Shut up about gateway games

As someone who goes to Multiman's convention each year, I'll witness that. Wargamers are more than happy to sit down to any game, and to teach any player. Yeah the entire room is white middle-aged men, but they're more than happy to teach anyone brave enough to enter, and to buy them a beer while playing. (MMP has a keg in the room while you play.)

"Gateway Game" is a term going back to the BGG days of elitist white men desperate to convince everyone that board games weren't all toys. You just need to move into the upper-class of gaming where brown serious strategy games are played as a grown-ups hobby.

LOL like when people who play wargames tell others they play historical “simulations.”

No, it’s just a game.

I like miniatures. They are toys.
There’s nothing immature about playing with games or toys. There’s something immature about trying to pretend that it’s not what you do.

I thought your "gateway game" was just the one that got you into the wider hobby. I cut my teeth on Arkham Horror 2nd and didn't touch Catan for years.

I understand why it's useful for many to have the boardgame equivalent of a grilled cheese sandwich - an unfussy standard that can be enjoyed by almost anyone. But anything can be a "gateway" game if you're adventurous enough.

Gregarius wrote: I hate the term as well, except when used in the past tense-- "What was your gateway game?"

Blood Bowl. It's what my best friend at the time (12 years old) was super into. Then Advanced Hero Quest. Then onto Warhammer. Then Magic. Then the floodgates were open. Always had the D&D books available as a child though. Read Greyhawk and Dragonlance much younger, plenty of other adventure stories. Don't really care for Blood Bowl to be honest.

No such thing as a gateway game. Either the person is primed to enjoy or they aren't. If they are the game is irrelevant. If not the game is irrelevant. The idea that you can force a thematic gamer to be an abstract lover (or vice versa) is laughably funny.

I've said this before a million times, but I'll say it again: Catan is a great example of both a "gateway game" and the fact that "gateway games" are absurd. For a person used to American mass-market games (which is a landscape that has itself shifted dramatically and is no longer what a lot of older gamers think it is) Catan should be baffling.
* There are dice, but you don't move with them
* There are spaces, but you don't play ON them, you play AROUND them
* Only one piece moves
* The score isn't immediately obvious (unless you already know the game, and even then there are hidden elements)
* Things happen to you when it's not your turn
* You can only indirectly target a player
and so on. It SHOULD have the opacity that, say, T&E is supposed to have. E pur, they say, si muove. People get introduced to Catan as a different kind of game all the time. They process it and seek out other things of its ilk.

As has been pointed out, "serious gamers" unfortunately see "gateway games" as something to move away from. Since Catan is for newbs, you shouldn't be seen playing it unless you're roping in some more marks. The goal is not to play Catan and have a good time, it's to eventually make them play some "meatier" bullshit like Great Western Trail.

People seem to think that "lighter" games with fewer rules are superior. There was a recent thread on BGG complaining about Uno where people gave "better" options. Uno's not a perfect game, but it's fine, and it appeals not just because there are fewer rules but because those rules are straightforward and all follow from each other without weird caveats and exceptions that gamers looooooove. It's true that people unused to hobbyist games do better without a wall of rules thrown at them to try and understand at once. But there are plenty of so-called light games which are difficult to approach because designers think it's super clever to design Fizzbin but put porcupines in it and call it "WAS IST DER FRAGE????"

Yes, Catan is this super-great game that we only play when we condescend to newbs in hopes of recruiting another new board gamer.

This thread is proof that some scars don't heal.

I recently picked up TTR Junior. It’s simple, it’s for kids.

It’s also fun.

I'm 56 years old, and I have been playing board games for over 5 full decades. I think that it's entirely possible for someone to disagree with me about gateway games without dismissing my extensive experience as a player. Also, popularity is not proof of quality. There are plenty of crappy things that are also popular, like White Castle hamburgers.

ubarose wrote: IBut eventuality I think, if you play long enough, you circle back to the classics. Because they are just damn good games.

The multiple Knizias still on my shelf that still receive regular play are a reflection of this. It's not like I'd consider T&E to fit the definition of a "gateway game" (using the usual context of "introducing the newbs to something different from regular card games/chess/Monopoly/whathaveyou") but I've introduced any number of people to "different gaming" with things like Modern Art and Through the Desert which are no more complex than games like Monopoly that many use the concept of "gateway games" as a path to escape from. It's just a way for people in a niche hobby to create stratifications that they think others should observe to make themselves feel superior (i.e. really a waste of time, like 90% of all Internet discourse.)

The first indication that a discussion on board games is a mistake is "I was on /r/boardgames." I've never seen a place that was so quick to crap over fun games and explain why they were bad actually. At least on BGG I can visit a forum that's just for that game.

Shellhead wrote: There are plenty of crappy things that are also popular, like White Castle hamburgers.

You shut your damn mouth.

Shellhead wrote: There are plenty of crappy things that are also popular, like White Castle hamburgers.

In my college days, there were two area fast foods I could only tolerate when drunk. White Castle, and Skyline.

Does admitting that I like White Castle and Skyline while sober make me a bad person?