02C43: Board Game Collection Utlization

Fortune & Glory

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 1071

Our board game collection now spans over 1000 entries in Board Game Geek, more than half of which are tagged as main games and not expansions. That's a crazy number of games and it's hard to cycle the collection efficiently so that as many games as possible get some decent playtime. With new games getting added to the collection every month, it's like that math problem of figuring out when the tub will fill when you have both the faucet and the drain open at the same time.

And we inevitably go into periods when certain games become more popular for a time because they resonate with the players or they're just so darn good. Other games fall out of circulation since they have harder or clunkier rules or newer games manage to scratch the same itch with tighter game mechanics or just prettier mechanics. And other games are being saved for dedicated groups - these mainly being legacy-style games.

For last night's game night, we dug up our copy of Fortune & Glory after years of inactivity. Our last tracked play for the game was back in December 2019 with a couple who is no longer together - it has been that long. the game mechanics feel a little older but it's still a solid game and one of the few dice-heavy experiences that we still enjoy a lot. I had a remarkably lucky run and won the game a little faster than expected, which was good since it left us time to play other games within the span of the night.

We go through the question of which games to prepare for a game night every single time. There's a design to bring out old stuff to keep the collection moving but we also want to bring newer stuff to introduce to the players because that's just the kind of gamers that we are. Board Game Geek helps me track plays and somewhat helps to highlight which games aren't moving, so that helps a bit. And then there's the nerdery of the stats they try to provide -  thus we know our Game H-Index is 22.93, which means there are at least 22 games that we've each played 22 times or more. It also computes utilization, which for us stands at only 30% based on how many times games have been played. For things to be more statistically viable, the formula postulates that we need to play each game (including expansions) at least 10 times before we start to get good returns on it. 

So yeah, we still have a long way to go and a lot of games that we love do tend to get the lion's share of plays. And every game night is another opportunity to play through more of our collection and experience new forms of fun with everyone. 

Enough of this - we gotta dash off to another game night!

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