I'm married to someone I went to board game meetups with before we dated. I'm very good friends with several people from that group now. We play board games periodically still despite the group no longer being active, and our reasons to meet up are now more about socialising than board games. Board games was a brilliant icebreaker, but it took effort from everyone involved.
Perhaps board games are not the best socialisation method, but I'd argue against that too. It's a very good way to get like-minded people in a room, sitting down, and collaborating.
However, "I know many people who say they’ve tried a couple of board games like Catan and really enjoyed it, and are surprised to hear that I think it is a bad game." is spot on and the author cannot be faulted for that opinion. I'd rather play Russian Roulette than Catan.
Some people don’t want to talk much they just want to be around people or off the multitude of screens they use all day
Unfortunately not many meetups are active these days and they doubled the price of creating them
genezeta•1h ago
But in any case, it's not very interesting. I mean, there's not much of an insight about board games. Even after saying that they "give you a false sense of socialising" (emphasis mine), the author immediately notes that "This is not representative of board gamers - many board gamers makes lots of close friends through board games - but for me, I was not building new friendships through board gaming."