I'm not special but my taste isn't that bad

After writing about how a friend's gaming group had been regularly playing some games for over a decade, that made me think about what games have had years worth of play for me.

I quickly realized that it was a really boring list. As opposed to a list of games that no one but me and my close friends would have ever heard vast majority of the games were ones that everyone has heard of, including people who aren't really in the hobby.

Settlers of Catan. Carcassonne. Ticket to Ride. Those are the top of the list of games I've been playing since I pretty much got into board games. (I accidentally bought Ticket to Ride when it just came out when I couldn't get TranAmerica. Best. Mistake. Ever)

There goes any chance of me thinking of myself as a special snowflake who has spent years playing hidden masterpieces no one else has ever heard of :D

(Well, I have been playing Alak, a quirky one-dimensional Go off and on for the past eight years. That's off the beaten path. But I wouldn't make it the centerpiece of a game night.)

Instead of my take away from this being that I'm a really boring gamer, I'm taking this as a sign that gaming has and will have meaningful and significant milestones. There will be games that have staying power through being accessible, replayable and through just being good.

(I also think that only time will really tell what those milestones will be. After all, everyone sets out to design one! And there are degrees of time, ranging from publication schedules to generations to centuries. Hi, Go and Chess!)

So I may not be a special snowflake who has special insight but I do appreciate a good game. That's what I'm telling myself. If I've been playing a game on a regular basis for over ten years and it's still in print, I'll call it a milestone for the hobby.