Lots of folks have been sharing this thread. I think it's interesting & useful. But I have some points of disagreement or at least caution about what conclusions we might reach about what kinds of games do & don't resonate with a 'general' audience. Here are my thoughts:
Yeah, I found the conclusions reached in that thread to be weirdly condescending to the general population. You're spot-on, it's a sales issue, not a what's being sold issue.
I'm the inventory manager for a board game café, I teach people games and about games and sell them on games all the time. It's about gauging interest, gauging level of investment, and finding games that hit the mark. If they're talking about games like they're AP Physics, aim lower, etc.
But that "Most people don't think games are fun" conclusion gets a big ol' thumbs down from me. This is simply not true. If it were, modern games wouldn't exist.
Certainly the data provided gives very good insight into the kinds of games that are best to demo when you're trying to sell product to non-specialist costumers who are just passing by. It's not reasonable to conclude this tells us what kind of games the average person is capable of enjoying.
Introducing people to games where you are a retailer & your implicit goal is to get them to make a purchase isn't like sitting down with a family member. It's the difference between having a conversation with a friend & flyering for a show on the Royal Mile at the Edinburgh Fringe.
People are resistant BECAUSE YOU'RE SELLING THEM SOMETHING. How many times in my life have I interrupted my day so a random salesperson can demo a product to me? I would guess less than once a year. This is no index of my interest in mini drones or cheaper WiFi or Greenpeace. It's the dynamic.
I think the "learned at 5" thing is important, though. Basically no one learns to play tabletop games from the rulebook. It's an oral tradition passed from player to player. The entire idea of "we need to read about this first" is a barrier to entry.
This myth of the median ding-dong who supposedly can't understand games is so ahistorical & bizarre I don't know what to do with it. Kids can learn draughts, chess & mancala at 5. I play 'hobby' games with my 8 year old all the time. In the 80s 50% of UK adults played cards at least fortnightly.
I regularly tell customers, "Once a kid is around 9 years old, they can learn any board game they want to. The trick is that they have to want to."
Even at dedicated tabletop cons, plenty of games are too weighty & ambitious for most attendees. They want to keep moving. It's not that they don't enjoy or understand Twilight Imperium, they just want to see a bunch of stuff. But board & card games are everywhere, across all cultures.
Some hobbyist gamers seem to imagine we're nuclear physicists or something. Like modern games are impossibly recondite & arcane & no outsider could ever learn them. Nonsense! Demonstrably untrue. The vast majority of people are more than capable of understanding.
The question is whether you think our job is to evangelize or to lay a place at the table. If you want strangers to purchase a game from you, of course you have to go for instant gratification. But I don't think the heart of gaming is generating economic events. It's community.
The thread is about selling games to people who think they don't like games. That's all it claims to be. It is not a thread about introducing people to games who think they don't like them. That is not a sale. It is an invitation. Most of us did not first encounter play in a shop, thank God.
I learned to play games with my dad. I still play games with my dad. I wanted to play because it was a space of connection, imagination & love. People of all ages play games of all complexities. I don't find teaching non 'hobby' people (such a weird term) any harder than seasoned veterans.
In my experience, all that matters is willingness, & welcome. Would the person like to play? Have you made them feel welcome? That's it. Pensioners learn Bridge & Mahjong. Kids I teach on creative writing retreats learn boardgames & Pathfinder (first edition, for goodness sake!) in moments.
Back when we made Rosetta: The Lost Language we got a weird cross-section of players. Folks who found games too hard & hobby players equally were like ‘this is great’ or ‘this is too complicated for its own good’. Change in genre exposed something about identity there over actual connection…
… like being ‘into games’ or ‘not into games’ was useful social shorthand but didn’t catch the nuances of the human underneath. ‘Hardcore hobbyists’ who resist change and experimentation. ‘Non-gamers’ who latched onto the joy of play rather easily and without fuss.
You make a lot of good points here! As you say, I completely agree that 'how do I get people to buy a game?' is a different question to 'how do I get people to try out boardgames as a hobby or interest?'
On the question of complexity, I think it's an issue when gamers are confident something like Wingspan is a nice entry to the hobby, when it really isn't. Certainly a lot of people are capable of learning that game with no background, but it doesn't mean they want to, or would enjoy the experience.