Cult of the Overrated

Last night some friends and I had a conversation over a board game, as is our tendency. The chitchat wandered over to games that for whatever reason we didn’t like much. Eventually this turned to my well-documented dislike for 7 Wonders. Most people at the table weren’t big fans of the game either, but none of them had quite the depth of my own antipathy. So for the sake of conversation, one of my friends began to offer up counterpoints to my complaints, just as a way to show me that it’s not as bad as all that. One of his points is that the game is so well-loved that it clearly struck a chord with a lot of people, which is true though not much of an indicator of quality. But thinking about that got me unreasonably annoyed. Rather than just not liking 7 Wonders and moving on with it, I found myself getting irritated that there were people out there who do like it. This is, of course, asinine. There’s no reason why other people enjoying a game should bother me. And yet I still found myself just a little resentful that a game I didn’t like was successful. My perception clearly doesn’t match with the prevailing opinion. As a game, I would call 7 Wonders “overrated”.