Strollerderby

I love spending time playing with my son. However, even as a kid I never liked board games, other than the Cranium type games. I've never even played monopoly and at 27 have vowed that I never will.

Let me tell you, on the 5th round of Candy Land, I've been known to cheat so that my son can be the last one to win and we can try something else.

With Chutes and Ladders, I'll cheat on the first go round. I fucking hate that game. If ever a game needed an express version. How about playing until 20 rather than 100 squares.

But more active rainy day games like Charades and Twister I can happily play for a while. Charades is really funny with a 5 year old!

Every time we get a group of people together to play Monopoly, someone ends up crying and/or divorced.  So we started playing Risk instead, and so far have only had to mediate one fistfight.  I'm thinking the express versions will cut down on the violence a little.

One thing that's worth considering is that in the last 10 years or so there are literally hundreds of fantastic board games that have come on the market, mostly from Europe. The production value in these games are often very high and many of them are highly entertaining and don't run for many hours at a time. The main problem is that you don't see them pop up at the big toystores like Toys 'R Us because they don't fit their marketing model: they aren't a game that everyone knows already (Monopoly, Scrabble), and they aren't a media tie-in to a popular TV show or movie.

If you find that you like board games but are tired of the same games you've played for the past 20 years (or more), check out some of the popular titles like Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, or Carcassonne. Here's a link to one of the larger sites that tracks the larger world of new boardgames:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/822

I play a modified version Carcassonne with my 4-yr old daughter, and she absolutely loves it. She's also a big fan of Loopin' Louie, which is a mechanized child's game (also from Germany):

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/327

Yeah, it's not the attention span that makes people want to not play games, it's the poor games. Hey, I'll sit for 3 hours to watch Lord of the Rings but try to get me to sit for 30 minutes of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.  It's not that I'm not willing to give my attention to a screen it's all about what's on that screen.

I agree with Pnumekin check out boardgamegeek.com  Our family play games 2-3 nights a week (games last 1-1.5 hours) and have enourmous fun. But, the games are of this new breed. I couldn't get anyone to give that time to Candyland, Clue, or Monopoly.