On re-read I’ll share an anecdote which I don’t think I’ve told here: a few months ago at the end of an online game night with some friends (players of commercial games, video games, MtG, etc but none of them Go players or chess players) I suggested multi color Go.
We played 4 player on 19x19 using a module on Tabletop simulator. And it was far more successful than it had any right to be. Most of them said they enjoyed it, one wanted to play more (only multi color) and although I did end up winning it was seriously challenging for me. By the end they had some idea of some basic shapes that were interesting
Only an anecdote but maybe the less serious and variant route is a good idea…
We are going into a bit finer/deeper details here, so there are three key points: a) I will not disagree that board games as a market is growing, but my point for that post was mainly focused on children and young people. Now, even on that category, a family may have bought 20 board games for their two kids in a span of a few years, but, let us be honest here, how much time does the average kid play video games and how much time do they spend on tablets and laptops? So, yeah, I think we will all agree that in the most usual household, tablets and laptops and consoles, win in time spent, even though the family appears to have spent quite the pretty penny on table tops.
b) I happen to have a good friend that is a table top game designer and works for a good sized company and they made a kickstarter that had a goal like 50k and within a day they had 200k pledged. That kind of money comes from people that are slightly older and, let’s face it, I pledged money too, but I didn’t get the game. Why? I have noone to play with! Rest assured that there are a lot of people that pledge money to see a great concept or an adaptation of their old favorite fantasy stuff and books or even totally new ideas. They even buy the games, but they do not play them (or if they do, they do not play them more than a couple of times). Go is one game and the topic is more centered about attracting a focused group that will stick with playing (which is why the spotlight of my thinking was about younger audiences). By the way, that friend of mine has the same problem. He has a tower of boxes made out of board games, but not enough players. Those acquisitions count “in the market” as “monetary success”, but what we are after initially is promotion and creating a new dedicated group of people that will play and eventually come to like and love the game. (notice that in your own article, it talks about couples and grown-ups)
c) So, since sales and popularity and dedication to what you bought are not the same things, my observation comes from the standpoint of not “how we can make people add Go into a series of disposable board games which they might be buying within the fast-buy consumer ethics of our current era”, but on “how we can make people long-lasting fans of Go in particular” … that is why I mentioned LotrR earlier. For sure the hundreds of millions of people that watched the movies did not become “lifelong fans”, but even if 1% did become enamored and bought the books and started poring over Tolkien’s unverse and fantasy books in general, that was the real victory for the industry. Those people will stick. Those people will keep on buying. Those people might have children that will grow up with the books. Those people will be the ones that will bring more life-long fans.
And they might show you this:
This is just the 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) stack.
Second edition had more books than that.
And then there was edition 3.5
And there is a 4rth edition.
And a 5th one.
A bookcase of books, just for the usual D&D.
Don’t get me started on DIFFERENT table-top RPG universes and rules … Warhammer 40K, Battletech, Vampire the Masquarade, Shadowrun and a lot lot more …
Sometimes we Go players like to think that we read a lot, but a regular D&D munchkin habitually has read more material than a 1-dan Go player. A munchking can have easily surpassed in effort a 3-dan player. Those are dedicated people.
munchkin = a D&D player that likes to read a lot of rulebooks and rulesets to obtain obscure knowledge of favorable loopholes that would allow them to exploit the system and gain “goodies” and annoy the Dungeon Master.
munchking = a D&D player that not only reads the rulebooks, but goes into such fine detail that has now started interpreting the wordings of the rules. They will do ANYTHING, for the slightest of advantages. Munchkings would have made amazing lawyers imho
P.s. I had a munchking friend and I told him that there is a rumor that in the computer version of the D&D campaign “Temple of Elemental Evil” if you click “reroll stats” 99999 times, then this is the ONLY case where you can roll a character with max stats on all six attributes … yes, you guessed it. He sat in front of the computer, did 99999 clicks and two days later called me and showed me the proof.
I’ll say it again. Those are dedicated people. At times even beyond belief.
I never had any interest in that kind of games. They are the George Clooney of games for me; everyone seems smitten, I’m unaffected.
(As far as dedication is concerned, I know fandoms. I don’t admire extreme dedication more because it’s an “intellectual” pastime, D&D etc, I consider it equally useless as kpop stans searching music scores, photos, itineraries and license plates to have absolute knowledge over their favorite idol. Someone showing me that picture you posted of a bunch of rulebooks and someone having absolutely every piece of merch of X impress me equally, and by that I mean not really.
Whatever flows anyone’s boat, but it’s nothing to me, what can I say.)
Also, it was a joke, it’s not that deep.
P.S. The joke got better, though, because they would probably have read the whole thing and try to prove something to me, while I can’t, won’t ever and not really care to be able to solve that tsumego.
Well, that may be, but I just wanted to depict the point that what some people are into can be quite complicated and time-consuming so, in comparison, they view other hobbies and games as “simplistic” even if they are not.
Another interesting point is that that a lot of people ended up in such hobbies despite the negative press they have had through the decades or the total lack of popularity and marketing, I say that there might be things that we might learn about promoting a hobbie that can be seen as equally time-consuming as Go.
I don’t admire extreme dedication more because it’s an “intellectual” pastime, D&D etc, I consider it equally useless as kpop stans searching music scores
As I once wrote half a page for the merits of Go, I can similarly write half a page for the merits of D&D (enhancing the imagination, inciting a love of learning and reading, teaching the valuable lesson of viewing situations from totally different standpoints, educating the players on a vast array of socio-political situations and thoughts, making the players more open to new ideas which they have to apply critical thinking to, socializing and applying social skills in gatherings with the players and between the characters that are being played and so on and so on and so on ), so I’d say that the comparison to fandoms like K-pop was really unfair.
Similarly, there is a vast difference between owning “fandom merch” (which are just showpieces) and owning books (which you actually read - there are people that buy books as showpieces as well, but let’s not get into those show-offs). Merch is objectively useless if seen outside the scope of the fandom or fad (e.g. like Goop you mentioned earlier or the licence plates you mentioned now - which I am frankly hesitant to ask what you mean with. Sometimes ignorance is bliss ), but books are always useful (even a horrible book can serve as a “what to avoid” example)
Also, it was a joke, it’s not that deep.
I understood that, but it was a good point, as well
Lest we forget - this is one thing that can happen when well-meaning people try to “advertise” Go to non-Go players
Things can get real cringy real fast.
Because - folks in the West can attest that playing Go rarely involves drinking beer with handsome men and beautiful women in atmospheric cafes. For many Westerners, Go is a very solitary pursuit. When we try to explain our fascination with the game to our non-Go-playing friends, we are often met with confused looks, or patient / patronizing nods - “There they go - rambling about that crazy game again.”
I thought the fellow in the SUSD video summed it up really well
Unable to interest any of his gaming friends in his new passion - he realized that he would have to find GO FRIENDS - some rare group of people that shared his fascination with the game, just so he could have someone to talk about this stuff with.
No amount of packaging or smoke-and-mirrors is going to change the fact that this game has a wicked steep learning curve. I think if Go is to become more popular in the West, it will have to slowly grow inspite of that fact rather than by somehow ignoring it.
I completely agree but that doesn’t mean to have reach all the people who could be interested in it. At the level of a medium sized school there are enough potentially interested to run a go activity. (Can switch “school” with “high school” “university”…)
In recent years in an elementary school in my village with about 600 pupils, about 20% learns how to play, about 6% plays occasionally, about 2% keeps playing weekly (for a year or more) and about 0.5% progresses to above 20k.
I would estimate these conversion factors from my data:
All children in that school =>
~75% knows that the game exists (the name or what it looks like) =>
~30% learns how to play and plays at least a couple of games on 9x9 =>
~30% keeps playing at least occasionally on 9x9 at 40k level or better =>
~30% plays at least dozens of games on 9x9 =>
~50% starts playing on 13x13 at 35k level or better =>
~50% starts playing on 19x19 at 20k level or better =>
~50% starts playing at 15k level or better
I don’t have any student that broke the 10k barrier yet, so I don’t have any numbers beyond this.
There is a regular go club at a 30 minute drive away from here, but they only have adults (not many and all middle-aged dans) and they only play on monday evenings from 8 PM in a bar. So that wouldn’t work for children under 12 and weaker than 10k. It is too late in the day and in a non-youth-friendly place and they are much too strong.
As the national youth coordinator for go since 2018, I do encourage regional clubs that organize tournaments to include a youth division in their tournaments. So there were about five 1-day youth tournaments within an hour drive in 2019 (of which one in my village that drew 19 participants), but that all stopped because of the pandemic.
Chess pieces are like different characters with different personalities, which appeals to young kids. What if Go stones had emoji’s printed on them? Play a stone for when your group makes two eyes, play a stone when invading, play a stone when running out to the center, stone when you can’t kill a group but have to settle for seki, etc.
), but books are always useful (even a horrible book can serve as a “what to avoid” example)
This is my life, LOL
stone for when your group makes two eyes, play a 
stone when invading, play a 
stone when running out to the center, 
stone when you can’t kill a group but have to settle for seki, etc.