I love learning new games. In fact, it might be my favourite thing about games. I think learning the rules is not just part of a game it is a kind of game in itself. One I’m great at and love. A big part of gaming is exploration and that’s what learning is: finding out what you can and can’t do, what you want and don’t want and how to get the former and avoid the latter, and seeing how the game communicates all of that and gives it meaning. It’s like diving into an ocean: a whole new world of physics to grapple with and levers to pull.

But I also like exploring games further. I may not be a gamer who plays something on BGA two hundred times in a week so I’m absolutely sure on the win to pay ratio of cards x and y. But exploration isn’t just the first dive in. Exploration is also the languid wanderings and deeper longer looks. The whimsical experiments down winding paths and the mistakes and getting lost. It’s a conversation with the rules, the designer, the art director, with yourself and with your players. It’s also a feature in your life. I remember the years we we played Warhammer and Shadowrun every week, that one afternoon where we played Settlers of Catan four times in a row, that period where we couldn’t wait to get Dominion back to the table with new people and new combos. I remember the year we got Pandemic and cards like One Quiet Night and Airlift became part of our language and thought processes, shorthand for good things we craved and things we felt in our blood and bones when they arrived. Likewise we played Arkham Horror so much we had our own in-jokes and barely had to think about our opening moves. We built up our own mythologies about how hard it was to get a job on the newspaper and why the Woods were so dangerous

And meanwhile I don’t remember the day at a con when I played six new games.

We all have too many games. We know this. It’s why terms like Shelf of Shame exist and why someone invented the 10×10 challenge (aiming to play 10 games 10 times each in a year). Both of those don’t address the core problem though: we’re BUYING too many games. No matter how much we try to keep playing, more games are coming in. I’m in a weekly gaming group now where we never play the same game twice. Why not? Because it’s unfair. Everyone has a shelf of shame ten feet high and wants their games to get to the table. We can’t circle back, it would be special treatment.

And here’s the real talk part: the fact that we buy so many games is bad for the hobby. It’s bad for design. Kickstarter and crowdfunding have been amazing for access and getting more games out, but it created more and more a trend where buying is more important than playing. Because with crowdfunding we can never try before we buy, and that means, inevitably, companies focus on what gets you to buy, not what gets you to keep playing. They know the average number of times a game is played is creeping closer and closer to 1 and might even be below 1 now. So they don’t need it to be good. Or different. Or robust. I’m not saying design is getting necessarily worse. But there is a lack of pressure on it to be better.

Meanwhile, the sheer volume and the need to appeal to the familiar means games are getting more homogenous. Since you aren’t going to play 100 games of your favourite trick taker, and find all its wonderful variations, you can play 100 different trick takers…but each one ends up feeling the same. I don’t mean variety for the sake of variety but every thing I play is starting to feel the same.

Or worse: just very middling and uninspired. Homogeneity means we keep reusing tools that work, but we’re not actually choosing the exact right tools, nor are we shaping them to fit. We’re just cutting things up and putting them back in, like a movie made only of cliches from other movies. This can get the job done but it’s not really good. And so so many games I find just leave me hollow. They are workable, but not great. Not quite finished or not quite playtested enough with enough different people. Mistakes haven’t been picked up. Rough edges aren’t smoothed off. Fiddliness not resolved into elegance.

I know some people won’t care, or think I’m an old man yelling at the cloud. In the same way I know most people don’t care about bad movies or bad books. They just want them to be there and take up space and maybe have a cute dragon in them. And that’s fine. But I do care. I care very much. And if nothing else, I think we should talk about it, which is what I hope this post encourages.

So here’s the challenge: I think every game worth its salt should be played at least fifty times to get the most out of it. I think I’d like to see the average for every game get up to fifty. But when I actually think about it, I’ve probably only played Ticket to Ride 20 times and that seems a lot. So let’s halve that. 25 times. Actually, you know what? Pandemic Legacy, if you won every chapter, was only 12 times and it was a masterpiece. So let’s say I want you to play every game you buy 12 times. Not every game in the world, mind you: JUST THE ONES YOU BUY.

And let’s assume you’re a seasoned gamer. This is something of a hobby for you. So we might assume you play games once a week. You might skip a week now and then, but you also might play two or three or four games on a night. Or a whole bunch at a convention. The average of one a week seems fair. So this means if you buy a game every three months, you can play it for twelve weeks then buy a new one. And therein lies the name of this challenge: you, the seasons gamer, can buy a game once per season.

Note you can PLAY as many games as you like. I don’t care what you play. But if you buy any games, you get four a year. One per season. Note this also doesn’t include free games, or games you borrow or games from a library. Only ones you pay money for. You get four of those a year. You get to decide if it counts when you back the kickstarter or when it arrives, but you only count those once. Also? If it comes from a charity shop it doesn’t count. Second hand purchase? You can count that as a half. And if you SELL a game on or give one away, it wipes out a purchase. If you donate it or put it in a street library, it can wipe out two! Because that’s stopping others from buying.

And I know, as a game publisher, I don’t want to be the one not encouraging sales. But I’m going to do it anyway. Maybe this is stupid of me. Maybe I’m missing the point. I’ll take criticism because it might just get this more talked about. Because I do think we’re just buying too much, and I think it’s bad for us, it’s bad for the industry and its bad for design. It’s probably not great for the environment either. It’s a consumerist mindset too, of valuing ownership over enjoyment. I think if we buy less we might actually share more. And believe me, I also know how much I want to be the nerd who owns the thing, so I can take it home and stroke it and feel special instead of having to look on from the sidelines. It is lovely to own things. But that turns this hobby into an endless game of consumership and oneupmanship, a game we can never ever win because there will always be another game that someone has and we don’t. We’re not just not playing our games, we’re robbing ourselves of every part of the joy. We’ve turned gaming as a hobby into nothing but collecting and owning, and then ripping the joy away from that as well because we can never really get enough.

Plus, it can be a whole different kind of lovely to open a game someone else has loved as well, with little notes on the scoresheets and bumps of love on the corners. Having fun with it then passing it back. and talking about how it went. The truth is games were never meant to be hung on the walls like art: they are meant to be like books, showing the wear and tear of hundreds of readers that came before, and will come after. And even if you do love having things to hold and admire, wouldn’t you rather curate that down to the very best? The most meaningful? The things that you really love?

So there it is: the Seasoned Gamer Challenge. Buy one game a season, and no more. If you set yourself this challenge this year, post about it. #seasonedgamerchallenge If you make it, or don’t, talk about that too. Talk about how buying things can end up running and ruining our lives. Because once we talk about this, we can figure out what to do about it.