For those old enough to remember a time before the advent of smart phones, people used to play games on a board, not a screen or app. Some of my favorite childhood board games included Monopoly, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Battleship, Stratego, Connect Four, and LIFE.
“Times have changed, however. In 2005, Milton Bradley produced a new edition of LIFE, and this particular version carried the subtitle Twists and Turns. The game board no longer consists of a linear movement from young adulthood to retirement with transitional events sequenced in predetermined fashion. Instead, the LIFE game board now consists of four loops, and one must determine time and time again, in no particular order, which one to enter. Earn it!, Learn it!, Live it! and Love it! are the declarative imperatives for these loops that now serve as the parameters for what it means to play the game of LIFE. Rather than nine career cards and nine salary cards in the previous game, from which a player could at best choose among three, this version has twenty-four possible career cards open to every player as well as the possibility of attaining up to seven promotions within a given profession. Interestingly, the game is no longer played with paper money. Rather, each player is now issued a Visa game card that is zipped through a ‘Lifepod’ monitor in the middle of the board, suggesting that LIFE has been restructured by a mass consumer mandate. Each player travels through the various loops of life, not as a family unit in an automobile game piece, but solo, scooting along on a skateboard unencumbered by a spouse or child. Marriage and child rearing are still optional but far less valued as integral to social personhood. The object of the game is, in case it is in doubt, is no longer a retirement spot at the end of the journey. Instead, the valuation of a player’s life is determined relative to other players by sliding one’s Visa card through the Lifepod at the end of the game and revealing how many ‘life points’ have been earned through skillfully navigating life’s loops.”[1]
Life definitely has changed and it seems board games such as LIFE have become relics from a distant age. But for those of us who have played board games, we recognize the value and relational connection that came from playing with family and friends. After the Columbine shooting in 1999, Josh McDowell wrote and dedicated a book entitled The Disconnected Generation: Saving Our Youth From Self Destruction as a gift to parents and families of Columbine. Coming out at the turn of the millennium, this book was really written twenty years before its time. Josh contrasts the generational gap between Baby Boomers and Millennials with these descriptors: Color TV – Internet, Working Fathers – Absent Fathers, At-home Mothers – Day Care, Women Employees – Women Managers, LP’s – CD’s, Rock-‘n’-Roll – Hip-hop, Long hair – Body Piercing, “Free” Sex – “Safe Sex.” Other than CD’s, I don’t see much today that wouldn’t fit in the Gen Z category.
Life for the next generation can be loopy. Skating around with headphones in, unplugged from the world and real people, life can become isolated and lonely. Students begin to accept any lifestyle and or approve of others, endorse other beliefs or claim no right to judge, personally develop preferences, and think everyone can do what is best or right for them. As in the game of LIFE, money/materials can begin to become what life is oriented around. McDowell writes, “The postmodern culture threatens to undermine our students’ faith and moral character.”
We may not get this new generation to connect to us through playing traditional board games, but we must find ways to connect. Almost twenty years of school shootings since Columbine only reinforces this point. McDowell found six connecting points to help one make this connection and I think they are just as relevant today. He says to give the next generation a sense of authenticity, security, significance, lovability, importance, and responsibility. McDowell labeled these six “A’s” as Affirmation, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection, Availability, and Accountability.
Things have changed but some things stay the same. The world will be a much better place if we make the time to connect.
[1] Setran, David and Chris Kiesling. Spiritual Formation in Emerging Adulthood, 57.