Young people love traditional games
In 2023, Michelle Kong opened a chess club called LA Chess Club, hoping to meet and interact with other players in their 20s. However, what disappointed her was that the number of participants was so small that they only used one chess board. The 27-year-old girl tried to post about the club on social media. Initially, a group of tattooed young men in Los Angeles came to play friendly matches and exchange phone numbers.
Soon, boxes of chess pieces were piling up in the backseat of Kong’s car. By the end of 2023, she had moved her headquarters from a cozy jazz bar to a larger space that could accommodate the 500 people who would attend the club’s summer meetings.
“It’s been a blast,” Michelle Kong said of the LA Chess Club’s appeal. Kong was looking for a place to store her 200 chess boards.
Faced with loneliness, young people in their 20s and 30s are gathering together to play chess, backgammon and mahjong in the hope that traditional gaming clubs can help ease the lack of social connection and digital overload that permeates the lives of younger generations.
Some people choose active sports like pickleball or running to distract themselves from the virtual world of their phones and computers. But people like Michelle Kong say that games like chess, which have been stored away in attics since their grandparents’ time, are gaining popularity among younger generations who want less athletic forms of socializing.
“A sport like running is not for me. I find it easier to connect with others when I don’t have to struggle to catch my breath or sweat,” said Victoria Newton, 35, who has been organizing events for the Knightcap chess club in Austin, Texas, since July.
Sales of board games in the U.S. increased more than 30% from 2019 to 2020, boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Juli Lennett, a toy industry consultant for market research firm Circana. Stuck at home and craving social interaction, many Americans found joy in these games.
The habit seems to continue even after the pandemic ends.
Circana said the number of board game events organized through its Partiful app, an invite-based event organizer, has quadrupled in the past year. The number of board game-related groups on the Meetup event listing site has also grown by about 10% each year from 2021 to 2023.
Eduardo Rojer, 30, attracts players to his free Rummikub meetups in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood with a colorful Instagram page featuring memes of the tile-matching game featuring celebrities like Charli XCX and Paris Hilton.
The club meets monthly and attracts about 80 people at each gathering. Eduardo Rojer learned the game from a friend and her mother early in the pandemic.
"As far as I know, it's a game my friend used to play with his grandmother. I wanted to make it more attractive and popular," said Eduardo Rojer.
Find simple pleasures
Young people today are thousands of years removed from the board game boom of their forebears. Board games are nearly as old as civilization itself, says Zachary Horton, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies the game. But they can be especially appealing to young people, he says, a generation that is saturated with digital media and lives in a politically charged era where each group seems to play by its own rules.
Formal clubs dedicated to board games became popular in America in the 19th century, when wealthy men could meet to play chess at the Mechanics' Institute Chess Club in San Francisco and the Manhattan Chess Club in New York.
As different types of games became more popular, gatherings changed as well, says Professor Horton.
The role-playing games of the 1970s gave rise to Dungeons & Dragons groups, and board game cafes and bars sprung up in the early 2000s, catering to players of complex strategy games like Catan.
There are more games to choose from than ever before – including video games – but many young people are still drawn to the classics. Among Gen Z, the board game movement is clear and strong, according to Professor Horton.
Remington Davenport, 35, founded the NYC Backgammon Club in 2023. She said nostalgia is part of the appeal of backgammon, a game that dates back 5,000 years. Many club members learned to play the game from their parents and grandparents.
Davenport shared that she felt out of place when attending craps events in New York City: “I was really disappointed by the lack of women at these events, especially those in their 20s and 30s.”
More than 3,500 people have attended regular NYC Backgammon Club meetings at restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan, she said. In April of this year, she quit her sales job to focus on backgammon full time.
Other board game clubs and groups were formed with the general idea of helping young people connect with the history of those who came before them.
Green Tile Social Club in New York and Mahjong Mistress in Los Angeles are aiming to help the next generation learn how to play mahjong, a game believed to have originated in 19th-century China and is popular across Asia.
The Mahjong Mistress founding team — Angie Lin, 33, Abby Wu, 27, Susan Kounlavongsa, 38, and Zoe Blue, 30 — hold regular meetups every few months that cost between $15 and $25 and can attract hundreds of participants.
“People are looking for healthy activities,” says Angie Lin, citing data showing that Generation Z is consuming less alcohol than older generations.
