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10 months ago
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I'm part of a fairly small board gaming community. I have a weekly game night with 4-5 people and an open meetup at a cafe that usually has about fifteen showing up on any given week. Within this group of maybe thirty total, I'd say at least ten of them have sizeable collections of 200-800 games. We'll typically have about 50-60 games at a meetup, and people will spend some amount of time sifting through bags trying to decide what to play. An embarrassment of riches, in a way...
About half of these collectors are relentless pushers. They have a constant influx of new games and entire bookshelves of shame. No matter what your preferences are, they have the perfect game for you. If you don't like the theme, don't worry as they have five others for you to choose from. They don't seem to realize what they're doing or that others might actually want to play their own games once in awhile. When I've brought the issue up with a couple of them, they both said it's not about who owns the game, but about wanting to play something interesting and exciting.
They just happen to be mostly interested in and excited about their new Kickstarters.
To compound the problem, these pushers — at least the ones with this lack of awareness — all seem to be lousy teachers. They are disorganized, constantly look things up in the rulebook, and frequently forget key rules or get something wrong that has a big impact on whether the mechanisms actually work. I suppose chalking it up as a learning game would be okay except for the fact that we rarely get a second play in as they'll have five new games the following week. This issue is magnified since it seems like we're always playing their games, and I've started to skip meetups out of frustration.
I know that the solution is probably just communicating and setting boundaries if they are unwilling to adjust their behavior, but the fact that it's 5 or 6 people in such a small group makes it a bit overwhelming. I wonder if you've had to deal with similar issues, or if you've noticed the same overlap of people aggressively pushing their games while also struggling with the teach.
About half of these collectors are relentless pushers. They have a constant influx of new games and entire bookshelves of shame. No matter what your preferences are, they have the perfect game for you. If you don't like the theme, don't worry as they have five others for you to choose from. They don't seem to realize what they're doing or that others might actually want to play their own games once in awhile. When I've brought the issue up with a couple of them, they both said it's not about who owns the game, but about wanting to play something interesting and exciting.
They just happen to be mostly interested in and excited about their new Kickstarters.
To compound the problem, these pushers — at least the ones with this lack of awareness — all seem to be lousy teachers. They are disorganized, constantly look things up in the rulebook, and frequently forget key rules or get something wrong that has a big impact on whether the mechanisms actually work. I suppose chalking it up as a learning game would be okay except for the fact that we rarely get a second play in as they'll have five new games the following week. This issue is magnified since it seems like we're always playing their games, and I've started to skip meetups out of frustration.
I know that the solution is probably just communicating and setting boundaries if they are unwilling to adjust their behavior, but the fact that it's 5 or 6 people in such a small group makes it a bit overwhelming. I wonder if you've had to deal with similar issues, or if you've noticed the same overlap of people aggressively pushing their games while also struggling with the teach.
Inherently a new game doesn't have the multiple plays that older games will have, so with those older games, many times even if the owner of a game stumbles, someone at the table can pick them up.
The first question is whether you've talked with the people involved and shown them the connection between always playing new games and the inherent sloppy teaches that follow. Given that fifteen people show up, the easy answer is to suggest that these people play with one another since many folks want to play games they already know.
What it feels like to me that they are doing is saying, "Hey, I made this investment, so you have to make it show value." Their investment is not your issue. No one has to accept that.
Encourage more of the group to move toward games they already know by bringing those games. (See BGG's Hall of Fame for suggestions of timeless games if you don't know of any.) There's no need to make a scene or embarrass them. Move on to bringing games you want to play. If they want to play their new Kickstarter or whatever, simply say, "You know, I want to play something I know today. I would rather play this older game or that older game."
This is not going to be the easiest thing to do, but you certainly are not beholden to these people's interests.
I will confess that I wonder whether I'm doing this unintentionally. I don't do many Kickstarters, but I do love new games! I'm going to a meetup this Saturday, and I'll be sure to bring games more folks know.
Thank you for your note!
Ms. Meeple (Jennifer Schlickbernd)
P.S. If there's a situation in your board game group or at a meetup that you would like advice on, please send me a Geekmail with "Ms. Meeple" in the title.
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