I made a small survey recently and posted on Reddit, a Facebook group for board games, in the Shut Up and Sit Down Discord channel, another Discord channel on the topic of board games and from my personal Facebook account.

The survey managed to get 91 responses. It is worth noticing that most of the responses are from board game communities - so they will be heavily skewed towards people with many games. I also posted among my 'regular' friends on Facebook to try to compensate for this skewness - but even my friends might also skew slightly towards the more nerdy type.

I promised to share the results once the survey completed, so here we are 👼

How many games (approximately, if unknown) do you have in your collection?

Largest collection was 1100 games (160 among friends)
The average collection size 126 games (15 among friends)
Smallest collection was 6 games (0 among friends)

How often to do you, on average, play board games?

• A couple of times per week | 40.7%
• A couple of times per month | 35.2%
• A couple of times per year | 13.2%
• Daily or almost daily | 7.7%
• Daily or almost daily | 3.3%

Who do you tend to play with?

• Partner/Spouse | 57.1%
• Family | 50.5%
• Mixed Friends | 48.4%
• Fixed Group of Friends | 42.9%
• Colleagues | 11.0%
• Strangers | 6.6%

Three people pointed out in the comments that I had forgot 'Solo' as an option to this answer. I assume they point it out since they would have clicked that answer. That means 'at least 3.3%' play board games solo, but the percentage is likely to be higher as it was not an option in the questionnaire.

Where do you play at?

• Home | 98.9%
• Online | 30.8%
• Board Game Cafés | 18.7%
• Public places, e.g. library, school | 16.5%
• Work | 8.8%

This answer might have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Do you borrow games from friends?

• Yes | 19.8%
  • ... but rarely | 55.6%, or 11% of total
  • ... sometimes | 38.9%, or 7.7% of total
  • ... often! | 5.6%, or 1% of total
• No | 80.2%
  • ... but would like to | 37%, or 29.7% of total
  • ... and would not like to | 63%, or 50.5% of total

Do you lend games to friends?

• Yes | 46.2%
  • ... but rarely | 66.7%, or 30.8% of total
  • ... sometimes | 33.3%, or 15.4% of total
  • ... often! | not a single one.
• No | 53.8%
  • ... but would like to | 24.5%, or 13.2% of total
  • ... and would not like to | 75.5%, or 40.6% of total

Do you know of, and make use of, BoardGameGeek.com

• Yes | 75.8%
  • ... and would rate it ⭐ | 0%
  • ... and would rate it ⭐⭐ | 1.4%
  • ... and would rate it ⭐⭐⭐ | 15.9%
  • ... and would rate it ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 50.7%
  • ... and would rate it ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 31.9%
• No | 24.2%

Most of the no-sayers to this question has been referred to the survey from my personal post. If we exclude those - then the ratio is 97% YES and 3% NO. BoardGameGeek.com is king 👑

Would you be interested in a web application to manage and share your collection with friends?

• Yes, and would like to | 46.2%
  • ... Search in own collection | 88.1%
  • ... Search in a friends collection | 78.6%
  • ... Tag/label games in own collection | 64.3%
  • ... Wishlist functionality | 64.3%
  • ... Game session logging and statistic | 59.5%
  • ... Finding local board game places | 47.6%
  • ... Finding local board game events | 45.2%
  • ... Folder organization of own collection | 38.1%
  • ... Finding local/only board game shops | 31.0%
  • ... Search in a set of combined collections | 28.6%
  • ... Event creation and management | 23.8%
  • ... Search in a collection of a place near me | 19.0%
• No | 53.8%

Which country are you from?

• United States | 48.2%
• Denmark | 26.5% 👈 these are all from my personal FB post.
• Canada | 8.4%
• Australia | 2.4%
• Brazil | 2.4%
• Portugal | 2.4%
• United Kingdom | 2.4%
• Andorra | 1.2%
• Germany | 1.2%
• New Zealand | 1.2%
• Sweden | 1.2%
• Switzerland | 1.2%
• Thailand | 1.2%

Would like the result of this survey sent to you on mail?

• Yes | 13.2%
  • ☝️ this might be what you answered.
• No | 86.8%

Download results

In case you want to query something specific, which is not covered by the resume above, feel free to download the (anonymized) raw responses 📓

Conclusion

I have long wanted to do develop something with Blazor and an app for board game management to replace my Google Sheet seemed like an obvious choice. I made this survey to check if it made sense to put some effort into releasing it or if I should keep it in my drawer.

Based on this survey I conclude;
Boardgamegeek.com is king 👑
No doubt about it. Everyone who is serious about collecting board games are using it and they like it! Anything new must integrate with BGG - no one wants to keep their collection up to date multiple places.

People do not like sharing ❌
The majority (50.5%) would not like to lend out games and a lot of people would not like to borrow them either (40.6%).

Searching is in 🔎
There is a modest interest for something besides BGG.com (46.2%), if that thing better have great search functionality! Our collections are so big that we need to search our own collection (88.1%) or the collection of a friend (78.6%) - and if we could tag games (64.3%) too, ohh boy. Yes please.

Say hi to GameWasm 🎲

People seem to be satisfied with BGG - but there might, with a bit of optimism, be room for something that complements BGG. I have therefore decided to move forward with my project 'GameWasm' (temporary project name).

The interest is not overwhelming, so I have decided to keep the scope of the project fairly small and focus on making it:

• Easy to sign up, no mail required ⚡
• Synchronize with BoardGameGeek, that is where the cool kids play! 🧙
• Easy to search in game meta data 🔎

I am hoping to attract a few users if I manage to keep the barrier to entry low and the searching experience adequate! I have a personal goal of reaching 100 active users which I would consider a huge success 🏆