Links: Trading Games, Writing about Games & Ranting about Owning Too Many Games

While board games can appear almost primitive in the digital age, eurogames – also known as German-style board games – have increased in popularity in near-concurrence with the rise of video games. Eurogames have simple rules, short playing times and emphasize strategy over luck and conflict. This book examines the form of eurogames, the hobbyist culture that surrounds them, and the way that hobbyists experience the play of such games. It chronicles the evolution of tabletop hobby gaming, explores why hobbyists play eurogames, how players balance the structure of competitive play with the demands of an intimate social gathering, and to what extent the social context of the game encounter shapes the playing experience. Combining history, cultural studies, leisure studies, ludology, and play theory, this innovative work highlights a popular alternative trend in the gaming community.

I think those who argue that there was a "golden era" of gaming are merely remembering a time when they first entered the hobby and everything seemed new and exciting. Or a couple of their favorite games (like Puerto Rico or Caylus) happened to come out that year and therefore those years produced "good games" in general.

When it comes to board games, I have too many. At almost 35 years old, I have about 240 board games. Two hundred and forty. Each of those board games take, on average, about three hours to play. That's seven hundred and twenty hours. It would take me thirty days of my life to play all of those games once, if I had some sort of magical android setting them up for me in a giant room with twenty tables. Thirty days of my life to scratch the surface of all of those games. There comes a point when you have to step back and ask yourself if you are some sort of decadent monster, or a total fucking idiot.

When I was a boy, I had some board games. Some. Maybe seven. One of them was HeroQuest, and I played that thing to death. I played it so much that I had to create new dungeons and new cards myself to keep it fresh. At no point did I ever think to myself "Man! I really need some other dungeon crawling game that's almost identical to this one except from a few new little mechanics." At no point did I think "I wish someone would crowd-fund a second edition of this game with nicer artwork. I would totally back that!" I was happy with what I had. I didn’t need anything else. I saw worlds inside that box.

What happened to me? What happened to us?