Most of us remember the forced family fun nights surrounding one thing: a board game. Whether it was Chutes and Ladders, Battleship, or Sorry, we were compelled to face off against one another in a battle of wits (and often luck) – and let’s face it, even if we thought we were too cool for Family Game Night, we almost always had fun in the end.

In fact, there is a nostalgic feeling we all share when recalling those glorious nights. (We recently held a Game Night at FCG Headquarters and reminisced about the good old days.) This may be due to the fact that kids today are not being subjected to the same tangible gameboards and plastic figures that we once were. Like most things of old, they have been widely replaced with technology. In the case of board games, this is no different.

According to StoneMaier Games, people under the age of 20 are hardly playing board games at all. We have all seen what happens when a company fails to connect with the next generation so in order to combat this, developers set out to change the way younger generations look at board games by encapsulating all the fun of a weekday night in an app.

“[A traditional game night is] about hanging out with old friends and meeting new people, sharing your latest acquisitions, smashing your opponents with a clever strategy or losing spectacularly,” Jonathan H. Liu said in a Wired Magazine article about the future of board games. “With the iPhone app, now I’m able to play Carcassonne with my friends in Portland and my fellow GeekDad writers in North Carolina and Wisconsin and Arizona—all at the same time!”

The advantage of playing a game in an app is that it allows friends and family from all over the country to participate in a competitive game, all from the comfort of their own home. Plus, the gaming industry hopes to reach the generations that are no longer (or never were) playing traditional board games by utilizing what that generation knows best: phone apps.

At FCG, the only thing we love more than one geeky thing is when two geeky things intertwine for the sake of innovation. Here is a list of your favorite childhood board games that are now available in the app store:

• Scrabble – Words With Friends
• Settlers of Catan – Catan
• RISK – RISK Global Domination
• Monopoly – Monopoly Bingo
• The Game of Life – LIFE

If the idea of a traditional game turned digital steals from your idea of what a board game should be, check out the pictures of from FCG’s Game Night event on Facebook and let us know what your favorite Game Night memories entail!