Game On! It's International Games Week at Your Library

Every year the American Library Association Games & Gaming Round Table runs International Games Week, an opportunity to celebrate gaming in libraries. Taking place this year from November 7th-13th, libraries can register gaming events they hold during the week to highlight just how much fun and educational gaming takes place inside our spaces. And we do a lot of gaming: from traditional games like chess and bingo to the latest video games, not a week goes by in which BPL staff are not running a gaming session of some sort. Next week we are running more than 20 games sessions aimed at kids through adults, including several twitch streaming sessions with BPL Librarians. (Check out our awesome events calendar to find more info on upcoming programs.)

Why offer gaming in libraries? Isn’t a library meant for books? Aren’t games noisy and distracting? Opening up libraries to provide a safe, inclusive space for all our patrons to meet up and exchange ideas—or simply hang out—is long-held goal of libraries. Gaming is part of our process towards reaching that goal. As you may know, libraries started including objects other than books a long time ago, from DVDs to wifi devices. The library is where kids can hang out after school and where grandma can get computer help. Games bring people of different backgrounds together and provide a shared goal with which they can easily engage. In this way, gaming fits snugly into the mission of the modern library.  And while we do a great deal of games-based programming, it is also part of our mission to provide materials that patrons can borrow for use outside our spaces.

This is where the Board Game Library comes in. The Board Game Library is a program started by an Incubator grant funded by The Charles H. Revson Foundation and Robin K. and Jay L. Lewis. Incubators are internal grants meant to foster new ideas within Brooklyn Public Library and the larger Brooklyn community. In December of 2019, we got a grant of $8000 dollars to build a circulating collection of board games that Brooklyn Public Library patrons could check out and take home. (Click here to learn about partnering with your neighborhood library to offer innovative programming through the BKLYN Incubator program.)

Since then the Board Game Library collection has grown to include over 150 unique titles with more being added. We have games for all ages. Our simplest games like First Orchard, and Socken Zocken are meant for Pre-schoolers, while our most complicated games will break the brains of most adults and take hours to play. (If this is your thing, check out Terraforming Mars, and Feast for Odin). All of the games are in our catalog and can be checked out like any book, though they can only be checked out and returned at the Crown Heights Library and the Youth Wing at Central. We are really hopeful that we can expand the program to other branches and that we can start running learn-to-play events once it is safe to resume in-person library programming. Check out more info on us here, including a full list of available titles.

Here are some simple, awesome games you can pick up easily and play with all ages:

Azul is a fast, tactile, abstract game that feels almost like a puzzle. Each player drafts tiles that look like starburst candies. You make a mosaic pattern with the tiles and score points based on how many pieces are already on your board. 

Carcassonne is an old favorite of mine. On each landscape tile that you lay down, you can claim different features. When you complete a feature, like a city or road, you can retrieve your player piece, so there is also a nice bit of resource management. I love that this can be played almost cooperatively, or very aggressively, depending on the players. We also have My First Carcassonne for younger kids.

Century: Golem Edition is an absolutely addictive resource management game that is wonderfully simple and fast. There is enough luck involved that the strategies that win the games. 

Coup is a martial, energetic card game for up to 6 players. Each player gets two role cards that they can use to take actions. You can also fib about which cards you are holding, but don’t get caught in a lie or you will lose one of your cards. This is a great game for a competitive group, or family.

MonsDRAWsity is a fast drawing and memory game good for large groups. One player has 20 seconds to look at a picture of a monster and then 2 minutes to describe it to the other players. Everyone votes on which monster drawing looks the most like the monster.