Forbidden Island is a cooperative board game where players work together to take treasures from a sinking island and get out alive. I started playing it years ago, after I saw it on Tabletop. It’s been one of my most frequently played games.
Fast forward to last year. Me, my best friend, and his girlfriend were playing it, her for the first time. She loved it so much she bought it for her parents for x-mas, who had already played the Ticket to Ride she’d given them the year prior halfway to death. They started playing Forbidden Island constantly too.
Her father is a counselor. Just this past week I learned that, while working with a client who was having trouble with his kids constantly bickering and fighting with each other, her father suggested the client buy them Forbidden Island. He thought that if the kids played it together, they might learn to get along better.
That weekend was a sea change in the man’s house. The kids played the game constantly, and they were working together. Peace finally reigned in their house.
I tell this partially to brag, because I’m super proud that my picking up this game, through a circuitous series of events, helped a family on another coast. But it also gets at a central philosophy of my life: Stories teach us how to be human. That’s true of passive stories such as books and movies, but it’s also certainly true of games. Especially true of games.
We learn how to be people from what we experience. This happens throughout life, but especially when we’re young. Most games are competitive, and this is all well and good, but the rise of cooperative games like Forbidden Island means that these kids got a good lesson in the benefits of cooperation when they might not have otherwise, and in the best of ways: without a lecture. They wouldn’t have needed a lecture. People like to win games, and since the very set up of the game requires cooperation to win, they’re tricked into learning the lesson because of the reward (victory) the game dangles in front of them.
They’re learning to be better people, or at least people who fight with their siblings less, because of a game. Because Matt Leacock made a game, Wil Wheaton made an internet video, and half a dozen other people made choices that put it in front of these kids.
There’s power in stories, board games most definitely included. I guess I’ll just have to keep playing tons of different games, so I can pick the best ones to pass along to the people in my life. Oh damn. What a terrible fate!
