In theory, a game (of any sort) can make for the perfect gift. Some, such as video games, can appeal directly to the recipient’s hobby and potentially offer hours of fun. Other types, though, such as board games might be more suited to group settings and can even allow you and the recipient to enjoy the game together.
However, due to personal taste and the sheer enormity of the range of games available, it can also be a risky prospect. If you think that someone you know might like a game as a gift, it’s worth taking an alternative approach rather than a random guess.
Board Games
When it comes to events like Christmas or Thanksgiving, where the family might be expected to come together and spend some time as a unit throughout the holiday, a board game can make a lot of sense as a gift. A successful venture here will allow the same game to be played time and time again, but it’s difficult to know if this game will actually be any fun without playing it yourself. If you’ve played it before, this might not be a problem, but that might not often be the case.
There are always user reviews, and with board games themselves being an incredibly vast and popular medium, there’s a lot of feedback throughout various sources that you can turn to. However, while experimentation is always good and can lead you to a wide range of new experiences that the people playing might not have known they would enjoy, it’s also valuable to know who you’ve got in mind. For example, there are many board games that hinge their entire gameplay loop around trivia, but if the person in question has no love of trivia, that doesn’t mean that board games are a complete write-off. Other games like Codenames, might be better suited to the immediate action and could be a preferable direction to take.
Physical Games and Sports
There’s another category to consider, and these are the type of games that use limited equipment while focusing the majority of the gameplay around physical activity. This can make these games fall quite neatly under the category of sports, but an unexpected piece of equipment can open up a game that might not have been possible without it. A good example of this are cornhole boards, such as those that you can find at https://www.cornholeworldwide.com/shop/personalized-cornhole-games/. In a way, these can be easier to buy for people due to their simplicity, and the natural competition that can come from the right group playing a game that’s easy to grasp and enjoyable to play. Once again, this might make sense for occasions where there’s a strong emphasis on the time spent together as many people in addition to the recipient might be able to get enjoyment out of it in a way that keeps it coming back out throughout the same holiday in the future.
Another direction that you might take here is to use their own interest in a sport. If they have a special interest in something like table tennis, regular tennis, or badminton, getting them a new bat or a setup that you can play at home in the case of the former might help the gift to take on a personal edge. In this way, it’s less about getting a game that can be enjoyed together and more about catering to their hobby, meaning it comes with the familiar risk of buying something in a field that you’re likely less familiar with than they are.
Video Games
If someone you know enjoys video games, it can feel like an easy gift to get someone, but the truth is that their taste might be much more specific than you take into account. For instance, you might know the console that they use, but might not take into account their preferred genre, the games that they’ve already played, mechanics that they tend to avoid or whether they prefer single-player games to multiplayer games.
Talking to them might lessen the surprise, but it can help you to get a better understanding of what they might prefer in this regard. In addition to this, you might find that looking up potential candidates on review aggregate sites like Metacritic can give you an insight into review scores from both critics and users, giving you an insight into which one might be best for the recipient. However, you might find it difficult to completely remove that element of uncertainty, which is a natural part of the gift-giving process.
Meg is an author at Cinnamon Hollow. She writes on a variety of topics sharing tips and ideas for daily life.