I'm Struggling with this Hobby, Y'all

(Spinning the related conversation off from the 'What Games are you playing thread')

This is likely going to come off as yet more random bitching, and I really don't mean to drag the site down, but this whole scene is starting to exhaust me...and I thought I was pretty moderate.

Worthington's Sea Kings Kickstarter hadn't finished for 48 hours and they've got another one launched (Wilderness Empires...which actually looks kinda cool). Sag, brought up that post of about 5 games per day launching. This is insanity. Going back to the old complaint that this hobby is more about games buying than games playing. On top of it, yeah, Wilderness Empires looks awesome, and I'm sure Academy's 1754: Conquest is gonna be awesome too, and they'll be more cool games coming out down the line.

I can't keep up with this crap.

A parent at my son's school found out from a conversation with my wife that I play boardgames. Well, this parent just bought Settlers of Catan and her family enjoys it. She wants me to tell her what other games they should buy. I want to say...none! Play Settlers and enjoy, but I'm afraid I'll come across as a prick or some sort of arrogant gatekeeper. Apparently, this mom follows some blog called GeekDad, which I can only assume is about consuming geek media (movies, comics, games, etc.). That ain't me!

This is likely on me, but I never thought of myself as a geek/nerd. We had a few boardgames and played the hell out of them. I don't think I bought a boardgame for like 4 years after I bought Settlers in the 90's. With already having some GW titles, BB, Silent Death, and Detroit/Cleveland Grand Prix my group was set.

This doesn't feel like that scene anymore. Maybe it was always like this, and we were just outliers. It seems all about consuming...and its making me feel ill.

Hopefully, I can find the restraint others around here have and still participate in these types of forums without feeling the urge to buy anything else, or worse become some judgmental prick to those who keep buying. I'd like to hope I could continue interesting conversation without everything being about 'old school' games or what not, but checking out of new purchases, I wonder if that won't be the case.

This hobby is just like playing Magic but instead of buying boosters, you buy new games. And the consumerism has become over the top.

Games are supposed to be about spending time with people doing something fun, maybe working your brain a bit. Once it got to the nerd crowd, it lost a lot.

One way to do it is just to mentally block out everything related to kickstarter. I've actually kind of started to do that and it has helped. I tend to check out as soon as I hear kickstarter. Normal publishers are still releasing games at a high, but sane, rate. You can browse what publishers have been up to every couple months and if you ignore kickstarters you'll probably feel less like the hobby is just a huge pyramid scheme---which is what gets me down (like you). On the other hand, even if you're looking at publishers, there's still more volume than there used to be.

Like you said, my beef with the hobby is that it's about buying rather than playing games. It's no coincidence that the strategy forums on BGG contain almost nothing and the general forums always have a hundred threads about acquiring the game.

It's why even though it's not the ideal way to talk about games (or thread a forum for newcomers ) the "what are you playing!" thread speaks to me. I get to read about our members playing games and how their games went, not so much about kickstarter and how they're sold.

The concept of "keeping up" is a construct of your own making--it's not some responsibility foisted on you by virtue of being a gamer (to whatever degree you feel you are one). There's room for lots of different levels of commitment, none of which require validation from others or the "scene" at large.

And yes, it's been like this for a long time. Whether you want to be swept up in the fervor or not is up to you. It's fine to let it all pass you by. In the last calendar year I've bought a couple Netrunner data packs and that's it. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything major.

Maybe one thing you can do to relieve your strain is consume less gaming information on the internet.

Nerd hobbies are about consumption, period. It's never what you have, it's what you need to get. There's this idea that if you don't grab everything that comes along you'll "miss out" on something great.

I've had a lot of the same struggles recently Jeff, especially with Kickstarter. I don't bring it up a whole lot because it's mostly covered elsewhere around here. But I find the whole idea of Kickstarter to be fundamentally exhausting, and the mania surrounding it is almost totally separate from how I enjoy the hobby. My solution for that part is what Gary recommended: just choose to ignore basically everything from Kickstarter. If something really worthwhile comes up, usually it's from a major publisher and will be in stores anyway.

But that assumes that you actually want to get anything new, and you obviously do not. And that's totally fine too, because there's no right way to enjoy the hobby. From all I've gathered you have a pretty good group of friends that doesn't need to have the latest and newest, so really you don't have a problem. If you still enjoy the actual playing of games and have people to play them with, that's the dream right there. I'm starting to get some of that after a couple months in Texas, and that's really what makes the hobby fun.

Let everyone else chase the newest Kickstarter and Essen titles. I confess that I don't see how that translates to enjoyment of board gaming, but it doesn't matter whether or not I understand anything. They can enjoy the hobby how they want, just like you do. Honestly I admire how you've chosen to enjoy the hobby your own way, because I think that's something a lot of gamers never figure out.

It can be hard to participate in the online board gaming community if you are unable or unwilling to spend a lot of money on it. I've experienced that myself. F:AT likes new games as much as anyone, but this place is a lot more connected to older titles than any other board gaming website. And even if it isn't, you still have people to play with. I've rambled a lot here, but that's my main point.

JoelCFC25 wrote: The concept of "keeping up" is a construct of your own making--it's not some responsibility foisted on you by virtue of being a gamer (to whatever degree you feel you are one). There's room for lots of different levels of commitment, none of which require validation from others or the "scene" at large.

And yes, it's been like this for a long time. Whether you want to be swept up in the fervor or not is up to you. It's fine to let it all pass you by. In the last calendar year I've bought a couple Netrunner data packs and that's it. I don't feel like I've missed out on anything major.

Maybe one thing you can do to relieve your strain is consume less gaming information on the internet.

I was going to say something along these lines.

I'm a defender of Kickstarter (although agree most games on it are shit), but I've only backed 7 games since 2012. I went to GenCon and bought nothing (and still had a great time). I'm on these forums, and BGG, and Reddit, and Twitter (following mostly boardgame idnustry people) and am not worried about playing/buying all the new shit.

When you read about video games or TV shows or movies do you feel this way too? I just bought Spec Ops: The Line for $5 on Steam but I'm not worried about Shadows of Mordor, Destiny, etc.

You have to figure out a way to filter it that works for you. That may be too much work for you and taking a step back may be the best choice, I don't know.

Also, you should totally recommend she pick up Ticket to Ride.

I've set a couple of ground rules that limit the scope of gaming for me -- buy used and don't buy games less than two years old. I violate those rules on occasion, but as a general approach it has served me well because most of the titles have shaken themselves out by then.

Reviewers (and I mean real reviewers, not jokers like me that dabble in it) don't have that luxury. They're on the hook to play what's new, so we see those games on the front page all the time.

Maybe we need a new category -- geriatric games. You and me can discuss Silent Death and Star Fleet Battles there.

S.

There are two related hobbies discussed here and at other comparable sites: playing games and collecting games. Decide if you are going to pursue both hobbies or just one, and then make your peace with that decision.

If you're going to focus on playing boardgames, then you just need to identify and acquire the games that will consistently deliver your idea of fun and, more importantly, appeal enough to the other players that you know so you can get these games on the table from time to time. You may find that you only need one or two games for each of the themes or major mechanics that you like.

If you're going to focus on collecting boardgames, there are too many games for any one person to ever collect all of them, so you will need to decide what kinds of games you are going to collect. Maybe all games with the same theme (Cthulhu, vampires, WWII, whatever) or from a certain publisher or designer. You are probably better off ignoring most or all Kickstarter games, because the quality tends to be lacking, and there are just too many of them coming out these days.

Remember, this is YOUR hobby. YOU make it what it is.
If YOU don't want to buy new games...Fine!
If YOU want to play the same games over and over...Great!
If YOU don't want to follow and keep up with Kickstarters...Fantastic!
If YOU want to participate in forums...'merica, Fuck Yeah!

If YOU are not having fun, if YOU aren't taking control of YOUR hobby, this is YOUR fault.
Not the people online talking about what new hotness they've played - They are irrelevant.
Not the Kickstarter faucet that never seems to shut off - They are irrelevant.

THEY have no impact on YOUR hobby - They are not factor. The only ones that factor in are you and the people sitting across the table from you.

So my advice is tune into what you like, tune out what you don't.

If you want to ramble about Titan games then conversation will follow or it won't. Lord knows I've rambled more than my fair share about Attack Wing...Sometimes it ends there, sometimes like right now the conversation goes into a little discussion.

Bottom line is I've taken control over my hobby and what I want from it. I've reflected on what I want to do. I've realized that I can't keep up with everything nor do I want to. I've made my hobby mine and I've never been happier (outside of all the extra crap sitting in my basement right now that I'm beginning the process of getting rid of).

i think the ever rising tide of games and industry crap has driven most of the romanticism from the hobby that most of us held at one point. And there is an emotional backlash against this. The small comprehensible niche hobby is gone. Boardgaming now, if not in sales exactly but in terms of product output, resembles a mass media entity or a large consumer market. Talking about the interesting games of the year becomes futile because there are so many and no one has played most of them. Talking about anything specific in the hobby (which is what i guess we do on this forum) gets harder because everyone is drowning in so much information overload.

I am with VonTush in terms of my spending habits. I know what I like and i know where to put my cash. I tend to only buy a game every few months and trade perhaps one or two more. My tastes in games are now pretty well defined so in terms of reading reviews i ignore 90% of what is out there. Still, I've only been in 'the hobby' since around 2010 but even in that short time it has changed to something i can no longer really comprehend.

I don't have a regular gaming group, and the reliable, more public, groups I've found are mostly comprised of Optimization Isolationists. This means that "taking control of my hobby" probably means selling off my copies of Spartacus and Cosmic Encounter, because I'll never get to play them more than once in a year. That's pretty sad. I bought quite a few games (after some research on each) because I left all my stuff back in England, so I've been trying to get a small collection together. Most games were initially ones I thought my wife might be OK with playing, then later, what I felt would be fun, that I could convince people to give a chance in the public group.

I was able to sell off a few at a recent gaming weekend, though I still kind of regret it, even for the games I probably wouldn't play again realistically.

I do spend more time reading about or watching videos about board games than playing them. More and more, I find this calms down any sense of needing to buy them. I can "see" how they play, and that satisfies that curiosity. I'm also probably done with Kickstarter too. I jumped on a handful of smaller games (plus one big one) earlier this year, but as almost all of them have yet to land, I'm paying much more attention to things like expected delivery dates. So now I see something interesting, but it says July 2015, and I know it'll probably be September, and that I might not even be interested any more by then.

I don't really need to echo what everyone else has put so well. You're in control of what you're getting.

I'm not sure if this will resonate with everyone else here, but I find that feeling overwhelmed by "the hobby" (whatever that means, exactly) is a result of a wacked-out ratio of games played to games talked about. If that ratio is too low, you start feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff that's out there. If you're playing a ton of games, you'll probably want to talk about whatever the new hotness is less, probably want to buy a new game less.

So go play more games!


Edit: As I wrote this, JEM posted about reading about games helping him stay away from buying. I hadn't really thought of that as an option, but maybe it's because I like to buy shit too much.

Mr White,

I've been struggling with the hobby, too. I've purged my collection of a lot of 'great' games which were never getting played... the number one reason to get rid of them, as well as get some money back... I have NEVER missed them. Boo-hoo Here I Stand? Nope.

The difficulty is not getting sucked back in by newer hype.

Over 40, I am thinking of buying one of those new cruiser skateboards just so I can skate next to my 6 year old boy (I rollerblade now). I want to learn how to snowboard. I am planning a bike vacation with my family next summer. Buy a few games, sure, but sell more to pay for them. Take our favourites along to play. Watch fewer review vids.

And fuck the hobby otherwise. Fuck XCom and Hyperborea and Dungeonquest 3rd revised and what other crap I don't need. I got dudes on a map, I have clash of cultures, I have this stuff... already. So until someone reinvents the paradigm big time, I'm fucking this hobby; I'm tired of it fucking me (my wallet, anyhow).

I guess an additional part of it has a lot to do with what many have said. Boardgaming being picked up by the modern nerd set (I mean the nerds that are into consuming all nerd crap, not real nerds that are designing rockets and apps and such) has really impacted the hobby. It's no longer so niche or romantic as has been mentioned, and there's a large drive to consume.

"Back in the day" going to the game store meant a dusty place, where the owner was smoking, and the scene was bit off color and had a sense of being outcasts to it. Maybe that was just my experience with the (few) stores in my area.

Now, I actively _don't_ take my kids into game stores because the stores are flooded with other crap as well, comics, movies, posters, shirts, etc that most stores are also peddling. It's this hyper level of consumption that has become associated with it, that I don't want my kids to have anything to do with nor do I want to support.

When he wants a new Pokemon booster. We go to Target and only after we picked up the other stuff we were after. I'm really hesitant about dropping him into the game stores. It's totally not that I don't want to say 'no' (Do that all the time), but it's a culture of spending that I'm not comfortable I want the kids thinking is ok.

Again, it's the whole consumption angle that is choking me out and how boardgames are really part of that system now. Why does that parent need to buy Ticket To Ride? They _just_ got Settlers.

Maybe I'm a big old dick though.

EDIT: Ultimately, I understand that it doesn't matter what other folks do nor can I bend the hobby to my wishes. I'm just venting at the state of things.

EDIT, EDIT: Removed the bit about the FF. Not relevant to the topic at all.