Photo: David Parlett and his game Hare and Tortoise.
The drama of not knowing: Joseph Jones interviews the board game designer and historian David Parlett
‘Games can be a spiritual experience.’
Famously, George Orwell said that sport was ‘war minus the shooting’. Those of us with particular memories of Monopoly with the extended family at Christmas might think that board games are not far behind. So what is a Quaker doing getting mixed up with all of that?
I think the most important thing to say about games from this point of view is that they are both cooperative and competitive. In order to play a game you have to tacitly agree to follow the rules. And what distinguishes games from just informal play, or playing around, is that games are formal. They have a structure and they have a set of rules, and the rules of a game may be likened to the script of a play – a game that’s well played between two well-matched players is like performing in the theatre; you are in effect putting the rules into play and performing them, and that’s where the cooperation comes in.
