Steve Bennett: Notes from a Game Party II

With some work-related interruptions, I’ve been hosting monthly game parties at my house for a year now. We started in December 2006 armed with little more than a game closet and a dream…. All right, I exaggerate, but the truth is there was no known gaming scene in our town of 9,000, and we were trying to build something out of nothing. Let’s be frank: We wanted to expand our pool of nearby game partners and have some fun in the process.

I think it’s working.

One thing you must remember if you want to try this at home is that you have to achieve critical mass before it becomes a self-perpetuating event. I had figured that would be the case, but circumstances in my life bear that out.

We started doing this last December, and except for an ice storm that took out our power and forced us to cancel the February event, we held a party every month through May. The winter parties were better attended than the spring ones, in part because less serious gamers have skewed priorities that involve strange customs like yard work and spring cleanup activities.

Starting in June, life interefered in a big way. Between a full slate of high school baseball games and the final stages of getting my wife’s book edited, proofread, promoted, and delivered, we had no time for playing games, much less hosting game parties. The parties were furloughed until October.

October was lightly attended, though we stayed busy playing games the entire time, November was better, and December was a rollicking affair. I think we’re achieving critical mass.

Here’s some of what is happening:

People are inviting other people whom they think are good candidates for our particular brand of fun. We encourage this.

Some folks are buying their own games after being introduced to the games at our house. This is the ultimate testament to our success. Ultimately, we’d like them to do their own research and buy games we don’t have, thus expanding our pool of potential games to play. Initially, it’s reasonable to think they’re going to buy games they’ve tried and enjoyed.

People are making requests for games to play because they’ve played them before. It’s fun to learn new games, but it’s also fun to just sit down and start playing with four other people who know how to play. We’re achieving familiarity with Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Citadels, 10 Days in the USA and San Marco.

An offshoot of this is that we are less responsible for having to teach rules and make game suggestions. It makes the game party a more organic event.

All in all, it’s starting to take on a life of its own. We just need to create the time slot once a month and clean the house a little bit in order to make it happen.

Picture this scene at your house: At one point during our most recent party, there were four different games going on and other people milling around, eating and watching. Young children (or future gamers) were running around. People were laughing; they were concentrating; they were groaning. By night’s end we had played Cathedral, Queen’s Necklace, Incan Gold, Carcassonne, Yspahan, TransAmerica, Apples to Apples, From Bad to Verse, Blokus, Through the Desert, Ticket to Ride Europe, Boggle, and Rumis. As you can see, it was a wide array of games: abstract, party, push-your-luck, word, and light-to-medium strategy games.

None of the games tilted to the heavy side, but that’s all right. In the past, we’ve played things like Puerto Rico, San Marco, Maharaja, and Union Pacific. It’s important to remember that it’s unlikely any of our guests are going to be as into games as we are.

What we can hope for is that they have fun playing a variety of games, many of them unfamiliar, and they look forward to that day every month when they get to come over, hang out among friends, play some games, eat some food, share a few laughs, and generally feel good for a few hours. There’s no downside to this formula.

Hosting a game party takes some effort, but not all that much when you really start thinking about it. The house has to be cleaned a little, but you have to clean it occasionally whether you have a game party or not. A little food has to be prepared and laid out, but you have to prepare meals whether you have a game party or not. You just make a little more. The one extra thing you have to do is invite people—and even that process gets easier as you create an email list for guests.

There is one other critical thing you have to do: Commit to hosting a party regularly. If you give it a chance to flourish, it will. Games are meant to be social, and in this mile-a-minute society we live in, true social opportunities seem harder and harder to come by. Make your own. As with virtue, game parties are their own reward.

© 2007 Steve Bennett

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Comments:

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Sounds great Steve, congrats!  How did you figure out who to approach during the initial formation of the party guestlist?  And are all of the original members (still in the area) still attending? When you mention food - what sort of spread are we talking about? Posted by Jim Clapperton on Dec 18, 2007 at 06:28 PM | #

Jim, I addressed most of that in earlier columns, which you can read at Notes From a Game Party and An Invitation Primer But so you and others don’t have to go slogging through 20,000 words of text, I’ll answer questions here. 1) The initial invitations were issued to people in a two-block stretch of my street, both sides. I invited a handful of other friends whom I knew to be good candidates for such a party. I walked up one side of the street and down the other handing out invitations that explained the types of games we would be playing. 2) It’s not really a game group, as such. So I don’t view the attendees as members. About a dozen of the people who came to the first party have been pretty regular about attending subsequent parties. In turn, there have been new names added to the invitation list. These are either people we didn’t know but someone thought they’d enjoy the games we were playing, or they are people we knew but hadn’t thought to ask originally. Some of these new names are regular attendees. 3) As for food, we make some kind of soupish, stewish concoction that we can put on a low flame or in the crock pot. We set out bowls, plates, cups, cutlery, and napkins. My wife usually bakes cookies because she is a brilliant cookie maker. We buy some pop, water, juice, and beer and stock a small, portable cooler. Then we encourage people to bring something of their own. It’s not mandatory. I don’t want anyone not showing up because they had no food or drink to bring. Folks will bring additional beverages, usually wine or beer. They’ll bring easy things like chips, and more involved things like homemade pizza. We end up with a wide variety of delicious food. We view our role as being the starter. We get it going and then other people fill in. At our last party, our neighbor offered to make the main dish, the soupish, stewish thing. I don’t know if his offer was an unstated indictment of my cooking or a genuine desire to contribute more. Perhaps naively, I think it was the latter. I hope that clears things up a little. Posted by Steve Bennett on Dec 19, 2007 at 09:40 AM | #

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