2022 Games Library Report

Well hello there U-Con-a-verse. How are you all doing? Wow has it been a moment since we’ve all been together but hey, we did a thing and I think we had fun.  I’ve had time to do one of my favorite Games Library things: crunching the stats for U-Con Games Library usage.  I also did one of my least favorite Games Library things: resetting all the parts counted dates to zero. I don’t want to talk about parts counting the entire library. Again. So let’s look at some stats yeah?

We didn’t use the library in 2020, but I had a budget, so I bought some games and some infrastructure. We also didn’t use the library in 2021, but by this time several of you had spent some time going through your game collections and culling the unused or unwanted games and donating them to the Library. In two years we went from 372 games to 520 games and only 66 of them were purchases. So thank you everyone who donated games.

This year was an interesting year statistically. On the whole the numbers were down, which was expected after a two year in-person hiatus, a late-in-the-game date change, and the fact that there is still a non zero chance of coming down with COVID at any gathering.  Still, though, I was surprised and pleased to see the Ballroom humming along with a decent number of games being played. Open gaming was pretty solidly attended throughout the con and it certainly didn’t feel like the ghost town of gaming we all worried we might have.  But what does that mean in terms of stats? Glad you asked.

The Library added 148 games since we last met 2 years ago and U-Con attendees played 116 of the total games available (22% of the Library). Of those 116 games, about a third of them were the new games that had not yet appeared at a U-Con. I do not have stats from the previous years of the percentage of the new games played, sadly, because now I am curious!

There were 178 checkouts over the weekend, which is generally low for checkouts. However, comparing this year’s numbers to 2017’s 167 checkouts in which we had roughly double the attendance at the con, 2022 is looking kinda awesome. Woot all you Games Library gamers!  Another interesting point I noticed is that there were no runaway games this year in terms of checkouts. In 2019 there were several games that just would not stay on the shelves and had numbers significantly above the rest of the games. This year the high numbers were a little mellower – The Isle of Cats and Kingdomino were checked out 5 times each; while Azul, Sagrada, Spirit Island -Horizons, Splendor, and Tak all got 4 checkouts each.

There is a dwindling handful of games that have been checked out every year since I started tracking stats: Forbidden Island, Lords of Waterdeep, Tokaido and Zombie Dice remain on that list.  Kingdom Builder got 0 check outs this year and, sadly, falls off the list.  The other, and happier, list are games that got their first ever checkout.  Welcome Apples to Apples, Lungarno and Strada Romana to the list of games in the library since 2014 that have gotten their first check out. Lungarno and Strada Romana are also (I think) two of the original 50 games in the Games Library.

For people who like numbers:

	# Games In Library	Unique Games Played	% Library Played	Total Checkouts
2017	237	83	35	167
2018	298	102	34	233
2019	372	153	41	339
2022	520	116	22	178

If you are wondering what the popular games are this year, definitely The Isle of Cats and Kingdomino are up there, as well as Azul, Sagrada, Spirit Island – Horizons, Splendor, and Tak.  Also cats and crafts were popular, Calico and Cat Lady getting 3 checkouts each and Arch Ravel, Knit Wit and Patchwork getting three, two and two checkouts respectively.  The Forbiddens as a whole (Island, Desert, Sky) got 4 checkouts but I swear I saw Desert out at least twice despite it not showing up on the checkout sheet. As always, the Ticket to Ride games did well with 6 checkouts across the lot of them (New York being the most popular). And of course, the stalwart games that have been played every year (Forbidden Island, Lords of Waterdeep, Tokaido and Zombie Dice) are a solid choice of games people like to play.

Weirdly this year no Fluxxes were played, and there are 12 different decks of them in the library. Perhaps people are just tired of real world flux and stayed away (on that note, nobody even asked to look at Pandemic or Pandemic: Hot Zone North America).

Lastly, Gubs – a game I bought at the auction in ‘19 because the name made me laugh – was checked out. I feel totally justified in dropping a whole $1.75 on that game now.

-Your Friendly Neighborhood Games Library Wrangler -JQ