Hell yeah this right here. Whole lotta folx in Eric’s replies going off about what their gateways were when what it should come down to is whatever gets the most people into board games, and that answer is frequently Uno or Monopoly. https://twitter.com/akilaverse/status/1386308847376027650

I have a cousin who’s not into board games at all, but her friends were and they insisted on playing “some game about powering cities in Germany”

She absolutely crushed them at Power Grid, but hasn’t played a strategy game since then, because board games just aren’t her thing

I taught the CEO at work how to play Splendor at our game night and she destroyed us in her first game but I never got her to play it again

Some people are actually really fucking good at strategy games; they’re just not into playing them

I found out recently one of the sales guys is deep into card games like Spades and Thirteen and plays them regularly, and I’m absolutely devastated that I never got to trot out Nokosu Dice when we still had an office. Card games are hobby games. Poker counts as a hobby game.

Poker at its highest level isn’t “just gambling” it turns into a social deduction game in addition to a push-your-probability game. The money is the lure to get people invested in playing it well.

A lot of people enjoy games, play them regularly, and still would not consider themselves gamers because games are just a fun diversion and they’re not invested in the wider gaming community like they are, say, in their Bridge group of church friends

We as board gamers tend to self-select into gaming groups and communities, but some struggle with being unable to introduce something we love SO DAMN MUCH to our loved ones who don’t approach gaming in the same ways we do

We have to meet them where they are and not rush them into the hobby at our level, because the hard truth is that complex strategy games just aren’t most people’s preference, and that’s okay.