Burnout: Taken Down Edition

But then again...we've been posting here for six months, and most of us have babbled about whatever seemed important to us at the moment, and you guys (and gals) have kept reading. So...here goes.

What do you do with boardgame burnout?

Right now, I've got it wickedly bad. Not to the degree where I don't want to play, but to the point where I do feel like I'm going through the motions. A few weeks ago we had a get-together to game; we ended up playing half a game of Original Trilogy Star Wars Risk before abandoning it to watch football and play Bioshock.

I thought that maybe it was just a bad session, but a couple of weeks later we tried Siege of the Citadel one of my favorite games. The energy just wasn't there. Somehow one of the best shoot-em-up boardgames ever designed didn't even inspire the type of excitement it should have.

Maybe it was to be expected. For the past two-and-a-half years I've done nothing but eat, breathe, and sleep boardgames. Time not spent playing them was spent reading about them. Time not spend buying them was planning on what I was going to buy. Time not spend trading them was spent meticulously figuring out what and when I could trade.

Problem #1 is that I'm one of the primary enablers of my boardgaming friends. For the most part, if it is going to get played, I have to buy it. I have to teach it. I have to help schedule it. Rules pile up in my brain like a freeway crash as I try to keep rulesets for a 100 games in my head. This of course fails miserably and our sessions grind to a halt as pages are flipped, rules are consulted, and the pace of our games slow to a crawl.

Problem #2 is the inertia of a larger board game collection. This poses a problem on many levels. First, you start to look at your collection as having certain areas "covered". You think, "I already have a game based on global conquest, one based on dungeoneering/adventuring, one on sci-fi shoot-em-ups, etc."

Also, and this is more maddening, you end up with the backlog. Gaming time just can't keep up with the acquisitions so you end up with a laundry list of games you were excited to get but just can't seem to get table time with all the heavy competition. Getting burned like that makes you hesitant to look into getting new games. You start to see them as "One more to add to the backlog."

Problem #3 is the demon temptress of video games. Like most board gamers, I'm a multi-hobby geek. I may own 170+ boardgames and CCGs but I own 13 consoles and nearly 350 games for them. In years past I'd always cycle between my hobbies; I'd be heavily into video games for a few months before drifting back into CCGs and after that it'd be back to buying movies and DVDs. Somehow I managed to avoid that during the past two+ years, even though I'd dabble again in dead CCGs or more games my primary interest was boardgaming. We'd game at lunch, we'd game at work, we'd plan monthly gaming sessions, we'd excitedly list off 10-20 games we'd like to squeeze in "sometime soon", the list goes on and on and on.

This has been reflected by the fact that I don't own a next generation console yet. Since having an Atari 2600 as a child, I have owned a new console that I wanted within a year of its release. Now, I'm starting to feel that as I play my brother's new Nintendo Wii or my cousin's XBox 360. If I took the money from the last few boardgames I'd purchased, I'd have one of these systems already.

Some of you have noticed that my contributions have diminished, and have rightfully called me out on having lower quality posts than in the past. The bit I wrote on theme vs. mechanics wasn't terribly inspired and something I cobbled together so I could contribute something. I was invited to write for Boardgamenews.com to bring some Ameritrash flavor to the place, and what have I done with that? Nothing. I just...can't...think of what to write about that's of any interest.

(Unless they want a review of Bioshock. That's a hell of a game.)

The scariest part of all was looking at my closet last night and thinking what else I could be doing with all that space. And the sudden urge to flag half the games I have for trade on BGG (though what would I trade them for? More games?)

I'm hoping things will pass, and I think they will. There have truly been some great Ameritrash stuff released this year. Whereas Euro games seem to be stuck in even more of a rut than I do, a lot of energy is going into bringing us better Ameritrash games with clean rules (though still complex enough for flavor!), insane production values, and great themes. Look at Last Night on Earth--a game I do need to get, as it might be just the ticket to light the fire again.

Anyway, I just thought I'd put that out there. What do you guys do when you experience burnout? Can this gamer be saved? And are boobies on Boardgamegeek a bad thing?

This is a copy of an article originally published on the old F:AT blog. Read original comments.