Board games are starting to look a lot like video games

Once upon a time, you had to nag a nearby nerd to play a board game like Dungeons & Dragons with you in person.

Now it’s as easy as asking someone from the game’s 2m+-member subreddit or its 1k+ Discord servers to stream the game with you online. 

Last year, that ease of connectivity meant that D&D had its biggest sales year since its launch in 1974.

You thought Fortnite streams were popular? 

Then look at board games. Even chess has become a livestreaming hit. 

On Twitch, chess streaming has close to doubled every month this year — and everyone from The Mountain from Game of Thrones (164k+ followers) to pros like Hikaru Nakamura (528k+) have amassed huge audiences. 

Welcome to the digital board-game boom 

Many of these games are played in person, then streamed out to a wider audience. But a bunch of startups are trying to make remote gameplay seamless: 

• The Vorpal Board lets you scan your cards into a virtual board that you share with remote players.
• CardBoard.Live is trying to turn board games into a tournament-style experience that lets passive viewers snoop through each player’s card deck.
• The Last Gameboard calls itself an “unlimited” tabletop game: It’s a long, thin tablet that can adapt into any game you want. 

It’s about time that being a nerd paid off.