We’re in a golden age of board games | Hacker News Reader

We’re in a golden age of board games

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128 pointsandrewl70 comments

Eh, I think the golden age was 5-8 years ago. Between the increased prices, increased shipping, increased consolidation (Asmodee) and so much moving to crowdfunding sites; without the games being tremendously better, I feel like we are in a silver age, at best.

I agree that it feels like we are post-peak. It probably depends on preferences but from my perspective the golden age started tapering off ~10 years ago.

It could also be that we’re in the “here to stay” phase the article also suggests. So if we are in a silver age, as you say, let’s hope that it lasts a long time. :)

We're really not, but we were from like 1995-2010, which inspired a rollup of the industry by private equity (pretty sure every game in this article is owned by the Asmodee Group, or whatever they're calling themselves now.) Now it's an endless wave of samey overproduced trash that intends to generate "IP."

Yes this is a puff piece. But like... Carcasonne was 2000. There has been amazing progress in game design and depth. So many games that have wide audiences and that are just fun and well designed, that would not have been published 20 years ago because it would not fit into the right mold.

For every "game meant to get 20 expansions", we have a wealth of very good replayable games that exist well on their own. For every game meant to launder 20 different kind of components, you get 4 wonderful games sold at cost and that are actually fun, with the tactileness being the flavor on top.

I kind of agree that lots of games are OK with making their boxes "too much" nowadays (if only from a practical perspective of it being too big and just a lot of trash). But I think almost everybody at the creative level is just earnestly excited to make board games. Business people want to make business, but that's the same in every industry.

First I've heard of Asmodee Group, but from a quick Google they own a remarkable number of games (that they call "IP").

A quick note that they at least don't own Wingspan, the first game in the article. It's by an independent publisher called [Stonemaier Games](https://stonemaiergames.com) who "grew up" on Kickstarter (and openly considered it a marketing tool in later years) but vocally moved away because the founder found the experience too stressful.

They make some great games and I recommend checking them out! I particularly enjoy Viticulture, and Scythe if Fantastic, if you can find people to play it with.

I have only begun to dabble in board games again in the last couple years, and Wingspan was my entry point, thanks to my birdnerd wife. I heartily second this Stonemaier recommendation - we own several more of their games already, and all are fantastic.

I bought the family a coop expansion for Viticulture that we're opening later this morning, and they're really a great company that, so far as I can tell, is doing everything they can to foster more indie producers, not dominate the market or play any of those kinda games. If there is a golden age, Stonemaier is one of the major mines.

>Now it's an endless wave of samey overproduced trash that intends to generate "IP."

Can't wait for the movie adaptations and shipping.

I love board games. I started playing board games in 1995, have a little over 600 now, and have run all kinds of events over the years.

We are not in a golden age.

Back in 2013 I was invited to a dinner with the Asmodee brass during Toy Fair. They laid out their plans for the company and industry. It all came to pass very quickly. By Gen Con 2016 you could feel that the wheels were coming off. The opening moments of Gen Con 2016 were hectic. This was the first year where you could pay $10 to get into the show floor a little early and the people who didn’t know were furious. Seafall, Cry Havoc, and Scythe were getting their pre-releases and when the gates opened it was the usual stampede but what was different were the lines. People were pretty rude, it was rough. I watched a YouTuber walk perpendicular into the Scythe line, which was blocking the walkway, shout at the people in the line, and then start physically moving people apart when they didn’t get out of the way fast enough..

And here’s the thing. None of those games were very good. We can argue the point on Scythe, but Seafall is considered a massive failure and Cry Havoc was rethemed to the point of illegibility before release. A gaggle of people being rude over terrible games they were told they “needed” to buy was the end of the “Golden Age” for me.

Every year since has felt worse. Asmodee gobbled up some of the best companies and now it’s changed hands multiple times. The studios are just logos on a box now, they’re shells of what they were.

I’ve played dozens of games over the past two years and they aren’t like they used to be. If they’re not outright dull or poorly designed, they usually feel like copies of imitations of better games.

I’ve had a subscription to Game Trade Magazine forever. Each month I tear out the blurbs of the games I want to buy. For the past two years I’ve been tearing out fewer and fewer ads. I tore out one page in the December 2022 issue. The game didn’t even look that good.

I’ve basically stopped buying new games. The ideas just aren’t there.

Board games aren’t going away, but this isn’t 2000-2015 either.

But also, who cares? The excitement is draining from board games and RPGs but other things like Warhammer and GMT/historical war games are getting more interesting. RPGs and board games are just overexposed and need to rest for a bit.

The historical game space is the most interesting and vital it's been since the 70s, but you wouldn't know it from any of the "golden age" articles largely hyping the latest low-interaction euro or unbalanced area control minis game.

RPGs... we'll see. Streaming has completely changed that market and I'm not sure its carrying capacity is in any meaningful sense tied to the number of players anymore.

When you talk to RPG fans now you’re find a lot of people who like the idea of RPGs and Kickstarter superbackers who’ve never played a game. Feels like you’re talking to the audience at an improv show.

Some would call my comment gatekeepy. I’m just wondering why everyone is choosing to sit outside of an open gate?

The people who started playing with 5th ed. are about to go through their first “Edition War”. Their true journey is about to begin.

I'm torn in replying because I think you're basically right, but also a little bit gatekeep-y, but also agree that "gatekeep" is regularly leveraged by people with financial interest against those trying to encourage a healthier attitude towards "the hobby" than capitalism would otherwise want us to have...

Buying books you don't play is nothing new. When I was a kid, maybe you owned 10, knew 5, really played 2; if you were hardcore and had the cash, more like 50/20/5. The number of kids today buying but with zero played doesn't sit right with me; but this is also a definitional issue of what "in the community" means as much as it's some capitalist land grab. It is cool that you don't need to play to appreciate it now. It is also not cool how much kids today are pushed to perform anything they do for fun, and while part of me is like "just log off", I also don't pretend to understand the entire social milieu pressuring them to not do that. If I take anything from my youth spent on games, it's that being a kid is rough and adults really don't understand.

Regarding "edition wars" - nah, I think this is generational projection, and I say that as a veteran of a couple. Whatever drives wedges into the communities today will be just as arbitrary and silly-looking to anyone outside it as THAC0 vs. DC. (And that's fine.) Also, with simulationism on the outs, it's hard to imagine anyone under 25 caring too much. What's going to split them will rather probably be some issue in worldbuilding or narratology I'm too old to understand. (And that's fine too.)

I mean, what you've written is basically the subtext of my comment.

I want them in, hence the open gate. You find more 5th edition "audience members" than DMs, players, or even readers/collectors.. Which is notable because it's a new class of D&D nerd that didn't, couldn't, really exist before 4th.

Not everyone at the improv show needs to get up on stage, but there's also nothing stopping them from trying but fear and some prep work.

All edition wars are dumb.

Off-topic question for you: of those 600 games, what’s your short-list of favorites?

I’ve only recently started playing board games and there’s an overwhelming number to choose from.

Sure.

0) Neuroshima Hex! - It's an OS for battles. The armies are little programs and battles are when you let two programs execute simultaneously.

1) 51st State - Same universe/publisher as Neuroshima Hex! You carve out turf in a post-apocalyptic America. Cards in the game can be played in 1 of three ways. a) Incorporate. Bring it into your state. b) Make a deal. Establish an ongoing trading relationship. c) Conqueror. Smash it for parts. A school would give you a worker/turn + victory point if you incorporate it, a worker/turn if you make a deal, and three workers at once if you conqueror it. Some factions are better at offense, some are better at trading, etc. It's great with 5.

2) Ticket to Ride. It's simple. Got it when it first came out, still play it.

3) Cuba Libre/Falling Sky/GMT COIN games in general. It models insurgencies across history. Caesar in Rome, The American Revolution, etc. Great ways to get people interested in history.

4) 4X Space Games. Space Empires 4X & Twilight Imperium especially.

5) Codenames. It's the best way to get to know new people. Like really get to know how they think. I made a massive multiplayer version of it a few years ago.

6) Bios Megafauna. The rulebook for this one is not the product of an ordered mind. The rules are in seemingly random order, some rules or exceptions only appear in the glossary, and the footnotes are full of scientific/pseudo-scientific ramblings.. And it's a lot of fun.

7) Starship Troopers. The 1970's Avalon Hill game. It's a neat hex-and-counter skirmish game.

8) Railways of the World. Started off as Railroad Tycoon: The Board Game. Play it with as many people around the table as possible.

For RPGs:

0) Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 4th edition. Incredible. I had absolutely no interest in Warhammer before picking it up.. Now I'm painting a few Warbands for Warcry, have 6th-8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and Blood Bowl is setup on my table. WFRP's a really solid game that blends the best of D&D and Call of Cuthulu. And, I really like The Old World as a setting.

1) Conan: Adventures in an age undreamed of. It's a 2d20 game (the Star Trek version is great too) that's equal parts RPG and dissertation on the works of Robert E. Howard.

2) DCC RPG. If you like D&D, play DCC. It's a heavily modified 3rd edition with a bonkers spell system and level-0 meat grinder dungeons. Some games try to be weird through art and tone.. DCC is weird through mechanism. It works. Everyone generates 4+ characters, runs them through a meat grinder, whoever survives to the end is your 1st level character, backstory included. <--THIS IS THE ONE if you want to create your own setting or run a hex crawl.

Overwhelming number of games:

I don't read reviews or watch videos. I still do what I've always done: Walk into game stores/conventions and buy what looks interesting. You get a lot of junk but also find great games that you might have missed because the internet decided that they are bad. If a game is popular you're not going to miss it. Just look around to see what people are playing at 12:00 AM at game store/con.

Thanks! Of your list I only know Ticket to Ride and Codenames (both great), so this is a list rich with potential for me. I really appreciate you taking the time to write that out.

I wish board games cost $20, not the $50 they charge.

For $50 I have to be careful to make sure any game is an awesome game, and indecision means I don't buy very often. If they were cheaper I would be more OK taking a risk on a new game.

The cost of production should be much lower? Wonder if they could sell much higher at cheaper prices so the volume is actually incremental. Hope someone tries.

Still cheaper than a family trip to the movie theater here, so worth it to me even if played for just one night.

Indeed, harsh reality.

Movie theater pricing is extreme.

You can often find them used on board game geek, or try them out on boardgamearena first FYI

They could probably do better if they targeted schools. While having Fun seems to be the primary goal, there is a whole lot of Learning happening in many Games.

How do you even publish a game that will resist kids at a school? They will bend the cards, lose the pieces, tear up the manual.

Sounds like a niche waiting to be mastered, then.

You can deal with bent cards and give copies of the manual, filing away an original. You can make sure all the pieces get put back in the box. You can make sure to give them to appropriate ages: High school kids (aged about 14-18) are going to be more responsible than 5th and 6th grades (ages 10-12).

I mean, they let us use computers in a computer lab - you know, back when mice had an actual, easy-to-steal tracking ball. We had to turn the mice upside down so the teacher could see that we didn't steal it. Similar things can be done here and it isn't like they'll be playing games with the frequency that we used to visit the computer lab.

If this all fails, though, you can play digital versions. My game group does plays online sometimes and while it might not work well with everything, it does work.

Plenty of games have been marketed to and played in schools. Games like Extinction: The Game of Ecology [1970][1] were only available for schools. I spent my entire middle school years playing Wff 'n Proof[2] games, like Equations, On-Words, and On-Sets, where we competed on our knowledge of math, English, and symbolic logic.

[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8434/extinction-game-eco...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Games

Admitting that I splurged a bit when seeing this one - https://montrosebiology.bigcartel.com/category/games (the card game is in the $20 to $30 price range).

Food chain island ( https://buttonshygames.com/products/food-chain-island ) could also be something that could show up in a grade school room. It could also be further laminated for additional durability.

Check if you can borrow board games from libraries around you.

In my area it is the case and I use it frequently.

Personally, I go to https://boardgamegeek.com/ and filter for games based on what I’m looking for and then I sort by reviews. Add them to a list on Amazon and keep an eye out for sales (across multiple retailers), especially around Black Friday.

There are a lot of board games in the $20 to $30 price point (and even many under that).

Going by Amazon prices, Azul, Splendor. Deep Sea Adventures is a press your luck game. Scout (also from Oink) is a... rummy with interesting hand management.

Red Seven is one that got a fair bit of play at the office table (Asmadi games).

Chatty Party if you want a cross between Excel and Cards against Humanity.

Ticket to Ride is an excellent train connection game.

Racoon Tycoon hasn't hit the table yet, but it looks interesting.

New York Slice gamifies "one divides, the other decides" and is something that allows for younger players.

Forbidden Island is an accessible cooperative game.

On the topic of cooperative games, The Crew takes tick thing games in a cooperative direction.

Fox in the Forest is an excellent two player trick taking game.

---

I admit to a bad case of FOMO with bard games. In the 90s and early 00s, I played board games in the MtG place in the San Antonio shopping mall in Palo Alto... and there were so many great games that I had played that were out then. I realizes there's a sampling bias because those were the games that people brought that were enjoyed... so now I have a low threshold for impulse buys on board games.

I would add The Castles of Burgundy to that price range list.

One of my favorites and easy enough for new board gamers but the new print hurts my eyes!

Well, when it was cheaper I bought various garbage board games and encountered a nice different problem: they take a lot of space.

So, no matter the price, space is a problem.

That being said, I wish they costed just 50$: plenty of them (especially those with miniatures) cost 100+ and maybe you have to buy sleeves and maybe some "adapter" to fit everything in one box once expansion are bought.

Another lesson learned is: never buy expansions. There are some very rare exceptions.

> Another lesson learned is: never buy expansions.

The last game of Carcassonne we played was the first game after we'd just purchased the big box with all of the expansions. It was just... too much.

Japan has something of it's own game renaissance going on (some games make it big in the West), but space is a major consideration there. So almost all Japanese games are very compact (often, but not exclusively, card based)

This view is somewhat biased by what games are small enough to bring over to NA/EU conventions to sell and pitch, and the lower price range of games publishers are willing to take a chance on. This in turn created some expectation that "good Japanese games are small" and became self-reinforcing in terms of what NA/EU publishers were willing to pick up.

Yes, some designers like Pawn and Seiji Kanai keep working mostly in that small-box style (not unlike lots of NA/EU designers), but e.g. Hisashi Hayashi's or Yasushi Kuroda's games weren't small "because of Japan", they were small because they didn't have money to make big ones!

If storage space is a consideration checkout the range of “Tiny Epic Games” by Gamelyn Games. I have about 20 decent games taking up the space of 3 or 4 “normal” size ones.

My city has 3 board game cafes you can go to to try out various games. Pre-pandemic there were more.

I wish there was some way you could have said what city/country you were talking about.

I know a lot of people who are passionate about board games, I hang out with a group of board game players from time to time, and I am quite an enthusiast myself. The complaint about prices is relatively recurring, but I don't think it's justified most of the time. People complain that some games are expensive, often referring to the quality of the material they offer, for the finishes, comparing it to other similar games, $100 seems to be a hard barrier to digest psychologically. When you buy a game, you buy an idea, a design. The cost is in the design, in the innovative mechanisms in it, and also a little bit in the illustrative art, but I think only secondarily. If a game costs me $120 but I play 20-30 games with three or four other friends, is it really expensive? If a game costs $30 but after 2 games I have already exhausted the game strategies and mechanics, was it really a good purchase?

P.S.: The fact that many buyers use the appearance of a game to judge the appropriateness of its price leads to a very unpleasant consequence: manufacturers, in order to justify the price of a game, produce it in a box that is twice as big as it needs to be, because if the game is big it justifies a higher price, and so we end up with libraries infested with games that take 2X or 3X the space needed.

There's really two separate issues in the pricing.

- Games are getting a much higher production level than the past, and this costs more. Sometimes this is good, but often it isn't necessary, it's just to pad out margins. At least you can see where the money is going, but it makes everything less accessible to kids, people with a casual interest, and anyone with limited cash on hand.

- Prices have just plain gone up. Yes, I can understand why a small-publisher POD title or a box of custom plastic is $100 even if I wish there were other options. But why has Catan gone from $25 to $60 MSRP even as the components have dropped slightly in quality? Bohnanza from $10 to $20? RftG, $20 to $35? These increases are a) largely pre-pandemic, b) since ~2015, tracking overproduced editions and industry consolidation rather than general inflation, so the cause is not really a mystery.

Board games have little resale value, so that’s an option.

A classic game has literally thousands of hours of play. I have a Catan set used almost weekly for 10 years.

Reviews are crucial.

Board games sell for nearly as much or more than you paid for them. Resale value is fine. The real problem is weight; board games are heavy enough that reselling for the same price amounts to taking a $20 loss on postage. That's why it's better to buy them 10 at a time than one at a time if you're doing it through the mail.

As someone who spent a big chunk of time in 2021-2022 trying to get rid of boardgames I don't want anymore, there's a lot working against reselling used games.

It's a market where outside of the top ~100 games, a specific product can be hard to find for an individual even when shipping works out. This is also why math trades are popular - but 2020-2022 made popular venues for those more difficult too, and the breadth of games means that while any given math trade is going to contain some hard-to-find games, it's probably not going to contain your hard-to-find one.

It's also a market for lemons. Lots of resellers don't even know if they're missing a critical piece, which printing/edition they have, if expansions are included, if it was a counterfeit to begin with, etc. Buyers have little way to distinguish people who know what they're selling from those who don't without lots of time investment. This also discourages market-makers from helping solve the logistical problems.

I suggest going to boardgame meetups to try games before you buy. I also recommend the second-hand game market to both buy games cheaper and sell on games that you don't want anymore, keeping costs low. I fine-tuned my collection in this way.

Would very much recommend looking on Facebook Marketplace. It has been a source of 90% of our board games for this exact reason. We also use Board Game Geek and some youtube videos to get a feel for things as well.

Are there any competitive 3+ player games that aren't either parallel solitaire or kingmaking/vote who wins? Neither one of those seems fun to me. Nor do "social" deception games.

And 2-player competitive games seem to devolve into steamrolling unless the players are (very) evenly matched.

Oddly enough, this is a similar dynamic with certain video games. Either the game is so chaotic that skill doesn't feel rewarded, or skill is so rewarded that unless you have the exact same skill, and you're only learning/playing with each other, someone is inevitably going to get better and start crushing the other.

I don't think that's an inherent flaw with the game itself, but with things like Fighting Games you have to still feel like you're having a good time (and be able to do cool things) while losing.

I’d love to play more board games but only know one, maybe two people who would be interested. Can anyone give some good two player games?

7 Wonders Duel is great, and even better than the very good original.

Patchwork is a very good space-filling tiling game. Its theme and premise may sound boring, but it is fun and very competitive.

The small city-based Ticket to Ride variants play two players very well, and are also good with 3 or 4 players.

Tak is a great abstract strategy game for two players.

Concordia is an excellent game, and plays very well with two players on small maps (e.g. Cyprus or Egypt).

There are so many different kinds of games that might or might not appeal to a person, but here are some that you can look up to see if they catch your interest:

- Radlands

- Brass Birmingham or Brass Lancashire

- Spirit Island

- Food Chain Magnate (beware, highly unforgiving)

- 7 wonders duel

- Great Western Trails

- Wingspan

7 Wonders Duel is good.

My favorites are Terraforming Mars and Through the Ages. Both are very good at 2 players. Puerto Rico is an older one, and it's great, and it has a separate 2 player rule set.

In addition to 7Wonders:Duel, mentioned here already, a few other good ones are Jaipur, Patchwork. I've also been enjoying Kingdomino recently, which works equally well as a 2 player game (2-4 players on box).

You might like this list[0], which uses BGG's "best for X players" vote, but BGG is biased towards heavier games.

[0]: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/48970/best-two

The best thing if you have a friend or two and live in a city is to go to a board game cafe and try out a bunch of stuff.

My wife and I have collected many games at this point, the usual rotation of games we have that works pretty well with 2 players:

- Everdell

- Mandala

- Terraforming Mars

- Jaipur

- Babel (the one by Uwe)

- Century (the first one)

I would anti-recommend 7 Wonders Duel unless you are a person who you know already likes games. It's _a bit_ heavy for an entry level game I think.

Jaipur is a very good quintisential 2 player game. The build quality is _amazing_.

You can try out some of these games on Board Game Arena, tho the tactile nature of games really changes things up so much. The kinds of games available for 2 players also depends on how competitive you are (lots of games recently are kind of "multiplayer solitaire", where there's limited ways for you to mess up other people's games, so it's more just trying to max out your own points).

Go to BoardGameGeek and do an advanced search, limiting "# of Players Range" to 2, and sort by number of ratings. You can restrict the search further in many ways. (https://boardgamegeek.com/advsearch/boardgame)

The recommendations in this thread are really good so I’ll add just one more which is more of a card game:

Lost Cities by Kosmos (first edition, not sure about latest but seems like classic play is still supported: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/50/lost-cities)

I just discovered Santorini recently - great 2 player game with lots of replay value, if the mechanics click for you. Otherwise, my gotos are Carcassonne, Century (golem edition for great art) and the classics like backgammon and cribbage.

Dominion is an EXCELLENT card game and has tons of expansions to keep it interesting. We have now accumulated almost 7 sets buying most of them used off marketplace!

51st State & Neuroshima Hex!

Targi - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/118048/targi Patchwork - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163412/patchwork are two that are just for 2 players.

Really depends on what type of game you're looking for. Generally when I'm trying to figure out what types of games people like, I'll ask if they have played Settlers of Catan and if they want ones longer/more complex than that or if Settlers of Catan was too long/too complex, or if they want more social games.

check out https://www.yucata.de/en and https://boardgamearena.com/ where you can play online. If it's hard to get people to play in person, perhaps see if you could get a group to play online - join a video call and then set up the game on boardgamearena.

Depending on where you are, look to see if there are boardgame meetups. These are a great way to learn games. At most of these, people will split into small groups, play a game, then when some groups are done, people will suggest some next games and people will split up and play those. Even for people who have been playing boardgames for years, I'd say we expect to be teaching a game to some people/learning a new game we've never played because there just so many boardgames out there.

Me and my partner both gave each other a boardgame, unbeknownst to us that the other was also doing so. And a sibling gave us a boardgame as well.

We are in our 30's and have really never stopped playing boardgames with our friends. But I don't think there have been this many boardgame gifts underneath the tree since my childhood.

I have been a little bit astonished lately to see reasonably deep dives into board games that don't at least mention the possibilities Augmented Reality and digital immersion will bring to the table. Efforts like TiltFive are here today and widely available enhanced vision systems are not far off. I get that the anti-digital ink-on-cardboard ethos runs pretty deep; but you can get the best parts of both worlds. So, while I do like and agree with this article about a general resurgence, I just think we haven't even scratched the surface of a golden age yet.

That’s like gluing wheels onto the side of a horse to call it a horse car. Horses are still thriving to this day as a hobby but that doesn’t change the fact that cars ate their lunch. Board games are much the same but if you are going to add a digital component, meaning you have already embraced the cons of the digital format, why not just go all the way and play the vastly superior video games to get all of the benefits of the format?

Computer games still don't have the shared experience of gathering around the table with a few beers. Board games still have their place.

The problem is finding a way to inject a digital experience without completely obliterating that feeling of analog togetherness. VR headsets, even with AR passthrough modes, are still too clunky, uncomfortable, and expensive. Meanwhile, the most popular way of achieving AR in practice is to use one's phone, but having everyone stare at their phone during a whole event feels almost as alienating as being physically isolated in the first place, because we're primed to think of our phones as tools for physical isolation.

Have you tried TiltFive with other people remote, or tried Demeo on a VR headset?

TiltFive has some very nice demos but it's still several years away from being on par with Tabletop Simulator in terms of remote presence and fluidity of play in any boardgame not specifically designed for it.

> That’s like gluing wheels onto the side of a horse to call it a horse car.

A postmodern understanding of horse carts.

To your point, though, consider all the things that are superior about friends sitting around a table interacting in real life playing a board game. That's why we don't all just play video games.

I think we are in a golden age of games personally. You can argue prices of new games have gone up, or have got worse, or whatever. And that may be true, but there are many many thousands of great games released over the last few decades that are great. Board games don't necessarily get better with new releases, the technology largely remains the same.

The golden age of board games seems to have started around 1995 with the release of settlers of Catan, and has only gotten more golden since then. We’re probably in the diamond age of board games by now.

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