We have to level set here. My collection is about 200 games. Depending on how you count it (And oh boy….I have previously made a very long writing about this) it is either 221 base games or 201 games if I collapse expandalones into a single game.
Is this collection too large? Maybe? Is this collection an example of exuberant consumerism? Oh God Yes! Do I get joy from having this collection? Most certainly!
And there lies the very simple question. Does it, in the words of a Japanese author and influencer, spark joy? I believe it does, I like being able to pull out a variety of games. In some cases, I enjoy owning and showing off weird game designs or completely original and weird games that people haven’t played before. These may not be the best games on the market but they are the ones that I enjoy and have fun playing. Many of these games were added for Game Daddy reasons, it was something I figured people would enjoy and I could easily bring to the table, others exist in the collection purely because I want to own them and even if I play them rarely, I doubt they will ever leave my collection. Some games hold a special place in my heart or memories, that may be related to the game or just to my social relationships in that time.
This is the month of October which houses a very special holiday for us here in Canadia, Free Ship Tuesdays. Canada Post allows the shipment of one package every Tuesday per business account anywhere within Canada. To prepare for this great occasion the Fall Canadian Math Trade happens on BoardGameGeek. If you don’t know what a Math Trade is, it’s a trade where for every game you give up you get a game that you were willing to trade for it, though you may be giving away games to one set of people and receiving games from a different set of people.
In preparation for the trade, I always start going through my collection with a fine toothcomb. What games would I legitimately not miss if I didn’t have them anymore? With years this question has gotten surprisingly easier, I know what hasn’t made it off the shelf and I know whether just purely owning a game brings me joy or not so sometimes I just look at a game and think “Well it’s your time to go on the chopping block.” As the trade gets set up and all items are listed a much more devious question comes out of the woodwork, what game do I want to add to my collection? With years this question has got frustratingly more difficult.
If I get a new game there are quite a few questions to answer that are ordered usually in this way:
- Does this add something sufficiently original to my collection?
- Is this going to get played and enjoyed by my general game group?
- Do I already have a game that does the same thing? Should this new game replace it? Or is the game in the collection the one worth keeping? Or am I indifferent?
While number 2 and 3 make sense, I was worried that #1 was effectively me chasing novelty, but as time has gone on, finding novelty has been difficult. That isn’t to say that there aren’t new ideas in games, in many ways, there is an evolution of ideals and mechanisms but they still kind of end up being the same mechanisms at the end of the day and it is the same building blocks rearranged in different ways. On the other hand, a game like Karesansui that interestingly uses Dutch auctions is not something that you can find in a lot of games.
As I stated above this has become quite a bit more difficult to add games to this. I feel like I have for the most part decided what I wanted. At this point, any addition is either a grail game (which is rare to find), a general curiosity (I am finally going to try out Spirit Island), or just whims. I love games but I truly feel like my collection is approaching what I can reasonably play in this state and I often look more to offloading instead of on-boarding. Are great games coming out? Yeah I am sure there are, but I am not sure that I need them right now, at least for now.
So that’s what I’ve been thinking about