An ending and a beginning at Sunday Game Night

From: Nathan
To: Game Friends

Game Friends,

This Sunday marks the end of another successful season of Sunday Game Night and the corresponding onset of Summer Game Night. As we embark on the next phase in our shared journey, let me explain to you the rules of Summer Game Night:

1. I will not email you about Summer Game Night.
2. Depending on my availability, there will often be grilling and games on Sundays at my apartment.
3. If you want to hang out and grill and play games, it is up to you to contact me via email/text message/in-person communication and ask if anything is happening.
4. There is a pool at our building but there’s construction happening and it’s not clear when it will open. Once that happens there can be a pool party portion of Game Night, but really only if you show up promptly at 5.

As for this Sunday at 5pm, it’s a sort of in-between Game Night—obviously not a Summer Game Night because here I am, emailing you about it. But if we grill like a Summer Game Night and game like a Summer Game Night and quack like a Summer Game Night, what’s the difference?

Nathan

From: Kyle
To: Game Friends

The pernicious and often maliciously didactic illusion that there can ever in fact be a distinction between “Sunday Game Nights” and “Summer Game Nights” is an entirely false redefining of the recreational dynamic intended to keep those who profit from such divisions in power. Only when we realize that such separations are an attempt to weaken our ability to all equally and mutually eat, drink, and play games, will all meeples truly be free.

From: Lauren
To: Game Friends

Thanks for a great season, Nathan! I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on the season behind us and look forward to the season ahead.

Indisputably, we are enjoying a golden age of Game Night. But what interests me most as a critic and scholar of the genre is how it will adapt to the changing technological constraints of the field. Until now, changing technology— and the changing expectations of consumers— have proved incredibly fruitful, spurring new heights of innovation and growth. The classic example, of course, is the Game Night Email. A response to consumers’ shortened attention spans and demand for ever more personalized content, the Game Night Email has become a heavy hitter in the genre, and arguably even more iconic than Castles of Burgundy— especially when you poll younger generations of game players.

A more recent innovation, sundaygamenight.email, responds to the “Netflixification” of the game night genre, providing a bingeable Game Night product. Response to sundaygamenight.email has been quieter, though its devotees are fervent. Of course, showrunners have also not made the investment in sundaygamenight.email that they made in the Game Night Email itself, witness the fact that it has not been updated since April.

Those innovations are all in the past. Let’s look at the challenges Game Night has ahead.

First, of course, are the indications that summer will no longer be following a traditional season-based schedule. This is the sort of scheduling and communications challenge that is right in SGN’s wheelhouse, and I can’t wait to see how they innovate within the form. Frankly, I’m just disappointed the planet isn’t rolling out those changes more quickly.

More tricky is the phasing out of legacy infrastructure like apartments and disposable income. Seattle, where SGN is headquartered, is on the leading edge of the movement to replace these archaic elements of the game playing process. Is this a risk? Yes. But it’s also an opportunity. Sooner or later, we will all be shuffling anarcho-nomads of a blasted, ruined landscape, and SGN has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to define what the form will become for that generation!

Anyway, I’ll show up at 9:30ish as usual.