The season of eggnog and Santa hats has arrived, and whether you celebrate Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Christmas, or nothing at all, chances are your calendar is about to be filled with that age-old tradition: the holiday party. Whether you’re hosting or attending one, I’d like to offer a humble suggestion. Make it a game night.
There are few times in life that I can say, with 100 percent certainty, that I’m right, and this is one of them. Games rock! You should play them, and you should convince your guests and/or fellow partygoers to join you. “But they’re so uncool!” you might protest. To that, I’ll quote the great Floridian Ariana Grande: “Yes, and?” Just hear me out.
According to my records (also known as my Partiful event history), I’ve co-hosted at least ten game nights in the last three years. My roommate at the time and I came up with the idea as a solution to a problem we noticed: We wanted to see our friends more regularly, without a lot of pressure or excessive planning, and we wanted to maintain a spirit of creativity, collaboration, and general whimsy in our household. Previous parties I’d thrown had always been stressful; I felt the pressure to make sure everyone was having a nice time and had someone to hang with or talk to throughout the night. Often, I was unable to fully engage in any single interaction because I felt pulled in multiple directions, fretted over someone else looking bored and lonely, or remembered an introduction I had failed to make. Game night solved all of those problems and slowly became the true highlight of my social life.
With game night, I no longer had to worry about managing everyone’s social interactions — those happened organically and with little to no weirdness. I didn’t have to revolve my entire social life around going out to drink, either. (Who hasn’t heard a story about that one person who got way too drunk at the corporate holiday party? Perhaps if they’d been playing a lively game of Uno, it never would’ve happened.) This year, I’m throwing my first-ever holiday party, and, of course, it’s going to be a game night, so I consulted a few experts on the topic of why hosting a game night is worth it. Sara Berkai, the game designer and software engineer behind Ambessa Play, points out that instead of getting to know one another with a barrage of carefully worded questions, games allow us to see what someone’s personality is really like. “You don’t take yourself as seriously when you’re playing a game,” she explains. “You show up as just your playful self and you’re not thinking of anything else. When I’m talking to someone I just met at a party, it is a sort of interview, which can be painful and awkward for me. If I’m playing a game, the stakes are super low.”
Instead of having to explain that you’re a project manager who loves concerts or some other variation of what you’d put on a Hinge profile, you can just play, and your actual qualities and interests will naturally emerge. Alex Hague, one of the designers behind my favorite party game, Wavelength, agrees. “I think of games as social scaffolding,” he says. “They’re essentially a form of infrastructure where you get to learn new things about your friends and family completely outside what you might naturally talk about.”
And no matter what kind of party it is or who is attending (colleagues, family, friends, casual acquaintances), games offer a guaranteed point of connection that, Hague points out, few other forms of media do. “As the media landscape gets more and more fragmented, there are fewer and fewer cultural touchpoints that everyone shares,” he points out. “It’s a trope that learning game rules is annoying and boring — which is true — but learning and playing the same thing together, what comes out of that is this revelatory experience where you actually get to focus on and share in a single thing with friends or family or whoever.”
We can also learn about ourselves through the games we play. “You’re connecting to your inner child,” says Berkai. “When you think of children, they are less judgmental, always in a state of wonder. You’re bringing your most playful self.”
Play is accessible to all humans, and even many other types of animals. The only real barrier to entry is one’s own willingness to participate. Whether we’re playing Heads Up — the game I always start with because it’s the most fun, requires little to no explanation, and gets everyone lightly acquainted as the evening begins — or Linkee, the trivia game that I bought partly because it had Nick Jonas’s face on it, I get to watch my loved ones discover new things about each other without any input from me.
Have you ever considered that games can bridge generational gaps, too? When I’m playing Heads Up with my aunts, I don’t have to talk about whether or not I’m thinking about grad school or marriage, and when I realize that my cousin is actually really good at drawing turtles thanks to a game of Pictionary, I might even invite them to join me later for an art class.
If you’re looking for suggestions to spice up your own game night, some of my favorites are We’re Not Really Strangers, Ticket to Ride, Clue, and Clue’s scarier, more complicated younger sibling, Betrayal at House on the Hill. Mafia is a great game for nearly any size party. If you’ve got more than 20 people in attendance, a team-based game like Linkee or Wavelength is ideal. For between 10 and 20, I’d suggest card games, trivia games, and other question-based games. You can even make two-player games like checkers and mancala work by setting up a tournament so guests can rotate in and out. Puzzles are also great for a chill but collaborative vibe, allowing for plenty of relaxed conversation.
So, I leave you with one final, humble recommendation: If you’re not hosting this holiday season, whenever you attend a party, it can’t hurt to bring a deck of cards or offer up your phone for a round of Heads Up. Your hosts might thank you for taking some responsibility off of their hands. You might make a new friend (or enemy). You’ll probably learn something about yourself or others. At a game night, the possibilities are endless.
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