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Just found out the average board game costs about $60 and gets played only 3 times
I was reading a stats post from BoardGameGeek last week and someone crunched numbers on their collection of 200 games. They claimed the average game gets played 3 times total before it sits on a shelf forever. I did the math on my own shelf of 38 games and honestly it checks out, half of them haven't hit the table since 2022. That means every time one of us drops $60 on a shiny new box, we're basically paying $20 per play if we even get that far. My buddy Dave has 90 games and I watched him buy a $75 Kickstarter he opened exactly once. The worst part is we all know cheaper games like The Crew get played 30 times, but we still chase the big new thing. So here's my real question, is the hobby actually about playing games or just buying them and feeling good about the shelf?
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janac519d ago
The math on "average game gets played 3 times" is a bit off. That number comes from counting every game ever bought, including all the duds people regret and the games still shrink wrapped on the shelf. If you only count games people actually like and keep, the play count is way higher. I have 40 games and yeah, some got played twice and never again, but my copy of Catan has hit the table at least 50 times over the years, and that alone pulls my average up. The real problem is people buy games before they know if their group will even like them, so the shelf fills up with stuff nobody asked to play again. BoardGameGeek numbers also skew toward collectors who buy way more than they play, which makes the whole hobby look worse than it is. So no, the hobby is not just about buying. It is about buying too much and not being honest about which games your group actually wants to play.
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