The Winnie the Pooh Principle
I distinctly remember my mom talking about Winnie the Pooh when I was a kid. What she was talking about wasn't even specifically about Pooh, necessarily, but rather about the ebb and flow of "coolness." She said that Winnie the Pooh is very cool when you're a little kid, but at some point (around the middle of elementary school), it's suddenly very uncool. It's for babies. Only an idiot infant would still like Winnie the Pooh. Fastforward to teenage years, and all a sudden it may be considered cute for a girl to wear a t-shirt or a keychain of Winnie the Pooh as a sort of throw-back to a childhood love. That same t-shirt or keychain may enter into uncoolness as that teenage girl moves into her twenties, only to be back in vogue once she enters her thirties or beyond, when she or those around her are entering motherhood or start rediscovering old classics on streaming services.
This can frankly apply to lots of other properties: Mickey Mouse, etc. You typically see Mickey on the shirts of younger children and on Disney adults. Seeing it on just about anyone else can come across as silly.
Well, with one notable exception....
Reminder to self: I need to rewatch The Outsiders.
I'm talking about all this because I think a similar thing happens to hobby board gamers. I've heard of several people talk about the "board game bell curve" (and I often talk about it myself), which deals with the idea of a board gamer cutting their teeth on simple/gateway/welcoming games, graduating to medium-weight games, and then moving on to the heavyweight Lacerdas and Mindclash type games before ultimately settling back into the light-to-medium weight games as their go-to. I certainly am finding myself more and more drawn to those light-to-medium games, especially as my daughter is getting more into board games and I spend more and more time on BGA.
What I tend to hear about less is what I'm calling this Winnie the Pooh Principle, which is when certain games make multiple appearances in a gamer's favorites over a period of time. For example, early in my marriage, my wife and I played a lot of Ticket to Ride. I mean a lot of it. We would sometimes play multiple times a day, multiple days in a row. It was a game that we introduced to a lot of people and with which we always had a blast. For a long time, it was in my top 10 games of all time, usually hovering right around spot #3.
Eventually, though, it started slipping in my estimation as I moved on to "better games." When people would ask about what games I loved, I mentioned Ticket to Ride less and less. I didn't want people to think I was a noob in the hobby, and mentioning any of the big three (TTR, Catan, Carcassonne) as a favorite was, in my mind, a surefire way to let people know that you hadn't played very many "real" games. (This is a stupid and wrong way of thinking, as all three of those games are classics for a reason, and they deserve the love they receive!)
As I grew as a gamer and as an industry professional, I started really reevaluating Ticket to Ride. It's such a simple game: draw train cards, claim routes, or draw tickets. That's it. Yet the way the game shakes out each time is fascinating and unique. As a board game designer, I'm frankly jealous of what Alan R. Moon has done! Not only has he created a game that is simple yet satisfying to play, but he's done it in such a way that it's almost infinitely expandable via maps and small rules tweaks. It's a gold mine!
For Valentine's Day this year, I purchased my wife a copy of Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West, and we have been playing a three player campaign of it alongside our daughter.
Averi, with just a little help from mom and dad, won Game 1!
It's been one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life! Playing through Legends of the West has 100% reignited the Ticket to Ride fever in me. I've since hopped into multiple games of the base game (as well as Europe, and some of the expansions and map packs) on BGA, and I think I can now say with full confidence that Ticket to Ride is back among my best-of-the-bests. So this isn't just one of those "well, the base game is meh but the legacy version is where it's at" kind of things--this is one of those, "I'll play TTR, any version, because the simplest version is still a masterpiece in my eyes" kind of things.
So, if there's a game that you used to love that you haven't thought about in a while...maybe get it back out and table it. Who knows? You may just find your own Winnie the Pooh!
