Life Off the Grid
Can you even remember life before the Internet? Some of you truly can’t because you’re not old enough. Think of all the things you couldn’t do if the Internet/World Wide Web didn’t exist anymore.
I experienced something similar to this for most of the day today. The powers that be cut off our Web access to troubleshoot some degradation in service that we’d been having the past few Fridays. To put it another way, email worked today, but Google didn’t. Also, the cafeteria was only accepting cash, not credit cards.
Would more board games get played if there were no Internet?
If you stretch the idea of lack of Internet to mean that you can’t connect computers locally either, then no one could play electronic games where each player needs his own system. You could take turns on a single computer, but no one ever seriously did that for any significant length of time. So there still could be a fair amount of time spent on solo computer gaming.
Some people would probably spend their new-found time on other activities – maybe even playing games outdoors.
I think quite a few online gamers would make the move to board games though, since there are quite a few similarities. You sit in a chair. You have the play area in front of you. There are opponents to beat. There are tactics and strategies to experiment with. There are victory points for the taking.
If there were no Internet, you probably wouldn’t be reading this (at least, not as a blog). There would be no Board Game Geek, Twitter, or Facebook for promoting board games. There would be no Amazon or other online stores from which to purchase board games. You’d have to go to your closest brick-and-mortar game store to buy them or order them through the (snail) mail.
On balance though, I still think more board games would be played. That said, I don’t want the Internet to go away. Do you?