The Important Role Of Nostalgia In The Board Games Business

If you received a €uro for every news article you could find with a quick Google search promoting the idea that ‘board games are back’ or that nostalgia is set to see the board games business boom you would have at least €37 based on a quick Google search we conducted.

Board games have obviously never gone away, they have continued to sell as technology has creeped into most aspects of our lives. Nostalgia is such a big part of that longevity. Nostalgia is a sentimental view of the past based more on positive memories and emotions associated with certain past events or past times than actual reality.

Those golden family or friendship group moments that we remember based on playing board games either with our parents growing up or with our friends create a strong emotional driver for the urge to buy and play board games.

As the same Google news search would reveal, this is not just about those classic iconic board games like Monopoly and Scrabble though, it is the entire play pattern based on face to face social interaction in a world where we are all buried in screens most of the day, and certainly for much of our leisure time.

Future generations will probably laugh at how ridiculous our behaviour has been walking round staring at a tiny screen. Technology is heading towards some kind of cyborg humanity where the technology will be much more practical and physically less harmful and risky than staring at a tiny screen all day.

The more that technology ensnares us, the more that nostalgic feeling for the old way of interacting with each other over a board game becomes attractive. So, while many pundits and journalists have been predicting the end of the board games industry since video games came to the fore in the 1970s and 1980s, the board games category is a massive beneficiary of increased tech addiction and consumption.

Anyone who has been in the games business for a while will have discussed what they do with someone at a dinner party or social gathering and been asked ‘Does anyone still play board games any more’, and the answer of course has always been yes. The good news though is that technology trends are increasing the desire of human beings for real old-fashioned social fun, and that’s only going to help the board games business.