When is too much of a good thing… actually a bad thing?
It’s a question I’ve been turning over in my head a lot lately, and like most of my rambling blog posts, the question started with a board game.
On March 25th, Restoration Games announced the return of Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit with The Lord of the Rings: The Kings Gambit. I saw this announcement immediately after I was listening to the Board Games Insider podcast where host Stephen Buonocore announced his co-designed game with Geoff Engelstein, The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict.
Now, my wife and I have always been fans of the Lord of the Rings series. The books and the original trilogy of movies, mind you. We didn’t care for the Hobbit movies (although I found this fan-edit to be significantly more palatable), and we only watched a single episode of The Rings of Power.
But ever since Embracer group acquired Middle Earth Enterprises, it feels like a deluge of Lord of the Rings games have hit the marketplace. In just the past few years there’s been The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game,The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth, There’s The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, You’ve got heavier titles like The Lord of the Rings: Foes of Middle-earth and The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth. And then there are others ,The Lord of the Rings: The Adventure Book Game, Exit: The Lord of the Rings, Spot It! The Lord of the Rings, and more! All these games circling the same source material, each trying to carve out its own little piece of Tolkien’s world.
At some point, I start to wonder: when does one of my favourite IPs being in a game stop being exciting and is actively hurting my intrest in it?
There was a time not so long ago when a new Lord of the Rings anything felt like an event. Maybe it was because releases were so spaced out. A movie trilogy in 2001, then a decade break before the Hobbit movies. I know that part of the reason was because so few people had access to the license, famously gate kept by Christopher Tolkien. But to go from a drip feed of Lord of the Rings content to the veritable deluge of releases that I’m seeing today, it causes a bit of an emotional whiplash.
I feel like that scarcity gave the games that did exist some weight. I have vivid memories of playing through the Lord of the Rings video games on the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo Gamecube. Those games felt like they belonged. Like they had a reason to exist beyond simply wearing the skin of a beloved IP.
Nowadays, I can’t help but wonder if some of these games coming out NEED to be Lord of the Rings themed, or are they just slapping the name on because they know it’ll catch the attention of long-time fans? I received Lord of the Rings: Spot It for Christmas this year, and I’m sure that I never would have received that game if not for the LOTR name on the package.
I’m not trying to say that any of these games are bad, some of them are genuinely clever. But because LOTR games are no longer rare, they no longer feel special or unique. Which hurts my heart, just a little.
To be fair, there’s a very real upside to all of this. More games set in Middle-earth means more entry points into the hobby. A trick-taking game might appeal to one group. The narrative adventure that is Journeys in Middle-Earth will appeal to another. A quick, portable game like Spot It! might be the thing that gets a non-gamer to sit down at the table in the first place.
And there’s something comforting about a familiar setting. You don’t need to learn a new world, new characters, or new terminology. You already know who the factions are. You already understand the stakes. That familiarity lowers the barrier to entry in a way that original themes sometimes struggle to match, especially when it comes to High Fantasy, which has a tendency to copy Lord of the Rings anyway, in a way that makes them feel generic.
With that context, having a wide spread of games tied to the same IP is beneficial. It increases the chances that someone will find a version of that world that clicks with them mechanically. Not every game needs to be for everyone. But maybe there should be a version of Middle-earth for everyone.
But there’s a tipping point. And I don’t think it’s tied to a specific number of releases. It’s more of a feeling than a metric. A moment when I hear another game announcement and instead of thinking, “Oh, that’s interesting,” I thought “Of course there’s another one.”
And that’s when the cynic inside of me wakes up. These Lord of the Rings games are starting to feel less like a creative decision and more like a branding exercise. Because the real question isn’t whether a game is good. It’s whether the theme feels earned.
Does this game need to be set in Middle-earth? Does the design draw something meaningful from that world? Or could you strip away the names, swap in generic fantasy art, and end up with essentially the same experience? Is the only reason this is a Lord of the Rings game is so that long time fans like me will buy it?
And when those thoughts start popping into my head, I start to feel fatigue.
Even if each individual game is solid, even if each one targets a different audience, there’s still a cumulative effect. Seeing the same IP over and over again, across wildly different genres and weight classes, starts to wear down my sense of excitement. The same thing happened when Marvel really got their ball rolling. At first, a new Marvel movie was an event. It was an exciting thing to look forward to. First it was Iron Man in 2008, then Iron Man 2 in 2010, then Thor and Captain America in 2011, and Avengers in 2012. Now, there have been something like 17 movies and TV shows over the past 4 years. Absolutely exhausting, trying to keep up. I’ll be honest, after Infinity War and Endgame in 2019, I started ignoring everything Marvel.
And I’m worried I’m going to do the same with The Lord of the Rings.
I don’t think there’s a clean answer to when “too much” becomes too much. It’s not a total number of games. It’s not even a trend. It’s a feeling that creeps in when the connection between theme and design starts to feel thin, when the IP stops being a source of inspiration and starts being a marketing shortcut.
I don’t mind seeing more games set in Middle-earth. In fact, part of me enjoys it. It means the world I grew up loving continues to find new ways to exist. But I do find myself becoming more selective. Not because I’m tired of The Lord of the Rings, but because now I’m needing to mentally strip the LOTR theme off the game to decide if it’s an actually interesting game underneath the pretty wrapping paper. LOTR has stopped being a selling point for me, and is starting to be an active deterrent. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to buy any LOTR games in the future, but I’m certainly going to be more selective about them.
It’s a question I’ve been mulling over for years, and one that tends to pop into my head whenever I’m browsing an upcoming release and trying to get a sense of what people are thinking. I scroll past the preview images, maybe skim a few comments, and then my eyes drift over to the rating… only to see that bar graph with a giant foot, the 1 ratings outnumbering every other number by a large margin. Also, why the heck are there ratings on this game if it isn’t even out yet? These 1s aren’t low scores from disappointed players, they aren’t thoughtful critiques explaining why something didn’t land. These 1s feel more of a punishment than anything else. And I always find myself wondering: what is that number actually trying to say?
Because, at least in my mind, a rating is supposed to represent an experience. It’s meant to capture what it felt like to sit down, learn the rules, fumble through a first play, and how much joy someone had during their play. But when a number gets assigned before any of that has happened, it starts to mean something else entirely. It’s less about the game, and more about the drama surrounding the production, or perhaps one of the people involved.
Two recent examples of unreleased games with a large number of 1 ratings
The Things We’re Really Rating
In my experience, a lot of these early 1s don’t come out of nowhere. They’re reactions to decisions made long before a game ever reaches players. Recently, AI-generated art has been a flashpoint. People see something that feels off, or read a comment suggesting shortcuts were taken, and suddenly the rating becomes a place to push back. The most recent case of this was Concordia Special Edition by Awakened Realms. The cover looked a little Ai generated, people reacted, and Awakened Realms responded by saying “No AI art will be in the final game“
Sidebar: I’m surprised people continue to be surprised every time Awakened Realms uses AI images, considering Awakened Realms used AI art in their pre-production images many of their projects, including the special editions of Agricola, Puerto Rico, and more. They always publicly state that there will be “no AI art in the final products”, but it seems like every time they release a new product, there’s a new backlash over their continued use of AI promotional images.
No AI in my copy of Agricola
But honestly, I’m glad that people are willing to raise a stink over AI images. I don’t have the patience for it and I end up silently voting with my wallet instead of grandstanding on social media. But without vocal pushback, how is a company supposed to know what they’re doing is wrong? That said, I do dislike when those concerns get funnelled into a single number on Board Game Geek, especially in a context where a rating is for an entire game. It feels like it distorts the purpose of that number and platform.
What makes it even harder to untangle is when a game is getting slammed for multiple reasons. Some people give it a 1 for using AI art, others give it a 1 for being too expensive, packed with unnecessary deluxe components and premium materials. All of these concerns are valid, but is it worth dragging the entire production through the mud for it? Does Concordia designer Mac Gerdts get mud on his face by association because a publisher made the choice to use AI artwork for a promotional cover?
When Numbers Stop Meaning What We Think They Mean
The tricky part is that once ratings start being used this way, the meaning of the numbers begins to shift. A 1 no longer necessarily means “this game is terrible to play.” or “It’s utterly broken”, like in the recent case of RoboRover 2077. It now might just mean “I disagree with how this was made,” or “I don’t like what this represents,” or even “I’m frustrated with the publisher.”
And to be clear, those feelings aren’t inherently wrong. People engage with games for all kinds of reasons, and the hobby doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Themes matter. Production choices matter. The broader industry matters. But when all of those things get compressed into a single score, it becomes harder to extract useful information, especially for someone who just wants to know: is this a good game to play?
Sometimes just looking at a game cover or back of box picture won’t let you know if a game is for you or not
That’s ultimately why I look at ratings in the first place. Not as a verdict, but as a rough barometer. Sometimes I’ll be standing in my friendly local game store and I’ll pick up a box I hadn’t heard of. A quick search on BGG will sometimes tell me that a game might be a diamond in the rough, or, that a game isn’t really worth a second look. When that signal gets overwhelmed by reactions that aren’t rooted in gameplay, it becomes harder to trust what I’m seeing.
And people weaponizing their 1 ratings can go a step too far. The brigading between fans of Gloomhaven and Brass: Birmingham didn’t just stay in comment threads, it spilled directly into ratings, with people boosting one and tanking the other in a kind of ongoing tug-of-war. At that point, the numbers stop reflecting experience altogether and start reflecting the zealotry of the fanbase.
Can You Even Fix This?
Whenever I feel dissatisfaction with a system, my brain always shifts to trying to figure out a solution, even when I am powerless to make changes. I know BGG does take action against review bombing, and it can be challenging sifting out the actions of bad actors vs the legitimist grievances. But beyond that, I can’t help but wonder if ratings should be weighted differently? Should people who log plays have more influence than those who don’t? Could the system identify and limit users who consistently “review bomb” games before release? Should there be a separate rating for ‘verified’ reviewers, like Rotten Tomatoes has for movies?
But the moment you start going down that road, you run into a different kind of problem. Not a technical one, but a philosophical one. Who gets to have a voice?
Because there are infinite edge cases that don’t fit neatly into these solutions. What if you’ve played one edition of a game and want to rate another? What if you have strong objections to a game’s theme or message? Should those perspectives be excluded entirely just because they’re not tied to logged plays?
There’s also the simple reality that any system designed to police behaviour will eventually be gamed. If ratings required comments, people would leave empty ones. If they required play logs, people would log plays they didn’t have. At a certain point, you’re not solving the problem, you’re just moving it around.
Maybe the System Isn’t the Only Issue
Another idea that comes up fairly often is whether the rating system itself is part of the problem. A single number is a blunt tool. It tries to capture too many things at once: gameplay, components, art, rules clarity, personal taste, and compress everything into a single data point.
Would it be worth breaking the rating system apart? Would a system where you rate different aspects separately: gameplay, components, art, rules, overall experience. A composite score could still exist, but it would be built from multiple perspectives rather than a single gut reaction. Maybe that would make it harder to use the system as a blunt instrument.
Or maybe it would just give people more places to express the same frustrations.
A simpler, more immediate change might be to restrict ratings before release. Let previews be previews. Let early impressions live in comments and reviews. And let ratings reflect actual time spent with the game as it’s intended to be played. It wouldn’t solve everything, but it might curb the knee-jerk reactions to pre-production decisions.
Sometimes I wonder just how many people are turned away from Bullet because of the anime artwork.
Or Maybe This Is Just Who We Are
There’s a part of me that keeps coming back to a less satisfying answer: maybe this isn’t a systems problem. In my previous job as a Systems Administrator, I used to tell managers all the time “IT are really bad managers.” It’s not about building a system resilient to abuse, but it’s about how people choose to engage with the systems.
Some people will always use ratings as a way to express frustration, or to push back against trends they don’t like, or to support the things they care about. Others will treat them as carefully considered reflections of their experiences. Hell, I read one account of someone who used the rating system as a reminder of how many times he played each game in his collection (so a game he played twice got a 2, etc)
No system can really account for every use case that the public will invent.
Where I Personally Land
For my part, I don’t include ratings in my reviews. And even when I do rate games on BGG, I try to be mindful of what that number represents. Not just how I felt in the moment, but how the game held up over time, how it played across multiple sessions, how much joy it brought me each time it hit the table.
I also tend to avoid the extremes. A 1 or a 10 should mean something, at least to me. They’re not just expressions of dislike or hype, they’re markers of something truly exceptional, whether good or bad. Most games I play fall somewhere between a 6 and a 9, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that. Any game that would hit those lower scores get weeded out before they even hit my table, so they don’t even get a chance to get a score.
But more than anything, I find myself relying less on the number on the BGG page or it’s placement in the overall top games list, and more on the opinions of people I trust. The written reviews, the YouTube Videos, and posts people share after actually playing the game. That’s where I find the real value.
Because at the end of the day, I don’t think the BGG top games list is a objectively correct measure of the quality of a game, but it does serve as a barometer for me. And the more people use the ratings to talk about everything, the less value the BGG ratings has for me.
Imagine this scenario. You’re at your friendly local game store. You’ve just picked up a hot new game off the shelf. You flip it over to check out the back, as if you don’t already know everything about the game from the media blitz on BGG/social media, let alone your own research. You feel an overwhelming urge to buy the game, add it to your collection. Just think how excited your game group will be when they hear you’ve picked up a brand new game! But in the back of your mind, something’s itching. Do you really need a new game? Don’t you have 7 other games on your shelf of shame/opportunity? Never mind the dozens of games you bought, punched, learned, and played only once.
You love board games. You’ve played hundreds. You’ve backed dozens of Kickstarters, you read rules just for fun, you’ve joined online board game communities to talk about your favourite games… And yet… there they are. The games you genuinely liked, experiences you enjoy, just, sitting on your shelf. Unfinished legacy campaigns, half-explored systems. Expansions you’ve folded into the base box that you never got around to actually playing.
My question is: Why do board gamers keep abandoning games they actually like?
Or perhaps more bluntly: Why are we always chasing the cult of the new?
Allow me to pontificate.
Completion Bias
Humans hate unfinished things. This isn’t a gamer problem, it’s a brain problem. Psychologists have known for nearly a century that we remember unfinished tasks more vividly than completed ones. It’s why a half finished campaign nags at you more than the game you’ve already “got your money’s worth” from.
Board games are especially good at triggering this completion bias:
Campaigns with branching paths
Expansions that promise to “fix” or “deepen” the base game
Modular content you haven’t tried yet
Fan expansions or community made variants
Expert strategies that only become clear after 10+ plays
The completion bias gets cranked up to 11 when companies like Queen Games put numbers on the sides of their boxes. It’s brutally unsatisfying to look at a shelf of games and see the spines labelled “1…2…4…”. Where’s 3? You have to get number 3!!
Some gamers aspire to acquire the entire catalogue of their favourite designer. I fell into this trap for a while, seeking out every Vladimir Suchy game possible. But in the end, I had 8 different games and only really enjoyed playing 2 of them.
Loss aversion is absolutely at play here. You’ve put in the initial investment to acquire a game or a series, so adding the latest game or an expansion is comparatively cheap. In the worst scenario, a game or expansion doesn’t get reprinted so you need to add it to your collection now before it disappears, as if it’s a rare Pokemon in the Safari Zone.
The Infinite Release Problem
There are more board games coming out now than at any other point in the hobby’s history. Crowdfunding, print-on-demand, small and indie publishers, solo designers, anyone and everyone can put a game out into the world. Which is great! But it’s also overwhelming. It feels like every single week there’s a “must-play” new game, two hot new Kickstarter games, and a massively popular designer releasing a new game that has the whole board game media sphere in a tizzy.
And board gaming is a social hobby, even when you mostly play solo. We want to be part of the conversation or cultural zeitgeist. We want to know what everyone else is talking about. We might want to avoid spoilers, hot takes, and the creeping sense that we’re falling behind. So you shelve your old favourites, or any unplayed games you already own temporarily so you can “just try” the new thing. You buy the hot game, post a picture of it on social media or to your board game groups chat, and say to yourself “I’ll definitely learn how to play this before next game day”
Unfortunately, the act of buying a game and posting on social media gave your brain a sweet, sweet dopamine hit, and if we’re being honest, learning rules is pretty boring. What’s even more boring is going back to that old game that you promised yourself to play last week.
Novelty Is a Hell of a Drug
On the subject of sweet dopamine hits, new games are front-loaded with dopamine. The first play is full of discovery, learning the systems, discovering the strategies, talking about what you can do better next time! This feeling is powerful, but it doesn’t last forever. And when you compare a game that you like, with a whole new game, it’s so easy to pick the new game. After all, the new game might be your new favourite game of all time! The new game can be anything and everything, while the old game… you already know what the old game has to offer.
Another frustration point is if one player at your table is particularly good at a game. Do you want to spend your one game night a week struggling against someone who’s probably going to win anyway? A new game offers a level playing field, with everyone at the table discovering strategies at the same time.
Too Much Content Can Kill Love
Here’s where this really hits modern board gaming. Big games now feel designed to be endless. This is more of a problem with crowdfunded games where the all-in tier is $800 and is shipped in 3 waves. I’m talking Final Girl, or Bloodborne, or Marvel United, or any of those big crowdfunding projects. With modules, expansions, campaigns, and just piles and piles of content. So much that you could play this game for every game night and still have fresh stuff to play when the expansion hits Kickstarter the following year!
Sometimes having too much content can push players away. When you have so many different permutations of how a game can be played, with interlocking modules or optional expansions, you can become paralyzed. Which module should you start with, which combination is the optimal way to play? Does character X play well against mission Y? This turns a game night into homework. And my high school grades should tell you, I hate homework.
The Fantasy of the Perfect Play
Another quiet trap: holding games off for the “right moment.” Maybe you don’t want to play Zoo Vadis until you have at least 5 players, or Tainted Grail is best at one or two players, so you need to wait for a game night that suits that. Maybe you don’t want to play a deduction game while you’re tired, or start a complex game when you only have 2 hours before one of your players HAS to leave. You don’t want to play a certain game until the conditions are ideal.
Postponing games you’re excited about cools your enthusiasm. And while your enthusiasm is cooling-off on one game, there’s a shiny new game right around the corner, begging you for your time and money.
Why Do We Chase the New?
At the end of the day, I think it’s important to state that abandoning games doesn’t make you an irresponsible person. Board games are not obligations, they’re not self-improvement tools. You don’t owe a game anything just because you bought it. I do think it’s worth noticing how often we confuse starting something new with doing something meaningful.
The cult of the new always keeps us moving, keeps us active and engaged in our favourite hobby, but it’s not always engaging in a deeper or more meaningful way. If you’re like me, once the dopamine of buying a new game, watching the shipping tracker inch closer to your door every day, then pulling off the shrink wrap and punching the pieces out while imagining what it’s going to be like to play this game wears off, you just feel vaguely unsatisfied. Some of the arguments above might be why.
If you’ve been feeling disconnected with your hobby, or missing the joy you once held with cardboard, I think the trick to reinvigorating your hobby time isn’t by buying a new game, but it’s getting back to the classics. Playing the games that made you fall in love with board games in the first place. When was the last time you played Carcassonne, Pandemic, or Agricola? Those are still amazing games! You can plop them onto the table and have a great night with them, right now!
I think cult of the new isn’t really about games, but about feeling connected. When the media we consume is always showing us a new thing, it’s pretty natural to want to be a part of that conversation. But in the end, if you aren’t playing games, then you’re just engaging in wanton consumerism, and that’s not very fun at all.
Perhaps this is a byproduct of playing entirely too many games on Board Game Arena, or maybe I’ve just become more sensitive to it since having kids and watching my sleep health deteriorate entirely, but I hate hidden trackable information in board games.
First, a definition.
Hidden Trackable Information (HTI) refers to information that everyone at the table could be tracking and therefore knows with 100% certainty, but which is deliberately hidden. I’m not talking about drawing cards into your hand in Ticket to Ride, even if you use the public market every turn, because you could still be drawing blindly from the deck, and that information is hidden.
What I mean is something more like Puerto Rico, where scores are completely trackable, but for some reason the scores are told to be hidden. Or For Sale, where you can, and probably should, be tracking how much money each player is paying at each auction, and therefore how much money they have left for future bids, but the rules insist on keeping your bank accounts private.
Here’s my real problem with hidden trackable information: I’m dumb. And I play games with really smart people.
I don’t mind losing because I made tactical errors, or because randomness bit me in the ass. I can handle that just fine. But when I lose because I wasn’t able to keep every piece of data in my head while my opponents were successfully counting cards or tracking points, it feels incredibly discouraging.
A good example is El Grande. Players drop cubes into the castle, and when it’s time to score, the cubes are revealed and whoever has the majority scores the points. I find it deeply frustrating to sit there trying to remember who put cubes in and how many. Should I commit three cubes because I think that puts me into the majority? Should I commit four just to be safe? If I had been writing this down as players added cubes, I’d be able to make an informed decision instead of guessing based on vibes and vibes alone.
As most parents do, I’m going to blame my children.
Over the past five years, my sleep has been constantly interrupted by rugrats. Unfortunately for me, no one else in my game group has kids. They usually show up to game night well rested and emotionally stable, ready for a long game of cold calculations. Meanwhile, I’m crawling in on four hours of sleep because my five-year-old was awake for three hours from 1am to 4am, terrified she was going to swallow her first loose tooth (true story).
Some people have very strong opinions about hidden trackable information. I’m always surprised by the ferocity with which people will defend games that use HTI, and rail against the mere idea of someone using a memory aid or taking notes.
“It makes games so much less enjoyable!” “memory is a skill! That’s part of playing the game!”
In furtherance of me being dumb, playing a lot of board games online has absolutely made my brain lazy. The Yucata version of El Grande shows you exactly what’s in the castle at all times, because, ostensibly, you could be tracking that information yourself. BGA has a notes feature built right into the interface, allowing you to jot things down at any time. Somewhat ironically, I almost never use it, but I’m glad it’s there, especially for those async games that stretch over weeks.
The most common defences of HTI seem to be that it reduces analysis paralysis and prevents king making. If everyone knows exactly who’s winning, the table will pile on the leader. If all information is open, players might spend far more time puzzling out the optimal move instead of trusting their gut and just playing the game. To me, this sounds like the defence of well rested players relying on their more simple compatriots making mistakes to cement their victory.
So where is the line? When is hidden trackable information okay?
Would you allow someone to look through a discard pile to check whether a card had already been played, and they just missed it? Would you allow a player to look into their bag in Orléans or Automobiles to confirm what cubes they even have available to them?
If you let someone shift through their discard pile, would you let them look through the previously played tricks to see if that jack of hearts had already been played? Some games like Cat in the Box are very friendly to players like me, because they include a whole board for everyone to track what cards have already been played.
Now, I will concede that playing El Grande with perfect information makes the reveal much less exciting. Sometimes imperfect information really does create a different, and occasionally better, experience. I’ll also concede that taking this argument to its logical extreme is annoying. I absolutely don’t want to play with someone who’s maintaining a full spreadsheet of which cards have appeared and which ones I’ve drafted while playing Star Realms. As with most things, nuance matters.
Some games only work with HTI. Trio, for instance, should be a simple game of memory, but for some reason it makes me feel like my brain is melting out of my ears. But the game only really shines when players are making mistakes and struggling to remember if they already know what someone’s lowest card is. The ever shifting information of players hands helps facilitate that feeling as well. Similarly, Wandering Towers would be really boring if those towers were clear.
As with all things, context matters. I’m generally pretty against HTI in economic euro games, because the purpose or goal of those games are to be the most efficient, and obscuring some information goes against the spirit of the game. In other, less mathematical games, where the purpose of the game is to evoke specific feelings, then HTI makes sense.
But in my opinion, someone who insists on preserving HTI and then wins because of my poor memory is no better than someone winning a game because their opponent forgot a rule and had a critical turn derailed. I’d much rather win or lose with everyone playing at their best, rather than because someone couldn’t remember how many cubes were dropped into a tower.
All of this said, I’m speaking from a place of privilege. No one at my table suffers from serious analysis paralysis. No one quarterbacks co-op games. No one is deliberately exploiting information asymmetry to bully less confident players. I’m not arguing that HTI is always bad, or that it should be purged from game design entirely.
But I am saying this: if the deciding factor in a strategy game is who remembered better, or who was able to silently run a second game in their head while also playing the first one, then that’s not a test of strategy I find especially compelling anymore.
I want to win or lose because I made better decisions with the information in front of me. I want my mistakes to be tactical, not neurological. When a game rewards someone for tracking numbers in their head while pretending they aren’t there, it doesn’t feel clever to me, it feels exclusionary.
Maybe that’s the sleep deprivation talking. Maybe it’s too many games on BGA. Or maybe it’s just that, at this stage of my life, I’m less interested in proving I can remember how many cubes went into a tower three rounds ago, and more interested in making interesting choices right now. If that means occasionally letting players look into their bag and confirm the information that was available to them all along? I’m fine with that. I’d rather play a game where everyone can see the whole picture, than one where the real contest is who forgot the least.
It’s hard to argue with the idea that board gaming is in a golden age right now. Walk into almost any game store, browse an online retailer, or sit down at a local café, and you’re spoiled for choice in a way that simply didn’t exist 15 or 20 years ago. Some people may argue that the real golden age of board games was 10 years ago, when some of the best games of all time were being released, but I’d argue that the reason why the previous decade seemed better than now has more to do with our overconsumption of media and increased awareness of the average game coming out now, rather than an actual quality difference. It’s not unlike when someone says “movies used to be so much better”, and then list only the best movies from a decade. All the chaff has been lost to time, it’s not that the movies used to be better, but we just remember the good ones.
So many games, so much better
I’ll obviously concede that the raw number of new games has increased dramatically over the past 20 years, but I honestly believe that the average game has gotten better. Designers have spent decades iterating, seeing the mechanisms that work, discarding the bits that don’t, and “firing” older designs with cleaner, more engaging versions that make it hard to go back.
Production quality has quietly reset expectations: distinct art styles, thoughtful graphic design, and gorgeous components that almost always meet a solid baseline of quality. The average game released today would be considered an ultra deluxe edition 15 years ago. Just look at Agricola’s original printing, where all the animals are just coloured discs. No stickers, no ani-meeples, no screen printing. Just piles of wooden discs and cubes.
Behold my sheep pen
That is why this era feels like a golden age: you can pick almost any weight or genre and find multiple polished options that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Even mid‑tier releases tend to be well-developed, thoroughly playtested, and perhaps most importantly, look amazing.
I think one of the concepts that people who say that the golden age of board gaming is over needs to reconcile, is the fact that anyone who joined the board game hobby in the last 5 or 10 years, had a period of explosive interest. Every game mechanic was new and interesting, and you had two decades of great titles to plumb. But once you’ve discovered all the greats, your attention naturally shifts to what’s coming out now, and you’re seeing a lot more of the average game, that will eventually be forgotten to time. For example, around 2008 saw the release of Pandemic, Brass, and Agricola. But for all their acclaim, how many people even remember some of the mid-range releases, such as Steel Driver, Shanghaien, or Comuni?
Crowdfunding: fuel and friction
I’d argue that Crowdfunding is the single biggest accelerant behind the glut of new titles, but it also embodies many of the hobby’s current risks. For established publishers, it has morphed from a funding lifeline for games that wouldn’t exist otherwise, into a marketing and pre‑pay/pre-order machine, complete with built‑in hype, and moving the risk from the publisher onto the customers.
The “indie dream” of Kickstarter is shrinking, as players are increasingly less likely to pay attention to, and more importantly, less likely to contribute their dollars to projects that aren’t 1) fully conceptualized and ready to produce, and 2) from a known designer or publisher. Players instead concentrate on the brands that have massive advertising budgets, recognizable designers, and more commonly, a licensed IP. All this leaves unknown designers struggling to fund without already having a platform and/or a huge following.
At the same time, crowdfunding has enabled some amazing projects that might never have existed in a purely traditional system. Games that the designer believed in when no publisher was willing to take on the risk of producing it. The hard question is whether a few unicorns justify a culture of compulsive backing when there are already thousands of proven games on shelves today. Why should you as a consumer take the risk on a Crowdfunded game and put your money down months if not years in advance, when you could pop into your friendly local game store today and buy dozens of known, great games?
Culture, venues, and the next wave of players
On the subject of FLGS, outside the bubble that is this hobby’s media sphere, board games are more visible and normal than they used to be. Wingspan shows up at family gatherings for people who have never heard the phrase “hobby board game,” Ticket to Ride appeared on Saturday Night Live, and big‑box retailers are stocking titles that you used to have to special order.
The small city where I live has grown to support 3 separate board game cafés, and each one is frequently full. Almost every pub around me has a game shelf, and more often than not I see someone plopping one of those games onto the table to have a good time while enjoying their beverages. Libraries are getting in on the action, allowing players to take games home to explore, spreading the board gaming joy to a dozen families at a time. While anecdotal, all of this showcases that board gaming is becoming much more normalized as a default night‑out option rather than a niche pastime.
The most important shift may be generational. Many of the people entering the hobby now are in high school, college, or young adulthood, and they are growing up with modern designs as a normal social activity rather than a discovery. That cohort is likely to carry board gaming forward as one of their default ways to spend time together, and eventually to introduce their own kids to it.
Real risks: AI art, waste, and buying instead of playing
For all of my optimism, there are genuine threats that could flatten or sour the current board game trajectory if left unchecked.
AI art creep: Generative art is cheap and fast, which makes it tempting for publishers looking to cut costs or hit tight schedules. Over time, that will sand off the unique voices that made modern board game art so exciting, replacing distinctive illustrators with a bland, derivative style.
Wasteful production: Giant boxes full of plastic minis and single‑use packaging represent real environmental and storage costs, especially when many of those games see only a handful of plays before being sold or shelved. Every time I feel like this trend is starting to wane, another massive crowdfunding campaign shows up, earns 8 million bucks, and proves me wrong.
Volume over depth: There is a strong temptation, for players and publishers, to treat games as collectibles first and experiences second. Case in point being Queen Games’ Stefan Feld City Collection. When shelves fill faster than tables, good designs get buried, and the market rewards hype cycles and derivative games based on existing products more than replayable, unique and interesting systems.
None of these risks are inevitable outcomes. They are responses to incentives, and incentives can change.
How this golden age becomes a foundation, not a peak
If there is a single lever that would improve the hobby from here, it’s a shift in how players relate to their collections. I want to see more playing, less impulse buying. I feel like higher prices that reflect real development and production costs would likely slow down mindless accumulation and make each purchase feel more like a deliberate commitment to something that will actually hit the table, but we’ve all see the discourse around Food Chain Magnate, and how it’s art and components don’t justify it’s $120 price tag, despite it being one of the best games ever made.
I think it looks beautiful, just the way it is.
Proselytize tactfully: invite people in, show them genuinely great games on their first contact, and normalize board gaming the way golf or live music is normalized. Don’t trick someone into coming to your place only to slam down Arcsand trap them in an hour-long rule tutorial ahead of a 4-hour play time.
Vote with your wallet: reward publishers who pay human artists, design thoughtful, replayable games, and avoid wasteful components; starve the projects that lean on AI shortcuts, plastic bloat, and shallow design. Even if they’re using your favourite IP as a vehicle to suck money out of your wallet.
From that vantage point, this moment or golden age, is less “the top” and more of a mature plateau. This is a time when the board game hobby is big enough to be visible, diverse enough to satisfy nearly any taste, but still flexible enough to be shaped by the people who care about it.
What does it mean to be a board game collector? I think most of us in the board game hobby refer to the selection of games that we own as “our collection”, I often wonder how much thought is put into curating a collection, versus having an excuse for wanton consumerism.
Wile reading Sir Terry Pratchett’s 2004 novel Going Postal, a character by the name of Stanley Howler describes his hobby, which is pin collecting.
“While most ‘pinheads’ do indeed begin with a casually acquired flashy novelty pin, followed by the contents of their grandmothers’ pincushion, haha, the path to a truly worthwhile collection lies not in the simple disbursement of money in the nearest pin emporium, oh no. Any dilettante can become ‘kingpin’ with enough expenditure, but for the true ‘pinhead’ the real pleasure is in the joy of the chase, the pin fairs, the house clearances, and, who knows, a casual glint in the gutter that turns out to be a well-preserved Doublefast or an unbroken two-pointer. Well is it said: ‘See a pin and pick it up, and all day long you’ll have a pin.”
The line about the thrill of the chase really resonated with me. Aside from board games, one of my other main hobbies is reading. I have at least 6 book cases in my house, full of books. As my kids get older, their books take up more and more of my bookshelves, which means the remaining shelves have started to get double stacked. I’ve culled half a dozen boxes of books of my shelf, and yet, I still have hundreds of books that I just can’t bare the thought of parting with. Even though the vast majority of my book consumption these days is through my local library (either by borrowing the physical book, or the audio book and ebooks through Libby), I still dedicate a significant portion of my wall space to my books.
I’ve gotten a bit off track, though. When I was a teenager, I fell in love with a book. The Book of Flying by Keith Miller. I bought it on for $2 on heavy discount from a clearance table at Coles. The story is about Pico, a boy born without wings in a city of winged people. He falls in love with a winged girl after he rescues her from the sea, but their love is forbidden. He goes on a journey to find his wings, or perish in the attempt. I adored The Book of Flying, reading it over and over again. Unfortunately, I lost it when I broke up with a girlfriend, and she absconded with most of my books. For the next 8 years, it was my journey to find a copy of The Book of Flying. It was what I searched for whenever I visited a used book store, and visiting used book stores became a pastime for me and my wife when we visited new towns.
Yes, I know I could have just ordered the book on Amazon. But the point was having something to look for, a reason to go into all those used book stores and crawl through the dusty stacks.
Then one day I found it. High on a shelf in Victoria, B.C. I instantly bought it for $8, and felt complete and whole. The major downside was that now I had no real reason to visit used bookstores. I still do, but I miss having something to chase. And the high I felt after I finally acquired my grail book, is something I’m still searching for to this day.
So how does this relate to board games? As per Stanley Howler, any dilettante can become ‘kingpin’ with enough expenditure. Simply spending money recklessly does not make a collector, nor does simply having an obscene amount of games. You don’t need to own everything for a product line. Just because your favourite game released a new expansion, such as a new Phoenixborn & Chimera expansion for Ashes Reborn, or yet another scenario pack for Arkham Horror: The Card Game, or even another heroine pack for Bullet, no matter how much fun that game is, doesn’t mean you have to buy it to maintain your ‘complete collection’. The real joy and charm in a collection, is the personal story you have for every entry. How boring is the conversation when someone asks you how you got a game and your answer is just “bought it online”. The much more interesting tale is when you tell someone you bought a copy of Istanbul while you were in Turkey, or you found an out of print expansion for Five Tribes in a bookshop while on vacation in Nova Scotia. Or even the time my friend Bigfoot found a complete copy of Shogun for $4 at our local Value Village. To me, being a board game collector isn’t about volume or completion, it’s about stories and the chase.
I think we’ve all felt the “completionist” inside of us swell up when games get released as part of a set or series. Shut Up & Sit Down did a video review of the first four games in the Stefan Feld’s City Collection, where they struggle with the idea of owning only part of a series. This ‘problem’ does get exacerbated when publishers put sequential numbers on the sides of their boxes, making things look really awkward when you choose to only own the games that you enjoy. But purchasing games you don’t enjoy simply so your boxes have friends on their shelf sounds like a pretty silly pastime to me.
I always meant to pick up Scott Pilgrim 4 & 5. It’s never been a priority, though.
At the end of the day, I don’t think a board game collection is measured in numbers, or in whether the shelf looks “complete.” It’s measured in the stories those boxes carry with them. The hunt through used game stores, finding hidden gems at a thrift store, or even the strange scenarios that we found yourself in ownership of a new game. It’s these moments that give a board game collection a real value.
Being a collector isn’t about owning everything. It’s about owning something that matters. A collection should be a reflection of who you are, not just a representation of money you threw at an online retailer. So the next time you’re tempted by a hot new game, or are feeling the sting of FOMO when a hot kickstarter game is fulfilling, consider changing your tactic. Find something to really care about, a gem that no one else can easily find, and embark on a epic hunt.
