Logged my 500th play of Catan last night and half my group thinks I have a problem
So I keep a little notebook where I write down every board game play, and last night at my buddy Dave's place in Portland I wrote down number 500 for Catan. That's just Catan, not counting anything else. It took me 7 years to get there. The weird part was how I felt about it. I was kind of proud for a second, then I looked around and realized nobody at the table cared at all, they just wanted to roll dice and complain about sheep. Now I'm stuck wondering if tracking plays like this makes me a real fan of the hobby or just a guy who likes spreadsheets more than games. Dave says the notebook is a sickness, but my other friend Jess says it's the only reason she remembers which games she actually liked. My 500th game was also my 11th straight loss, which maybe says more than the number does. Do you all keep play logs, or is writing stuff down after every game just too much work for a hobby?
My cousin got really into tracking her plays after reading some board game blog about how it helps you see patterns in what you actually enjoy versus what you just buy. She said the numbers showed her she was playing heavy strategy games way less than she thought and party games way more (which made her stop buying the heavy stuff). Tracking is just a tool, same as any hobby where people log stuff (runners, readers, whatever). Five hundred games in seven years works out to about 70 games a year, which is barely more than one a week, so Dave calling it a sickness seems like a stretch. The 11 straight losses thing would bug me more than the notebook, no lie.