Matt Carlson: Why Obama should play boardgames

I was listening to the radio last week and some book publishers were being interviewed about their enthusiasm for the new President.  It seems President Obama is quite a reader, he is often seen with a book in his hand.  The publishers were excited about their future prospects, as any book that is being carried around by Obama instantly receives a huge jump in sales.  While they were glowing about the benefits of a president who is seen as a reader, I began to ponder – what would it look like if we had a president who played boardgames?  There are many good lessons a president could learn from playing boardgames.

I am not looking to start a political discussion here, it isn’t really an appropriate place.  I will also skip over the general benefits of exercising one’s brain when boardgaming.  However, there are some specific concepts that come across in many boardgames that would serve a president well.

A strong economy is necessary but not sufficient to win the game
Most of my favorite games have an initial build-up phase while players maneuver to construct ways in which to increase their income.  As the game progresses, money becomes less and less important and players spend their cash freely to earn victory points to win the game.  In these games (such as Puerto Rico, Dominion, Saint Petersburg, and Race for the Galaxy) the most important decision players face is when they should switch their focus away from earning resources and instead put their efforts into gaining points.  The US economy is an important thing and the president needs to be trying to find ways to improve it, but it shouldn’t be the end-all or be-all of his concerns. 

Don’t spend more than you can afford
As seen again and again in railroad games such as Age of Steam, Railroad Tycoon, or Rails of Europe, borrowing money is often a necessary thing to jump-start one’s economy.  However, it is very easy for beginners to borrow too much and get themselves so far behind in debt that they can never dig themselves out.  A corollary to this would be:  Don’t overextend your resources.  This lesson can be learned in military themed games such as Risk, where spreading your troops too thin is a dangerous move, or in more economic games (Monopoly, Boomtown) where spreading your efforts out into too many different areas makes you last in all of them.  This leads us to…

Use the resources available wisely
In nearly every good game, there are limited resources and many ways to spend them.  The difficult bit is determining where one should place one’s emphasis.  This includes guns and butter type resources as in Agricola (a farming game set in the middle ages with extremely limited resources that need to be used to both improve your family farm and feed your family at the same time), people as resources such as in Agricola or El Grande (an area control game set in Spain), or even the resource of time itself.  Time management crops up in nearly every game as players have a limited number of turns and/or actions to complete what they want to have done.  In some games, such as Around the World in 80 Days, time management is arguably the most important resource.  The president has limited resources and needs to make hard decisions about where to use them.  Despite good intentions, he will not be able to please all of the people all the time.

Play well with others
Last, but certainly not least, the president needs to be able to play well with others.  This applies both on the global stage where the United States needs to do what it can to help its partner countries (and the world in general) but it also applies to efforts of the president to work with the other two branches of government.  In almost any game that includes more than two players, it is important for all the players to have at least some semblance of cooperation towards a mutual goal.  That could be something as simple as players who are behind working together to catch up to a leader or something more complex and explicit such as trading in Bohnanza (a game based around farming beans where trading with others is the primary way to improve one’s position.) A politician cannot rise to the Oval Office without learning how to form a coalition based on mutual cooperation, but it is always good to keep things in perspective.

I’m sure there are plenty other lessons to be learned, but these consist of a great start to any boardgamer president’s list of qualifications.  Perhaps someday, we’ll see on the local bookshelves:  All I Really Needed to Know I Learned Playing Boardgames…..

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