It’s not a matter of life or death – there’s more to it … we must win!
Board games teach us life’s lessons.
Playing will teach us awareness and understanding of our environment early in life already. This begins with the color and shape of objects, continues through different game mechanisms all the way to complex corporate management games. We will, when playing together, celebrate great victories after epic battles. And funny party games will make us laugh together. We may at times be really down, forced to swallow a bitter pill of defeat. We will learn to handle these emotions and understand each other better.
Why people like to play
“Man is only fully human when playing” is a famous quote of Friedrich Schiller and playing in its many forms in fact represents a vital component of life. But why then do we enjoy playing so much? Sigmund Freud already defined playing as a problem and anxiety cleansing condition, a way of breaking taboos and an escape into foreign realities. Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi postulated that the so-called “flow” of play is important in a game. Players in “flow” will be fully wrapped up in and focused on the game. Csíkszentmihályi describes this state as akin to oblivion.
What playing games will teach us
Flow thus allows us to fully immerse into a role, gaining new perspectives and thus new insights. The intense emotional experience when playing games will embed new facts in our mind clearly more deeply. More firmly embedded facts will also be easier to recall. Games thus encourage not only learning, but also:
Csíkszentmihályi states that “flow” leads to a type of oblivion that helps us to focus. Especially our digital world will increasingly offer distraction. A quick glance at our cell phone, quickly checking our e-mail or sharing a friend’s new post – our everyday life offers constant distraction. All the more important therefore that we learn to resist such distractions and fully focus on issues at hand at an early age already.
Board and card games demand a high degree of logical thinking. Depending on the game, future moves must be planned well in advance and the opponent’s moves must also be anticipated as well as can be. Playing is not monotonous assembly line work, but quite the opposite. It is all about analyzing your situation, weighing up your options and planning ahead. This promotes logical thinking.
Freud already recognized that playing games has a type of psychological cleansing effect. This means that playing will help to relieve stress and deal with problems and anxieties. Playing encourages submersion into foreign realities and leaving our daily stress behind.
Children and youths on average today spend more than 220 minutes alone on their smartphone each day. Although today’s kids are excellently digitally interlinked, they are under threat of social isolation. Board and card games will bring family and friends together around a table again. This will encourage interaction and strengthen social bonding.
Children find defeat particularly difficult to cope with. Although a tear may often be shed, learning how to cope with setbacks is absolutely vital in life. Games offer the ideal platform to learn how disappointment may be handled. Children do not need to always win. Children may be praised when they win – this will boost their confidence. And after this, losing the next time round won’t be so traumatic at all.
All the senses and talents are challenged and stimulated
Our interactive family game INTERACTION will allow players to prove their mettle in five different areas: knowledge, creativity, action, social and games. The free app furthermore adapts the tasks set by the game to suit the location and age of each player. The questions and tasks given to an 8-year-old will, for instance, be different to those of a 12-year-old and different again from those of parents or grandparents. INTERACTION thus challenges but will not overtax a player’s senses and talents. And regular updates will constantly offer new game content to be discovered. And best of all: The app offers first time support to relegate boring instructions to the past – simply unpack and start playing
