Can board games be an aid to religious development? Judging by the surprisingly large number available, several certainly try. Do they succeed? As vehicles for thinking about religion, possibly; as games, generally not.
This failure-as-games does not surprise games designer and Quaker David Parlett. The core of a good game, he says, is an original rules set, a way of playing that hasn’t been done before; the theme, message or look of the game is secondary. Take Monopoly, he says. 'One of the reasons why that has lasted so long is that when it came out it had a completely original mechanism.' Many religious games come from the opposite viewpoint: they have a message to push or information to get across and then cast around for an appropriate vehicle, which often replicates another game.
Which isn't to say they are all bad. Bibleopoly (no prizes for guessing its inspiration) is actually pretty fun first time round, if only because you spend your time laughing at the differences with the original (and no, Sodom and Gomorrah do not take the place of Old Kent Road). Sadly, the sole Quaker contribution to this genre, The 1652 Country Game, came out badly: the dual elements of racing around a board as fast as possible and regularly stopping to discuss Quaker values and beliefs don't gel well.
BuddhaWheel, based on Buddhist ideas of rebirth and enlightenment, is the best of the crop. Emily Rogers, a Buddhist with Quaker roots, spent five years developing the game, in which players travel through many lives trying to become Buddhas. The process of creating and playing BuddhaWheel has helped Emily develop her own faith, because she had to consider which of the actions players engage in during the game are positive and negative, as well as see the positive effects of negative actions. One of the most interesting features is that when a player is reborn in a hell or god realm, they must describe for themselves hellish or godlike experiences. Emily says that non-religious players in particular have found this liberating: 'Unless we have a spiritual path or spiritual community, we don’t really talk about what we really love and really hate'.
Like religion in general, different religious board games appeal to different people (The Evangelical Explosion Game, anyone?) but many have focused too heavily on the ends of informing people about the religion instead of the means of producing a great game. And if it’s not a game people want to play, then it won’t be a goal they ever bother to reach.

Labels: games