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?
- Shopping for games
- Selling / trading games
- Playing boardgames - against AI's
- Playing boardgames - solo
- Traveling to play games
- Making print-and-play games
- Pimping up games / customising games, including painting miniatures
- Organising game sessions / activities
- Boardgame photography
- Watching videos
- Making videos
- Listening to podcasts
- Making podcasts
- Designing boardgames
- Playtesting boardgames
- Deck-building (e.g. Magic: The Gathering and Android: Netrunner players)
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