2018 Games Library Report

Hello and welcome to the U-Con 2018 Games Library Report. Post convention contains both my favorite thing to do (crunching stats on how the library was used) and my least favorite thing to do (clearing the “Parts counted date” column on my spreadsheet and starting over again). I haven’t even begun parts counting but I crunched numbers like a mad thing just after I put the Games Library to bed. What can I say, I like the numbers..

This year 102 of the 298 games were checked out (34%, which is down a percent from last year). In total there were 233 checkouts compared to last year’s 167 which leads me to consider two possibilities for the uptick in checkouts but the drop in percentage: Either a lot more games were added to the library (15 donations and 26 bought new vs. 16 bought in 2017 (no stats on donations)) or more games were played multiple times. Considering Azul was checked out 17 times (!!!) I’m going to guess a little bit of each.

Speaking of multiple checkouts, HOLY COW AZUL! I had to go back and recount the sign-out sheets when I did the final tallies. It turns out that I did not accidentally add an extra 5 hash marks; y’all just really liked Azul. For reference, the previous record was held by Patchwork last year at 9 checkouts.

If you are looking for gamer gift ideas, other popular games besides Azul were Forbidden Sky and Suspend (both at 8 checkouts), Patchwork and Unearth (7) and Potion Explosion and Dragonwood (6). We hosted a portion of ConTessa’s Game Library this year so I have even more stats. They dropped off 44 games that were not in U-Con’s Games Library and 10 of those were checked out (23% of their library. Total ConTessa checkouts were 15; games with more than 1 checkout include Exploding Kittens, Kabuki, One Deck Dungeon, Santorini and Unstable Unicorns).

This year marks 5 years of Games Library statistics collected and in that time, 7 games have been checked out every year: Coup, Forbidden Island, Kingdom Builder, Lords of Waterdeep, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Tokaido and Zombie Dice. It would have been 8 games but nobody checked out Original Fluxx. Chemistry Fluxx did get checked out (4 times!) and Fluxxes are Fluxxes so in essence, Fluxx as a concept has been going strong all 5 years. BTW, Chemistry Fluxx holds the record for most Fluxx checkouts. If you are looking for games with staying power, you can’t do much better than the ones people request over and over again.

Lastly, Albion, one of the Original 50 Games I inherited, got its first checkout this year. It warms my heart when someone gives some love to the older games.

The Games Library started out with 280-odd games on Friday and ended up with just over 300 when I packed them up Sunday night. That’s almost 20 games in one weekend! Many thanks to Looney Labs for their donation to the Library (Zombie Fluxx, Nanofictionary and Get the MacGuffin), Will Niebling and his crew (Toura, Spike, New Haven, Gobblestones and Artifact Stack) and all the people who donated games throughout the con (Mary Z. – Indigo and Heroes Unite; Nick O. – Super Dungeon Explorer: Super Ninja Ambush; Robert C. – Firefly the Game; the person who came up to the library to donate games their kids outgrew – Robot Turtles, Labyrinth, Mmm…Brains; and the anonymous donor of Root). Thank you all!

-JQ