Play on! Bars and cafes embrace ‘game night’

CHICAGO – Some cozy up at coffee houses to challenge friends to a game of Monopoly or, perhaps, Battleship. Others gather in pubs for a rowdy night of trivia, with prizes ranging from bragging rights to baseball tickets.

“Game night” has become the rage in many U.S. cities, as people search for new ways to socialize beyond the traditional bar scene.

“Everyone really gets into it,” says Samantha Donaldson, a 25-year-old government worker who recently began competing in the packed “quizzo trivia night” at the Penn. Avenue Pour House in Washington, D.C. She’s enjoyed answering questions that test her breadth of knowledge, such as one category that challenged players to identify famous people with the initials “J.J.” (James Joyce and Jermaine Jackson among them).

But quiz night – a tradition with British roots that’s gained popularity over the years with TV shows such as “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire” and “Weakest Link” – is just one version of game night.

At the Whistle Stop Bar in San Diego, patrons can play old standbys, from Candyland to Uno, during “games & grooves” night. And several W hotels, including those in New York, San Francisco and Honolulu, have placed board games in their lobbies.

The fad also seems to be having an impact on sales of “adult” board games.

They were up 5 percent in 2003, compared with the previous year, according to the NPD Group, a research firm that tracks toy and game sales. That’s a notable increase, say those in the industry, since overall toy sales fell about 3 percent during the same period.

“Obviously, games are something that stand the test of time,” says Jim Silver, publisher of Toy Book, a trade publication.

That’s certainly the case with Go, an ancient Asian game in which players strategically place black and white “stones” on a board to gain territory.

Mark Rubenstein, a 52-year-old software developer, used to call it a good night when more than two people showed up at an Evanston, Ill., cafe to play the game in the mid-‘90s. Now, as many as 40 players come to play on any night.

Sonja Rygielski, a 17-year-old student from Chicago, sought out the club after seeing a Japanese cartoon called “Hikaru No Go,” about a boy who is inhabited by the ghost of an old Go player.

“It gets your mind going when there’s no school,” she said, while taking a break from a game.

Chris Urso, a 20-year-old college student, whose math instructor introduced him to Go, says he was looking for something beyond computer games.

“This is three-dimensional,” he says. “You can talk to the person you’re playing.”

Not that video games have to be anti-social.

Teens in Lake Oswego, Ore., and elsewhere are creating their version of game night by hosting “LAN” parties – hooking into each other’s Xbox, GameCube or PlayStation games via speedy local area networks, so they can play together in the same room while eating pizza.

On the adult end of the spectrum, pub and coffee house owners say game nights help bring in business.

“It’s a good way to build a loyal clientele that feels warmly about the place and invested in the place,” says Maurice Collins, owner of the Wild Colonial Tavern in Providence, R.I., which has a quiz night every Sunday.

But Collins says to watch out for quiz masters who don’t double-check their facts – including his friend who tried to pass off the answer “giant squid” to this question: “The blue whale has only one enemy besides man. What is it?”

“People started to boo,” Collins recalls, laughing. (He says the correct answer is “killer whale.”)

Trivia Night at Blue Spark in Spokane has turned blah Tuesday into one of the most popular nights of the week. Owner Bernard McGuire created a home-grown trivia game after he saw it catch on in his native California.

“Oh my gosh, it’s awesome for pub trivia, we get a great crowd and we have lots of fun,” said Blue Spark General Manager Annette Beach. “(McGuire) writes all the games. He’s been playing pub trivia for years and he just loves putting all the games together.”

Beach said the Tuesday night festivities, which start at 9:45 p.m. during the summer, give people a good excuse to get together and have some plain old fun.

“The main thing is that it’s so much fun, and it does build business,” she said. “A great array of people come in, young and middle-aged. It’s very competitive.”