How the Table Game Industry Is Booming in Canada

It’s no secret that gaming has taken off around the world massively and that Canada hasn’t been left behind. With an estimated 23 million Canadian gamers, surveys generally find that over 60% of people here play games regularly. But one perhaps surprising area is the table games genre, where we’ve seen interest continue to grow despite so much competition from others types of games.

The Game Café Locations

While independent game stores have struggled due to the difficult situation in the retail world, a new type of location has begun to thrive. Known as friendly local game cafes, these are places where people can go to drink coffee and play some tabletop games with other fans.  Some of these places have hundreds of games in their libraries, and some offer a wide selection of food on the menu.

You can either buy a game to take home with you or just hire it for a few dollars an hour and play it right there. This is a good way of trying out a new title or re-discovering an old favorite that you no longer have at home. Snakes and Lattes is a successful chain of this type that started in Toronto in 2010 and now has three locations in Canada as well as four more in the US.

The Conventions

Table game players love to meet other fans and speak about their favorites or discover new releases. Because of this, gaming conventions give them a terrific way to meet other gamers and find out what’s happening in the industry. There are many of them, across the planet and while smaller events can host just a few hundred people, the bigger conventions can attract thousands of visitors.

One recent example was seen in Calgary, where the FallCon event was held at the Telus Convention Centre in August. This was the 35th time it had been held and it included new prototypes for testing and live auctions, among other things.

Online Games

While playing our favorite table games at home, in a friend’s, or in a café remains tempting, the arrival of online games has added a new alternative worth bearing in mind. There’s now an online version of just about any table game you might want to play, from chess to Dungeons and Dragons and from Monopoly to Risk. Some are even available in virtual reality or augmented reality versions now.

The classic card game blackjack is another example of a tabletop game going online. This look at the blackjack strategy with Michael Shackleford confirms that it remains a simple game where hitting or standing is the main choice for players to make. Understanding how to play with a basic strategy will help you to make better decisions depending on the first cards dealt.

All of these reasons help to explain why table games are still booming even when there are many other types of games to choose from. Tastes change over the years, but the most popular tabletop games show no sign of losing their popularity in Canada anytime soon.