THE NATIONAL DEBT may not sound like your idea of a good time. But Utah brothers Mark and David Call hope you'll change your mind once you've played the board game they invented: "Tax and Spend: The Deficit Reduction Game."
It's sort of Monopoly in reverse. Instead of trying to amass a fortune, players compete to see who can erase $4 trillion of red ink.The Calls personally are hoping to earn a slightly more modest sum with their game, and think they can beat the grim odds (3,000 new board games are produced each year in the United States; 45 make a profit; three become household words).
The Calls are among several Utahns who are marketing games this year. Veteran Utah game inventor Mike Agrelius has two new games: "In Your Face" and "Extinction: The Last Game They Ever Played." Ardell Olsen has sold 23,000 copies of his very first game, "Book of Mormon Challenge." Also new for LDS game players is Chris King's "Second Coming." And former Utahn John Boyle is doing well with "Double Talk," which was chosen among Games magazine's top 100 games of 1993.
Like the Calls, Agrelius knows that just coming up with a good game isn't enough anymore. He is promoting "In Your Face" with $2-off coupons for Domino's Pizza; the game is also a giveaway for local radio contests. The Calls wear sweatshirts imprinted with their "Tax and Spend" logo and have sponsored "Tax and Spend" playoffs at local stores.
The brothers came up with their game idea last winter, while grousing about the tendency of politicians to tax and spend. Why do they keep doing it, one brother asked. It must be fun, answered the other. They both decided if it was that much fun everyone should have a chance to do it. They spent the next six months coming up with rules, a board and playing pieces.
Players roll a die to determine who will be the conservative, liberal, lobbyist or senator. Then they're off, in a race to see who can get down Constitution Avenue first, and who can lop the most off the deficit.
Although it's not meant as an educational game, says Mark Call, players can't help learning about the political process - about filibusters, pork barrels, tax shelters and power. Mark, who graduated in political science from the University of Utah in 1987, got a firsthand look at the political process while he was an intern in the Hinckley Institute's Washington, D.C., program.
Like the Calls, Agrelius has invested tens of thousands of dollars in his two new games. Agrelius is also the inventor of "Abstracts," which has had some limited success in its five years on the market, and several games geared to the LDS market.
It looks like "In Your Face" and "Extinction" may have more broad appeal. Burt Hochberg, editor of Games magazine in New York, praises both and predicts they will make the magazine's Top 100 games next year.
"In Your Face" is a UNO-like card game ("but not as mindless and stupid," says Hochberg). UNO is the No. 1 seller of all time, no matter what Hochberg thinks of it, and Agrelius wanted to come up with something equally fast-paced and easy to learn. He has included a "pre-game video" to explain the rules.
"Extinction: The Last Game They Ever Played" is a dinosaur-based card game in which players try to collect and preserve herds of plant-eating dinosaurs, defending them from other players' meat-eating dinosaurs and natural disaster cards.
Card games, Agrelius predicts, are the next big trend for games. He thinks they will appeal to people who are tired of spending $30 on board games.
While nearly 100 percent of game sales are at Christmas, Ardell Olsen's "Book of Mormon Challenge" has done well since he introduced it at LDS General Conference last spring. Olsen has already accomplished a feat most game inventors only dream about - he has already broken even on his investment and is now making a profit.