Have you tried playing board games other than Snakes and Ladders with small children? Ideally kids under about seven, if you want to avoid the competitive snotraggery. I ask this not because I think you'd definitely enjoy it (you might not), but because it can be an excellent, simplified, case study in why humans enjoy board games. Things like Hungry Hungry Hippos or Headache or Doctor - there's a DELIGHT in the mechanism, as well as anything from fascination to resentment at the role of chance.
I think with more complex games there's also a...sort of enjoyment from modelling different decision types? Monopoly for instance was SUPPOSED to make you hate capitalism (instead, it just makes you hate monopoly). If you play it with pre-teens it shows up really sharply 'trying out different social models and roles in a safe sandbox' - my cousin used to regularly run a black market ring in spare game pieces, which had no conceivable use, but he convinced us to buy and trade them, alongside the properties and houses. And for our part, it's not like we didn't KNOW this was useless, but it was fun to play along AS IF we were collecting something precious.
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regna
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Date: 2018-10-18 02:56 pm (UTC)I think with more complex games there's also a...sort of enjoyment from modelling different decision types? Monopoly for instance was SUPPOSED to make you hate capitalism (instead, it just makes you hate monopoly). If you play it with pre-teens it shows up really sharply 'trying out different social models and roles in a safe sandbox' - my cousin used to regularly run a black market ring in spare game pieces, which had no conceivable use, but he convinced us to buy and trade them, alongside the properties and houses. And for our part, it's not like we didn't KNOW this was useless, but it was fun to play along AS IF we were collecting something precious.