Comlink – even though your points are valid, the maaleh of games is that it gives you something fun to do so the date isn’t too boring.
I agree with you that it can be a problem of not allowing for personal interaction, and I do remember having this problem once (and I’ve only played games on dates 2x that I can remember). I remember feeling like there was no point to the date at all.
There are two ways to avoid that problem:
1. Only play games for a short time at the beginning of the date as a warm-up. Alternatively, in the middle of the date, if no one has anything to say or it’s just getting boring, you can pull out the games just for a short time. The second time I played a game on a date, he did it this way (the first way), and it worked really well.
2. You can try to find a game that involves conversation. I’m not sure how many games there are like this, but I’m sure there must be some. You are the game expert – do you know of any? I actully recently saw a game that is meant for dates. It has questions to find out about the other person.
Boggle and chess are probably bad ideas (especially boggle).