The Slump Is Fine
BGStats doesn't lie. Neither does life.
My play count has been dropping since the beginning of the year.
I know this because I track every session in BGStats, one of those small habits I picked up when I started taking the hobby more seriously. Nothing elaborate, just a few taps after each game: the title, who I played with, how long it took. Over time, it draws a curve. And lately, that curve has been going down.
My first instinct was mild guilt. The kind that sounds like: you have 94 games on that shelf, and you’re not playing them. That quiet pressure, familiar to anyone who’s spent real money and real care building a collection, started doing its thing.
Then I went to the gym instead.
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Here’s what’s actually been happening since March. I’ve been putting more time into my physical health. Nothing dramatic, no transformation arc, just the slow discipline of showing up and doing the thing consistently. It takes time and energy. After a long workday, there are evenings where sitting down to parse a rulebook or set up a heavy euro genuinely doesn’t appeal to me. And I’ve been listening to that signal instead of fighting it.
The guilt faded pretty quickly once I named it for what it was: hobby pressure. The idea that a collection needs to be justified through constant use. That pauses are failures.
They’re not. They’re just... pauses.
I think about the way I got into this hobby in the first place. It was 2019, 2020. I was always looking forward to playing something for the sheer joy of the moment. The feel of a heavy box, the satisfaction of a well-played round of Brass: Birmingham, the particular kind of quiet you get when you’re deep in a Set A Watch: Doomed Run solo run at midnight. None of that involved a quota.
BGStats shows me a curve going down. It also shows me 800 sessions in 2025 alone. Weeks where I played three or four times. Long sessions of Terraforming Mars with the Hellfire Club — yes, we named it, or rather Jonathan named it, after that — including the legendary all-plant victory by Joesey, who somehow colonized Mars exclusively with greenery and became an internal meme. I made a billboard. We still laugh about it. The data tells the whole story, not just the recent slowdown.
And there’s something else the app can’t capture: I have more people to play with now than I did two years ago. Joesey, Dadi, and the rest of our gaming group — people who get the same pull toward cardboard and chits. Those relationships don’t disappear because I skipped two game nights. If anything, taking a breath makes me look forward to the next session more.
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The seasonal slump, if that’s even the right name for it, is real. Spring in central Sicily pulls you outside — and I’ve been walking more than playing. Work has its rhythms. Bodies need movement, not just mental exercise. Life has seasons, and hobbies live inside those seasons too.
I’m not worried about the curve. It’ll go back up when it wants to. It always does.
Honestly, the most useful thing BGStats ever taught me isn’t how much I play. It’s that I’ve been doing this long enough to have patterns. And patterns include valleys.
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I’m curious whether you’ve been through something similar. A stretch where life crowded out the table, and you felt either fine about it or weirdly guilty. How did you navigate it?
Let me know in the comments. And if you’re not subscribed yet, it’s free, and I’d love to have you here.
I’m currently undergoing one now. Organising the house, ready to sell it in the next few weeks, is taking up all my time.
I’ve also spent more time selling on games than I have playing them.
I don’t feel guilty about it. I know the time will be there again in future, though, as you’ve probably experienced yourself, writing a blog about games brings with it its own pressures in terms of playing things to discuss, or keeping up with the latest games and goings on.
A bit of patience and appreciation for the things I’m doing with my time away from the game table helps me navigate it.
I totally get that. I have been bouncing back and forth between my physical and virtual shelf of opportunity :D I try not to make my hobbies part of "the grind" - work is enough of a thing I have to do every day.
I have realized I don't always have the bandwidth for playing a board game solo game or with other people and I need some alone time. And yes, going for walks! So great!
My games are always there for me when I need that kind of escape or time around the table. And sometimes the time away also lets me take a step back and evaluate my collection. I sold a couple stacks of games after letting them all sit for a bit, noticing which ones were pulling me back to the table and which were probably ready to move on.