I think a lot of us get hung up on the actual PLAYS of our games, and rightfully so, but that can lead to feelings of discouragement and remorse when discussing the amount of money we spent or the ‘shelf of shame’ and whatnot. I’m hoping I can shift the perspective there and talk about the other aspects of this hobby.
Not everyone is going to fit into the same box that I’m in, but there’s a boardgame playing hobby, and there’s a boardgame collection hobby. Collecting can be just as rewarding and important to some of us.
Strictly speaking of crowdfunding now, let’s say you spend $100 on a kickstarter and then the game arrives and you play it 3 times and sell it. I don’t see that as a negative. The entire process of watching a game developer’s concept become a reality is fascinating to me. Even if the game isn’t a 10/10, didn’t you enjoy the crowdfunding campaign? I like reading all the monthly updates along the way. I like reading the comments and seeing the transparency between the game designers and their fans. Sometimes I even get a peek behind the curtain into the manufacturing process. I certainly learned a lot about tariffs and how shipping containers from China works recently. (of course your mileage may vary as there are less than transparent devs, bad publishers, campaign horror stories, etc.)
Then the game gets delivered. I like the entire process, down to the new game smell. Maybe I’m weird. I like throwing an episode of The Office on in the background while I punch all the chits out and organize the game. I like heavyweight euros that take a long time to parse (looking at you and your 4 hour initial setup, Voidfall). I like reading the rulebooks. My analytical mind loves grasping the rules and having those little epiphanies of strategy. “oh, that’s why they made this rule, so you can combo from X to Y.”
Setting up the first game, doing a mock 1v1 to make sure I understand everything. At this point, I don’t know how many hours I’ve sunk into a game before I’ve ever even played it! It’s taken up my mental real estate and it’s been fun for me the whole time.
Now if it’s fun and I immediately want to replay it, then I get another dopamine hit of “good job self, you did adequate research during the crowdfund and correctly deduced you’d enjoy this.” It has a permanent spot in my collection, so then I get to working on optimizing things. Is there an insert I can make/buy/print to make setup/teardown easier? Are there miniatures I can paint? What 3D prints have people done for this game? I’ve sunk lots of time in these sorts of things as well. Printing and Painting is a whole hobby in itself, but there’s great overlap with boardgaming.
Then, there’s trackers like BoardGameGeek, or the excellent BG Stats app. You can keep track of your plays, who won, pictures, notes, the stats are endless. It can break down the cost of your hobby (better to not look at this), or even the cost per play so you can see what games you had the best bang for your buck with. You can see mechanics of each game and prune your collection to that end. “Should I keep both Arnak and Dune Imperium? They’re both a hybrid of deckbuilding and worker placement.” (answer is yes).
Of course crowdfunding is a whole beast and some don’t engage with that. But my point remains that there is research to be done before you buy a game and there’s a collection management aspect of this hobby and there is an improvement/streamline aspect (painting/printing). All of that is fun for me and exists outside of the “playing a game” part of the hobby.
I’ve bought games that were duds to me and I started to get discouraged, and then thought, you know what? The entire process of me discovering this game sparked joy. And even though it’s not for me, I will sell it and move on and I had fun along the way. I love this hobby.