‘They’re great again’: The Traitors and our renewed love for board games

YoIt is an unidentifiable day in the liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s. People are full of cheese and winter colds are passed between family members. Then someone pulls out a board game and the world inhales. Will this game unite grumpy grandparents with tech-loving teenagers, bringing together their loved ones in a scene of joy and goodwill only seen in nativity scenes or Hallmark movies? Or will it sow more seeds of resentment, leading to Monopoly boards being thrown across the room or parents falling asleep during a particularly tedious game of Risk? Each attempt is a roll of the dice in itself.

Many of us will recognize this scenario. Board games have long been considered a source of tension in meetings, or just a little silly. Think about games and you probably imagine inscrutable instructions with glacial gameplay and small pieces that are sure to get lost on the couch. But for people in the know, board games have seen a resurgence. A new generation of games has emerged, fast enough to prevent gamblers from picking up their phones. It is a lucrative field to be in. In 2017, the global market was valued at £5.6 million. By the end of 2023, it was predicted to reach £9.42 million.

Riding this wave of popularity is the hit BBC reality show. The traitors. This TV show, inspired by party games like Werewolf or Mafia, has now been turned into a branded board game, on sale for £26.99. The traitors began life in the Netherlands before being ported to UK audiences in late 2022. It was a word-of-mouth hit and quickly became one of the most talked-about TV moments of the year.

As with the paranoia-inducing board games that inspired it, the premise is fairly simple, but can push players to their limits. Twenty-two strangers arrive at a Scottish castle, where they secretly divide into two sides. A small number are “traitors,” who work together to “kill” their fellow contestants while their identities go undetected. Others? The “faithful” trying to catch them. The first series started off a little slowly, but built to a historic final showdown that left everyone in the room (including show host/fringe madam Claudia Winkleman) in tears.

Providing 2024 with a much-needed boost, the show returns tonight for its highly anticipated second season. When I speak to executive producer Sarah Fay weeks before launch, she tells me that the series is still being put together in the editing room like “one big murder mystery puzzle.” Sure, there will be little tweaks and twists along the way, but they stick to the game’s winning formula. That’s the key, she says: focusing on the game. “First of all, this is a psychological game, and then we’re filming on top of that,” she tells me. “It shouldn’t be the other way around.”

Werewolf, The traitors and other social deduction games are based on a central idea: the “bad guys” are among the players, and it is up to the “good guys” to find them. You don’t necessarily need a fancy board game or card game; All you need is a narrator to describe the action and a group of players who trust each other enough to close their eyes while roles are assigned. In fact, the format has appeared in popular culture before. The traitors. There was Among Us, the online game popular during the pandemic based on the same idea. And who can forget Secret Hitler, the board game in which players are divided into “liberals” and “fascists” and must try to “kill Hitler” from within the latter side? Secret Hitler has been the catalyst for most of the arguments among my friends, to the point where we’ve had to ban ourselves from playing it for years. It turns out that calling your partner a fascist isn’t exactly conducive to creating warm, welcoming friendships, even if it’s kind of fun.

From The traitors has grown in popularity and spawned spin-off games “based on the hit BBC show”, adding to the ever-growing list on offer every Christmas. It’s easy to attribute the industry’s growth to the pandemic, when families and households sought some distraction from fatalism. But board games were on the rise before then, with many of the biggest games of the 21st century emerging in the 2010s and board game cafes appearing in major UK cities. According to NPR, more than 4,000 board games (including card, dice, and war games) are released each year. For Annie, a doctor living in Manchester, and her friends, they are the first form of entertainment everyone offers at parties. “They’re back to being great,” she says.

The resurgence of board games is even more impressive given the negative connotations many of us have with them. James Vaughan is the head of game development at Big Potato Games, the London-based company revolutionizing the industry by creating “games for people who don’t like games.” He, like many of the company’s staff, often fell into that category and immediately turned down requests to play because “I thought of board games when we were kids: pretty boring, take forever, lots of rules to learn.” .

Since board games had been the (proudly) nerdiest group pastime for years, there was a feeling that the new game to make them “cool” again would have to be the antithesis of those classics. Then, an X-rated card game burst onto the scene with two fingers raised firmly in the air at the board games of yesteryear. I’m referring, of course, to Cards Against Humanity, the game with a PG-17 rating (gasp!) and one goal: to be as offensive as possible. Young players were quickly drawn back into board games with tasteless jokes about porn categories and Madelaine McCann. Countless equally “shocking” games followed suit, from the Internet-themed What Do You Meme? to the surprisingly “edgy” S*** Happens, F**k: The Game, and These Cards Will Get You Dr.

The games that followed had less need to loudly proclaim their street cred, although no one would call these releases, like Secret Hitler or Exploding Kittens, tame. Most importantly, however, the most controversial elements were not the entire selling point. The name Secret Hitler might surprise some, but the game made it clear that it wasn’t trivializing the rise of far-right politics. In the FAQ section of their website, anyone who wants to complain because they “don’t think there’s anything funny or interesting about fascism” is offered a long list of contact details for US senators to get in touch with.

Naturally, the liberal versus fascist angle of Secret Hitler evokes comedy in itself (one friend remembers a particularly heated game on a family vacation that descended into chaos when he yelled at his 12-year-old sister that she was “definitely Hitler”). But social deduction games across the board scratch a certain satisfying itch in players. “These types of games bring a lot of humor to the proceedings,” says Fay. “You think you know the people around you, but Nana in the corner could literally be lying to you.”

Tensions also arise. Not everyone wants to cheat on their loved ones, or would like to, but they realistically know that they wouldn’t be very good at it. Keeping the lie about a secret Hitler game is one thing, but the long filming process The traitors It means that such betrayal can wear you down. The last remaining traitor from the first series, Wilf, almost steals the prize, only to collapse in the final moment under the pressure of deceiving his friends. But even in a more standard, off-screen social deduction game, the “intense” nature of the game can be off-putting, Vaughan says. “It can be something that, if not handled very carefully, can scare some people,” she says.

Consequently, the elements of social deduction must be handled “delicately.” Big Potato specializes in quick party games, so Traitors-Style items only exist in short rounds for games like the Chameleon word puzzle. These shorter social deduction games are perfect for anyone nervous about this type of format, says Vaughan, “because you’re going to be the liar, but only for five minutes. If you get caught, that’s fine. New round, start again.”

But in the end, the contents of the games – whether cooperative or combative – are secondary to the simple act of playing. For many people, the appeal of board games comes from the tangibility of the game. Like vinyl records, cameras and other items described as “retro” by Urban Outfitters, the fun comes from the tactile nature of board games: from moving pieces, collectible cards or, in the case of the “game of dodgeball cards.” Throw Throw Burrito, throwing a cat-shaped toy at your friends.

While some games from the 2010s incorporated the telephone game into the action, these are rarer now. Board games are a chance for people to get away from their phones – that’s the point. Vaughan tells me that he originally wanted to work in video game design, associating video games with his childhood experiences playing in the same room with his friends. Now, most video games are played alone or with people over the Internet. With board and party games, the minimum is that you have to be in the room with the other players. Whether they’re working as a team or lying to each other, well, that’s up to you to figure out…