would have students staying with them periodically. They said,
at the end of the semester, when these foreign students
who'd been staying with them would finish off, they'd always
(26:31):
have two students staying in the house. They'd have this
in the back garden. They had set up this log
where you could have like a pillow fight on it
over like a mud pit, right, And they said, I
think it sounds bizarre now I'm saying it out loud,
but they said that you could tell how well people
had bonded over the semester by how hard they went
(26:51):
at each other with the pillows during that pillow fight.
If they were just kind of like acquaintances, they'd sort
of gently tap each other they were best friends, they'd
absolutely wail on each other. And I think there's something
lovely and quite transgressive.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I teach creative writing classes and I retreats for a
week with kids aged eleven to thirteen, and we play
some games, including bluffing games, games where you might lie
to each other. Right, it is lovely and it also
feels quite transgressive and exciting for them to bluff out.
A teacher tell me something in game, within the safe
(27:30):
space of the game, the magic circle of the game,
say I'm not a baddie, you can trust me. Take
me with you on your quest, and I believe them.
And then later they win and they reveal that they
were lying to me all the time. That is a
an exciting and I think kind of wonderful bonding. It
requires trust to actually be safe to bluff in the game.
(27:54):
So I'm not sure if it helps us be better
at facing our own mortality. But I think explore bring
the sort of many rooms in the mansion of ourselves,
trying on different feelings and different ways of being. There's
nothing better than games.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Tim Claire's new book is Across the Board, How Games
Make Us Human? Follow Tim on Instagram at Tim dot
Claire dot fifty, on x at Tim Claire Poet, and
on blue Sky at Tim Clare dot Besky dot Social Tim,
thank you so much for joining me, Thank you for
having me, Thanks so much for listening. If you like
(28:33):
this episode, please share it with a friend. Up next
on the Eric Corman Show, we'll talk with a player
from the Seattle Mariners. That's coming up next on the
Eric Corman Show. And so then, may you and your
family be well and I'll talk to you soon
Greetings and welcome to the Eric Korman Show. I am
on a journey to learn from superhumans, people who have
done remarkable things or have remarkable ideas to share, so
that I can be the best dad I can for
my son AJ. Tim Clare is an award winning writer,
poet and podcaster. He is the author of We Can't
(00:22):
All Be Astronauts and Coward and the novels The Honors and.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
The Ice House.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
He has performed his work at festivals and clubs across
the world and on BBC TV and radio.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Tim has also.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Written for The Guardian, The Times, The Independent and Big Issue,
and hosts the creative writing podcast Death of one Thousand Cuts.
Tim's new book is Across the Board How Games Make
Us Human. Follow Tim on Instagram at Tim dot Claire
dot fifty and Claire is spelled Clare on x at
(00:59):
Tim Claire Poet, and on Blue Sky at Tim Claire
dot b Sky. That's Social. Coming up, we'll talk about
why we play games as humans. White board gaming for
adults has become so popular over the past twenty five years,
and why it's okay to just have fun.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Something is happening to how we conceive of childhood and
play and joy. If we're getting so anxious that we
see a train set and say saying it's fun, it
will bring your child joy. We're saying this is going
to help their cognitive development and their social development because
they'll talk to other kids. All of that may be true,
but one odd set of priorities that we have.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
But first tim what is a game?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, that is a harder question to answer than you'd
think it would be because I guess for all of us,
if you ask somebody the question do you know what
a game is? We go yeah, right, Like I don't
think there's a human alive who wouldn't say that. Who
has the power of speech. Isn't a baby, right, they'd say, yeah,
I know what a game is. You ask a child
of three or four with the power of speech, do
(02:08):
you know what a game is? They go, yeah, sure,
do you want to play a game? They can answer that.
So we all have like this intuitive sense of what
a game is. We all think that, and yet when
you get down to asking someone, okay, so what is
a game? As you've just done this apparently simple question,
so intuitive that we probably wouldn't ever question it. You know,
(02:29):
we wouldn't say, Gosh, I'm not sure I know what
the answer is to that. When you start getting down
to it, and I'm not the first person to have
thought about this, it can get a little bit tricky. Now,
no lesser authority than Ludwig of Wittgenstein spill a great dealibink,
actually using the example of what is a game as
a demonstration of the fact that you can't really pin
(02:51):
down a tight definition of a game. You can't explain
what a game is. Witgenstein didn't really care about games
per se, using as an example for categories that appear
all across language, but specifically with games. He was saying, look,
there's no definition you can give that includes everything that
is a game and excludes everything that isn't a game. Rather,
(03:13):
you'll have this kind of loose territory of game like things,
and as you go further and further out into the
wilderness around that territory, you'll get sort of mysterious things
that seem a bit like games and not quite games. Okay,
so I've given you all that word salad explaining that
we can't quite pin down games. But rather Rickenstein would
(03:35):
have said, they've got family resemblances. All the best we
can do is point to some things going on, you know,
like chess, football, but maybe also things like I don't know,
two people on a date, or politics. These things and
things like them are games. We can point to them
and do that. That's what he thought the best we
could do. Now, not everyone agrees with that. There's a
(03:57):
great philosopher called Bernard Suits who really vehemently disagreed with
Bickenstein and said, you're not trying hard enough. You need
to look properly. And his pocket definition of a game
was that a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome
unnecessary obstacles. If you're at work, you're at the office
(04:19):
and someone says, hey, can you throw this piece of
paper away for me, that's a job. That's a task. Yep.
If someone hands you a scrunched up piece of paper
and says, hey, do you think you can get it
from your seat? Throw it into the waste paper basket
over there, that is a game.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I love that, and I think about like golf, for example,
that's not what you're right about in the book, but
having a club on a very long stick and having
to hit a ball hundreds of yards that's very difficult.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
We could have just picked up.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
The balls and thrown them instead of using this club
at the end of a very long stick. That would
have been a lot easier. That makes sense what you
just said. And in your book you'd talk specifically about
table talk games, and why is it that you wanted
to focus on those.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Well, the one practical reason is I had to draw
a line somewhere because otherwise, and this is just simply
how my brain works, I would have been spiraling out
like I did in my description of what a game is.
I would have been spiraling out and saying is this
a game? Is this a game? And I would have
been talking about all sorts of things. So it was
an arbitrary line that I drew. Because I love playing
(05:27):
board games, I love playing card games. I knew this
was an area that I had genuine investment in. Not
that I don't admire people who enjoy sports, but I
just knew this is something that I know I can
write about with passion and interest. Also, I just think
that there's something about tabletop games, by which I mean
games you play in person round not necessarily a table,
(05:49):
but you know, in a physical space. Then they don't
involve feats of strength generally, or they can involve some dexterity.
I was just kind of interested because they seemed to
me to be something that has happened all throughout human history,
and yet when you actually come to look at people
writing about them and evidence for them that's written down,
(06:12):
they're kind of everywhere and nowhere. They crop up in
people's accounts of something else. A Roman centurion walking through
Rome might mention that there are people playing games, but
he wasn't writing about those games. They're just something that
in the texture of human life. And so there's something
that simultaneously everywhere like extraordinary by being around us everywhere
(06:34):
in every civilization, and yet also it completely mundane in
a way that makes us miss them, I think a
lot of the time. So I wanted to kind of
turn people's attention towards this thing that surrounds us all
the time and say, hey, we're taking this so granted,
let's look at it again and see if there's something
there that maybe we missed.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I love games. My son loves games. It's a way
that our family has connected and stayed connected over the years.
My parents love games, my grandparents, I mean it is
so intergenerational. Why do we play games as humans?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I want to share with you first that some people,
when I ask them that question reacted with kind of annoyance.
They were like, because it's fun, and that was kind
of the end of the conversation for them. It's like, again,
it's something that's so obvious because to pass the time,
because games are fun, end of conversation, let's move on, right.
But for me, that's just kicking the can down the road, right,
(07:43):
because the next question is, well, what is fun? And
why do human beings sometimes want fun? And why do
we sometimes feel guilty about having fun? Why do we
sometimes think that fun is a thing that's okay for
children but maybe not for serious adults or only under
certain conditions. And then you only have to ask like
four or five questions, and you're at what is a
(08:04):
good life? What is the purpose of human life? And
you're at this deep, profound, philosophical existential question. So games
to me seem like as good a place as any
to start asking those questions. I've got some theories because
I don't have a final answer on what is the
meaning of life? I'm afraid I can't answer that totally.
(08:25):
But my feeling is there's a lot of things that
games bring to us in the same way as like
why do we exercise? You could come at that from
a bunch of different angles, but one really good one
for games for me is that games there are a
form of kind of thinking that you can touch. They
are a form of conversation you can touch. They're a
(08:47):
way of speaking without words, They're a way of connecting
with other people. They're kind of Each game is its
own language, as anyone who speaks multiple languages, and I
don't write in this book. What made me feel very
guilty is maybe try to start learning languages, actually, because
I realized how much I missed that. But like every game,
(09:07):
if you speak multiple languages, you'll know that some ideas
are easier to express in one language than in another.
There are some really, really interesting, I think, profound and
beautiful things that humans can express either personally and inter
personally with one another through this abstract, strange but deeply
human language of games. So for me, connection is a
(09:28):
profound one. Of course. Just want to say, because some
people might say, well, there are some games that are
solo games, right, Not every game is played with a
human beings, so they can't all be about connection. And
I would say that some of those solo games are
like a form of meditation, and the connection is with
oneself and the world.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
I would agree, at least that's how I've seen it
play out. The other thing that I find interesting about
games is how it is sort of like a rehearsal
for real life experiences or real life dilemmas. Some of
the strategy game, for example, fall into that category, like
chess for example, Like if you get to be good
at chess, then handling negotiations in the future seems to
(10:09):
be a lot easier. Is that potentially one of the
benefits of gaming.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Well, it's interesting you should say this. I've got a
potentially contentious view on this, which I'm going to express
hopefully while still being amiable, and that is that there's
a tendency for us to look at games and start
to get slightly anxious that we need to find some
(10:36):
way of justifying our enjoyment, right, and so we kind
of go, hey, this is going to make you very intellectual.
Maybe it's going to help you. I see children's toys
for five year olds advertised now, and they'll say helps
cognitive development aids normal social development, and it will be
through a train set. I kind of feel like something
(10:57):
is happening to how we can see of childhood and
play and joy. If we're getting so anxious that we
see a train set and instead of saying it's fun,
it will bring your child joy, we're saying this is
going to help their cognitive development and their social development
because they'll talk to other kids. All of that may
be true, but one odd set of priorities that we
(11:19):
have now, the fact is with chess, if you actually
look at that, there was a study done that began
in the nineteen twenties on chess players across a whole
range of cognitive problem solving measures. Were these chess masters geniuses?
You know? Were they better or were they just better
than the average person at these tests? And the answer
(11:40):
was yes, they were better at a whole bunch of
cognitive tests as long as those tests were to do
with chess. As soon as they weren't to do with chess,
they scored no better than average the average person. And
in fact, you know, in terms of like being able
to negotiate, there's a lot of chess masters throughout history
who famously have really struggled with existing in the real
(12:01):
world talking to other human beings. They've had profound difficulties
negotiating the world as a human being, but been really
good at chess. So, of course, like the ability to
think about in a negotiation game. It can be a
really good model for like how an economy works, how
(12:21):
to talk to somebody and get them to work with
you when maybe ultimately one of you is going to
be the winner and one of you is going to
be the loser. You know, it's a really interesting thing
in a game. I want this property, I'm going to
give you some money, but you know I'm trying to
beat you later on. This is a zero s game.
One interesting dilemma. But the people generally who make the
(12:42):
most deals round the table will do better than the
people who are not involved in those deals. So that's
a really interesting dilemma. You can build your math skills.
All these things can happen in a game. And I
don't deny that games can be educational. You can have
historical games that can teach you so much about the world.
That's not necessarily the best way to spend your time.
(13:02):
If you just wanted the educational benefits, right, It's not
necessarily the best way to spend your time if you
want the emotional benefits either. Frankly, for people who want
to bond with other people and companionship and socialization, you
don't need a board between you necessarily. I agree with
and affirm the spirit of what you're saying there, but
I would say that there is something behind it all
(13:25):
that is nothing to do with that. If they exist
their fringe benefits as far as I'm concerned, going.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Back to that idea of just fun for fun's sake,
that is a certain draw. And I've noticed over the
past i don't know, ten fifteen years, that there has
been this resurgence of tabletop gaming among adults, because that
used to be a thing that was found upon. Adults
did not play games. They might get together historically once
(13:59):
a week and play Bridge or Peanut Gol or another
card game with other adults, but board gaming in its
current form did not exist. And that's been a recent change.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And why do you think about it? Well, twenty five
years ago, I can give you the classic answer, but
it also happens to be one that I think is true,
which is that twenty five years ago this year, Settlers
of Katan was released. It's a game of people arrive
on this empty island and you start setting up a
civilization there and you trade with each other. It's relatively simple,
(14:32):
but there's that lovely negotiation that I think he's always
been people's favorite bit of monopoly. Whatever their relationship with
that game, a few people wouldn't say that one of
the most compelling things about it is the ability to
do deals to buy and sell. Katan offers that there's
negotiation and trading as well as a bit of luck.
And this game has now sold over forty million copies.
(14:55):
I want to say, so it's sold more than like
say Sergeant Pepper or any individ you're one of the
Beatles albums. It's sold more than in terms so that
you think about its cultural impact of something like this.
That game was a massive success and continues to be
a massive success to this day. And in its train
came games like Ticket to Ride and Carkason, which is
(15:20):
a game where you're building a map. These games that
I think are a little bit more complex than say
the games that we were getting in the eighties and nineties.
They would just be what are called like roll and
move games like Candyland kind of thing where you're rolling
a dice and you're moving around a board. Now, don't
get me wrong, I love snakes and that is I've
got no but I think I think it's actually an
(15:40):
excellently designed game. So I'm not doing those down. But
there was just this new level of engagement and strategy.
But you can pick them up quite easily. I think
Ticket to Ride is accessible for children for adults, is
very compelling. It's good fun, it's dramatic, and you have
these well designed boards now that have a kind of
table presence. I think, like, you go past these games
(16:03):
and you stop and you look. So for me, those
games are the beginning of a revolution in people getting
into games, and they coincide with the Internet allowing say,
new models of economics. Like A very boring part of
it is that like Kickstarter appears, crowdfunding site appears, and
designers are able to put games up and say, look,
(16:26):
I want to make this. No conventional publishers necessarily understands this,
but can I connect with people who like the look
of this? And loads of people started backing games, and
now games routinely find hundreds of thousands, even millions of
dollars on crowdfunding sites, and that has just allowed people
to find each other and get excited about these games.
(16:50):
In its train has come a revolution in design, Like
the games are much better in the last twenty five
years than they've ever been in human history.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Oh yeah, I think about a game like Violaded Imperium,
for example, and that'll show you, like how much gaming
that I do. I don't play Twilight Imperium all the
time because it takes at least twelve hours. Yes, there's
so much into a game like that where it's you explore,
you extract, and there's some other thing and then you
exterminate it.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I mean, it's just crazy four X games. Yeah, And
I think a game like that, the idea of getting
together and spending twelve hours or longer playing a big
game where you're all gathered around a table with your friends.
I mean, that is the kind of human experience that
twenty five years ago people were saying wouldn't happen anymore.
(17:38):
You know, the idea that you essentially you get together
with your friends, there's no screens, and you're like, we're
going to sit round a table together, and what is
keeping us occupied is that we're all having an experience together,
we're all creating this story. I think that's something quite
beautiful about that, right, and I think it maybe possibly
(17:58):
speaks to a little bit of as much as I
love technology as much as the next person, I enjoy
living in the future, I think we do suffer a
little bit from screen fatigue, and I think balanced with
the kind of like increased role of screens in our lives,
we kind of crave the chance to put them down
sometimes and be with each other and be in a
(18:20):
space where that's not happening. We can sit over a
massive map with spaceships and space everywhere and imagine we're
guiding our armada like like they do in Star Wars.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Right at the beginning of your book, you talk about
it's a historical fact about maps and other things being
smuggled into German pow camps so that the British prisoners
got information to help them escape from the camps. And
(18:53):
you say that every game had an escape kit built in,
like whether it was a map on the back of
a plane card or hidden in some other component of
the game. Because the Germans didn't know they thought, oh well,
if the prisoners have games they won't try to escape. Ironically,
you say that every game then had an escape kit contained,
(19:15):
and now you say that every game period is an
escape kit because it takes us to these foreign worlds
and mythological places and so on. And you're implying too
that they are escape kits because they let us escape
from our screens.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah. I think that that's definitely true, and I want
to make it clear I'm not anti screen. You know,
a screen is just a medium, Okay, like a screen
is just a medium, like anything else you can see.
It's often been a mind expanding thing for me. I
get to speak to people all around the world via screens.
(19:50):
I get to watch amazing documentaries and movies that bond
me with my daughter. When we're watching them together, we
come away from it going wow. It lets me keep
in touch with my family who don't live near me.
So I'm not against screens per se. But I think
there is something lovely about being able to mix things up.
And I think all of us have experienced that fatigue
(20:11):
if you have to work as part of your job
with a screen, of just coming away from it and
wanting something else, wanting to be able to escape from it.
Board games, as evidenced by their huge popularity at the moment,
you would think that video games would have just wiped
the floor with them, right, because they can do so
many things that maybe board games once asparred to do
(20:34):
much better in terms of graphics, moving images. They can
take all the math right, and the computer can do
that for you. You don't have to do any admin
in a video game. But it turns out that there's
a bunch of things that games can do, including just
let you pick up a bunch of dice and throw
them right that you do not get on the screen.
And so I think there's always going to be space
(20:56):
for both of those things in our lives.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
How do you out to your daughter about games? So
what are the games that you play? And how do
you imagine you're in your daughter's relationship evolving with games.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I took her to a small games convention in my
home city, Norwich yesterday. I must admit you'll have had this,
but sometimes you want to take your kid to something
and they're not that keen to go, and you think,
am I just doing this for me? Or am I
genuinely because I've lived a bit longer and I can
imagine the future maybe a bit better than them. I
(21:31):
think they're going to enjoy this, and I need to
kind of nudge them through their reluctance. Or is it
just that I love games and I'm being selfish? And
so I wrestled with that a bit, But we went
and she had the time of her life, and I
was so thrilled. When we sit down to play games,
I'll often be because I'm a games reviewer, because my
house is absolutely rammed to the rafters with game boxes,
(21:54):
I've always got new ones to show her. Whereas the
thing I try to be mindful of is that often
she'll want to play when we've all he played to
gain that sense of mastery and familiarity, Whereas I'm just like, yeah,
but I want to show you this. I want to
show you this, I want to move you on to this.
What I tried to do when I'm playing with her
is I tell her how much I'm enjoy playing games
(22:16):
with her. I think I just emphasized that I'm really
enjoying it. The weird thing is the thing that you
think you would have to have the conversation with a child, right,
which is how to cope with losing, oddly has not
been an issue with her. She's reasonably philosophical about taking
a loss in a way that I was not at
(22:37):
her age at all. I mean, my dad tells me
I was a good loser. That is not my memory.
My memory is of having full blown meltdowns and tantrums
if I felt I'd been hard done by right, So
I don't think she got that from me. Yesterday when
we went to the convention, she got a really really
great teach from a female game design who was showing
(23:00):
her games there. And it was just amazing to see
this person take her in hand, speak to her with
respect and interest, say what kind of game would you
like to play? Why do you feel that about this?
And just ask her this series. It was an incredible
show of expertise in empathic listening, really listening to what
(23:22):
my daughter was saying. Because she was clearly nervous about
sitting down and learning a new game. She thought she
wouldn't be able to do it. Maybe she was worried
about reading the rules on the cards. And the person
said we're going to sit down, we're going to start playing.
I think you'll be all right, but would you like
to be on my team. You can read the cards
and make the decisions. If at any point you're not
enjoying yourself, we can stop. Is that okay? I was
(23:44):
watching just in Awe and my daughter kind of came
out of her shell and was great. She sat with
them through the game, and whenever she was making a decision,
the person would the designer would explain the options and
then say what do you think would be best for us?
And my daughter would, now empowered, would give an opinion,
and then the designer would say, yeah, I think you're right.
(24:06):
That's a great idea, good idea. I was so amazed
at how she was able to basically empower my daughter
to make her own decisions, hand it back to her
and really listen. And I was like, oh, wow, this
is great because I can often sort of breeze past
worries and say you'll be fine, You'll be fine. Of course,
we're doing that because we're trying to not make a
(24:26):
mountain out of a molehill. But this person just really
listens to my daughter and really got to the bottom
of what her concerns were. I just saw her grow.
That's something that I'm not as good at as the
person I saw doing that, but something that I aspire
to do.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
What a wonderful example of how to give an eight
year old agency. Yeah, and that's the one thing that
I always appreciated playing games with my son, that he
could make his own decisions, and games giving the ability
to fail with minimal or no consequences. That's the thing
that I always appreciated from them, whether or not they're
something that'll make you smarter or better at this or
(25:11):
that life skill, but just the ability to fail, even
to die with no consequence. Could that possibly be the
biggest benefit of gaming that we can figure our on
mortality and walk away from it.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
I think there's definitely having that kind of laboratory space
where you can do wild things right and see the
consequences play out in a game engine, and sometimes maybe
even take huge risks deliberately to see how it feels,
you know, and to feel that like a game can
(25:45):
make you feel regret, which is odd for a piece
of art. Normally, you read a novel and it can
give you all sorts of experiences, but you don't feel
implicated in any of the decisions the character makes. In
a game, you can, and you can go and no,
I shouldn't have done that. And if it's a role
playing game, maybe you do feel like there's a story
based reason why you feel terrible. But also I think
(26:08):
you know you were talking about agency and that ability
to do things safely. It also allows for kind of
safe conflict. I always remember when I went up to
Glasgow years and years ago now to stay with a
family who would have students staying with them periodically. They said,
at the end of the semester, when these foreign students
who'd been staying with them would finish off, they'd always
(26:31):
have two students staying in the house. They'd have this
in the back garden. They had set up this log
where you could have like a pillow fight on it
over like a mud pit, right, And they said, I
think it sounds bizarre now I'm saying it out loud,
but they said that you could tell how well people
had bonded over the semester by how hard they went
(26:51):
at each other with the pillows during that pillow fight.
If they were just kind of like acquaintances, they'd sort
of gently tap each other they were best friends, they'd
absolutely wail on each other. And I think there's something
lovely and quite transgressive.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
I teach creative writing classes and I retreats for a
week with kids aged eleven to thirteen, and we play
some games, including bluffing games, games where you might lie
to each other. Right, it is lovely and it also
feels quite transgressive and exciting for them to bluff out.
A teacher tell me something in game, within the safe
(27:30):
space of the game, the magic circle of the game,
say I'm not a baddie, you can trust me. Take
me with you on your quest, and I believe them.
And then later they win and they reveal that they
were lying to me all the time. That is a
an exciting and I think kind of wonderful bonding. It
requires trust to actually be safe to bluff in the game.
(27:54):
So I'm not sure if it helps us be better
at facing our own mortality. But I think explore bring
the sort of many rooms in the mansion of ourselves,
trying on different feelings and different ways of being. There's
nothing better than games.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Tim Claire's new book is Across the Board, How Games
Make Us Human? Follow Tim on Instagram at Tim dot
Claire dot fifty, on x at Tim Claire Poet, and
on blue Sky at Tim Clare dot Besky dot Social Tim,
thank you so much for joining me, Thank you for
having me, Thanks so much for listening. If you like
(28:33):
this episode, please share it with a friend. Up next
on the Eric Corman Show, we'll talk with a player
from the Seattle Mariners. That's coming up next on the
Eric Corman Show. And so then, may you and your
family be well and I'll talk to you soon
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