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January 21, 2022

Is staying in the new going out?

By Dawn Cuthbertson, Sympatico / MSN Finance

A friend’s birthday party last week saw my friends and I pretend it wasn’t -30 C as we celebrated at a downtown bar.

Looking around the table, I commented that I could barely remember the last time we gathered for a so-called night out on the town. While it’s true that we’re all making a conscious effort to stay in more and host potlucks instead of wining and dining, I realized there was something else keeping us indoors other than the wind chill.

Games.

From Scrabble and Trivia Pursuit to Nintendo’s Wii, my friends and I seem to have embraced the gaming community - traditional and virtual – with gusto.

And it’s not just us. In these tough economic times, there seems to be a renewed interest in games among adults as we try to maintain our social lives, but spend less.

As my friends talked about their favourite games, I remembered a night a few months ago when I realized they weren’t just for kids. After dinner at a friend’s condo, the hostess suggested we play Battle of the Sexes. What started out as a friendly game quickly turned into a fierce competition and afterward I was surprised by how much fun I had.

Games give me nostalgia for the days my sister and I spent hours in my parent’s basement playing Monopoly and Risk with neighbourhood friends. Back then money was the least of our worries because we didn’t have any to spend. So if gaming is going to take me back to a time when life was a little simpler, count me in.

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