7B - Reading

7B- Shall we go out or stay in?
READING
6. READING
a Match the five games from the box to the type of game they are. Have you ever
played any of them?
Candy Crush Board game

Dungeons and Dragons Brain-training game
Poker Card game
Scrabble Role-playing game
Sudoku Video game
Candy crush Video game

Dungeons and Dragons Role-playing game
Poker Card game
Scrabble Board game
Sudoku Brain-training game
c Read the first part of an article about board games. What is unusual about the
Thirsty Meeples café? Where does its name come from?
It’s a café where people play board games.
The café’s name comes from wanting a drink (thirsty) and the pieces gamers play with
A different kind of social network

It’s a bright Thursday morning in Oxford and the Thirsty Meeples café is a buzz of activity. As I,
my wife, and two sons sit at a sunny window table, the assistant, Gareth, introduces himself and
recommends some games. First, he suggests Forbidden Desert. ‘You have crash-landed in a
desert,’ explains Gareth. ‘You have to find all the pieces of a flying ship in order to escape.’ Next,
he suggests Small World, in which wizards, giants, and humans with special powers battle for
land in a world that’s too small for them all. Last, he recommends Citadels, a game where you
compete to become the King’s Master Builder by building a medieval city. We choose Citadels. As
we play, next to us Eveline, a 30-year-old Dutch university teacher, is playing Ticket to Ride with
her Belgian husband, Roger – they are r rrrracing against each other to build railway tracks across
Europe. Two teenagers play Sushi Go!, a card game where they have to create sushi dishes.
What has drawn all these different people here, from serious gamers to families? Eveline thinks
she
has the answer. She looks around at the other customers and at the library of games on the
shelves. ‘I would say it’s the original social network.’
Thirsty Meeples’s name comes from the combination of ‘meeples’, the pieces that board
gamers play with, and wanting a drink. It is one of a growing number of board game shops and
cafés popping up all over the UK, inspired by their growing popularity in the USA.
F.Actualización: 05/04/2024 7B – READING 1

READING
d Read the first part again and look at the photos of the games. In which game, A-E, do players
have to…?
1 C try to get an important job

2 D make a transport network across a continent.
3 B fight others to get more living space
4 E make something to eat
5 A get out of somewhere after an accident
A – Forbidden Desert B – Small World
C- Citadels D- Ticket to Ride E- Sushi Go!
e Now read the second part of the article. What are the three main reasons why board games
have become so popular?
1. Games and customers are very different today (customers are young professional
people).
2. More women are playing games.
3. The growth of video games has made playing games a normal thing for adults to do.
Peter Wooding, a former punk rocker, opened a board game shop called Orc’s Nest in Covent

READING
Garden, London, in 1987. For the first few years, the shop hardly made any money at all, but over 30
years later, it is thriving.
Wooding says that one of the reasons for its success is that the games and players are very
different from 30 years ago. Today, they are young professional couples, who like the idea of
playing a game with friends and having a few drinks, rather than going out to the pub.
Another reason is that there are also far more women playing games. Wooding says the game
Pandemic, where players must collaborate to control global diseases, and whose main character is a
female scientist, has had a huge influence. ‘Much wider appeal,’ says Wooding. ‘More friendly.’
Pandemic is an example of the newer, less aggressive games, with themes like farming or landscape
building.
One such game, Catan, in which players have to buy and sell
natural resources to build roads and
new cities, has sold more than 22 million copies in 30 languages.
The growth of the video games industry has, perhaps surprisingly, also been one of the biggest
factors in the new popularity of board games, largely because they have made playing games such
a
normal thing for adults to do. Everyone has at least one game on their phone, and more people are
open to the idea of playing a game than ever before. Social media has also provided an easy way for
people to recommend new games to each other.
At Thirsty Meeples in Oxford, I talk to owners John and Zuzi Morgan. What’s Zuzi’s explanation for
the trend? ‘There’s so much technology,’ she says. ‘Everybody’s busy and you want to bring people
back together in a way that’s not just staring at screens. It’s a natural thing in people. We are
supposed to be together and communicating with each other in the real world.’
‘You connect with people across the table. It’s a very human thing.’ Matt Leacock, creator of
Pandemic.
f Read the second part again. With a partner, explain in your own words what these phrases
mean.
1. it is thriving= it’s doing very well.

2. young professional couples= couples where both people work and have a profession,
e.g. doctors, lawyers, etc
3. rather than going out to the pub = instead of going to the pub
4. much wider appeal = more different kinds of people like them
5. one of the biggest factors = one of the most important reasons
6. not just staring at screens = not just looking at phones, tablets, television etc.
7. in the real world: no in the virtual world. It emphasizes the value of face-to-face
communication

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7B- Shall we go out or stay in?

Candy Crush Board game

Candy crush Video game

A different kind of social network

F.Actualización: 05/04/2024 7B – READING 1

1 C try to get an important job

A – Forbidden Desert B – Small World

C- Citadels D- Ticket to Ride E- Sushi Go!

F.Actualización: 05/04/2024 7B – READING 2

1. it is thriving= it’s doing very well.

F.Actualización: 05/04/2024 7B – READING 3

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