Boardgames To Go 200 - A Quarter-Century of Boardgaming (with Dave Arnott)

Opener: Please join my Discord server https://discord.io/BoardgamesToGo ! There you can find other BGTG listeners, introduce yourself, share some current gaming thoughts, find online opponents, and maybe even meet someone who lives within driving distance of you in the real world.

I almost can't believe I've made it to episode 200! Even though my boardgame podcast has been around a long time (the longest!), contemporaries like The Dice Tower and Garrett's Games and Geekiness are closer to a thousand episodes. "Newcomes" like Shut Up & Sit Down will be passing me very quickly in terms of episodes...they all passed me in terms of audience long ago. But that's ok--I remind myself that I do this podcast largely to make a contribution to the hobby and get my voice out there. That a loyal handful of you listen & enjoy it is icing on the cake.

I should've asked my wife to take a photo of Dave Arnott and I recording this episode. There's a photo of us recording one long ago, perhaps the earlier retrospective we did about the hobby. That was episode 75, back in 2007, now 15 years ago! At that time we were reflecting on how things were different, mostly better, than when we both entered the hobby after Settlers and Siggins. We were looking back on a decade or so, feeling that we were "old men" in the hobby. Now we can look back on a quarter-century of boardgaming, and we're REALLY the old men now.

A lot has already been written about how the hobby is different now than it was in the past. Everything from Kickstarter to under-represented folks to co-op games to social media to "mainstreaming" our games with distribution in Target or Barnes & Noble. Dave & I touch on some of that, but we don't try to analyze the industry or the hobby so much as our changing experience. To some degree, I think all of us go through an "arc" in this hobby: discovery, enthusiasm, purchasing, missing old favorites, downsizing, and a "settling in" for years of enjoyment with old friends. Is that right? What do you suppose is next for me?

Whatever you think about that, thank you for helping me get to 200 episodes, no matter how long it took. I still think about games all the time, play them almost as much as ever, am interested in new trends as well as old favorites...and feel compelled to share my opinions. It's how I came up in this hobby--hearing others' opinions. Boardgames are inherently social and communal. Perhaps it only makes sense that talking about them is a related activity.


-Mark