A Toy? A Hobby? Or a Form of Media?

An interview with the media scholar Paul Booth on his new book, Board Games as Media- exploring how to define tabletop games in relation to the greater hobby & media categories as well as their expanding role and influence in our daily lives.

Over the past few years, we have entered a new golden age of board games, with the trends attributed to the Covid pandemic dramatically expanding an already rapidly growing market. With this hobby reaching more people than ever, it is the perfect time to reexamine the place that board games have in our lives and the larger media landscape. And, when you consider the digitalization of games and the rise of small, niche tabletop games, it is especially important to examine just how board games are poised to grow and develop moving forward.

To answer these important questions, Tabletop Simulator Blog sat down with a true board game expert. Paul Booth is a Professor in the College of Communication at DePaul University and the author of multiple books about both board games and media studies. Last year, Professor Booth released his latest book, Board Games as Media, which takes the historically understudied subject of board games and looks at them through the lens of media studies. Now without further adieu, let's jump into my interview with Paul Booth!

*Paul’s quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

A New Golden Age

“After all, they have become very popular,” Professor Paul Booth writes in the introduction to his book, Board Games as Media, “...we are in the midst of a board game renaissance!”  The present golden age of the board gaming hobby has resulted from an upswing in independent development, an explosion of digital platforms, a proliferation of board gaming cafes and venues, and the always trustworthy kitchen table. These trends mean that our favorite hobby is quickly becoming one of our most important and far-reaching forms of media. But, as it has grown, it has also changed. During our conversation, Paul pointed out that, compared to earlier iterations, “The types of games that are being made right now are complex, thoughtful, and purposeful.” In other words, as the number of board games has grown, so too has their reach as well as their ability to convey meaning. Essentially, board gaming is approaching the size, scope, and depth of traditional media (in this case, television and film). And it’s about time that we look at it as such. 

As tabletop gaming continues to strain the hegemony of TV and film, Paul Booth sets out to explain why the essential study of this media form hasn’t seemed to keep pace with its explosive growth, how to fix this, and why it matters for the future.

Missing from Media Studies

Paul and I talk about why board games are unique and why they need to be studied further

This brought our conversation to the question of how board games are actually classified. Despite their rise in popularity over the past decades, board games have generally been left in a type of media purgatory, with no agreed-on classification of where the hobby falls relative to film, visual art, video games, etc. This was the very confusion that Paul set out to tackle. During our conversation, he summarized his basic “plan” behind Board Games as Media, “I wanted to combine the two areas I am most interested in, board games and Media Studies.” Now, this is necessary because board games are met with a number of preconceptions from those outside the hobby. Board games are often grouped with “toys”, and are typically considered childish, irrelevant, or otherwise culturally worthless, especially in relation to “higher media”. But, failing to look at the depth of the entire tabletop industry or metonymizing it to Twister or Guess Who, is a shortcoming that prevents us from truly appreciating all that a board game can do. As Paul put it, “Referring to board games as just Scrabble and Monopoly would be like referring to TV as just Friends and The Office. There are so many more board games out there, but TV is so much more visible….We talk about TV shows as commenting on our culture and film as a communication on our culture, but we very rarely talk about board games in the same way. But they are doing it too.” That is the essential point behind Board Games as Media, there is a gap in how we study tabletop games, both as independent texts as well as part of a growing culture. And now, with their newfound influence, it is more essential than ever to bring the study of board games into the fold of Media Studies.

Paul started the journey to Board Games As Media as a, “thought experiment, challenging myself to sit down with some of my favorite games and asking myself, ‘what does this tell me about the world I inhabit?’” It turns out that the answer to this question is, “a lot”. And through this thought experiment, Paul fleshed out how board games communicate their relevance in a way completely unique from other media. This new approach is essential to understanding the popularity of board games, their impact on our world, and their future. 

Why People Matter

A discussion on the biggest advantage board games have over traditional media

After we went over the logistical and comparable reasons board games must be considered as media, Paul and I turned to look at the self-contained reasons they should be given more weight. Most important on this list is the difference between a viewer and a player. While someone watching or studying a TV show, is superficially considered part of the experience, the relationship is shallow and the events on the screen will unfold the same regardless of the thoughts or actions of the viewer. In other words, that media form could exist in a vacuum. It could be broadcast into space and still retain the majority of its internal textual meaning. Yet board games require a participant; they require a much more symbiotic relationship. A board game is meaningless until someone picks up the pieces and plays. So in trying to consider board games as a form of media we need to also think about, as Paul told me, “what is the text of a board game? It is all of the stuff but it's more than the stuff, because a cube is just a cube...a cube doesn’t become a text until it is part of a larger system” By considering this unique dynamic, two important results are clear. First, this special participant-to-media relationship explains their current boom. Second, board games offer a unique route to changing society for the better.

During our conversation, Paul laid out the blueprint of expanding the gaming hobby, “Bringing new people in is about finding new ways to reach new audiences”. And the success of these “new ways” can be partially explained by how important people are to the project. By engaging in a form of media that requires active participation, new players experience something different than with most other forms of media. They have an experience in which they are responsible for the entire space existing. This sense of essentiality is then compounded with the exceptional variety within the board gaming hobby, a variety of games as well as the game designers. Tabletop gaming offers a unique place for the independent developer. As Paul put it, “Unlike any other media type, a single person or a small group of people can create a very popular board game.” This means that the range and variety of board games is far greater than the more hegemonic world of television production. In a sense, board gaming offers both a personalized and varied experience to any new player, creating a unique draw to the hobby that can help explain its rapid growth. 

Two of the biggest questions surrounding our modern board game renaissance are, “why have they become so popular?” and, “what can they do with their new influence?” These two answers may actually be related. As mentioned before, our epoch of tabletop gaming has created the space for new and exciting development. However, the industry is still plagued by the issues of inaccessibility and exclusion (along lines of race, gender, disability, etc.) that are present in our general society. However, it is the very uniqueness of board games, enabled by their newfound popularity, that offers a solution to this issue. During our conversation, Paul laid out this unique opportunity for change:

“A board game has to have a person get involved. In that sense, we become complicit in that game, at least in a certain way… so, the more that we can make the content reflect the kind of people we want to be, we start practicing those behaviors. If you want to be anti-racist, create a game where you have to be anti-racist...We need to advertise and promote the idea that there are these amazing designers creating these incredible games that are not white males. Not all of the games are about colonization, not all the games are about taking over land…”

In this sense, the self-contained traits of board games offer both the route to their further expansion as well as their social impact. This is a reach and influence that many forms of media do not possess and a factor that remains understudied. Only by treating board games as the influential and potentially society-changing media they are can we understand their impact and potential.

The Pandemic and Digitalization

A conversation about what has happened since Board Games as Media was published

Now that we had covered the important crossroads of board games and media studies, we shifted our conversation to where the hobby has been heading recently. The Pandemic turned every aspect of our world upside down. That applied to board gaming as well as writing about board gaming. During our conversation, Paul even mentioned that the dawn of Covid - 19 pushed him to introduce some important rewrites on the book we were discussing. And, thinking about the hobby as a whole, the impacts of a person-to-screen world on a traditionally person-to-person activity, were enormous. However, despite the lockdowns and disruptions, there is an argument to be made that Covid expanded the hobby. Our own market research article covers the exponential growth that the board game market experienced. And, a lot of this perseverance and growth had to do with the switch to digital alternatives, most prominently Tabletop Simulator. This reflects the sentiment that Paul passed on to me, “in the option between no board gaming and digital board gaming, people will always choose digital board gaming” And, though the shift to TTS as a platform was caused by unfortunate world events, the trend we are seeing now displays how digital board gaming was able to preserve the hobby, expand the hobby, and once again assert how important the growing board game community is.

Paul pointed out that one of the primary advantages of TTS’s is its variety, that it is, “easy to get any game...If you want to play a digital version of “game X”, it's just there.” That availability obviously provides a draw to the platform for people who are previously board game-inclined. In that way, digitalization served as a preserver of the hobby. However, it is more important to note its role as a grower of the hobby. As Paul pointed out, “[digitalization] opened up the hobby to people who wouldn’t necessarily be introduced to it, it brings in more digitally literate people...In a way, it also opens it up to people who may have a disability and normally wouldn’t be able to get into board gaming.” In this sense, the Covid-inflected digitalization of the board game hobby helped to open it up to those who may not have ever gotten into it. Especially over the past year, alternatives like TTS have both protected and encouraged the growth of this newly influential form of media. And, as board gaming has withstood the test of this year with a still increasing reach, the need to treat it as true “media” has only grown. Our “hobby,” providing increasingly profound player experiences to a growing, shifting, and unexpected group of people, should also be considered our “study.”

Thinking about the future

Wrapping up and looking to the board game community of tomorrow

Paul and I then turned to the all-important topic of “the future of board gaming”. The trajectory of the hobby and its study in a post-covid world faces a few factors working in a couple different directions. Overall, the consensus is that the growth of tabletop gaming, “is not going to stop, but it is going to slow.” The number one factor that will combat this while continuing to push our favorite hobby to new people is diversity, diversity in players, diversity in game, and diversity in developers. As Paul said in our discussion, “diversity keeps the hobby alive, every couple of years, there is a new game that revolutionizes the mechanics.” And these revolutions and advances have and will continue to have the power to draw new people in. This diversity can come from the rise of new pockets of players, but also new pockets of developers who have used crowdfunding resources like Kickstarter to produce new games with new perspectives and new ideas. Paul admits that, even with the predicted slowing of the board game market, “I do think there are going to be a lot more of the small games.”

Yet, another potential factor that may complicate this outlook is the movements of larger board game developers. Paul put it like this: 

“In some ways, it looks like the beginning of any type of industry where we have all of these little pockets of creators that might come together to cooperate and work with each other...But then you also have the huge corporations that are buying up all of these smaller companies. So, we're seeing in the board game industry what has happened in the other media industries.” 

So, there are a few things at play that could affect where the board game hobby is heading. In order to accurately predict, and, in fact, influence where the hobby is going, we must begin to think of tabletop games as genuine media. We must treat them with the same reverence and interest that we treat the trends of other large media industries. But, for now, to end on a more hopeful note, Paul wrapped up our discussion with this prediction, “I do think the hobby is here to stay… the people who are passionate about board games are passing that along to the family and their friends and that's going to bring a new generation of people who grow up thinking that this is how board gaming should be played.”

We do too.

Follow Paul on Twitter & check out Board Games as Media on sale now!

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Article Author: Grayson M. TTS Blog Staff Writer