Repetition is Not Repetition

 Repetition is Not Repetition

The above quote can be applied to anything. Ms. Bausch was a dancer and so I'll go ahead and guess she was referring to dance. Perhaps she was more broadly referring to the arts, depending on the context. But the impact of repetition has been on my mind as of late. I record a podcast with some friends I used to work with in a comic book store (you can listen to The Secret Origins of Mint Condition here, if you're so inclined) and while we talk about all manner of things (sports, games, comic books, on and on), we often talk about pop culture most. We talk about the things we love and why. In one of our more recent recordings, we tried to answer the question, "What is Star Wars?" We kept coming back to the notion (both on and off the air) that the meaning of SW has for us personally evolved over time. And that got me thinking about precisely why I connected so very much with the original Star Wars trilogy more than anything since. This despite the fact that I actually *objectively* enjoy both Rogue One and The Last Jedi more than Return of the Jedi.

I came to the conclusion that some of my adoration of the movies and shows I love came from repeated viewings. I have seen a ton of the animated series Camp Cretaceous as well as the movies The Good Dinosaur and Encanto. That's because my son had periods where he loved those so much that those were all he wanted to watch. I fell hard for Camp Cretaceous when I first started watching it with him, but I didn't much care for The Good Dinosaur and I had some issues with how Encanto ended. But the more I watched all three of these things, the more I found to love about them; I kept discovering more details that really sold me, etc. I needed the exposure (especially when it came to The Good Dinosaur!) to really improve my opinion of them to the point where I found I loved watching them.

The same action makes me feel something completely different by the end.

It's really kind of cool how our feelings, opinions, and reactions can evolve over time and through exposure. The reason I write this here is because it got me thinking about board games and the impact that exposure can have on us. Sometimes, we really are smitten with a game from the start and that adoration holds up past the first or second play. Other times, we write off a game after only one play when it doesn't live up to our expectations or simply doesn't engage us. All of this is to say that the vast majority of games is owed more than one play.

It can be so easy to rely on our gaming experience to *know* we don't like a game after a single play. And I think, more often than not, we're right. Especially for those of us with more gaming experience under our belts. However, I also wrote a year ago (!) about the difference between collecting and playing board games. The line between the two can grow pretty thin; if collecting is how you enjoy the hobby, then you do you! But the downside to collecting and effectively playing each game once before moving on so you can strike another title from your list is that you might sometimes miss out on something you would've noticed and appreciated had you stuck with the game for one more play. It might be considered a small moment in one of the episodes of Camp Cretaceous (which is touted as part of Netflix's "Diversity Matters" collection, which is a bit of a loaded assertion, yeah?), but as Brooklyn is fixing a radio, she explains that she spent a lot of time in the garage with her dads. Dads plural. It was done with such subtlety and was such a throwaway line that it was easy to miss. I was confident that I heard the plural and ran it back to make sure. Well, I was right. And I think this show has done a really great job of earning the "diversity matters" label because it's diverse without being heavy-handed with it. Oh, they don't step lightly and seem to hope nobody will notice it's diverse, but they're also not heavy-handed so I feel as though they're hoping we'll stand up and applaud for them for "making the effort." However, when I mentioned to my wife that I appreciated the way they included this intentionally but didn't make a big deal out of it, she told me she had missed that and didn't realize that the line had included a plural and not singular when it came to Brooklyn's dads. If I hadn't said anything and she hadn't watched the episode again, she wouldn't have noticed!

It's admittedly a fairly small detail for some viewers, but for other viewers, it's a big deal! And it's not a thing you ever appreciate if you missed it the first time and didn't go back to watch it again! I mention this because there are elements of a game that can only come to light upon multiple plays. I mention all of this because this was an experience I had with Star Wars Armada. My first several experiences with the game weren't very good because I had never played a minis game before and couldn't wrap my head around it. I kept playing against the same friend who stomped me every. single. time. I wasn't getting any better and I wasn't having any fun. I quit playing Armada and shelved it twice before it stuck! I couldn't understand how anyone could win a game without flying a Star Destroyer straight at an opponent because that was all I kept seeing across the table. But then I met some other folks in St. Louis who played Armada, and that's when it stuck. It wasn't enough that I played the game multiple times; I also had to play the game against more than just one opponent to figure out that it was something I enjoyed!

On the other end of the spectrum, it only took one play for me to know that I didn't need to play Cosmic Encounter again. I didn't have fun playing it and I found myself complaining about it after we finished the game.

But somewhere in between those two places is a middle ground. I played Scythe once and didn't enjoy it. I was playing with people who had played before, so I was always behind. Additionally, I walked into the game expecting mech combat and that was not really the premise of the game at all. That was something like five or so years ago and I haven't played it again since. But I keep meaning to get back to it with a better understanding of what to expect and how to play the game, because maybe that will make the difference. I don't own the game, so it's not like I have skin in the game, so to speak. It's not sitting on my shelf collecting dust. But unlike Cosmic Encounter, I'm not so convinced that I disliked the game so much as my expectations clashed with reality.

I share all of this because I want you to take a couple of minutes and consider your board game collection or perhaps a title that you played once and disliked. Really consider all of those games and think about if there's anything there that you might revisit. Maybe your dislike will be confirmed, but maybe you'll discover something new. Maybe you missed something the first time around. Maybe your repetition in playing that game is not repetition. Maybe, just maybe, this time, when you play that game, you'll feel something completely different by the end.