PinkFae Archive #19: The Golden Age of Board Games

This article may sound a little odd, coming as it does after the article I wrote a couple of month ago about the end of the Golden Age. But keep in mind that the PinkFae archives are reprints of entries that I wrote back in 2016 (and a couple in 2017) when I was writing for PinkFae. This particular article was first published on 29 May 2016. So keep that in mind as you compare the two articles. But, as I don't want the articles I wrote there to be lost, I'm publishing them all again here. I hope you enjoy this one!

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I was talking to an acquaintance of mine the other day. In the course of our discussion, I mentioned that I write blogs about tabletop games. She asked me what I meant by 'tabletop games.' When I said, 'as opposed to video games,' she responded, 'So you mean like Monopoly and Sorry?' I had to explain to her that there was a lot more to modern board games than the 'classics' that she was probably used to from her childhood. I got to explain to her that we are currently in the golden age of board games. But it seems to me that her experience is typical; not many people seem to realise just how amazing board games have become in the last two decades. So today, I want to talk about the golden age that we are currently experiencing.

The End of the Golden Age?

I've written two articles now about the Golden Age of board games. One was published here on this site, and the other was written for PinkFae. The PinkFae article was number 19, so will be appearing here in a few weeks as part of the normal cycle of PinkFae archives.

This is important because in the PinkFae article, I referenced the beginning of the Golden Age. Specifically, I said:

...in 1995, a dental technician from Germany named Klaus Teber released the board game Settlers of Catan. This groundbreaking game combined the best elements of both American and Euro games... [and] sparked a revolution. Suddenly, game designers realised that board games could be fun for everyone without instigating feuds within families or groups of friends. The Golden Age was upon us!

The game was released in the English-speaking world the following year, by Mayfair Games, a company that had existed since 1981. Arguably, this company is responsible for the golden age of board games; by bringing Settlers of Catan to the English-speaking world, Mayfair Games paved the way for the best ideas in two different areas of board gaming to co-mingle and produce the amazing games that exist today. They also published the English-language editions of many of the staples of modern board games: Agricola, Bang!, Tigris and Euphrates, and Patchwork, to name a few.

Resolution: Failed.

Welcome to the 200th post on the Game Dork's Gaming Corner! I've got to say, it's kind of amazing to me that I've come this far.

Enough woolgathering. Let's get to the issue at hand.

Some of you may know that I made a new year's resolution to play 80 of the games on the top 100 list over at Board Game Geek. Tomorrow is the last day of 2017, so I think it's safe to call it. I did not meet that goal.

Here's how the numbers ended up: the most games that I had played that were in the top 100 list at any one time was 31. This is a shame, as four of the games I had played that were at one point on the top 100 dropped to 101 or lower at some point over the course of the year. In fact, if we were to expand our criteria to include anything in the top 200, that would add another 16 games to my list, for a total of 47. Still thirty three games shy of my goal, but a good deal closer...

The Downside of the Golden Age

As I've mentioned many times, we are in the midst of a Golden Age of board games. Lots of amazing new games are being published every month. If you go down to your local Board Game Cafe (assuming you're lucky enough to have one in your town, and if you aren't, maybe you should try to start one up!), they'll likely have hundreds, if not thousands, of different titles from which to choose. And that's not counting the ones they don't happen to have at that particular location, to say nothing of the out-of-print titles that are hard to find!

And that is an incredible thing.

To have so many options... to have hundreds of games you can play. You can seriously play a different game every day for a year. Two years, if you have access to a good supply, and maybe even more if you're in a place with a vibrant gaming community!

Golden Age

People are fond of pointing out the 'golden age' of things. There was the golden age of comics, the golden age of cinema, the golden age of television, the golden age of aviation, and so on. Normally, a golden age is identified in retrospect. People who study a particular topic look at the history and say, 'Look at the innovations that were made during this historical time period. Look at the great people who made a difference in that time. That was the golden age of [insert topic here].'

Rarely does one get to identify a golden age whilst it is occurring.

But that's exactly what is happening with board games right now.

I remember as a young boy in the 80s, reading Games Magazine. I enjoyed solving the puzzles, doing cryptograms and rebuses and other word games and visual puzzles. But there was a section in the middle of each issue that I always skipped: board game reviews. That seemed silly to me.

Back in the 80s, board games included staples such as Monopoly and Scrabble, as well as party games like Scruples, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, and Balderdash. Those were your options. I was familiar with a few games from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which populated my grandparents' cabinets: games like Life or Payday. All of these were fairly simplistic. They may have had an interesting theme, but there wasn't a lot of meat to the mechanics. Roll some dice, move a pawn, draw a card, follow the instructions.