iPad as Game Board

Apple markets its iPad as “The best way to experience the web, photos and video. Hands down.” But we can do all those things just fine on a laptop, so what’s the iPad’s real raison d’être? The answer, of course, is board games. The iPad seems custom designed to lie flat on a table and be sat around, to be interacted with manually. It is a literal gaming platform, a board upon which to play.

The iPad seems custom designed to lie flat on a table and be sat around, to be interacted with manually.  It is a literal gaming platform, a board upon which to play.

CheckMates in action

My friend Neale has designed a gorgeous chess app to be played on the iPad, called CheckMates, just released yesterday via the app store. Pushing the pieces around with your fingers feels so natural that it really feels like this is what the iPad was born to do. Computerized versions of board games are like computerized versions of pinball or computerized versions of sex—they simulate the superficial experience, but lack the physical, tactile engagement that is so important to the activity. Part of the magic of board games lies in being face-to-face with the other players and few digital games facilitate that kind of interaction.

The iPad changes that. Instead of trying to bring the board to the screen it transforms the screen into a board. The board game is not being brought into the digital era, the computer is being brought into the (millennia old, ongoing) board game era. The iPad version of Scrabble, in which players can use their iPhones as “racks” to display their letters, has been much-mocked, but what a perfect use for the form factors involved! Once they had come up with the idea, how could they resist it? The technology itself demands this use. I say CheckMates should have gone all the way and made use of the iPads accelerometers to allow players to tip over the board, scattering the pieces; then they could have released a deluxe travel version with a “magnetic” board, on which this feature is disabled.

from Virtual Shackles

One of my favourite childhood games was The aMAZEing Labyrinth, in which the board changes as you play. That game was elegantly designed and (like Scrabble or chess) would certainly not be improved through being played on an iPad (part of the pleasure is sliding the physical pieces around), but imagine how you could extend the concept of the ever-changing board using the iPad. The device is a tactile game board imbued with the infinite malleability of the digital age. I think it’s only a matter of time before someone designs a game that uses real pieces that are physically placed on top of a dynamically changing board generated by the iPad, pieces that the iPad can sense and react to. I think this could make for awesome real-time strategy board games.

Computerized versions of board games are like computerized versions of pinball or computerized versions of sex—they simulate the superficial experience, but lack the physical, tactile engagement that is so important to the activity

The key to getting board games right is recognizing the physicality of the iPad, because physicality is what makes board games what they are. We shouldn’t think about the iPad as a web reader, or a photo viewer, or a video player, or an oversized smartphone, or an eccentric gaming console. We should think about it as a flat board that can rest easily on a table, around which players can gather, and go from there.