The current study aimed to investigate whether board games could be used to improve creative potential. Games have proven to be effective learning tools, and some studies have indicated positive links between creativity and other types of games, namely video games and role-playing games. However, less is known regarding board games’ potential benefits on creativity. This exploratory study compared two types of board games: creative and non-creative board games. We used a within-subject repeated-measurement design, in which participants played to both types of games, across two sessions separated by one week. We assessed creative potential with a divergent thinking task, using fluency and originality as indicators. We controlled for openness, mood states, and enjoyment. Results suggest an improvement of originality after playing both types of games, whereas no differences were observed for fluency. Considering the base level of participants, we found improvement for low-performing participants specifically, in both fluency and originality, although analyses’ limited statistical power may have impacted the findings. These findings provide a first step in the study of creativity and board games and suggest they could help temporarily improve one’s divergent thinking capacity.

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棋盘游戏对创造潜力的影响

目前的研究旨在调查棋盘游戏是否可用于提高创造潜力。游戏已被证明是有效的学习工具，一些研究表明创造力与其他类型的游戏（即视频游戏和角色扮演游戏）之间存在积极联系。然而，关于棋盘游戏对创造力的潜在好处知之甚少。这项探索性研究比较了两种类型的棋盘游戏：创意棋盘游戏和非创意棋盘游戏。我们使用了受试者内重复测量设计，其中参与者在相隔一周的两个会话中玩两种类型的游戏。我们使用流畅性和原创性作为指标，通过发散思维任务来评估创造潜力。我们控制了开放性、情绪状态和享受。结果表明，在玩两种类型的游戏后，原创性都有所提高，而在流畅性方面没有观察到差异。考虑到参与者的基本水平，我们发现表现不佳的参与者在流畅性和原创性方面都有所改善，尽管分析的统计能力有限可能会影响结果。这些发现为创造力和棋盘游戏的研究迈出了第一步，并表明它们可以帮助暂时提高一个人的发散思维能力。