One thing I forgot to add: certain extremely prominent reviewers, unsure of some basic rules in some games on their all-time Top 10, particularly stunned me.

When people pursue as a hobby chess, go, Scrabble, bridge, poker, billiards, tennis, disc golf, model train building, gardening, woodworking, cooing, or birdwatching, the crucial common factor is a substantial investment of effort toward improvement that pays off in feelings of deep accomplishment. Hobbies are often preferable to work not because they are so much easier, nor because they’re entirely about relaxation, but for the somewhat opposite reason that they reward dedicated effort and true skills much more consistently than most of the awful jobs out there.

The logic of hobbies is not that of consumerist entertainment, like when people pay for Netflix to veg out in front of numerous movies and TV shows. If you’re constantly choosing flashy new garden features out of a catalogue and having others create them while you’re away from home, then you’re not a hobbyist gardener; you’re a rich dude who can afford landscapers. If you have the fanciest pool table in your den, but haven’t learned to play well, then it’s a shallow status symbol, not your hobby.

Now, maybe I’m just a judgmental asshole who doesn’t appreciate how hard some people work, or how desperately they need to unwind in an easy chair with the boob tube on. But I honestly think that most of the people I know would feel more energized and content if they replaced a big chunk of passive entertainment time with some kind of hobby.

Is our — well let’s just say “pastime” — moving in the hobby direction, or the entertainment one? Well, Your Thoughtful Honor, Exhibit A for the prosecution is that we have very few prominent reviewers or critics who become masters of games and then explain to the public tips and habits to gradually move from novicehood to mastery. All of the most successful reviewers appear to give a majority of their reviews after a single play, and even put games at the top of their all time lists after only a handful of plays. Just think for a second about the long list of hobbies I listed above (which of course are but a thin slice of those that exist in our culture). and it should be clear how absurd our status quo would be for any of them. A review of 9-ball, encouraging you to play, who has played six times in his life and unsurprisingly sucks at it? A supposed chef talking about her favorite recipes, each of which she has attempted exactly once? A “model train builder” proudly showing off what she paid for and had someone else construct, instead of proudly showing off the products of her own hands and brain?

Exhibit B is the increasingly frequent critique of board game designers, to the effect that it’s their fault alone if they don’t manage to hook reviewers or buyers instantly. God forbid we should trust pioneering experts about the deep satisfaction we can attain after enduring a fair amount of early frustration, tons of initial losses, and “learning games” that seem nearly endless, until they’re miraulously not.

We already have enough movies and shows. I don’t want a movie on cardboard, with some easy “participation” along the way. I want to do things that are hard and discover how to get better at them, because — not to get too existentialist about it — that’s what it means to “get busy living, not get busy dying”.

So, while I don’t think that newer hit games are generally worse than older one’s — quite the contrary! — I’m worried about the size of collections and the speed of acquisitions because I would like to be part of a hobbyist community that likes to find a reasonable number of arenas (games) in which to internalize the rules, develop strategies and counterstrategies, and increasingly challenge each other. Fresh new games are sometimes amazing, especially when there’s reliable evidence that’s they’ll be replayed many times with increasing depth. But if I’m playing with collectors (shopaholics), knowing I’m going to be pending most of my gaming time learning new rulebooks, then stumbling through as a novice with other novices, then I guess I’d rather be improving my gardening.