It's an old question--one I've been asked, and asked others, many times. But I asked it of myself today due to a new insight.

It seems every time I get close to really getting into a game and feeling it might be "my game"--the one I can "marry" and enjoy exclusively for the rest of my life--something about it loses its appeal. That always makes me stop and think. What is it I'm really looking for in a game? And why have I been so fascinated with games all my life anyway?

This time I reflected back to childhood. But not to the actual games I played then--which is what I usually reflect back to. Instead I remembered the sandbox. It wasn't really a sandbox per se; it was just a patch of dirt next to a tree in our backyard--or sometimes a different tree in our front yard. There, when I was pretty young--maybe 6 or 7--my friends and I would play for what seemed like hours on end. We'd bring in toy vehicles--trucks, cars, jeeps, airplanes, tanks, or whatever--and sometimes toy soldiers. We'd carve out little roads with our hands and maybe gather sticks or rocks together and call them airports or garages or forts or something. Whatever suited our fancy. And on the fly, we'd let our imagination run free and make up stories, acting them out with the toys.

Other times these same friends and I would play army. We'd pick up toy guns and odd pieces of equipment (often real WWII belts or canteens or holsters which our fathers had brought back from the war or picked up at a surplus store) and take up sides--or sometimes all be on the same team, fighting imaginary enemies--and traipse off into the nearby woods to have mock shoot-em-ups.

So, what does that have to do with board games? Well, I think that for me there may be a connection. When I look back on those childhood games, I'd have to say it was the most fun I've ever had. A couple years later I was too old for such games, but I continued to have nostalgic memories of them for many years afterward. I remember walking with my high-school friend Sam one day, and I happened to mention playing army; and he said he'd give anything to be able to go back to those days and feel that free and just lose himself in an imaginative adventure like that. So, it wasn't just me who cherished such fond memories.

In later childhood, I learned different kinds of games--games with strict rules and clear objectives. Instead of playing army, the kids my age played baseball or football. Instead of playing with toy soldiers and vehicles in the sandbox, kids my age now played games like Monopoly, Risk, or Clue. Or sometimes a classic game like checkers (which every boy got for Christmas at least once).

I came to hate sports at a very early age. I don't know why. I was a klutz for one thing, but I could've corrected that with practice, I guess. Part of it was being "mentally gifted"--which meant I was being programmed for success in life via my brains, not my muscle. Early on, I bought into the stereotype of athletes being dummies (and of nerds being pencilnecks, but that didn't matter because being smart was more important than being strong). So, I avoided sports whenever I could. And when I couldn't (because throughout my school years sports were required), I played halfheartedly and didn't care.

Board Games

But board games were another thing altogether! In fifth grade, I remember the teacher (Mrs. Tussy) kept a selection of board games on hand for rainy-day recesses. It was the first time I ever saw or played Clue, and I loved it at first sight. Twister was brand-new then, and one kid offered to bring it in--but Mrs. Tussy wasn't sure it'd be appropriate. IIRC, she finally gave in, though, and we played Twister in class one day. It didn't impress me, though the other kids seemed to like it. I'd rather have played Clue.

That year I made up a Christmas wish list, and it had nothing but board games on it. My mom bought me a bunch of them, and I was in seventh heaven. (I guess she still remembers that, because just this past Christmas--36 years later--she sent me four new board games--Quarto, Pylos, Quoridor, and one other. But I haven't even torn off the shrinkwrap yet.) Once I had all those games, though, I started to realize I had mixed feelings about them. I loved the themes--getting to play detective (Clue), real-estate tycoon (Monopoly), career man (Careers), or world conqueror (Risk). But it was often hard to find anyone else to play the games with. I might talk my mother into it sometimes, or less often my father, or cajole my little sister into playing. They often played grudgingly, though; and it annoyed me that they seemed more interested in winning than in really enjoying the game. Thus, I hated games that required three or more players, because players were too hard to come by. And in fact, I wished games could be played alone, because then I'd be able to play them all I wanted to, without the hassle of talking others into it.

Another thing I discovered is that I preferred games in which my pieces could move around freely, rather than just along a track. I felt confined in Monopoly. Careers was better, because there were lots of side tracks to take. Clue and Risk were better yet, because your pieces could move in many different directions and get to anyplace on the board. The freer the movement, the better I liked the game.

By the time I was eleven or twelve, my focus was on games with a military theme. I still loved Risk, but a friend introduced me to Stratego and I liked that too. I also played Dogfight with a cousin one evening, and I thought that was great. My dad played checkers with me back then, but I never got the hang of it and was drawn to chess instead--because it looked like a stylized medieval battle.

What I was really doing, half consciously, was looking for an adult equivalent of my old sandbox games. In case that wasn't clear enough, I discovered something else at this time: I hated games that forced me to think too hard. My dad could always beat me at checkers--even after he showed me some of the tricks and tried to help me learn. Somehow I could never catch on; and to this day I suck so bad at checkers that I'm intimidated by the very sight of the game. (I bought a book on checkers a few years ago, determined to apply myself and finally "crack the code"; but even with the book's help and a computer to practice on, I failed miserably.) Chess turned out to be the same kind of game--though I learned a lot from chess books and managed to at least go from beginner to novice; it's less of a stylized medieval battle than an abstract test of geometric logic. When I realized that, chess instantly went from being appealing to being abhorrent.

When I was thirteen, a friend (the same one who'd introduced me to Stratego) bought Avalon Hill's Waterloo. He gave it a good build-up for a week or so before we sat down to play it. Once we did, I was hooked. Despite the cheap-looking cardboard pieces, it was a big, detailed, theme-heavy game such as I'd never seen before. The mapboard was like my old sandbox--only better because it was more detailed (and in effect bigger, because of the small-hex grid). And the way we played, winning wasn't really an issue for a long time--because who could even comprehend such a complicated game, much less master it well enough to compete in it? For us--at least for the first several games--it was just a matter of pushing the pieces around, setting up battles, and resolving combat. Just experimenting and watching what happened, observing the scenario as it unfolded--and also imagining what the real 1815 battle must've looked like.

Perfect Game

Throughout high school, and into college and beyond, I was an avid wargamer. I bought and played at least a couple hundred wargames, selling off a batch when my collection got too big, then buying new games as they came out. Most of the time, I was looking for the one perfect wargame--one that I could claim as "my game" and stick to long enough to master all its nuances. I started a wargaming club; I dabbled at military miniatures; and every chance I got I immersed myself in wargaming. It was as close to an obsession as anything I've ever experienced.

But all the while, I was just trying to recapture the spirit of the childhood sandbox. When other wargamers would start talking about conventions and tournaments, their remarks fell on deaf ears. To me, that wasn't what wargaming was about. That's what chess and checkers and bridge are about; and I hated those kinds of games (though I secretly wished I could be good at them). The socializing that went on at conventions didn't interest me, because it would take me away from immersing myself in a wargame scenario. The competition that went on in tournaments seemed equally repugnant, because the focus on winning would force me to concentrate and sweat over the game instead of just relaxing and enjoying it.

But in the late 80s or early 90s, my viewpoint changed. One day while playing a solitaire scenario of ASL (Advanced Squad Leader), the scales fell from my eyes. I had always supposed that on a scale of 1 to 10--1 being "chess with dice" and 10 being "real combat"--ASL was about an 8. Now, all of a sudden, it was perfectly clear to me that it was really only about a 2. It was such a shock that I'm still feeling the re-percussions even today.

So, what happened to cause such a disillusionment? Well, nothing happened exactly. I was just playing ASL as usual, looking up the rules I wasn't sure about, immersing myself imaginatively and emotionally in WWII tactical combat. . . . And all of a sudden reality seemed to strike down my whole "suspension of disbelief." Looking up the rules was real; rolling the dice and checking the chart was real. But the WWII tactical combat was purely imaginary. Which meant that any connection between the game itself and WWII tactical combat was illusory.

Before, I had figured all the work I was putting into learning and mastering the game was basically the same kind of work a military historian does: I was learning about the tactical dimension of WWII--how things really worked at that level. If the game system had been a complete, accurate model of tactical combat, that would've been true, I guess. But it wasn't such a model. For one thing, no real-life commander had even a tiny fraction of the control that an ASL player enjoys. Every turn of every ASL game, I was making detailed decisions of a kind that were never made by WWII battalion leaders.

Then again, I didn't really want that. If ASL had had totally realistic command-control rules, I'd have complained that the game deprived me of the overview and level of control I wanted. I wanted to be both the battalion commander and a god hovering omnipotently and omnisciently over the battlefield. But to achieve that, I'd be involved in military fiction, not military history. And to enjoy it as military fiction, I'd have to suspend my disbelief. But that thick rulebook undermined my efforts to do that: every time I looked up a rule, I'd say to myself, "OK, so that's how this subsystem of the game works--but it's only related to real combat in a very distorted way."

I don't know, maybe it's just that ASL was too complicated. The more I had to look up rules and refresh my memory (or learn a special subsystem for a particular scenario), the clearer it became that they were, in fact, just rules. Not accurate historical models of combat, but just the rules of the game. When it came right down to it, I was sitting there looking at a game board, moving pieces and rolling dice. The very same thing I'd be doing if I were playing Monopoly or chess (except that in chess there'd be no dice). If I were a WWII battalion commander, I'd be doing very different things.

That's about the best I can do of describing what I experienced that day. The decision that resulted was: if I'm basically just playing chess anyway, why not dump this complicated rulebook and all the hoops I've been jumping through, and just play chess? If all I want to do is imagine WWII tactical combat I can do that without any props--or by watching a movie or reading a book.

Since then, I've found that that works. Chess is sufficient to give me all the mental exercise and logical understanding I was getting from ASL; and books and documentaries give me more of the imaginative "being there" insight than I was getting from ASL. So, instead of playing wargames, I now play chess and read about war. I've found it to be simpler and more effective--and more honest than I was being with myself before.

What this newfound honesty meant (as hindsight reveals) is that I had finally outgrown the sandbox. Henceforth, the child in me would be subordinate to the adult. Games would never again be just an imaginative escape or a comfortable way to vicariously experience the drama of battle. From now on, they'd be what they really are: competitive mental exercises.

The home computer transformed gaming for me, mainly by enabling me to play most any game by myself. Wargames had been so big and elaborate and time-consuming that I could just play both sides against each other and enjoy that. But with a home computer, I could now play chess, learn bridge and go, and even grit my teeth and face checkers again. So I did all that, and enjoyed it in a way. But it was never as satisfying as wargames had been. Something always seemed to be missing.

I tried computer wargames, real-time combat flight sims, and strategy games like Civ2. They were all appealing at first--but after a while it seemed the game was playing me instead of me playing it. The eye and ear candy would wear off the way chewing gum loses its flavor. As long as I kept the settings on Easy and let the child in me run free, computer games could be fun. But as soon as I'd switch to Intermediate level and approach the game from my new adult vantage point, it'd be frustrating and time-consuming.

Classics

So, for the most part, I've abandoned the elaborate computer games and returned to playing classic games like dominoes, backgammon, or cards. Those games provide the mental exercise that the adult in me finds useful and worthwhile. They're also short enough that I can play a game or three in the evening and still have a life. And because of the chance element, I don't have to think all that hard; there's a chance of winning via luck, even if I commit a blunder or two (though the adult in me shakes its head and says I ought to be studying the odds and thinking things through carefully at all times--or better yet, just stick to chess).

Yet, just the other day I was driving to work and saw an airplane turning in the sky overhead. Images of the sandbox flooded back in, and I remembered when I'd fly my toy airplane toward my friend's vehicle and say, "My plane is coming down and bombing your jeep."

And my friend would say, "OK, but my jeep is driving fast into a cave where your bombs can't get it." And I'd make explosion sounds with my mouth and say, "I just bombed the cave, and now your jeep is trapped in there." And my friend says, Well, my guy got out of his jeep and got a shovel and started digging . . . and now he's dug out and can drive the jeep out again."

That's the kind of game the child in me wants to play. But I've outgrown it twice now: once when I got into board wargames, and again when board wargames lost their charm for me.

Sometimes I think I ought to give RPGs a try. But I wouldn't like them; they're too elaborate, unstructured, and theme-heavy for my taste now (and also too social; I'm quite the lone wolf). Other times I think I ought to get back into wargaming. But I wouldn't like that either; all the chrome and complication would be distasteful to me now. The best I can do, I guess, is play solitaire and flash back every so often to the magic of the childhood sandbox.

When it comes to games, I'm hopelessly torn, I guess, between the desire for imaginative immersion and the desire for mental exercise. But these days games can only satisfy the latter desire, not the former. So I find myself playing games almost the way I do calisthenics: just for the exercise, not so much for fun.

Something tells me that if my childhood experience had been different--if I'd made people (i.e., the other players and our social interaction) the priority--game playing today would be more fun than work. But alas, I always regarded other players like the batteries in a "batteries not included" toy--as something I wish weren't needed in the first place, but the sooner I get 'em and plug 'em in and put 'em to work, the better.

Sorry to end on such a "tragic" note. But that's my story so far. What's yours? How did you get into gaming, and what have you learned along the way?