With the emergence of Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator, there has been a massive movement of bringing cardboard to the digital space. This isn’t necessarily new since games such as The Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Ticket to Ride have been on digital platforms for some time now. So, why then do people still take the time (and money) to spend on boxes of cardboard if the easier option is to always sit in front of a screen within your own home?
I am hard on the side of playing board games in person, feeling the cardboard, and seeing the person you’re playing with/against face-to-face. I also cannot deny the ease of accessibility of being able to port a game to the computer and being able to play with a multitude of people outside of your favorite gaming group. Or especially in my case, being able to connect with my favorite gaming group across the pond via these digital versions. A lot of what I discuss seefurther is simply my experience with the in-person version of games versus the on-line versions and while I know that it won’t be the same for everyone, I hope that a connection is made along with some form of illumination as to why cardboard feels so right.
I’ll start with an easy one for me, the number one game on my list, Seasons. The online version of this game on Tabletop Simulator was surprisingly smooth and certain upkeep items (such as keeping track of cards that provided crystals or tokens at the change of seasons or end of the round) were automatically taken care of which is a helpful aid. Including the audio benefit of Discord, the normal banter we would normally have in person was nearly the same. Surprisingly though, the game wasn’t any quicker than an in-person version of the game would take. I had thought that the lack of setup and upkeep would shave off an easy 20 minutes but this didn’t happen. So, the game lengths are about the same but the online version removes setup/upkeep woes, wouldn’t that make it the better version simply due to that? The beauty of Seasons isn’t simply how the game plays and the strategies one can create while playing. Every turn, one player has to roll those massive dice. Every player has to fiddle with their currently available cards while also looking forward to the future on what cards become available. The touching and thinking over a player’s elemental tokens is something every player does, even if they aren’t conscious of it. This fidgeting and handling of die/cards/tokens is something that is simply not available over the internet and I would argue adds way more to the game than the simple benefit of a computer handling upkeep.