When the new year was approaching and I looked in my closet I saw that I had over 120 games. Holy crap! that’s a lot, and the problem was I hadn’t played a lot of them in a long time.
I’m actually pretty good about keeping my collection filtered. I look at the piles on the shelf and am pretty diligent about cycling through the games that I don’t like anymore or that I’m pretty sure won’t get played again. I also don’t have stacks of thrift store finds that I never plan on using just because they were cheap.
The problem is that between me and my friends we’re constantly getting new items and playing them, pushing the older titles further into dust collecting territory. They still are really good games, but we all kind of succumb to the “Cult of the New” syndrome and get excited about the shiny box and the new games that are available.
That brings me to my New Year’s Resolution. I committed to not playing any of my games a second time until all the games had been played once. I printed up a large list of the games on my wall and planned a marathon day on January 1st to kick it off.
Here were the rules. I didn’t necessarily have to be the one playing the game, but if I wasn’t, it had to have been played in my house. If I played a game that I owned at another person’s house/party, it would count as well. Games with expansions had to be played using each expansion at least once. It has been going on all year now and we’re working our way through the list.
I love this project. It forces us to bring out old classics that we had put away and forgotten about. We reevaluate the games we have and figure out which ones we actually want to keep and which ones have had their time and should go to a better home. I’ve found a couple games that I like even better now than I did before. I’d say we’re a little over halfway done now, so we should be complete by the end of summer.
We haven’t cheated yet, save for one exception. I got a game recently that begged to be played more times. This game will be the subject of the next review; due out later this week. I encourage gamer’s everywhere to rediscover their collections.
I see on BGG a ton of collections that have hundreds upon hundreds of games. First of all, what kind of magic closet do these people have that can handle this mass, and secondly, why have more games can you can enjoy. I’ve constantly heard people state they have new games that they’ve never even opened. I’m not saying to do what I undertook, but merely to awaken the sleeping games on your shelf.
