For many, when they hear the words “board games” they envision a couple of kids sitting around playing Monopoly.

 

There of course is nothing wrong with that visual and nothing wrong with Monopoly, perhaps the most iconic of all board games.

 

However, the board game world is a little more expansive than that and few understand that more than Eric Yurko.

 

Yurko, a 2009 graduate of Bridgeport High School, has a blog site “What’s Eric Playing?” which is devoted primarily to board games.

 

He provides detailed reviews of games, lists pros and cons, goes over game play, avoids spoilers and generally gives all the info a person would want on every game he comes across. The blog also features some of his other interests but board games are clearly his forte.

 

It would be inaccurate to say Yurko has played every game on the market. But he has played a lot of them. Chances are if you go into a store and see a new game that looks interesting, he has played it and reviewed it and has an opinion on it from enjoyment factor to box art to ease at reading the instructions.

 

“There are so many games out there,” Yurko said. “It’s been building since the 90s when German game companies started churning out games. It’s been a trend for a while, but it has really caught on in the last couple of years.

 

“This is total speculation on my part but it might be a push back to how imbedded in digital stuff our lives have become and people are seeking a form of connection that doesn’t necessarily rely on digital media.

 

“I think there is something to be said about having an energy to do something else. It’s similar to when someone says, ‘I just want to lay on the couch and read a book.’ With board games, it’s something that is analog and tactile. So much of our experience is move mouse, click mouse.”

 

But perhaps a more important factor in the rise of number of board games is the simple fact that they are fun. Yurko would agree with that and his enthusiasm with playing them are evident in both his written reviews and his discussions about them.

 

“As I was growing up, my family and I played a lot of board games,” he said. “My grandma lives up in Weirton so we would occasionally have the family together to play Euchre. At home we played Pit, Clue, Careers. Occasionally Monopoly, but that would just cause me and my sister to fight. Every game did, but Monopoly was just the worst.

 

“But then I kind of took a break. I was mostly playing video games for most of high school then I got to early college and a few of my friends were playing a game I had never heard of called Catan. They were playing that and Bang, a western hidden roles game. We played both of those games so many times.”

 

College for Yurko was Stanford, where he finished his undergraduate degree in 2013 and his masters in 2014. He has remained in the Palo Alto area of California where as a software engineer he is in one of the top tech hubs in the world.

 

The transition period between undergraduate and graduate school is when Yurko started buying games of his own with one notable exception that was a gift and also a somewhat humorous memory while living in 2020.

 

“A game that has aged very poorly was given to me as a gift, it’s called Pandemic,” Yurko said. “So, yeah, I haven’t played that one in a while.

 

“But at the time I was like, ‘Wow, there are a lot of board games out there’ so I started going to Reddit where there is a board game subreddit. I would say, ‘Hey I’m really into these four games, what games should I buy?’ I had this really nice cute little board game shelf where I had maybe 10, 15 board games. After grad school, things kind of got out of hand.”

 

In 2015, Yurko found himself with some free time and he wasn’t sure what to do with it. A friend suggested he try his hand at writing. He thought he could probably pull off writing some reviews of board games, marking the beginning of the What’s Eric Playing? blog.

 

“I was a little nervous when I started,” Yurko said. “It comes and goes now. Basically, I just hope nobody yells at me when I post something because we all know how the internet can be. Thankfully it’s been pretty good though.

 

“There’s not necessarily a comfort level in my reception but there is now a comfort level in that I know how I want to process something I’m playing. I know how to move through it and get to an end point and this is the overall opinion I want to have.

 

“I think a lot of people think reviewers are mostly there to be like, ‘You want this. Go buy it.’ I try with my reviews to keep the principle that I don’t want to come across as ‘You should go buy this game’ because that’s a weird stance to take for somebody who got the game for free.

 

“I try to be like, ‘If you like it, you should check it out, maybe play it.’ I will happily tell people to play the game. If you tell people to go buy it, then they ask is it worth it and that’s not really a value judgement I can make because I didn’t buy it.”

 

Along with perhaps more board games being played with a global pandemic keeping people at home more, Yurko said there has also been a rise in different avenues to play them.

 

“There is this real interesting tension right now because a lot of people who can’t get their normal board game groups back together so they have been doing more online board gaming. There are online platforms for virtually playing physical board games. They are not video games, technically. And they are not board game Aps. They are digitally moving around pieces on a digital board.”

 

One genre of board games that has especially risen in popularity the past couple of years is true crim type mystery games.

 

“There is a reason why police procedurals have been a mainstay of American media,” Yurko said. “People like solving mysteries. That’s why escape rooms are fun. That's why Clue is always going to be a fun game. It’s why we watch Scooby Doo. We grow up with it and then we eventually watch NCIS.

 

“A lot of companies are doing a better job of getting licenses so there are board games in universes that people care about.”

 

As far as what Eric is actually playing, he has a few games that he is particularly fond of.

 

He recently played a game called Hoop Gods which he says is a surprisingly faithful implementation of a three-on-three basketball game.

 

Yurko really enjoys co-op problem solving games and cited titles such as The Shipwreck Arcana, Search for Planet X and The Castles of Tuscany.

 

A game that is a kind of a hybrid of Euchre or Hearts or Spades that he recommends is The Crew where instead of taking tricks for yourself, you are trying to make sure the right player takes the right trick at the right time, but you can’t talk about the cards in your hand.

 

Some of the more family-oriented games he is really fond of right now include Quirky Circuits, Magic Maze, Abandon All Artichokes, Just One, Strike and Monsdrawsity.

 

More information about all these games as well as countless others are available at What’s Eric Playing?

 

“There are people sitting down for four and a half to five hours with really complex space adventures and there are people just throwing out a quick card game,” Yurko said. “The band of games that take five minutes to play and the games that take five days has really expanded for people and there is a lot of cool stuff in there that appeals to a lot of different folks.”

 

Yurko’s site also has a Patreon section where participants can get access to some additional content.

 

In addition to his full time job and maintaining his blog, Yurko also works on the committee for the American Tabletop Awards, which gives awards annually to various board games released during the previous calendar year.

 

Editor's Note: Photos submitted by Eric Yurko