At this point nearly everyone knows somebody whose life has been affected in one way or another by the worsening economic situation in the United States and, increasingly, around the world. If you didn’t know somebody and you’re reading this, you do now. I was laid off from my technical writing position at a major corporation due to “economic uncertainty”. I’ve been back to full-time work for a month now, thankfully, but everywhere you look jobs are being lost by the hundreds and thousands. Businesses- very big businesses—are on the ropes and the fruits of unfettered corporate greed are ripening as bad loans and foreclosed homes have become the signs of our times.

These are dark financial times and unless you’re an AIG employee spending a million dollar bonus check at an online game shop I think you’re pretty crazy to be blowing money on board games right now. I’ve always championed the brick and mortar game store and spending your money to support the publishers, designers, and businesses that make this hobby happen but right now I can’t think of a bigger waste of money than a board game that you may play a couple of times before it gathers dust on a shelf that likely contains several other underplayed, unplayed, or otherwise underused games.

For my part, I haven’t paid money for a board game since I was laid off in October. Not that I wouldn’t have, but I simply could not afford to under any circumstance. If it weren’t for a few review copies provided by publishers, Cracked LCD might have turned into four months worth of “Games from the Crypt” installments and maybe a review of CHECKERS. The funny thing is that now with the bank account slowly recuperating and the reassuring ability to actually feed my family without fear of spending down to my last dollar returning, I’m still not in any hurry to buy a new board game. When you have an unstable, practically nonexistent income and you’re looking at either buying a $60 board game or keeping the power on for another month, it’s kind of a no-brainer unless you are an immature deadbeat with seriously maladjusted priorities and a love of the dark. What’s more, during those lean months I found myself selling about half of my game collection to keep from having to borrow heavily or make substantial lifestyle changes. And as a result, I saw a lot of games that I thought I would never sell head out the door. And I don’t miss them one bit, even some of the really great games I liquidated like PATHS OF GLORY, COMBAT COMMANDER, SHOGUN, and several of the Columbia block wargame titles.

Of course, I’ve still got an awesome game collection even with these “layoffs”, so to speak. DUNE, SETTLERS OF CATAN, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, TWILIGHT IMPERIUM, MAGIC REALM and games of that caliber I didn’t even consider selling and wouldn’t unless circumstances were much graver than they were and there was nothing left to liquidate. My one-of-a-thousand-copy of RISK: BLACK OPS never got near the sale pile. And my beloved swastikas-and-all copy of ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ wasn’t about to hit eBay- even though they would likely have taken it down as they did a similar copy a couple of months ago. I look at the game shelves now and they’re definitely leaner, but they’re a hell of a lot meaner too. Every game is a favorite, and every one is something I’m willing to play anywhere, any time.

And there’s a lot less overlap with the game collections of my friends. What’s the point of owning a copy of POWER GRID when you know three people who own a copy of it, and if you’re playing it at least one of them is going to be involved? I’m just about completely over the whole “collecting for the sake of collecting” thing; I don’t want to own a game just to have it anymore. If it’s on my shelf, I want it to be played. Otherwise, it’s like laying a pile of money on the shelf and leaving it there.

It turns out that I really kind of think of games as a capital investment and if you don’t get anything out of them than it’s time to let them go- it’s the same theory in practice that I used to keep the shelves at Atlanta Game Factory from stagnating with slow product. If I look at a game on my shelf and think “we’re never going to play that again” or “we’ll play GAME Z over GAME X if we want that kind of thing” then it’s a waste of space and capital. And woe is the game, and I had several, that were probably never going to be played- no matter how cool they may be, like poor KRIEGBOT that was all but waylaid by my rediscovery of OGRE. But there it was, punched and sorted and never played. So out it went. I’m just not in this hobby to pile a shelf full of games and let them sit there, reminding me that I could have used that money to take my wife out to dinner or to take care of some bills. The good news is that your investment in this hobby can at least be partially recapitalized- all you have to do is let go of all those unplayed games, all those second- and third- tier titles, and all of those games you bought on the clearance table just because they were cheap.

That sort of flies in the face of the reasoning of most game collectors, who are quick to glut their collection with unplayed or even unopened games just to increase its size or who thrive on having collections that are more about what they own than what they play. Over the past decade, the internet has made it easier than ever to amass large board game collections and that aspect of the hobby is one that’s almost become a more significant part of the hobby than actually playing the games. I know people who own tremendous game collections full of games they’ve never played or have even forgotten that they own but for me that way of life is just so remote from my priorities that it’s almost alien. I can’t imagine spending literally hundreds of dollars for a game that I may never play, but I know people who do so, and regularly.

The good news for these folks is that if and when the Second Great Depression gets into full swing, they’ll have something to liquidate. As long as currency still holds value and there’s still some priorities-scrambled chump willing to invest money in rare board games. Or maybe we could trade copies of FULL METAL PLANETE for a spot further up the bread line. Heck, I guess we’ve got to have something to do while waiting for the foreman to announce the day’s jobs at the work camp. I know who I’m calling for that.