Books discussed:

Everybody wins by James Wallis

Board games in 100 moves by Ian Livingstone and James Wallis

I don’t think there is anyone in the UK who is more knowledgeable or eloquent on the subject of tabletop games than James Wallis. Author, journalist and games designer, James was also the founder of gaming’s most interesting prize, the Diana Jones Award. He’s been at the centre of the tabletop gaming for over 30 years. Two recent books showcase his talents, and yet left me oddly unsatisfied. The reasons for this are nothing to do with James, and everything to do with how we treat writing about games.

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Board games in 100 moves is, nominally, a collaboration with Ian Livingstone. I say nominally, because I would challenge anyone to read Livingstone’s introduction, then the rest of the book, and say that this is not a James Wallis creation. This seems a minor point, but it does indicate a certain ambiguity about the topic that the publisher felt that only the more famous of the two authors could be on the front cover.

Beyond the front cover, this is an excellent introduction to the history of board games. It ranges from the Ancient Egyptian game of Senet, up to 2018’s smash hit The Mind. Along the way, Wallis takes in early educational and mystical games, the invention and popularisation of playing cards, and the impact of technological advances such as printing and plastic. And, because he can’t write a boring sentence, the whole thing skips along at a lively, informative clip. And because it’s a Dorling Kindersley book, it looks gorgeous.

But also because it’s a DK book, the word count leaves something to be desired. There is so much to explore in an 8000 year history of something that is as fundamental to our humanity as games, and Wallis just doesn’t have space here to dig into detail, or fully unfurl his erudition.

Readers who know the basics, and want to dive deeper into the recent explosion in gaming should instead turn to Everybody Wins. This is unequivocally Wallis’s book, and collects a series of articles written for tabletop gaming magazine, in which he covered each year’s winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres prize since its inception in 1979. Wallis augments this basic structure by splitting the entries into thematic eras, and using them to tell the story of the hobby, and of the prize, through the deliberations of the SdJ judging panel. This is inevitably something of a stretch, but the attempt is skillful and entertaining. His history of the prize, and sometimes gnomic allusions to its politics, tells an intriguing story of a hobby and an industry finding its feet. But what of the games?

The accounts of these classics are a feast. Wallis is masterful in his ability to evoke the feel of a game, and to elegantly describe the experience of play in a way which made me several times look up the prices of some of the older games he describes. His affection for these games, many of which have fallen out of favour as well as out of print, is infectious. He is funny as well as erudite, especially when he doesn’t care for the game and has the word count to indulge himself- although a running joke about ass in one article might have been better off on the cutting room floor. The format, again, constrains him- there is as much space to discuss the epochal impact and influence of Catan (1995) as there is to discuss the fact that Enchanted Forest (1982) is total bobbins.

He’s also been let down by the publishers in a very mundane and infuriating way. Wallis has added panels explaining some of the terms and introducing the personalities that non-hobbyists might not be familiar with. These panels would make this a book one could wholeheartedly recommend to someone intrigued by modern board games, rather than ‘into’ them. Unfortunately, due to a combination of small text, white font and vibrant background, they are barely legible.

This is obviously a real shame, but shouldn’t take away from the fact that this is the best account of the recent evolution of our hobby that I have come across. Taken with Board games in 100 moves, it confirms Wallis as our foremost writer on tabletop gaming.

And I guess that is my complaint about these books- the writing is not foregrounded. Either because there isn’t enough space among all the pictures, or due to simple neglect, publishers haven’t given Wallis the platform he, or the hobby, deserves.

This may look like special pleading- what right does my funny little hobby have to command respect and resources from mainstream media? Except it’s not little- the tabletop gaming industry make billions worldwide, and the UK is one of the leading centres of it, both historically and today. And it’s not fluff, either. Wallis makes the case for the importance of games very well in 100 moves, while Everybody wins is a celebration of what is possible with cardboard and imagination.

But in order to command attention, it seems to me that a cultural product needs to be either high-minded (books and theatre) or overwhelmingly popular (video games, TV). Tabletop gaming doesn’t quite fit either, and so may take a while to escape the ‘nerd culture’ niche. How it does that is perhaps something to explore another time. But in the meantime, I do recommend you seek out these books, not least because that might encourage a publisher to give Wallis the freedom to really show us what he can do.