Earlier this summer, my friends and I had gotten sick of NBA Jam and needed something to do while sitting around and drinking beer. On little more than a whim, the board game Settlers of Catan was purchased. Flash forward a few weeks, and we’re all suddenly dreaming about board games and blowing our savings on buying as many of Catan’s boutique cousins as we can with very little guidance or gameplay know-how.
Enter Scott Nicholson. Scott is the steward of Board Games with Scott, a series of online videos explaining and, more recently, analyzing board games. In addition to his videos, Scott has also conducted original research regarding the way games can effect the way we learn, as well as designed his own game, Tulipmania 1637. Scott’s mix of crazy game intelligence and goofy humor make us feel a lot better about our intensely nerdy pastime, and there aren’t many better ways to kill an afternoon than to watch a few of Scott’s videos and then kill about eight thousand subsequent afternoons playing Puerto Rico or Carcassonne.
Whose Fault Is That: What would you say are the most important ways that the type of games you cover differ from the games that an average suburban family might play while they’re on vacation?
Scott Nicholson: Well, I do cover some of the types of games that an average family might play while they’re on vacation. The big thing about the games that I look at, though, is the concept of meaningful decisions. In a lot of the videos I try to pick games, and I enjoy games, where the decisions that you make in the game are meaningful, and that they’re interesting decisions to make, as well. For example, in a game like Monopoly, when you roll the dice, you move around and your decision is “Do you buy the property or not?”. Basic strategy is that you always buy the property if you can. So really, there aren’t many meaningful decisions or interesting decisions going on in that game. And that’s true for a lot of lighter games.
Now, the question is, “Does that matter?”. Because there are also a lot of games I like that don’t have a lot of meaningful decisions. Dungeon Quest, for example, is a great example of a game that tells a story. And in that story, you know, you’re making a few decisions but it’s more about experiencing what’s going on with your characters. So that’s another piece that I like in games that we don’t see a lot in these family games: The concept of narrative, or story. These are things that I like to see.
I could go on with some specifics. Player elimination, like you have in Monopoly, we don’t have in a lot of these games, but when it comes down to the core of it, it’s about games that allow you to create interesting or meaningful decisions, or games that have a narrative component. These are some of the big differences.
WFIT: If you had two rounds of five hours of gaming to get someone hooked on board games, which games would you play? Why?
SN: What I would actually do is figure out is what that person’s interested in. Remember, I’m coming from the library background, and a big part of what the library does is something called “reader’s advisory.” And in reader’s advisory, what you’re trying to do is match a person to the books that match their interest. You’re trying to match their information need and their information interest. If you can make that match, you can get someone inspired to read. If you have a bad match, you’re going to have someone that doesn’t want to read.
The same is true with games. You need to match the games to the players. You need to find out about their backgrounds, their areas of interest, their gaming background, what sort of things they like to do in a game, and then bring out games that match those. So I can’t give you a generic laundry list. Sure, there are the gateway games that people talk about, things like Settlers and Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne and games like that, but the reality is that if those don’t match what someone is interested in doing, like if someone likes narrative more, then those games are not going to be a good match. You might want some adventure games, or a Pandemic-type story game where you’re really getting into what’s going on, or a dungeon game or something like that.
My answer is really based on the people that are sitting down to play.
WFIT: What would you consider to be a particularly underrated mainstream board game? Conversely, what would you say is an overrated Eurogame?
SN: Why, Tulipmania 1637 is an under—sorry. (Laughs). Let’s see here. Overrated eurogame. The term ‘overrated’ is a difficult one and not one that I would actually use. There are some popular games that I don’t like, games like Stone Age. I don’t like that one. Would I make the statement that they’re overrated? No. I respect that there are different types of people that like different types of things. I don’t think I would call anything overrated, because I don’t think that’s a term that I would use. I don’t like Dominion very much, and that’s a popular game.
As far as an underrated mainstream game, I think Scrabble is underrated by a lot of people. One of the things I like about Scrabble is that you can play it with someone who has a strong word knowledge or you can play it with someone who has a strong strategy. And those people can enjoy playing against each other. In fact, my partner and I play together that way. He understands words, he’s got a great vocabulary, and when we play we come out about even. And that’s great. You’ve got a couple of paths to winning. Of course, you’ve got players who have both strategy and the word knowledge, and they are double-goodness. Is that a word? I don’t know, but maybe I can use all my letters with it.
WFIT: What led you to enter the video blog fray? Was there a specific edition of BGWS that made you think it was something worth sticking with?
SN: At Syracuse University, I teach online. So a lot of my students are at a distance. I wanted to provide them with some video content, and I knew the only way I would be able to get good at producing video content is to practice it. That’s what I’ve found is true for any technology stuff. You have to take something and use it in a real-world context. And once you’ve done that, you’re going to start to get better at that technology.
Video editing is a huge hurdle to work through, and I knew I wasn’t going to get good at it until I did it on a regular basis. That’s why I decided to start it. I said “Well, I’m gonna start by taking my hobby and making some videos about board games. And I’m going to use those skills to make more video content for my classes.”
Last summer, I taught an entire class about games and libraries and posted it on YouTube. You can still find a 30-video series out there on games and libraries, if you want to learn about that.
And you know, it wasn’t any one episode that made it worth sticking with. It’s the response I get from people. The main reason I’ve always played games and liked games is because I get to interact with people, and having Board Games With Scott has made it much easier for me to find people to interact with. I now can go traveling somewhere, send an email out or a notice out on boardgamegeek, and find a gaming group. And the folks there are interesting in meeting with me and chatting with me and showing me their games, and that’s really cool. I really like that.
I think that if I had the money and the time, I would like to do a travel show based around board games. I would travel to places, I would meet the local gamers, and play some of the games that are from that area. I think that would be a lot of fun, and something that would be really exciting to do. So if anyone out there has connections to the travel channel and they’re looking for something new, how about “Board Games With Scott Around the World!” or something like that?
Actually, for a show like that it wouldn’t just be board games. You’d look at all sorts of gamers, and learn about local games as you travel. Underlying games is the concept of play, and play is a very important thing to us in society. Even as adults, we need to play on a regular basis, and having that element of play is critical, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve been so interested in helping to promote games that promote good experiences, because that play is a pretty important thing.
WFIT: How, if at all, would you relate your academic interest in distance learning and library science to game theory? Have you ever thought about composing any academic work that related to games directly?
SN: My work for the last three years has been purely about how libraries use games to bring people in, to get them engaged with each other, to promote literacy, to promote learning. That’s been my work, so I’ve got my book Everyone Plays at the Library, which is actually about games and libraries. Now, where that’s moving and where my research is moving is into game creation on two fronts.
One is working with folks to actually make games. Libraries are places of education. They really are the only places of free education after high school. It’s one of the few places that offers education to adults and seniors for free, so looking at ways of using games to teach things that libraries typically teach is one possible research path I’m exploring. Another research path I’m exploring is what happens when you help people make games.
I see the library as becoming a place where you can learn how to make games, because neat stuff happens as far as motivation, learning, and creativity that happens when you create a game. That’s where my research is moving. So, you’re going to see more from me. I’m going to be more engaged in game scholarship, looking more at the angle of how people behave when they create games.
As far as using research to actually make games for the general public, I don’t know that I’ll be making that connection. I’m in an information school. What we do in an information school is that we’re interested in how information is used and viewed and the impact it has on society. I’ll be taking a similar scholarly approach to games: How are they used? How are they viewed? What is the impact that games have on society? That’s more of the research path I’ve been taking. Does that mean ever? No, I don’t know what’s in the future. My research changes and flows based on my interest and what’s going on in society, so who knows where things will go.
My next few years are going to be spent looking at what happens and the things that happen when someone creates a game, and how libraries, especially school libraries, can facilitate game creation programs to help kids learn new topics.
WFIT: Have you ever thought about going back and re-covering, say, Settlers of Catan or any of the other, more popular games that you may have glossed over in the early BGWS days?
SN: Well actually, I talked about Settlers of Catan in episode 67, my last episode, which was about dice-based resources. So what I’m doing now with this new form, I will certainly be revisiting games that are older and out of print and things like that. That’s one of the reasons why, is that I wanted to—I got tired of just running around trying to cover the new hotness. That was what I was doing with the show was trying to cover games that were new, and that people were excited about, and teach people how to play those.
Now there are lots of people that are doing that, so I don’t feel the need to do it anymore. I’m doing something different. I’m taking a much more academic approach to my show. I’m taking a topic and exploring that topic area and understanding how these games relate to each other. It is game scholarship, that’s what I’m doing with Board Games With Scott. I perceive my new show as like a college class on board games. In each lecture I’m taking a topic and covering it and presenting examples. And that’s how I visualize the show, now.
WFIT: How would you compare your taste in video games to your taste in board games?
SN: I don’t like playing online with people I don’t know, but that’s actually true with board games, too. So I’d say that’s a similar thing. If I play a videogame online, I much prefer to play it with people who I already have a real life connection with. People that I know, or people that I’ve become friends with on the internet, or something like that.
I don’t enjoy video implementations of board games. I find that it loses a lot in translations, that the tactile sensations are gone, the face-to-face social interactions are gone. There are a lot of things that disappear. As an example, when they made an online version of Tulip Mania available, I found the game would just encourage you to click through things quickly and not really analyze what was going on. So, I found that people click-click-click, and say “Oh, I’m done!” and not really understand what had happened. Playing with a board game slows down that pace, and forces you to consider what’s going on.
I really like adventure games. Diablo 2 is probably the game I’ve spent the most time with, followed by World of Warcraft. I actually broke that addiction awhile ago, but I have played World of Warcraft since it started, and I still have characters there, and for me World of Warcraft is interesting only when I’m playing with people who I know. Then I have that social space, and it’s basically a chat with something to do. Although I will pick up the new expansion and play it and see the content, I imagine, but once I’ve worked through that content I will step back from it for awhile. But really, I look for those personal connections.
I don’t care for real-time strategy games on the computer. I find that my mind doesn’t work too well for that. When I’m playing electronic games, I tend to move towards the adventure games, the fantasy games. I enjoy that sort of exploration; I enjoy that sort of thing. I also enjoy a good round of Halo.
WFIT: What inspired the episode-65 schism between purely positive reviews and more analytic, critical content?
SN: It really was because I looked around and said “There are a lot of people who have taken my model and are using it.” And I realize that’s going to sound like I’m egotistical, but that was the reality. I looked, and saw that there are a lot of people who are using this model of teaching games, so I’m not needed to do that anymore. I see what I do as a service. I have to, because I’m not really getting much money for it. It’s a service for folks, and I look around and I don’t want to compete with people who are doing fine video reviews, and who are teaching games already. We don’t need one more video of something that’s been covered. Once it’s been covered three or four times, another voice in that fray doesn’t matter. And I also thought about what I was doing as a scholar, so I said “All right, I’m going to take a more scholarly approach, I’m going to step up a notch from just explaining a name and taking a more humanities approach to the study of games and how they relate to each other.” So that’s what I’m doing.
It’s not always going great, I’m learning from it, again. For me, I want something that’s challenging. I also found that it was easy for me to put together an episode of Board Games With Scott where I talk about a game. The challenge was gone. It was not exciting for me to do, it was mundane. I wanted something that would challenge me. And now, looking at games and thinking about games in a different way, and thinking about how they cross and how they connect, that’s a new challenge for me, so I’ll explore that for awhile. When I get tired of that, I’ll move on to something else, I’ll imagine.
For me, it’s because I wanted a new challenge, and to present a new product to the market, something that wasn’t already being done, and that tied into my scholarship a little bit more.
WFIT: If you could change one rule of one mainstream board game (Monopoly, RISK, et al.) to make it more interesting, what would it be?
SN: I think that one of the rules (laughs)—With Monopoly, I would just ask the people—play by the rules. (Laughs). There is no free parking payout. That is not there. All that does is artificially add time to the game. So in the game Monopoly, I’d suggest that you read the rules before you play. You might find that the game plays better, there’s more balance. It’s shorter with the rules as they are written.
One rule I would suggest people play with in the game of Sorry!—If you ever find yourself sitting down to play a game of Sorry!, play with a hand of cards. A hand of three cards, for example. You have three cards, you play one, you draw one. That small change makes Sorry! a much more interesting game. So if you get stuck in a game of Sorry!, suggest it. The game becomes much more interesting.
Joe Bernardi interviewed Scott Nicholson in August 2010. Scott’s website, and links to all the episodes of his video series, can be found here. He also participates in the podcasts On Board Games and Games In Libraries. Scott’s new book, Everyone Plays At the Library, is available now.