The U.S. seems to be getting more playful all the time; indoor games are booming. During the past 15 years, annual retail sales at the leading U.S. game manufacturer, Parker Brothers, Inc., increased about five times—$5,000,000 to $25 million—and the total number of games sold yearly has jumped from 3,000,000 to more than 10 million.
Why? More leisure, more education —and television. Says Parker's President Robert B. M. Barton: "TV turned out to be a blessing. It brought people back into the home again, and made them build things called 'family rooms' and 'game rooms.' " Parker's Monopoly remains the most popular patented game of all time (about 1,300,000 sets sold last year), but there is a new trend in the family rooms toward harder and harder games.
The Anatomy of Betrayal. One uncompromisingly eggheaded gamemaker is a four-year-old partnership of four Harvardmen and an interloper from Yale—all with other fulltime jobs—who call themselves Games Research, Inc. Their first game was Convention!, which can be played by two to seven players, each of whom is trying to win the nomination for President of the U.S. Uncommitted delegates, ballots, caucuses, bandwagon sentiment and demonstrations all play a part, with the smoke-filled room a policy of utter desperation.
Second—and most sophisticated—product of Games Research is Diplomacy. Around a 1914 map of Europe, three to seven players representing different countries try to deal and double-deal their way to control of the Continent, using fleets, armies and entangling alliances. At the start of each game, players have half an hour for private diplomacy; thereafter each move is preceded by a 15-minute period of whispered negotiation.
Moves are made by writing "orders" to one's armies and fleets, which are exposed simultaneously, then carried out with counters. During negotiation periods, players pair off in twos and threes for whispered conversations, which, according to the directions, "usually consist of bargaining or joint military planning, but may include such things as exchanging information, denouncing, threatening, spreading rumors and so forth. The rules do not bind a player to anything he says."
"Some people can't adjust to the atmosphere of betrayal necessary," says Businessman John Moot, president of Games Research. "It's a tradition that women are masterful liars, but I've found that most women playing Diplomacy can't bring themselves to lie, or else they are very bad at it. My wife got extremely upset the first time I doublecrossed her, and now, although she understands it intellectually, she still can't accept a betrayal emotionally."