GAME BOYS GET UNPLUGGED   THE NATION, May 2011

At the Polar Cafe, the wired generation powers down with parlour games

[1] In what many people will greet with a huge sigh of relief, a cafe at the Crystal Design Centre is low-tech, switched off, unplugged. Patrons don’t sit at computer terminals and race virtual hotrods – they sit at tables and play board games.

[2] Board games. You know – cardboard and little pieces of plastic you move around, maybe a pair of dice too. How about a guessing game with picture cards?

[3] What is the world coming to? (Or going back to?)

Polar Board Games & Cafe

[4] Pat Pornpiranon and Dee Sattarujawong opened Polar Board Games & Cafe one month ago to slow down the pace of life a little bit. They rescued some games from the dusty top of the wardrobe and found a few new ones, and now they’ve got customers enjoying their refreshments while chatting over their board moves.

[5] Face to face, no less.

[6] It’s a suitably friendly and homey place – comfy chairs, wood floor. One wall has a painting of the busy pathways found in the Kids of Carcassonne game, which is popular here too. Shelves are stacked with other choices of pastimes.

[7] Cafes specialising in parlour games have caught on in South Korea and China. Sometimes there’s a small admission fee that covers snacks, several hours of gaming and help from the staff.

[8] The drinks at Polar Cafe cost around Bt80 (approx HK$20), and for that price you get to try out any game for an hour. Buy another drink and play for another hour. There are about 40 games to choose from at this point, most of them imported from Germany and the US. There’s little foreign text to slow you down, and anyway, you get Thai instructions and the staff can help with the rules.

[9] “I played nothing but Monopoly, Uno, and Snakes & Ladders when I was a child,” says Pat, a Thai University business-management graduate. “There weren’t that many games available in Thailand, but when I studied in the US, I found a lot of interesting board games that were more challenging than anything on the computer.”

[10] “Germany is the pioneer when it comes to new and interesting board games,” says Dee. “It has a prestigious award for creativity called the Spiel Des Jahres.”

[11] If you like a game so much you want to take it home, the prices range from Bt500 to Bt3,000 (HK$130-720). They’re great for parties, lazy afternoons or dreary family get-togethers where no one can think of what else to do except eat. It might also boost your strategic talents and your kids’ math scores.

Board games as a learning tool

[12] Pat and Dee also run a Chinese-language school called Learning East and use board games as teaching tools.

[13] “Kids of Carcassonne, for example, is a great game for little children,” explains Pat. “You place tiles to form paths and then try to close them off with wooden tokens. The player with the most tokens when all the tiles are used wins. Kids learn to watch the tiles carefully and think twice before every move. It’s good for teaching problem-solving.”

[14] Customer Benson Tanattanachot, 29, says he became utterly bored with computer games. “There’s a lot more satisfaction in playing against human opponents,” he says. “I prefer a game you can enjoy with friends and family. And in Thailand, you don’t usually see the wide selection of games that you get here.”

[15] Benson and a chum got so immersed in Carcassonne that they decided to buy it. “It’s fun, and the playing cards are beautifully illustrated,” he says. “It promotes sharp wit and logic, skills which I can use in my marketing job.”

[16] Another cafe patron, Aey, says she was never big on games but she’s really taken by the fun she’s found here, and the intriguing effects on the brain. “Thai children should get to play games like this to learn about teamwork and society,” says the 30-something working woman. “Kids today have their computer games and console games, but they play alone. For board games, you have to have a circle of friends. My friends and I love playing Railways to the World.”

[17] In Railways to the World, you build railroads to deliver goods to cities. There is no board, so it’s different every time you play.

[18] Pat points out that, while the chief appeal of parlour games is in the pleasant socialising – which usually trumps the drive to win – you can learn a lot about people by watching how they play, especially with games like Dixit, which won the Spiel Des Jahres last year.

[19] In Dixit, players receive cards with illustrations and take turns giving clues about them to the others. The other players choose the card in their own hands that they think best matches your clue. The trick is in choosing the perfect clue to share, not too specific or too vague.

[20] “No matter what language you speak, you can play Dixit,” says Dee, “and the more you play, the more you learn about the other players’ perspectives on life. It can also improve children’s vocabulary, especially when they play with their parents, and stretches their minds to think abstractly.”

[21] All very nice, but come on, girls – seriously – have you seen the latest iPad and Xbox Kinect? How can you compete with that?

[22] “Parents want pastimes that will keep their children away from the TV and computer,” says Pat. “They’re trying to get back into more interactive things now. The way a child behaves reflects how his parents treat him. Activities like this that get families together can only be a good thing.”

[23] Polar Board Games & Cafe is in Phase 2 of the Crystal Design Centre on Ram Indra-Ekamai Road and is open weekdays from 1 pm to 9 pm and weekends from 11 am to 10 pm. Find out more at (083) 133 0743 or www.polarplaygames.com.