Prefer to listen to my voice instead of reading these words? This post is available on the Talking Tabletop Podcast Episode 2, amongst other great board game contributors!
This weekend, I was chatting with my cousin about our new year resolutions in regard to our favourite hobbies. She mentioned that she read 170 novels last year, and is hoping to top that number in 2024. I asked how she managed to read a book every other day, and she reported that most of her reading were generic romance novels that were entertaining enough while being easy and quick to consume. My own reading habits are nearly the complete opposite. I read 3 novels in 2023, one of which left me emotionally devastated. My reading habits skew much more to the quality over quantity side of the spectrum, but it got me thinking about my main hobby and the rate at which I consume board games.
Books and board games share a problem with most forms of media. There is simply too much content to consume. There are an estimated 500,000 new books each year, 18,000 movies, 10,000 new video games, and 4,500 new board games, there are millions of hours of new content created every single year that our backlogs have absolutely no hope of keeping up, let alone going back to catch up on the gems we’ve missed. Under this deluge of content, I can see why we seek to put up some guardrails on our hobby time.
Of course, no one can experience all the content. We naturally winnow those astronomical numbers down. We ignore products that we know aren’t interested in (the entire horror genre gets ignored by our household). We count on reviews, both professional and user generated, to steer clear of stinkers. We push products made by our favourite creators to the top of the lists, and through these measures, we find ourselves with a much more manageable list of exciting new releases to spend our time, money, and energy on seeking out.
In 2023, I recorded 328 plays of 132 different games, 54 of those being new to me. A respectable showing, a little down from the previous year, but still a good year for board games. A few of the new to me games were big hits (like Akropolis and Cat in the Box) while others were stinkers in disguise (Beast and Shipwreck Arcana come to mind). Most of the new to me games fall in the “That was pretty good. No complaints, didn’t set my world on fire. I’d play it again if someone requested it” category. It’s not a bad place to be, it’s just where the average game falls in my estimation.
Akropolis was my favourite new-to-me game from last year
When my cousin told me she read 170 books over the year, at first I was amazed, then I began to consider the parallels between her reading hobby and my board game hobby. Most of the books she read didn’t set her world aflame. They were content that got consumed, then placed aside. A number in a spreadsheet, an entry in Goodreads. She wasn’t changed by the book, her world view remains unaltered. Likewise, I played 54 new board games last year. None of them broke into my top 10 (in fact, shockingly few of my top games of all time saw a single play in the last year) but a few are peaking into my top 50. This isn’t to say that they are bad games, just that they didn’t shake my world. My world view remains unaltered, and now here I stand at the dawn of a new year, reflecting on what I’m doing with my hobby. I’m understanding why people subject themselves to these challenges. Why do I spend dozens and dozens of hours playing board games that I only “like” and not “love”? Why don’t I resolve to play Food Chain Magnate or Galaxy Trucker 10 times this year? Surely that would bring me more joy than the rat race of buying, unboxing, learning, and teaching new games every week. Should I consider pivoting to only playing the absolute hits and abandon my pursuit of new games? Would I be happier playing 3 great games over and over again instead of 170 good games?
Perhaps, but perhaps not. I know that I derive a significant amount of joy from discovery. The whole process of learning about new games, the thrill of acquisition, and the crescendo of finally getting a game to the table with my friends is part of what makes me happy in this hobby. All that being said, the rat race can get exhausting, and if you spend ALL of your hobby time just grinding through new releases, it’s real easy to fall into unsustainable habits and burn out on the deluge of new releases.
All of this to say, I hope this year you take some time to reflect on what brings you joy. If you’ve been feverishly acquiring games, or playing a hundred games a single time before moving on and feeling the burn-out that can cause, I hope you take the time to shake up how you engage with your hobby. Remember, buying games does not equal more time to play games, and if playing games is what really makes you happy, then it’s worth spending some time refocusing on what aspects of board games really make you happy.
