Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Why Keep a Game?

Transcript

Why Keep a Game? · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and Deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
• 0:07
  as I step out for a walk and delivered an episode to you while I
• 0:10
  stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners. It's
• 0:22
  a slightly drizzly day here in suburban Chicago, even though it has already started
• 0:27
  to rain. It's just a very light, sort of sprinkling rain, and
• 0:31
  this is the time I have to go for a walk, so I'm going
• 0:34
  for a walk. I don't even think the rain is coming down hard enough
• 0:36
  that you could hear it if I had an umbrella, but I didn't bring
• 0:40
  an umbrella because it's just very light. So we'll see how it goes.
• 0:46
  The clouds are a kind of slate gray across the sky. You can see
• 0:50
  a little texture in them, but not much. I put on a hoodie
• 0:53
  so that my glasses wouldn't get wet. My hair I don't care so much
• 0:56
  about, but my glasses get wet. It gets hard to see. So
• 0:59
  I'm where hoodie. All right. Well, today I thought I would talk
• 1:02
  about something that sort of happened over the weekend in terms of my gaming and
• 1:06
  sort of reflect on it with you. Over the weekend, I noticed that
• 1:11
  my spreadsheet that I used to keep track of where games go had an awful
• 1:15
  lot of handwritten notes on it. Let me explain a little bit about how
• 1:19
  my games are stored in my process. So basically, I'm going to be
• 1:22
  talking today a little bit about how my collection is stored, and then talk
• 1:25
  a little bit about when do you decide to keep a game when do you
• 1:29
  decide to get rid of it. So my collection is in our basement in
• 1:33
  a set of Callacs shelves. Along with there is a table that we call
• 1:38
  the side table that has a big pile of games on it. That's how
• 1:42
  the games are shelved in our basement. I realized a long time ago,
• 1:48
  four years ago, I guess that the Callak shelves could hold more than four
• 1:55
  games. Generally they can hold like four full sized ticket to ride size games
• 2:00
  in the cube. Sometimes it could be a little more. Sometimes it could
• 2:02
  be a less. If you're willing to kind of stack and tetrist the games
• 2:06
  in there, you can often get more in there. But depending on game
• 2:09
  size whatever, it's generally about four. However, the cubes are fourteen inches
• 2:15
  deep, meaning that if you slide the games all the way to the back
• 2:17
  of the cube. You have about a three inch space in front of the
• 2:22
  games in front of the games, so in order to save space, one
• 2:27
  of the things I started doing is picking out games that I like the way
• 2:30
  they look and that store okay on standing up, and I would put those
• 2:35
  games in the front of each cube. So when you look at my game
• 2:38
  collection in my basement, the cubes are all full. They all have a
• 2:40
  game in the front, and then behind them are the other games. Now
• 2:46
  one, this looks really nice. The downside of that, though, is
• 2:49
  that it doesn't make it easy to browse the games, because every single cube
• 2:53
  has four or five or six sometimes games in it, and then another game
• 2:58
  in front of those that make it harder to see the games in the back.
• 3:01
  So the solution to that that I have found is to keep a spreadsheet
• 3:06
  in my computer of all the games that I have and where they are in
• 3:10
  the collection. The spreadsheet makes it very easy to find games individually because the
• 3:15
  spreadsheet is cupped in alphabetical order and it lists where in the collection the game
• 3:21
  is, so it makes it pretty easy to find a game if I don't
• 3:24
  remember offhand which cube it's in. And if it's a game I haven't played
• 3:28
  in a while, that's really useful. It also very helps a lot when
• 3:31
  I'm cleaning up and putting away, because I don't have to decide where to
• 3:34
  put the game each time. I can just look at the spreadsheet and see
• 3:37
  where it goes. Of course, the downside using a physical piece of paper
• 3:44
  one you could lose it, although I'm pretty careful about putting it back where
• 3:47
  I keep it. The second thing is that if I need to make a
• 3:52
  change to it, either have to print out a new copy or write on
• 3:54
  it, and I sort of split the difference on that. Generally, what
• 3:58
  I do is, if I need to make a cheat I will make I
• 4:00
  will note the change on the spreadsheet, the print out of spreadsheet with pencil,
• 4:05
  and then once the spreadsheet seems like it's got a lot of changes on
• 4:09
  it, then I will go back to my computer and update it. I
• 4:12
  find that kind of organizational task pretty mentally fun and soothing, so that's a
• 4:17
  nice way to spend my time. It also does beg the bigger question,
• 4:20
  though, is such as how do you let people who are new peruse your
• 4:25
  game collection then to see of something they want to play and the solution I've
• 4:30
  done to this is again kind of feeds into my interest or desire in organizing
• 4:34
  things, and this is I made a set of cards about the size of
• 4:40
  magic cards. They are a little smaller, but about that size that display
• 4:44
  the games in my collection. They have a picture of the box of the
• 4:46
  game on it. They have the name of the game as well as the
• 4:49
  Board Game Geek tagline. You know when you go on to Board Game Geek
• 4:53
  and you look up a game, there's like a eighty character tagline underneath each
• 4:57
  game. I've grabbed those and and then it says like how many people it
• 5:00
  plays, how long it goes, and what kind of game it is.
• 5:03
  I categorize the games by the sort of most significant aspect of them. Some
• 5:08
  of them it's player count. So I categorize this games as two player or
• 5:14
  game length. So there's filler that I have family slash, light game,
• 5:18
  medium game, heavy game, cooperative game, novelty game. I put those
• 5:24
  in the category of like if we want to play a game because it's goofy
• 5:27
  to play it rather than because it's like a good game, I have those
• 5:30
  in my novelty category. So I have this like binder of cards, and
• 5:33
  that takes a lot of time to reorganize, and I did do that last
• 5:38
  weekend or two weekends ago. I did reorganize that. One thing I found
• 5:42
  is that I'd miss some stuff in my spreadsheet, so my and on board
• 5:46
  game Geek, so I had a handful of games that I got rid of,
• 5:49
  and my actual collection size went down. I'll talk about that in a
• 5:51
  couple of days when we do our Top of the Stack. But actually now
• 5:55
  I think about this episode will come out after the Top of the Sack episode.
• 5:59
  So I talked about that when I did my Top of the Stack,
• 6:02
  but it doesn't start to beg the question. As I'm doing this, I
• 6:04
  realize, like, man, my collection is too big, you know.
• 6:09
  On one hand, I love having lots of love a lot of having lots
• 6:13
  of choices, But the reality is a lot of the games I have are
• 6:15
  they're not getting played, They're just taking up space, and when I get
• 6:18
  new games, I don't have any room for them. And as a result,
• 6:21
  I have a lot of games I'm just keeping in a kind of pile
• 6:24
  on the side table, which I don't particularly like. Right now, this
• 6:28
  pile is like two games deep, so there's some games that you literally have
• 6:31
  to move a stack of games in order to see it, and that's too
• 6:34
  much, I think, So some culling is in order, which I haven't
• 6:39
  done a big cull in a while. I usually try to do one each
• 6:43
  year for the game sale that they do at Fair Game. But I'm thinking
• 6:46
  I might do a call ahead of time and try to sell some games on
• 6:50
  board game Geek or on Facebook marketplace. I guess I could use Craigslist as
• 6:55
  well. I like to do local pickup. You lose so much of the
• 6:58
  value of a game in shipping. Either you have to price it lower so
• 7:00
  people are willing to pay for shipping, or you price it higher and no
• 7:04
  one wants to buy it. So I just do local pickup is my preference.
• 7:09
  But so did sort of beg the question of if I'm going to go
• 7:12
  through my collection, how do I decide what to get rid of? And
• 7:15
  then should I get rid of those? So all of that is kind of
• 7:18
  whirling around in my mind. And then yesterday I played a game of Nexus
• 7:24
  Ops, which is a very fighty game. It is a very fighting game.
• 7:30
  It is just a game of quick combat tactics. Trying to read the
• 7:34
  other players trying to out maneuver them. There's quite a bit of luck in
• 7:38
  it, and it is a fun game for what it is. I can
• 7:42
  see why people like it. In playing it, I can see why I
• 7:45
  kept it as long as I did. The potential, the feeling of the
• 7:47
  potential of it is there. But ultimately, after playing it again, I'm
• 7:50
  like, if I never play this again, I won't feel bad, so
• 7:55
  it's silly to keep it. And I actually offered it to the person I
• 7:59
  played it with who really did like it, and they're like, sure,
• 8:01
  so that one's leaving the collection. It's great and it'll go to people who
• 8:05
  will play it, which is even better. But it sort of does beg
• 8:07
  the question then, of what kind of filters do I use when I'm deciding
• 8:13
  what games to keep in my collection, which I thought I would talk about
• 8:16
  today. If you go to the show notes for today's episode, you'll find
• 8:18
  links to three or four I don't remember exactly, but three or four different
• 8:22
  episodes I've done in previous seasons where I talk about either what games I'm getting
• 8:28
  rid of or how do I organize my collection, or calling the collection in
• 8:33
  particularly, there is an episode two hundred and sixty something, so about four
• 8:37
  years ago where I talk about doing this initial organization. So if you want
• 8:41
  to listen to other episodes of me talking about this and perhaps repeating myself,
• 8:45
  I'll admit I did not go back and listen to those again. But I
• 8:48
  thought today I would talk a little bit about what are the factors that make
• 8:50
  me decide to keep a game or get rid of a game, and how
• 8:54
  have those those factors influenced my decisions recently. And this it gives me a
• 9:00
  chance to sort of out loud think through how am I going to filter my
• 9:05
  collection going forward when I do my big caull, How am I gonna decide
• 9:09
  what to keep or not? So the first one, one of the first
• 9:13
  factors that decides whether I should keep a game or not is have I played
• 9:15
  it. I generally do not like to get rid of a game that I've
• 9:18
  never played. And as a result, as you know from my survey of
• 9:20
  the shelf of Opportunity from a couple of weeks ago, I have a bunch
• 9:24
  of games that I am interested in playing but haven't had a ton of motivation
• 9:28
  to play or it's hard to get to the table, and I suspect they
• 9:33
  won't last to a second play. I'll play them once I'll be like,
• 9:35
  Okay, that was an interesting experience. Out the door you go. But
• 9:39
  I so it is kind of weird that I keep them if I think,
• 9:41
  ah, this probably isn't going to be a game that I'll like. But
• 9:45
  the interest of new games, the novelty of trying a game I've never played
• 9:50
  before, outweighs almost anything else in my collection. Not entirely, you know,
• 9:54
  I love playing games that I love, but I like trying new games.
• 9:58
  I really like it, So my yes is most It's very rare that
• 10:01
  I'm going to get rid of a game that I own without playing it.
• 10:05
  That said, my love of playing some games is probably the first filter,
• 10:09
  like is this a game I love? If it's been in my Top fifty,
• 10:13
  I probably am not going to get rid of it, But there might
• 10:15
  be sometimes, Like I mean, ever, let's not talk about the Top
• 10:18
  fifty I owe you from six months ago. Maybe I'll just at this point
• 10:22
  wait until December and do a new Top fifty in December. But the fact
• 10:26
  that some games I find fun every time I play them, and they're weird
• 10:30
  or interesting or just really compelling means that there are some games I can't imagine
• 10:35
  getting rid of anytime soon or at all. Maybe these might, And so
• 10:41
  I think of these as always play games, games that I love to play,
• 10:43
  I will happily play anytime someone asks too. Some of the top ones
• 10:48
  are the games that my wife and I like, Wingspan. I can't imagine
• 10:50
  getting rid of Wingspan. We always have a great time playing it. Segrata,
• 10:54
  we always have a great time playing Segrata London, the Martin Wallace game,
• 10:58
  we have a great time playing that. So you know, some of
• 11:01
  these games that I've played dozens of times on the table are games that I
• 11:05
  definitely will not get rid of. The second factor, particularly one now.
• 11:11
  So those they're never really on the table to get rid of, right,
• 11:13
  I'm not thinking about getting rid of them. The second category is something that
• 11:16
  I probably am thinking about getting rid of more. And these are games that
• 11:20
  I have because I collect that designer. The two sort of biggest groups of
• 11:24
  games that I have that I own because I collect that designer are Martin Wallace
• 11:30
  and Vladimir Succi. Both Martin Wallace and Vladimir Succi have games they've made that
• 11:35
  I bought because they're games made by that person, and I've played them once.
• 11:41
  I don't know if I don't think I have any. I don't have
• 11:43
  any Vladimir Succi games I haven't played. I do have a couple of Martin
• 11:46
  Wallace games I haven't played, and I keep them because they are by that
• 11:50
  designer, the Vladimir Susci ones, especially League of Six twentieth Century. These
• 11:56
  are actually pretty good games. They're fun. I don't have a lot of
• 12:00
  I have to play them, but I'm not going to get rid of them
• 12:01
  because they are part of my Vladimir Succi collection. Martin Wallace, I'm a
• 12:05
  little more flexible on, just because he produces so many games, But a
• 12:11
  lot of the games that I have of his that I sort of has to
• 12:13
  take a rid of would be very hard to replace if I decided I wanted
• 12:16
  to get them again, and frankly, they're not in a huge demand,
• 12:20
  so getting rid of them would just be about reducing the number of games in
• 12:22
  my collection. And while that is a motivation. And then the other category
• 12:28
  of games that I'm less likely to get rid of are games that I have
• 12:31
  in my collection because they're in my collection as a collection rather than as a
• 12:35
  library, by which I mean games that I own for their novelty's sake,
• 12:41
  rather than because I want to play them. One example of that kind of
• 12:58
  game would be the Colombo board game. I don't particularly like the Colombo Detective
• 13:03
  Game. I don't think it's particularly interesting as a mystery game, nor is
• 13:05
  it particularly fun. But I love having a game that's themed around Colombo,
• 13:11
  and as long as I have the space to keep it, it's gonna stay
• 13:13
  because it's an interesting novelty. The same is true of the Murder She Wrote
• 13:26
  game. So I have some games that are in my collection because of that
• 13:30
  novelty aspect, and I don't see them leaving. So what are some of
• 13:37
  the factors that would make me get rid of a game? And here I'll
• 13:41
  use some examples of games that I have gotten rid of, or am getting
• 13:45
  rid of, or am thinking about getting rid of that fit this category.
• 13:50
  The first one is it's widely available. So if I have a game and
• 13:54
  I'm not like super into it and it's very widely available, I think it's
• 14:01
  reasonable to get rid of it because it's not hard to get a hold of
• 14:03
  if I want to. So, for instance, let's say that I really
• 14:07
  like Splendor or Wingspan. Like Wingspan would be an example of a game I
• 14:11
  could get rid of because I know it's widely available and if I want to
• 14:15
  play it again, I can. Ultimately, that actually is a bigger factor
• 14:18
  for why I might not buy a game to begin with. I mentioned in
• 14:22
  a previous episode that I didn't by Void Fall in part because I knew at
• 14:26
  least one friend who was buying it, and it turns out I have two
• 14:28
  or three different friends who have it, so I don't really need to have
• 14:31
  it in my collection. Would it be fun to have, Sure, But
• 14:35
  that's true of every game I encounter that I don't just absolutely hate, so
• 14:39
  it being widely available would be one of the reasons I might be willing to
• 14:41
  get rid of a game, and in fact have done so in the past,
• 14:45
  right that I had for a while, I didn't have Katan in my
• 14:48
  collection because my school board game club at school did not have Katan, So
• 14:52
  I gave my copy to the school board game club because then I wanted them
• 14:56
  to have a copy of Katan, and I knew if I want to play
• 14:58
  Catan, it's easy to get a hold of the same goes for a lot
• 15:01
  of the games that I've given to my board game club, although there as
• 15:05
  often it's because I found a copy of Goodwill, but then or sometimes I'll
• 15:11
  give the copy I have to the game club, and then I'll find another
• 15:13
  copy of Goodwill and replace. That's why the copy of Settlers of Catan that
• 15:16
  I have right now is in fact a copy I got at Goodwill. Because
• 15:20
  it's fun to have every now and again, you want to play it,
• 15:22
  and it's nice to have it on hand, but it's easy to get hold
• 15:24
  of so I was happy, I was willing to get rid of it.
• 15:28
  So the two biggest factors of why a game would get played get removed from
• 15:33
  my collection then would be that I don't like it or it never gets played.
• 15:37
  Games I don't like, obviously I should get rid of them. The
• 15:41
  reality is, because I'm an omni gamer, there's a lot of games that
• 15:45
  I play and I'm like, yeah, that was fun, it was fine.
• 15:46
  A game being fine, it's harder to I mean, it's a little
• 15:50
  harder, Like I could see the potential in it. Maybe if I played
• 15:54
  it again with the right people, it would be great, And then I
• 15:56
  feel bad for having gotten rid of it. That's often the place I find
• 15:58
  myself when I'm getting rid of games. It was fine, or even it
• 16:02
  was kind of fun, but is it just maybe it's not fun enough to
• 16:07
  grab my attention, And that's the never gets played and not quite fun enough
• 16:11
  are the things that go together. I'd say the biggest example of a game
• 16:15
  that I'm getting rid of because it never gets played is Bunny Kingdom. I
• 16:18
  like Bunny Kingdom a lot. I think it's really cool. Every time I
• 16:21
  suggest playing it, the people around me are like, nah. I've brought
• 16:23
  it to my game club a couple of times, people haven't played enough.
• 16:26
  I said I want to play Bunny Kingdom, and I get it on the
• 16:29
  table, then people will play it. But if I have it as a
• 16:32
  list of games we might play, no one ever picks it. And the
• 16:34
  same goes for at home. It never gets played, and so while I
• 16:37
  like it, obviously, I don't like it enough to say I really want
• 16:41
  to play this today, And so it occurs to me it's a game that
• 16:42
  would be better in someone else's collection. The other one is maybe it's a
• 16:47
  game I've grown out of. The Nexus Ops games that I mentioned would be
• 16:51
  an example of that but like you know, part of the filter has to
• 16:55
  be is this going to get played? You know, a lot of the
• 16:57
  games that I've gotten rid of in the past are games that I like,
• 17:00
  and I just realized it's not getting played. It's probably not going to get
• 17:03
  played. I should make room for other games in my collection, and so
• 17:07
  then that game goes out the window or goes onto the cell pile. I
• 17:11
  think the biggest factor for me right now is I really should make an effort
• 17:15
  to play more of the games I haven't played, so I can decide do
• 17:18
  they stay or do they go? If they stay, what's going instead.
• 17:22
  I've never been one to say I have to have a firm one in,
• 17:25
  one out policy, But people who can hold themselves to that they keep a
• 17:29
  reasonable collection. My collection's outrageously big. I could play a different game every
• 17:33
  day and it would be almost two years before I repeated a game. That's
• 17:37
  too much, I think. At the same time, it's really fun and
• 17:41
  why hamper myself? Those are kind of the two ends of the spectrum there.
• 17:45
  So that's the situation I'm in with the games I've got and the thing
• 17:52
  the thoughts that I have as I'm moving forward toward a big cull, which
• 17:56
  does lead me to the question for you, what makes you keep a game?
• 17:59
  What makes you get rid of a game? Head over to board game
• 18:02
  Geek guild three two six nine and look for the thread that I'm going to
• 18:03
  start about this week's episodes. Uh, and let me know what you think
• 18:08
  of these questions. I'd be happy to hear how you decide which games to
• 18:14
  keep and what makes the game get above the cut For you again, you
• 18:18
  can join me over on board game Geek and guild three two six nine.
• 18:21
  You could also send me a board game message. One bat nine two nine
• 18:23
  is my user name there. You can send me an email Brendan at rattlebocksgames
• 18:26
  dot com. Thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope your
• 18:30
  next walk is this pleasant is mindless? Bye Bye. Brought to you by
• 18:53
  rattle Box Game