Come June, I’ll start hosting a monthly board game group out of my church, Christ Community Church. I often find myself asking why though. I’ve hosted massive game groups before, but never had an actual direction other than a nebulous desire to spread the gospel and without that direction, I found myself opening the door to a lot of conversations I didn’t finish.
This time around, I’m concentrating less on board games in general and more on the fellowship aspect they provide. I’ve learned from experience that games can build bonds between members of a community who would never otherwise meet, such as teens and seniors playing chess together. That’s where I want to be and the kind of relationships I’d like to foster.
To that end we need to understand the elements of the gaming experience model. There are five of these elements that are important for planning these meetups:
- The social interaction between players due to the game (Social)
- The engagement between players and the narrative of the game (Narrative)
- The actions required by the players in changing the game state (Action)
- The knowledge that the players bring to the game (Knowledge)
- The decisions required by the players in changing the game state (Strategy)
These five concepts-Social, Narrative, Action, Knowledge, and Strategy (SNAKS)-are the underlying
concepts for gaming experience archetypes and will help me choose my “featured”games. My hope is that I don’t just pick games that I want to play myself or sell, but ones that bring people together
But hey, maybe I’m overthinking this.