The Game of Life
September 4, 2003

“Life is a game”, (or so they say); but I would submit to you that the opposite is also true: “Games are a reflection of life.” Consequently, as our lifestyles evolve, so do our games.

At a recent family get-together, I was drafted into playing a few of the new games. They are not like the old ones, such as “Monopoly” which emphasized individual responsibility and entrepreneurship. No, rather these new games are played in teams and the objectives reward loud and obnoxious behavior. You might think, “Finally, a game for me!” but I would caution you.

It is no coincidence that the decline of family values in our modern culture corresponds with the decline in popularity of old-fashioned games, like “Sorry” and “Trouble.” The mere titles of these old games demonstrated that our society used to be concerned with the feelings of others and some sense of morality.

Contrast this with new games with in-your-face names like “Outburst”, “Balderdash” and “Taboo”. These titles are confrontational and attempt to appeal to the more deviant side of our human nature.

Older games tended to have some practical application in real life and offered some benefit to humanity-- for instance, the game “Operation.” No doubt, somewhere out there today, there is a doctor whose first surgery was a Funny-Bone-ectomy on a patient who had a red light bulb for a nose.

Compare this with all the “Trivial Pursuit” champions out there. Right now they are probably all sitting around on their sofas watching television, being spoon-fed yet even more useless trivia.

Let me illustrate this decay in our culture with “The Game of Life” itself. I can remember their old advertising jingle: “You will learn about life when you play the game of Life.” Well, life has changed! And in order for this statement to hold up today, “The Game of Life” would also need to change—and not for the better.

In the original “Game of Life”, each player eventually comes to a fork in the road where they must choose between entering the labor force now, or attending college and getting a job later. In the updated version the dilemma becomes “Which part of my anatomy will I have pierced?” and “What design shall I choose for my tattoo?” These questions must be answered before dropping out of High School.

In the old version of “Life”, each player would also get a car and get married and decide on how many children to have. The spouse would be represented by a stick-head token: blue for a husband and pink for a wife. Nowadays there would have to be a third color for transgenders.

There might even be two stick-heads of the same color riding in the front seat, if they were from Vermont and joined in a so-called “same-sex marriage.” Also, in the new game there is an additional option besides marriage, and that is for the stick-heads to simply live together in order to “see how it goes.”

Eventually the pink stick-heads undergo elective augmentation surgery-- at which point their stick-like bodies are replaced with more contoured tokens. The blue stick-heads also get exchanged, but only for fatter stick bodies.

And finally, in the new edition of “The Game of Life”, the dice are then rolled to see whether the stick-head couple remains together or splits up. Sadly, the odds are against them. (I did not say that the new “Life” would be more fun-- simply more accurate.)

But the nice thing is that we all have a choice as to which game we want to play: the new version or the vintage one. And even more important than that, we must ask ourselves “Which game are we teaching our children to play?” Are we equipping them with wise strategy or are we leaving them to their own devices in order to learn the rules the hard way-- on their own?

Children will always have to experience some of the learning curves of LIFE for themselves, but we should help them avoid any “Dead Man’s Curve” by shining the light of our experience on their road ahead.

© Copyright 2003 Glen Davis