Monday 20 October 2014

spending my time

How do you actually spend your boardgame hobby time?

I started asking this question when one day I realised I might be spending more time blogging about boardgames than actually playing boardgames. That's sounds sad, but when I think further, I realise it should not be that surprising. My only regular weekly gaming time is Friday nights. Sometimes I play with the children on weekends. You need to find time and people to sit down together to play a boardgame. But blogging? It's an alone-time activity. I can do it any time I like, as long as I have a computer handy. I do enjoy my blogging. I enjoy writing down my experiences and thoughts. It's like reliving an enjoyable experience. And keeping records is something I find satisfying. So time spent blogging is time well spent too.

Here's how I think I'm spending my boardgame hobby time:

  • Blogging: This includes a bit of managing the photos I take. Time spent blogging is split between my two boardgame blogs - both this one and the Chinese version.
  • Playing games - in person: Mostly with the folks at Boardgamecafe.net or with Allen.
  • Playing games - electronic platform: I still continue to play Ascension almost everyday, with Han and Allen.
  • Reading games news / blogs: I use Feedly to subscribe to boardgame news feeds. I seldom search for new feeds to subscribe to nowadays. The ones I follow are more than enough for me. I still visit BGG, but not as often as before, and I don't read as much as before.
  • Reading rules and making summaries: To me, making those one-page rules summaries is almost inseparable from reading rules, unless I only intend to skim the rules to get a feel for the game, and do not intend to teach or to play the game yet.
  • Organising / maintaining games: This includes sleeving cards, bagging components, laminating reference sheets and so on. I generally don't sleeve my cards, and I don't buy many games lately anyway, so I don't spend much time on this.
  • Hand-crafting games: I rarely do this now, but this year I did self-make that Adventure Time themed version of Love Letter, which I thought was cute.

I don't hunt for the next new game to play as eagerly as before, but I still get to play many new games, many suggested by friends I play with.

Other than the boardgame related activities listed above, here are what I imagine other boardgame hobbyists do too. What else should I add?

  1. Shopping for games
  2. Selling / trading games
  3. Playing boardgames - against AI's
  4. Playing boardgames - solo
  5. Traveling to play games
  6. Making print-and-play games
  7. Pimping up games / customising games, including painting miniatures
  8. Organising game sessions / activities
  9. Boardgame photography
  10. Watching videos
  11. Making videos
  12. Listening to podcasts
  13. Making podcasts
  14. Designing boardgames
  15. Playtesting boardgames
  16. Deck-building (e.g. Magic: The Gathering and Android: Netrunner players)

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