by Richard Simone
That all changed in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic has changed everything and left millions of people working from home or in complete lockdown.
Amazingly, Google Trends have been showing that board games experienced a massive uptick in popularity during this lockdown. While films and video games have also been increasing in popularity, classic board games were the biggest winners, with search volumes for some of them increasing by over 300%.
Board game aficionados around the world will be happy to hear that their favourite pastime is becoming more popular by the day, but let’s have a look at the trends and try to understand what exactly is happening.
Board Games Bringing People Together
According an analysis by Betway Casino of Google Trends, board games like Pandemic, Monopoly, Risk and Ludo have all reached their all-time highs when it comes to popularity. The engine has been tracking all searches since 2004 and in no other period have the searches for these terms come close to the numbers recorded in March 2020.
Of course, millions of people sitting at home caused this uptick, but it is interesting that so many are interested in board games as opposed to watching movies or playing video games. The logical conclusion is that board games bring more human contact, which is the one thing so many people are missing in these uncertain times.
The USA, the world’s hardest hit nation in the pandemic, has also been on the forefront of the board game craze, with over 40% of all board game searches in March coming from the USA. The most popular game there appears to be Pandemic, which is ideally themed considering the situation we are finding ourselves in.
Board Games Moving Forwards
The incredible increase in search volume for board game related terms has been a shock to many, but fact is that this is likely a very temporary thing. Once the world goes back to normal, and entertainment venues like cinemas and shopping malls are open again, we can expect many people to put their board games away and start living their old lives again, highly oriented on digital forms of entertainment.
However, coronavirus has certainly taught us that we can still have fun at home with our family and closest friends and that we don’t need our phones and our TV sets on at all times to have a good time. While the world has suffered greatly, this is one of the silver linings that we can take from the situation and hopefully remember once the storm has finally settled.
