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The Expert: You buy board games as often and as many as you can. You play them alone or with friends. It‘s your favorite hobby.
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The Collector: You buy way too many games, but actually play only a handful of them.
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The Hermit: Your prefered way of playing is playing alone.
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The Specialist: You own a specific but small collection of games, carefully curated for every opportunity, heavy games included.
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The Casual: You play from time to time with friends, enjoy it, but you are just getting started.
I want to get to know you better! Have I missed a kind of gamer here?
(English is my 2nd language, sorry for my mistakes.)
Who made these categories?
I’m more of a specialist and a rule lawyer.
I mostly have a small collection of games ranging from easily explained to really huge. Like, I have Flashpoint, or Pandemic, or Betrayal at the house on the Hill. All of these are games you can understand well enough in 1-2 rounds of going if you know boardgames a bit. And then there are things like Junta, Arkham Horror, Eldricht Horror, Battlestar Galactica, considering to get the new dune game. Those are great, but a lot harder to get into.
But that’s a quality my current gaming circle likes. I can pick up a lot of rulesets and digest them decently quickly, because I’ve played a lot of games, and a lot of complicated games over the years. Like, if you’ve dealt with MtG and Dominion, you’ve seen 90% of deck building concepts and rules. Some P&P RPG experiences in 2-3 frameworks cover a lot of ground for a bunch of game rules. You kinda learn how rules tend to be written, how rules tend to be designed, and how rules are usually intended to be and that helps processing rulesets quicker.
I dislike this way of trying to put people into categories.
I have very few board games (10ish). Occasionally I rent boardgames. But still I’ve played over 200 different ones and know almost all of the games people mention. I know many places with very good collections where I can play board games for free, people often bring many games to events and I have friends who have very big collections as well.
The reason I don’t like buying more boardgames is I’m a fan of shared products. I’ll only buy small games that I absolutely love. That way I can save a lot of storage space. If there’s a game I want to play that I don’t have then I’ll either rent it or ask a friend to bring it. To ensure I’m not a leech I tend to bring snacks to private events or take care of explaining games to newcommers.
I love to research new games to death. I’ll read pdfs of rules, purchase them, look for expansions, etc. But I don’t play as often as I would like. I don’t have a group of friends and I mainly play with my SO. The games that hit the table most often are light to medium weight and games that work well with 2 players. I’ve loved games since I was a kid and have trouble culling my collection, but sometimes I exhaust my enthusiasm unfortunately.
What I don’t like about your categories is that you’re focusing on the buying and owning games part.
THANK YOU.
I’m sort of peeved that boardgames has gone from a “hey, I get to sit in meat space not staring at a monitor and doing something fun with friends” into a consumerist dog and pony show.
I was hoping this was going to be “you take the PRR and run it over the B&O” and “you try and get your train company to Chicago” or “you never build, only auction or develop” but yeah, it’s mostly about what you own and what you’re buying.
I’m sort of peeved that boardgames has gone from a “hey, I get to sit in meat space not staring at a monitor and doing something fun with friends” into a consumerist dog and pony show.
I feel like part of the problem is that the people participating in and boosting the consumerist aspect are the ones with the shiniest toys to show. Like, sure, 1830 is an awesome game (even if I still can’t get a regular group to play it), but you won’t get more upvotes for showing off your 100th game of 1830 than your first game of <insert the newest game>.
An look, I like having new games. I enjoy the feel of new puzzles to try. But in the end, it’s as you say, the best part of the games is getting together with friends and doing soemthing fun for a few hours. Having a collection as a backdrop in my video calls is not the point of buying games.
