Category Archives: Board Games

Researchscape International conducted an online survey of 2,000 U.S. adults aged 18 to 80 years old, quota sampled to reflect the U.S. population by age, gender, region, Hispanicity, and education. The survey was fielded from June 22 to June 24, 2018. About one in five U.S. consumers had purchased a video game in the past month, compared to one in ten who had purchased a board game and a similar amount who had purchased a card game. The most popular game purchased was Monopoly, bought by 90 out of 2,000 […]

Researchscape conducted an online omnibus survey of 2,339 U.S. respondents, and I snuck in some questions about board games. (The survey was fielded from May 26 to May 28, 2018.) BoardGameGeek.com allows users to log every tabletop game they own. I’ve always wondered: How comprehensive are these collections? Not very! Only 9% of BGG users have cataloged all of their games, and only 16% have cataloged most of their games. Only 13% of those making under $50,000 had logged most or all of their game collection, compared to 32% of […]

For an update analysis for 2024, see: U.S. Gamers Prefer the Familiar. The “cult of the new” is the obsession with new titles, which makes hobbyist gaming much like the movie industry. The online site, Yucata.de, offers free online games with human players. Here are the plays averaged across 111 games, relative to when each game was first introduced to the community. You can see that a new game peaks in 3 months, then gradually declines to half its peak after 2 years, dropping only slightly after that for the […]

Update: See our most recent research, Most Played Board Games and Card Games. Researchscape conducted a series of one-question polls as background research to its survey of Kickstarter backers. In a poll conducted March 23, 2016, half the U.S. online consumers interviewed had played a game this year: 18% in the past week, 17% within the past month, and 16% earlier in the year. The other half had played in 2015 or earlier or couldn’t recall. How long has it been since you played a card game or board game? (In real life, […]