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Watched my old game group fall apart after we switched to digital meetups | Board Game Geeks - Rigidtalk

Watched my old game group fall apart after we switched to digital meetups

Back in 2019, my Saturday crew of 8 people would pack into Dave's basement in Portland and play Terraforming Mars for 4 hours straight. After the pandemic hit, we tried moving to Tabletop Simulator and Discord, but within 6 months only 3 of us were still showing up regularly. It hit me that half the fun was the physical stuff like passing tiles around and seeing people's reactions across the table. Has anyone else seen their group shrink after going virtual, or did you find a way to keep that face-to-face energy?

2 comments

2 Comments

richardh442mo ago

Well bless your heart, this is exactly what I've been telling my wife about our book club. We moved to Zoom meetings during the lockdown and it just isn't the same. Half the magic was sitting in someone's living room with coffee and cookies, watching people's faces light up when a plot twist hit. That connection you get from being in the same room, sharing the same air, it matters more than we give it credit for. I think we're seeing a bigger pattern where people are realizing that digital convenience strips away the warmth from everything - not just games but church groups, neighborhood gatherings, even casual chats with coworkers. We've started meeting in person again this year and we're back up to 12 people every month. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.

janaw112mo ago

And @richardh44 you're totally right about that digital convenience stripping away the warmth. My D&D group hit the exact same wall hard. We had this beautiful chaos of snacks everywhere and dice rolling off the table and someone always yelling about the rule book. Once we went to Roll20 and Discord, it turned into people muting themselves and saying "I attack" then just staring at their screens. The spontaneity died. We tried everything to fix it - better microphones, virtual table backgrounds, even doing silly voices - but nothing matched the energy of looking across the table and seeing someone's actual face when they rolled a nat 20. We eventually just gave up the digital thing and started meeting in my garage with space heaters in the winter. Now we're back to 6 regulars and it feels like a real group again, not just people in boxes on a screen.