We love to play games with our kids.

There’s just so much to like about it. It gives us a great time to be face-to-face interacting and bonding. It also gives us a great glimpse into their budding personalities.

But can playing with our kids also help them get better grades in school?

According to a study we just read about, the answer is YES!

How parents play with their children matters. In a study that spanned 15 years, researchers at Utah State University have demonstrated a positive connection between how parents play with toddlers and the children’s future academic success.

They found a correlation between the early parent-child interactions and later academic achievement.

- Deseret News, March 11, 2012

We’ve had a feeling that this might be the case for a long time simply because we’ve seen how our kids have developed their minds as we’ve played a wide variety of games. And in this sense we’re not just talking about board games.

It starts with the very simple games we’d play with our kids when they were very little – Storytelling games at bedtime or memory games as we’d drive places or go on vacation. A number of creative play time ideas are talked about in the news article as well.

Then as the kids grew, our board game collection started to increase and introduce a wider variety of games that helped them develop a number of other thought processes, like planning, strategy, trade-offs, relative values and much more. So of course we’d believe that these skills would serve them well as they do schoolwork.

Well, now we can point to a scientific study that validates what we’ve felt all along.

One of the other things we really find interesting about the study is the impact of both mom and dad.

The results document the particular importance of two things: how crucial certain kinds of play are to a child’s future and playtime with both mom and dad. Most research has focused on interactions with moms. They found dads are very important, too, she says.

You bet we are!

Both mom and dad play a critical role in a child’s development. But if circumstances don’t allow for both mom and dad to be there. Then forge ahead anyway. I can speak from experience in that matter because my dad passed away when I was just 3. And our mom did a great job of keeping us tight as a family and helping us develop well by spending all the time she could with us. It’s just a matter of priorities.

When we started playing board games and card games with our kids, we didn’t do so with this in mind. We just wanted to have fun. And we still do!

This may be a nice bi-product, but we’re still all about just spending time and having fun together!

We’re interested in your thoughts.

Have playing games (and board/card games) with your children helped them achieve more academically?

Take our poll and leave a comment by clicking on the “read more” link.

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Two months ago we wrote about some of the fantastic family board games that have been made available in digital form for mobile devices like iPads, iPhones, and Androids. And one of our favorites to make the jump is Ticket to Ride by Days of Wonder.

One of the issues we talked about at the end of the article is whether digital board games would make their physical board game version obsolete. Our thoughts were that they wouldn’t replace the physical versions at all.

We don’t think that digital incarnations of great board games will kill the physical board game version at all. The big draw for physical board games and card games is the socialization. Getting together with friends and family is what it’s about. Grab a game off the shelf, sit down at the table and have a great time together pushing bits, shuffling cards, and rolling dice.

Well, now we’ve heard direct from the source what the digital version of board games have done for sales of the physical version. Eric Hautemont, the founder and CEO of Days of Wonder recently revealed the results for an article in The Penny Arcade Report.

We’ve loved reading about his perspective on why certain board games endure – like Monopoly. The simple reason is that people are familiar with it. They’ve been taught the rules by others and so it’s easy to pull out and play. And we’ve seen that a lot in our family and with others we play games with. The games they enjoy playing are ones that their either already familiar with or are taught how to play them by their friends. (Of course, it also has to be a great game.)

When the iPad first game out, Days of Wonder was the first game publisher ready with a digital version of their board game – SmallWorld. And it launched at the same time as the iPad did. And the results show a huge success. Not only was it extremely well received, but sales of the physical version of SmallWorld also increased 40%!

And with Ticket to Ride, the success has come again. When Ticket to Ride released on the iPad, sales of the physical version of the board game jumped 30%. Then when it released for the iPhone, sales of the iPad version shot up 400% and led to a 70% increase in sales of the physical version.

So what’s the trick? It was so affordable and convenient for people to purchase and play, that it was hard to pass up. And once people became familiar with the rules from playing on their device they were anxious to get the physical version to play with their family and friends.

Publishers have found that when people buy a game they love, they’ll buy it multiple times. And that seems to be true because we’ve done the same thing. We don’t have multiple versions of Monopoly like many families do (in fact we don’t have a single copy), but we do have expansions for many board games that we love – like Ticket to Ride and Smallworld.

And we know we’re not alone. When we wrote our article a couple months ago, we asked people if they also play digital versions of board games and an overwhelming 85% said Yes.

If you haven’t yet tried Ticket to Ride (in any incarnation), we’d highly suggest you don’t wait any longer – it’s one of the best family board games!

I love amusement parks and carnivals!

I love the feeling of zooming all over on roller coasters and other contraptions. I also have many fond memories of lazy summer days with my cousins at state fairs with cool rides.

And on those fun summer days I’d imagine what it would be like to work at an amusement park. I’d dream of how cool it would be around all those rides every day and ride as much as I wanted to.

Of course, that’s a young kid’s dream. Reality sets in as you age and you realize that working at an amusement park or carnival is a lot different than riding the rides.

So is Carnival – a card game about building carnival rides – more like the thrill of riding the rides or the drudgery of operating them while you watch others have fun?

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There are a lot of party games that have a moderator asking questions or making statements. Chances are you’ve played a number of them.

But have you ever played any that have people slapping the table for the answer?

In Trigger, players get that chance.

See what Brooke thinks of Trigger in her short video review.

Can the whole family enjoy Trigger?
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Since we started doing video reviews of family board games (just over 2 years), we’ve posted 110 board game and card game reviews and over 100 articles related to family time and board games. And as of today (2/29/12), our videos have been viewed more than 320,000 times!

That’s hard for us to believe because we know our extended family isn’t that big.

All we can say is THANK YOU for participating with us in the fun endeavor of family game time.

Those numbers indicate that on average each video has been viewed more than 3,000 times. However, we know that’s definitely not the case. Some board game reviews clearly stand out as the most popular.

So what are our most viewed board game and card game video reviews?
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As you can tell from our last post, SaltCON was a great time for gaming in Salt Lake City. But another great part of the weekend for me was meeting Matthew Fisk who does a video podcast called The Victory Point.

The Victory Point is a video podcast that teaches how to play board games with detailed video instruction. If you’re familiar with our video reviews of board games, you’ll know that we don’t go into all the details and rules of how to play a game. Rather we just give enough for viewers to get a feel for the game and then describe what we like about the game.

Matthew on the other hand dives into the details. He does a great job giving detailed explanations of how to play the games. And while it is a podcast and you could just listen along, it’s actually more than just audio. It’s full of images that show the components and step through the game play. It’s also segmented into chapters so it’s very easy to skip to the exact part that you’re interested in.

One that I particularly like is the 7 Wonders episode. Prior to watching this enhanced video podcast I had heard a lot about 7 Wonders. However, when I’d look at pictures of the game it looked like there was just a ton going on. But then I found The Victory Point podcast and immediately watched the 7 Wonders episode. And with how well it was presented, the game became very easy to tackle.

So when I had the chance to finally play 7 Wonders, I felt very familiar with the way to play the game at the outset. And with the way the podcast is broken down into chapters of less than a minute each, if we had questions, we could quickly cue up that chapter for clarity.

After understanding the 7 Wonders game so well from The Victory Point podcast, I made sure to watch others. And all of them have been great.

The funny thing is that when I met Matthew and his wife at SaltCON on Friday, I didn’t have any idea who they were and vice a versa. I merely saw that they had a game of Ghost Stories set up and ready to play, so I asked if they wouldn’t mind if I joined in an learned the game. I had heard Ghost Stories was a great cooperative game, so I was anxious to give it a try. And when I saw it out with, it was the perfect chance.

It wasn’t until near the end of the game that I found out that Matthew was the man behind The Victory Point podcast and he made the connection of myself with The Board Game Family. And he and his wife are super nice and they both love board games. In fact, his wife gave him the tickets to SaltCON and the weekend stay for his birthday. How cool is that?

But once you make new connections, you can’t just stop with one game. On Saturday we got together again to take our first foray into Kingdom Builder.

If you haven’t listened to an episode of The Victory Point podcast, we’d highly recommend you check it out. You can download them iTunes or check them out directly online.

This past weekend I spent a lot of time playing games. And it was a lot of fun!
It was the annual board game convention in our area – SaltCON – and I was once again asked to be a judge in the new family game design competition.

And I just have to say that it was pretty cool to take a day off of work to go play games.

Now SaltCON isn’t a huge gaming convention but it has been growing over the past few years and this year moved locations to accommodate an expected 500 attendees. It all started Friday at 10am and went through Saturday night at midnight. And throughout most of that time, the game tables were filled with people playing games of all sorts.

While a number of people brought their own games, SaltCON has a good sized board game library where you can check out a game, pick a table, and sit down and play. They also have signs that you can take to the table with you – signs like “Players Wanted” or “Teacher Wanted”.

And the great thing is that everyone is super nice. It makes pulling up a chair and playing a game with strangers very comfortable. And in the end, I walked away having met a ton of new, friendly people.

Great Time to Try New Games
In addition to the games I played as part of the new board game design competition, I played a number of other games that were recently published or that have been on my wish list for a while. SaltCON was a great chance to try them out to determine if they’d stay on my board game wish list.

So what are the games that stayed on the list?

Read more »

Have you had the enjoyable experience of being whooped by your kids in a board game?

Well, this week I had that great experience again.

After having been on a business trip for most of this week, I returned home nice an tired. My flight home lasted most of the day and when I finally got home, I was ready to just plop down and close my eyes for a good rest.

So I was surprised when our oldest son, Trevor came into the kitchen and plunked down a game on the table. There, sitting before my eyes was Power Grid. While we haven’t posted a review of Power Grid before, let me just say that I love it. I think it’s a fantastic board game.

For those that aren’t familiar with Power Grid, I’ll quickly tell you that it’s a game about building and extending your network of power plants. It has many different elements in the game that are so cool. It has auctions, fluctuating resource markets, network building, and many strategic decisions in each phase of every turn. And because of all that, it’s also a long game.

So when Trevor placed Power Grid on the table, I had a dilemma. I sure don’t want to pass up a chance to play a game with my 16 yr old. When he’s in the mood to play a game together, I better jump. Here he was, on a school night wanting to hang with dad. And before I left for my trip I had just bought The Robots expansion for Power Grid and had talked to him about it and how anxious I was to play it. But my mind and body sure wasn’t set for such an endeavor that night.

After telling him how torn I was, I told him that Power Grid just wasn’t in the cards. I told him that I’d be more than happy to play a shorter or lighter game, but I’d have to take a rain check on Power Grid. Unfortunately nothing else seemed to strike his fancy right then.

But when I walked into my room after that, I noticed a package on my bed that could only mean one thing – a copy of Yinsh that I recently ordered had arrived!

Now, here was a game that I’d be up for playing with Trevor. There are a few games that have been on my wish list for a number of years. And I believe Yinsh has been at the top the longest. It’s been hard to find in game stores and seems to be out of stock at a lot of online game stores as well. So when I saw it pop up on Amazon a couple weeks ago for only $22, I had to jump on it.

After seeing the package on the bed, my body regained some energy and I quickly opened it up and hustled downstairs to tell Trevor that a game was on.

Yinsh is a 2-player abstract strategy game with a very unique way to play. It’s all about getting 5 double-sided markers in a row with your color face up. Do this 3 times and you win the game. The challenge is in how you can flip the markers to get them to show your color face up. And once you get 5 in a row, you remove those markers and then also remove one of the pieces that allows you to flip markers. So as you get closer to winning, you also get handicapped.

Like I said, I’ve had my eye on it for years and just knew that it would be a 2-player game that I’d most likely love. And after playing it that night, I’m excited to report that my guess was right. It’s a fantastic game!

The only problem was that Trevor whooped me up and down – twice.

And I loved every minute of it!

It’s simply a great feeling when you can go head-to-head with your son and get beat. We’ve written before about whether you should let your kids win when playing board games. And it’s pretty clear that the older and wiser they get, this question isn’t even relevant. When you can sit down for a bit with a child for a mental challenge like this – no matter the outcome – it’s pretty sweet!

Of course the other part that makes the story sweet is that Trevor and I are planning a late night of gaming goodness tonight where for starters I’ll get a rematch of Yinsh and then who knows what else.

Here’s to game time with your family!

 

(And look forward full reviews of both Yinsh and Power Grid in the coming months.)