I shunned Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator early on due to the inconsistency of quality control and frustrations created by their twitchy, fiddly, physics-based functionality being able to flip the table for “funsies” wasn’t quite the cute joke the developers thought it was. Our group patiently worked out the digital quirks of the Yucata and Boite A Jeux websites, which look like they were built by a Geocities-era wayback machine. There were hundreds of games to choose from and online ports of board games did all the setup and upkeep and scorekeeping for you, like friendly and invisible robot butlers. At the start we basked in the honeymoon phase of novelty, choice, and luxury. Online gaming wasn’t a new concept but for most of us remote board gaming was, so when the shock and awe of Covid forced us to sequester we got a crash course. Recently I’ve lost my taste for remote, online board gaming. Twenty months into the pandemic timeline it hits me: I suffer from remote board gaming fatigue.
