Annuals or perennials—one of the most fundamental choices facing anyone who wants to start a garden.

So-called annual plants have a short life cycle. We sow them, they grow, bloom, produce new seeds, and then die at the end of the season.

Perennial plants, on the other hand, live for several seasons. No need to sow them again, they grow back every year on their own and keep developing.

Question: Why opt for short-lived plants that must be resown each year, when we could just put perennials in the ground once and for all and enjoy them for years?

Answer: the blooming. Most annuals may have a short lifespan, but they are constantly in bloom, while most perennials only bloom for a few weeks each year. What perennials offer in duration, annuals offer in intensity.

I came to think about gardening—of all things—while pondering a phrase that’s quite popular in the gaming world, the Cult of the New. I was wondering what kind of “new” was involved here—is there even more than one type of novelty for games, and if so, what sets them apart?

Well, I would argue that there is at least two different ways for games to be new. The novelty of some games wears off and needs to be repeated, while that of other games endures and needs to be cultivated. Thus the garden of our game collection will be variously composed of “annual” and “perennial” games.

Annuals are single-use games. Games that tell a story and die when that story is over. They are only new once. The only way to renew or extend the experience is to renew or extend the games themselves. The newness offered by narrative games, collectible card games or legacy games is relatively short, yet rich and intense.

Perennial games are much more modest in that regard. Their newness is brief, delicate and more demanding, even fussy; but it constantly regenerates. They have a much longer life, they never quite leave us. Abstract games, Euro-style, more mechanical games, or historical games renew themselves on their own, on every play. They keep bouncing back, whether after years of continuous practice or total neglect. We never make it through them.

Both forms of newness do have their place in any game collection.

The newness I prefer is the one that carries on, the one we continually uncover, in every corner of every session, every interaction, every decision; the newness that begs to get developed and cultivated through replay.

And my favorite games are the ones that remain new to me for a long time. Games that can produce their own newness.

Perennial, inexhaustible games.

Not that all that matters much; to each his own, and gamers decide the proportion of annuals and perennials they want to keep in their collection. More important, however, is to realize that a game’s novelty has nothing to do with its release date, with its age. A recent game is not necessarily new, and certainly a fresh, new game is not necessarily recent.

And there lies the trap behind the expression Cult of the New: it can easily lead us to confuse novelty with mere recentness.

I believe that, be it annual or perennial, every gamer worth his salt craves freshness and does worship the new.

Which is totally different from the obsessive need to jump blindly on each and every game coming out, buy them and play them once, hopefully before everybody else—just because they’re the latest and hottest—all the while despising any game older than a few months.

Because this compulsive behavior is neither a cult, nor to the new.

It’s simple addiction.

Have a look at any high-school schedule, report card or program. You’ll find math, geography. Chemistry, history, biology, philosophy.

Oh, and somewhere among those subjects, English.

I’ve always had somewhat of an issue with the subtle distortion that produces such a presentation of school curriculums. It seems that always seeing language listed as a subject among others comes to imply that it could be a subject like the others.

Which may lead us to forget that language is the discipline by which we approach, retain, refine and connect all the others.

Language is not just another brick in the wall of our knowledge; it is the mortar holding them all together.

Language nourishes and forms our ideas, in addition to bringing us the ideas of others. It is the uninterrupted stream of words that flows between our ears. Whether we use these words as vehicles or as fuel, whether we cultivate them or break them, they always yield new ideas. Having lots of words at our disposal to formulate our thoughts is like having lots of pixels to render images. They will be better defined, more nuanced, more compelling, irresistible.

Despite being presented as just another block in school curriculum, language is not a mere variety of knowledge; it is a condition of knowledge.

I often think along those lines when I hear about solo board gaming, and about all the many comments that it usually raises.

The fact is that the solo variants of multiplayer board games, just like board games that only play solitaire, have reached in recent years an unprecedented level of popularity, and are changing the landscape of the industry. There are more one-player only tabletop games available than ever before, claiming a market share that can now make them commercially viable. As for multi-player games, they tend to enjoy better sales when they come with a solo variant.

Why?

There are, of course, the usual reasons. Over many years we’ve grown accustomed to solo play through video games. As for board games, finding multiple opponents who are willing to play the kind of games we like, and at times that suit us, is far from easy, and often is in fact the first and toughest challenge of any multiplayer tabletop game. And—maybe you’ve noticed—board games have been getting more and more expensive lately; so being able to enjoy them in any circumstance without having to rely on anybody else increases the value proposition. And also the much better tools and techniques of the trade have raised the state of the art of board game design to a level of sophistication that allows all kinds of game concepts that are rich and robust enough to challenge and entertain any single player indefinitely.

But what if there was also something else?

Solitaire—is it not every player’s default, original state in front of any game? Aren’t we all solitaire players just before and after every multiplayer gaming session? However much we play together, we never better prepare or digest our gaming than when we’re by ourselves.

Armchair philosophy, all this, no doubt. But still I can’t manage to see the 1-player mention on a game box as a player count just like the others. Just as language among all other school subjects, solo play seems to always precede and encompass—and make possible—all other gaming experiences. It is of a unique nature, possessing features that are beyond the reach of those other experiences, while connecting them all together.

Which may help explain the current explosion of the popularity of solitaire board gaming—perhaps it is the common ground that connects all games, all gamers. The intimate, fundamental gaming experience.

Does it play solo? Yes, of course. Always. Just try reading a rulebook as a group; or keep an eye on what’s going on in your head during—and after—your next play.

Not all board games have an explicit solitaire mode.

But there is a solitaire player in each of us—and he never rests.

Two gamers were chatting on the bus. One was boasting about having managed to finally overcome every last obstacle and finish some video game.

Finishing a game.

It’s always a bit weird to hear, as much as it feels strange to think, that there are games that just end, that one can complete. And that there are so many of them.

But what kind of abuse must be done to a game to make it finite, non-renewable? So that it is no longer useful, pleasant, or even possible to play it again?

You have spent hours, days, weeks ramping up your skills, scrutinizing every corner of elaborate virtual worlds, stripping them of all their treasures, overcoming every obstacle they throw at you, avoiding all their traps and learning every maneuver. You have fought the same battles countless times, overcoming always bigger, stronger, more numerous enemies.

Then the game stops.

Oh, of course, there is a final scene; everything’s done with due decorum. The game congratulates you for having reached the summit, the apotheosis. You are crowned champion of the game. But still the story has concluded, the game has come to an end.

Just as you’ve reached the top level of your expertise, the game slips away and disappears.

Poof—it’s gone.

It could have postponed its own conclusion and confronted you with yet one more challenge (but then, why not keep it for the upcoming sequel they’ll try to sell you). But for now, the game has nothing more to offer you, it is depleted, exhausted.

Sorry, it says—it was fun while it lasted, but this is as far as it goes.

End of the line, everybody out.

Looks a lot like a dead end, doesn’t it.

Your only way out is back. Either to start over and follow more or less the same storyline, without much surprise, tension, expectation. Or to go and buy yet another game. And engage in yet another adventure. A brand new dead end.

I have long thought—and still do—that the current popularity of board games could be explained partly by a reaction to the general dematerialization of our modern world. Compared to most of our digital, virtual lives, just spending more than 10 minutes sitting at a real table, in the company of real-life players, playing a real game made of real pieces, has become an exotic, sought-after experience.

But perhaps do we also seek, through this tabletop gaming craze, to get away from the grip of those games-that-end. To free our minds from the skillfully veiled rigidity of those disposable, throw-away adventures.

At the table as well as on the screen, single-use games will always have their place. But the fact remains that possibly the greatest strength of tabletop games, whether they be European or American style, historical or war games, lies with the ease with which they can be nondeterministic, how fluent they are in uncertainty.

Inexhaustibility is their default attribute.

A handful of pieces, a few pages of rules, of which we can spend all our time, alone or with others, competing or collaborating, exploring the potential of the endless combinations.

A handful of pieces, a few pages of rules, and infinity is made available to everyone.

Over here the only things that end are gaming sessions. Never the games themselves.

The high school I attended used to show its commitment to maintaining its own academic standards namely by adding, at the end of the school year, an extra exam week, for its own exams, just before the Ministry exam week.

All Ministry exams, which all students in the province had to pass, on the same subject, at the same time, were of the same format: A set of multiple-choice questions. They were called objective examinations, a fancy name for, well, forms. The school exams on the other hand were exams of comprehension and memory. They were mainly made of blank pages and questions that required us to compose responses, called essay questions.

The fact that I had, for several years, to pass these two types of exams back to back, on the same subjects, left me with a lasting impression of their main differences.

First, essay question is an appropriate term. Because writing tiny essays was what we were doing, on those frighteningly empty pages, without really realizing it. And by passing such exams—as well as preparing for them—we were learning, far beyond any single “answer”, the crucial skills of summoning up, organizing, expressing, refining—of developing—our thoughts. Of asking ourselves relevant, diverse, timely, pregnant questions. Lots of them.

The multiple-choice question can’t care about anything else than answers and their binary processing: they are either good or bad, true or false.

A Ministry exam after the school exam was like an amusement ride after a wilderness survival exercise.

The point is that the format of those government exams was designed for the sole purpose of accommodating the Ministry. Not the school, not the student, nor knowledge itself, for that matter.

Because of course, essay questions are impractical, totally unsuitable for marking an entire student population in any timely and consistent manner.

Essay questions don’t scale.

And the very reasons why they don’t scale are precisely where all their strength, their value lies.

I enjoy many of my favorite games for those same reasons; because they have the same qualities as essay questions. Because they value exploration over solutions.

And they too, don’t scale.

Their production can be minimal, unadorned, even clumsy; their gameplay can be long, uncomfortable, opaque, frustrating, unforgiving. They can be hard to market, to explain, to play or analyze.

Compared to slick, mass-market smash-hits, often disguised, lubricated at great expense with popular licenses, enticing visuals and overproduced material, such visually dull, unwieldy essay games are total commercial misfits.

And just as there are some schools dedicated to maintaining their own standards, there are some publishers, such as Splotter, Sierra Madre, Hollandspiele or GMT, among others, that are crazy enough to dedicate themselves to keep producing these unconventional, marginal, essential games.

Games that do scale well mostly care about answers.

I find these families of games, and among them many story-driven games, tiresome because they’re too talkative, too explicit. They can not help, for example, but tell me when, why and how much my character or faction is in trouble. Which I find boring, since those are questions I enjoy asking—and answering—myself.

I enjoy trying to develop an ability for assessing my situation during a game; I much prefer having to estimate and surmise being in trouble for such and such reason, rather than being told by the game that I have only three life points left. Such games present me with a clear problem, along with the menu of the available solutions; then their narrative goes on pause and awaits my choice.

My answer.

I guess I enjoy attempting much more than answering. What amuses, what engages me in any game is everything that precedes the answer. The doubts, dissensions, hard choices, shifts, misunderstandings that may lead to an answer. But the answer itself is the show-stopper for me.

Come to think of it I’m far less interested by games that ask me questions, their own questions, than by games that force me, by their carefully calculated silence, their balanced opacity, to question myself.

In that sense a good game is like a snake charmer; by playing the right tones or rather making the right movements—but without telling anything—it brings up in its players all sorts of new, unexpected, memorable, and yes, sometimes poisonous, questions.

Questions that beg to be developed rather than be answered.

Essay questions.