How did tabletop gaming make such a comeback? We live in an age where so many seemingly better (and technologically superior) options are available to us. Tabletop gaming should by all logic be a dead format for entertainment. Yet, alongside vinyl records, tabletop gaming is continuing to see growth as an industry, with board game cafes opening up in cities all over the world.

The renaissance that we’re currently experiencing caught on with the early adoptors through novelty in quiet corners of college dorms, where at first it seemed retro and ironically edgy to sit down and play a board game like you were back at mom’s kitchen table. People actually doing something that the rest of the world thought was uncool has this weird effect of flipping around and making that thing actually become cool. Since culture evolves fluidly, new niches always cross over and become embedded in the mainstream. Once students saw past the nerdy, basement-dwelling stereotypes that traditionally went along with tabletop gaming and gave it a try, they discovered how much fun and joy it brought them. Turns out, in the complicated age of impersonal digital connectivity, where so many twenty and thirty-somethings felt a lack of face-to-face connection with their peers, simple, modest tabletop games reappeared just in time to bridge the gap like a refreshing can of Pepsi.

While Settlers of Catan was first to the modern scene and paved the way for Euro-style games to initally flourish, social deduction games are the current new wave to hit the shores of modern tabletop gaming. Many would credit The Resistance with spearheading this new movement, but social deduction is only a subset of a larger category of games that actively encourage metagame analysis of other players. In a sneaky way, Cards Against Humanity actually introduced mainstream audiences to that mechanic, while at the same time reigniting the party game genre that had been saturated with charade and trivia variants. When it was released, Cards Against Humanity spread like wildfire among non-gamers, continuing the work Catan did to pave the trail for tabletop games to connect with mainstream culture. Even though it’s original Kickstarter campaign only got up to $15K, you’d have a hard time arguing that another game can more rightfully cement itself as one of the top two answers on the Family Feud board for “Most influential tabletop games in the last decade” along with Catan.

Cards Against Humanity bills itself as a game that’s easy to get into and doesn’t take itself too seriously, best enjoyed casually and paired with a few beers. You aren’t really supposed to try to win at the game. However, everyone, no matter how much they claim otherwise to just be there to have a good time and laugh at the witty written content, is deep down desperately wanting to win whenever they play. Because there’s an unwritten rule that the person in the group who most consistently wins at Cards Against Humanity is also the most liked person within that group.

Being consistently good at Cards Against Humanity relies on reading the other players at the table in an even deeper and more intimate way than the binary assigned “good or evil” format of proper social deduction games (The Resistance, Secret Hitler, Werewolf or the like.) Remember, culture is fluid, A joke can be a massive hit among your Thursday night erotic limerick writing club, but be an absolute flop with your Sunday morning Japanese Beetle-fighting friends. In our increasingly segmented cultural landscape where meetup groups for both of those hobbies likely actually exist somewhere in your city, activities and actions that reward people with a sense of belonging have never felt more emotionally valuable. When the Card Czar deems your white card the funniest, you get a little hit of that new drug called “validation” that we’ve all been hooked on since Zuckerberg introduced the Like button. To win is to demonstrate that you share a higher degree of connection with the other people at the table, at least in terms of humor. Think back to some of the most obscure turning-point picks from your past Cards Against Humanity games, it was likely something that was conventionally unfunny, but picked based on an inside joke or past experience shared between the round winner and the Card Czar.

Seriously, nobody’s supposed to win with this card otherwise.

The “metagame social awareness” mechanic is likely going to gain even more popularity in the next while as designers realize how much of a sticky factor it is in games that catch on with mainstream audiences (and more importantly, sell well.) Codenames, another game reliant on teammates using limited communication (once again, rewarding teammates that share in-depth knowlege of each other’s personalities and shared past experiences) is on track to become the next big thing among the casual crowd. With two new themed expansions dropping at the end of the year after the original won the Spiel des Jahres award in 2016.

There’s a beautiful story to be interpreted here. We’re initially lured into modern tabletop games by the freshness and creativity on its surface, but ultimately stay for the camaraderie and personal connections discovered within. I‘m probably overthinking it, but I really hope not.

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