SXSW FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! Simon Ennis presents the documentary The Hobby as a quest to understand those who live lives consumed by board games. It is a window into a world where invention has become an obsession yet exists as one of society’s current cultural mirrors. Providing a premise for the existence of board games, The Hobby starts at a British museum, where we learn that board games have existed since 2500 BC in Mesopotamia. Offering this historical factoid and evidence is a British game historian who quantifies the board game yet who, in turn, casts his own opinion of disgust toward the modern board game, thus bookending The Hobby in mockery but also providing the relevancy for this desire and obsession for so many.
Following several board game players who offer exciting and quirky perspectives to a seemingly omnipresent subculture, Ennis reveals how these dedicated individuals who play in the World Series of Board Games in Las Vegas regularly play board games, invent board games, collect and hoard board games, or philosophize about board games—which is all of them—exist and rationalize their hobby.
The Hobby spends a great deal of time on a collection of folks participating in the World Series of Board Games, a five-day tournament that brings together the worldwide board gaming community and crowns the world’s best all-around board gamer. There’s no question about dedication and the competitive nature of those playing intense and challenging games to win a ring and advance to a final round where the winners take home $25,000. These men, women, and binary individuals provide deep introspection into their board game obsession or practice, which Ennis reveals with great detail and interest. These games are intricate and intense and provide that supposed lens into modern culture, which, according to history, board games have always done.
“…a collection of folks participating in the World Series of Board Games, a five-day tournament…”
A cast that includes “Roger Ebert of board games,” a rock-climbing board game philosopher, a birdwatcher who created an unlikely smash hit, and many others, everyone Ennis encounters and chooses as a subject for The Hobby shares a personal story of competition, compulsion, creativity, and connection.
A Chinese board game community, a family that plays games, YouTube board game stars, game nights in a cabin, and so on are all bonded through board games as players or collectors with a couple of inventors intertwined, revealing a reality of the business that has its pitfalls and successes. Each dedicated individual and group is a “mirror to the continuity of human psyche” if living in a “utopia, all that’s left is to play games, perhaps the meaning of life.” Since, in the end, whatever that may be, you can always play a game no matter what, especially if there’s nothing else to do, a premise to The Hobby.
Ennis does a great job following each person in their pursuit and level of board game interests, which can be an entire basement filled with boxes upon boxes or a game board museum in Rochester, New York. On the macro level of a billion-dollar business, Ennis has found a handful of collectors, inventors, players, and so forth who reveal an obsession that might appear on the brink of no return. Yet, I don’t think characters like The Dice Tower care what you may think about his life’s pursuit—and more power to him.
The Hobby is a winding documentary covering a great deal of ground, which has its slack moments and disinterest. However, the closure given to each subject is respectable in following through their individual stories of winning, losing, and surviving. A great deal of footage and vetted personalities contribute to an interesting topic, a type of geek subculture that keeps this billion-dollar business constantly churning. Particularly fitting is the closing song, which wraps up an exciting journey in an enjoyable manner.
The Hobby screened at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival.