Hello Friend,

I’m a true believer in the opinion that there is ‘a game for everyone’. Different people certainly have different ideas about what is fun… but everyone likes to have fun. 

Ok, there may be a grumpy old man somewhere, who’s only pleasure is to moan and swear at school children who dare to pass by his house. But everyone else likes to have fun. 

But loads of people claim to hate board games. When you quiz people, in about 80% of the cases, you can trace the declared hatred of games back to a traumatising game of Monopoly, some 30 years earlier. The other 20% have equally distressing stories about other games they’ve been forced to play. 

However, these people are too quick to condemn all games. They just haven’t yet discovered the games that are right for them. 

Some people hate acting games, because they feel like everyone is looking at them and judging them… but they love word games, because they’ve got a great vocabulary and love showing it off. Some people hate word games, because when they’re required to be clever, their brain just goes to mush… but they love games with tetris shaped tiles, because they enjoy the puzzle of fitting them together. Some people hate games with tetris shaped tiles because they can’t rotate and reflect things in their head, and trying to do so triggers high levels of stress… but they love acting games, because they’ve got an expressive face and a desire to be the centre of attention.   And so on. 

Do you have a person in your life that claims not to like games? Reply to this email by telling me something about them. Let me see if I can come up with a couple of suggestions that might get them to change their mind.