Playing My Games: Q1 2019

One of my mantras for this year has been “Have less, use more.” Instead of accumulating new things, I’m trying to enjoy new experiences and the things I already have. One of the ways to do that is actually playing my games.

When we moved to Finland last year, a lot of stuff stayed behind. I didn’t whittle my game collection down as much as I should have, but I “only” brought about 100 games with me. As a professional game designer, I can at least pretend that’s a reasonable working library.

When I reviewed the games I played in 2018, though, I saw I’d played about half of the games on my shelves. Which isn’t bad, but still means half of my games are gathering dust.

Have less, use more, right? So I made a goal for this year: play everything on my shelves at least once.

In With the Old, Out With Nothing

The first quarter got off to a pretty good start. I played 31 different games, only three of which are not regular residents of our shelves.

The power of the app played a big role in some of my volume of play, of course. I got in 41 plays of Evolution, mostly on the app. I have some issues with how the app handles multi-player, but the April update made some much-needed improvements. Frequent play has only increased my love of this game.

However, the real pay-off was in getting out some games that I hadn’t played in years. Big City is still a lovely game, and ten years was too long to go without putting those wonderful 3D buildings together. My family had played Serenissima back in December, but February was the first time all four of us had played together.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the lack of unpleasant surprises. The average game has gotten a lot better in the several decades that I’ve been collecting them, but the best games of the past hold up really well. I’m glad to have kept them.

The next quarter may not go as well, of course. I have a lot of complex games that are harder to teach and slower to play. I don’t know how many of those experiences I can rope in family and friends for. And some disappointments are probably inevitable.

There’s that copy of Cape Horn, for instance. After twenty years in shrink wrap, can it possibly live up to the wait? Maybe this quarter we’ll find out. Or maybe I’ll save it for December 31…

Playing My Games: Q1 Stats

• Games played: 89
• Different games played: 31
• Games played more than once: 8
• Newest game played: Fireball Island – The Curse of Vul-Kar
• Oldest game played: Tally Ho! (1973)
• Longest time since last played game: Big City (August 23, 2009)