I got a bit curious this afternoon and thought I’d look up the largest board games ever. First I did what anyone looking for a record would do; I went to the Guinness World Records site and searched there.
OK, I’m not going to get into basic design theory, search engine optimization, or site architecture, but suffice it to say that Guinness’ site fails on all fronts (much like me and Stratego, but that’s a different story.) I didn’t find out what the largest board game was there, but I did find out they’re releasing a board game of their own.
So then I googled it (yes, that’s a verb and needs no capitalization.) There I found a story about a guy in Canada who built a giant board game that has indeed been classified as “The Largest Board Game.” From the description he created a gargantuan Monopoly board with local street and place names.
This still wasn’t really what I wanted, so I continued my search. I found an article from August about a Green Bay Packers Game. One about a life-sized Candyland game in San Fransisco, and something called “Galaxion” that claims to be “the largest commercially available board game.” (Um, hate to break it to your guys, but “Railroad Tycoon” has you beat.)
I even found an article about Ken Fonarow who sold his board game collection for $150,000. Granted he had over 20,000 games, that’s still amazing, and where did he keep them all?
I even came across Scott’s post talking about his biggest change being that he’ll shorten his videos. Again, still not what I’m looking for.
“So, what is it you’re looking for?” you ask? Well, I want to know what the largest board game is that I can buy? I mean the one with the largest playing space? Is it “Railroad Tycoon?” Am I wrong and is it “Galaxion?” Or do I have to get as many “Carcassonne” base games as I can and find a football field somewhere?
