"Public Interest" and the (Potential) Social Impact of Board Games: The Role of the "Strategic Twist", Definition and Scope

Paulo Antunes's paper examines the "strategic twist" in modern board game design and asks whether this shift carries significance for the public interest. Following the post-Catan renaissance, the analog games industry moved away from pure randomness and player elimination toward strategy, control, and meaningful player choice, a transition the author frames as dialectical evolution rather than rupture. The paper defines the strategic twist along two dimensions: the orientation of games toward strategic play, and the strategic transformation of the surrounding games milieu. Its central thesis is that these developments give board games potential social impact, provided that impact is realized through community participation, production conditions, and a role in fostering critical, participatory culture.

The paper supports its argument largely through conceptual and theoretical analysis rather than empirical measurement. It proposes that cooperative, competitive, and engine-building mechanics can be read as reflections of social dynamics, and it draws parallels between historical European café culture and modern board game cafés as "third spaces" that sustain social capital. Its quantitative grounding is limited to illustrative market indicators, including an industry estimated at roughly $8 billion in 2020 before the pandemic slowed growth, an $880 million hobby games market reported by ICv2 in 2015, and Kickstarter activity showing over 100 tabletop projects raising $500,000 or more in 2021.

The scope spans the post-1980s period through the early 2020s and centers on strategy-oriented "Eurogame"-style titles and the hobby's broader social ecosystem. Overall, the paper is speculative in character, positioning board games as a medium with untapped potential to address serious social issues and sustainable development, while acknowledging that such potential remains contingent on how games are produced, played, and embedded in community life.