Hey everyone.
I'd like to start off today by introducing a concept called Game Fu. It's the mastery of gaming presented as a pretty bad pun. It's also quite real.
Much like kung fu, or any other martial art, or really anything at all, you get better at it the more you practice. The fact is many games use the same or similar systems which means practice in one game translates to skill in other games as well. Things like card drawing mechanisms or the way you are allowed to move pieces on a board are in many cases the same or similar enough that you feel comfortable sitting down to play a game you've never played before simply because experience in other games has prepared you. This does not mean all games use the same systems for everything but when you've seen a good number of games you start seeing patterns and learning new games becomes easier because often the rules are a riff on systems you already know. Game Fu of course has levels to it. One does not master such a discipline all at once! If you play a lot with people that do the same you can get into a good rhythm during each playthrough and great fun is had by all. But what if there is someone there that does not possess your level of Game Fu? Someone that keeps asking questions and slows the game down?
The first time a person plays a board game, any board game at all, they might find the rules overwhelming. They might feel stupid when sitting at a table with more experienced players and sometimes others might think that of them too because these concepts are extremely basic, right? Wrong. For the experienced player most if not all of the concepts of a game they've never seen before will be familiar to them. The same game shown to a person that has never played a game in their life, or worse, only played a few games of Monopoly (One of the worst games ever made), might be total gibberish. This is where the patience comes in. I've seen people excluded from games because they didn't grasp the rules during their first time. Experienced players don't take the time to let new players grow and thus miss out on expanding the community, and with it the hobby as a whole, and increase the risk of not having anyone to play with. This also means sales go down, game designers are not able to make new games/expansions and basically everyone loses.
This same applies for most hobbies I would think. Even if you want to be competitive and do hardcore things in whatever it is that you choose to do, introducing new people to it is always a good idea. If you're interested in it you should be interested in bringing new people in because that can only be good for the hobby as a whole.
I would like to thank you for reading my scattered thoughts put into words and I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to comment below and let me know what your thoughts are. Do you have experience with the topic, either good or bad, that you'd like to share?
Happy gaming everyone!
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