I was searching the forum for the old Quarterlies threads (surprisingly difficult) and ran across a Top 5 board games of the last 5 years thread. And it was posted 5 years ago, in 2017, sooo… Do we need a follow-up?
Granted, 2017 to 2022 is a pretty unconventional span to measure, but consider this: A search of that thread shows no instances of the word “Kickstarter/ed.” Gloomhaven (for better and worse probably the prototypical game of the period) was owned by a few thousand people at the time–the second wide-release Kickstarter was 2017. So I think there’s a very strong argument that five years ago was a quite important transition moment in the board game market and board gamer tastes. Hmm.