On Jan 14, 2021, my book Board Games as Media will be published by Bloomsbury Press. It’s the culmination of a multi-year research project (partly funded by DePaul University, where I’m a Professor of Media and Cinema Studies) that examined the board gaming hobby, the rise in popularity of board games generally, and the messages that board games are communicating to their players. You may have seen my post back in August 2019 that reports on the results of a huge survey I ran about board game players…and you may have even participated!

What I learned astounded me – about the breadth and depth of gaming, the community of players, and the importance of board gaming to so many people around the world. Here are the six most surprising things I learned while writing my book.

1. Board games exist in between text and activity

I originally proposed the book because, as an avid board gamer and as an academic who studies the media, I was struck by the fact that we didn’t have a good system for understanding how board games can act like media texts. This may seem like an esoteric question, but it actually gets at the heart of some of the issues of media studies:…

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Introduction

In April 2019 I conducted a survey of board gamers to find out who played hobby games, what types of games people played, and how people played games together. The results of the survey were overwhelming; I thought I’d get about 200 people to take the survey, but over 900 ended up filling it out! I’m incredibly grateful to everyone that took the time to answer my questions and provide such a wealth of information. The end result of this research will eventually be published in a book I’m working on, Board Games in the Digital Age, due out in late 2020/early 2021 from Bloomsbury Press. (If you’re interested in being notified when the book comes out, you can leave your email address here.)

Update: My book has been released! Board Games as Media is now available through Amazon.

Methodology

In order to collect the data, I mainly used targeted social media posts and word-of-mouth to spread the survey. About 1,100 people opened the survey, but of those 1,100 people, only about 850 actually filled out the survey. This is not unusual – and there’s often attrition on the questions, so not all of those 850 answered every question.

Pretty Graphs

Demographic Questions

The data demonstrate that most of the…

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