Replaying old favorites

Insight on the News, March 11, 2002 by Lauren Murphy

Americans are craving comfort food, remembering the importance of family, sprucing up their homes and spending more time in church. And they are playing games again. Board games such as Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit, once dismissed as hokey, are out of the closet and competing for attention with newer games such as Scattergories and, among higher technology, Microsoft's Xbox.

"The worse the economy is, the better board games do," says Bob Schwartz, owner of Games Unlimited in Pittsburgh, whose sales have increased by 25 percent in the last year. In the five recessions he's seen in 25 years in business, the sales pickup is "like clockwork."

Culture-watchers say that, in the wake of terrorism, board games encourage relaxed, comfortable social interchange, although their upward trend in sales began before Sept. 11. According to the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales for board games, sales were up 23 percent during the first 10 months of 2000, compared with the same period in 1999.

Of course, not all games promote relaxed family interchange. The Boingo Games company offers a slightly less wholesome approach to home entertainment with the Wheel of Intoxication, which is, according to its manufacturer, a "supercharged, party in a box" that lets players "skip the bar tonight and party up."

But forecaster Gerald Celente, author of Trends 2000, claims board games can have a rehabilitative quality. "It's no wonder why people are using these games because they're simple," says Celente, the director of the Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y. "They're ways of reuniting and bonding together."

LAUREN MURPHY WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER DAILY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.