What is it about little bits of cardboard, plastic, and wood that draw people in so much? This week, we're talking about fans of board games: AKA Board Game Geeks!

Next week, will we escape the podcast in 60 minutes or less? Probably not, but that won't stop us from uncovering the mystery of escape room fans!

## Episode outline

### Fandom Facts

**Origins and history:**

Board games are... broad, and historically date back quite a ways. Wikipedia provides a succinct description not unlike a description of life:

> A board game is a tabletop game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Some games are based on pure strategy, but many contain an element of chance; and some are purely chance, with no element of skill.> > Games usually have a goal that a player aims to achieve. Early board games represented a battle between two armies, and most modern board games are still based on defeating opponents in terms of counters, winning position, or accrual of points.>> — [Wikipedia - Board game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_game)

While it is unclear what the _first_ board game was, many early games date back as far as 5000 years ago; some examples of the early board games include Senet (Egypt, ~5000 years ago), Go (China, ~2500 years ago), and Backgammon (Persia, ~5000 years ago).

**Size of Fandom:**

Using a few proxies of popularity, we can try to estimate the number of fans (and level of involvement of fans):

- BoardGameGeek had approximately 360k registered in 2010, with 100k active per month ([BoardGameGeek - Geek Analytics 2010](https://boardgamegeek.com/article/6071127#6071127))- The most backed board game on Kickstarter, Exploding Kittens, had almost 220 000 backers

**Fan Demographics:**

The demographic data we managed to obtain comes from [The Daily Worker Placement](http://dailyworkerplacement.com/2016/02/19/survey-results-1-who-are-we/). Of the almost 2400 respondents...

- **Country**: Over 56% were from the USA- **Age**: 42% are 25-35, 33% are 35-44, 16% are 45+- **Marital Status**: 52% are married, 15% are in a relationship(s)- **Gender**: The majority are male, and 24% identified as female, 1.1% as non-binary, and 0.6% as trans- **Education**: Almost two-thirds have a bachelor's degree or higher- **Tenure**: Less than 25% of respondents had been playing board games for two years or less; almost half of respondents have been playing games between three and ten years

**Search Data**

[Interest in board games is highly periodic (by search volume)](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F015ll). Every year, around December, interest in board games spikes to the highest point in that year. That being said, ignoring the peak, it looks like board games are back on the upswing after a gradual decline in interest from 2004 to 2010, and is slowly recovering to 2004-ish levels.

Other data, like sales, suggests that growth is more substantial:

> Global sales of games and puzzles have grown from $9.3 billion in 2013 to $9.6 billion in 2016, according to Euromonitor International, with expected year-on-year growth of more than 1 percent this year.>> — [CNBC - Millennials are driving the board games revival](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/22/millennials-the-board-games-revival-catan-pandemic.html)

The top ten countries for board games by search volume are: Canada, Estonia, Australia, United Kingdom, Poland, New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Greece, and the United States.

The top five rising related topics are: Words with Friends, Pandemic, Dominion, Kickstarter, and Descent: Journeys in the Dark

**Fanfics:**

Believe it or not, we managed to find some board game fanfic on Archive of our own. There are approximately 100 game categories in the "other media" section of Archive of our own (including 7 for Settlers of Catan).

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