Solo board gaming has surged from a niche feature to a major component of modern hobby board gaming in just a few years, according to a new academic analysis of more than 104,000 titles spanning almost a century of board game design.

The research, published in the journal Simulation & Gaming, analysed metadata from BoardGameGeek’s vast trove of titles, covering games published between 1930 and 2025.

It found that solo play ranked as the third most prevalent component in games released between 2020 and 2025, behind only dice rolling and hand management – a trend boosted by many publishers treating a dedicated solo mode as a commercial necessity over the past few years.

Co-op play also loomed larger in recent years, appearing in 2.9% of game listings in the 2010s and 3.7% between 2020 to 2025, having not appeared in the top ten mechanisms across any of the preceding eight decades.

The report also noted the extraordinary growth in games present in the BGG database since the turn of the millennium.

It said the number of titles published per decade grew about 22%, to about 9,400, from the 1980s to the 1990s, before more than doubling to over 21,000 titles in the 2000s, and surging to more than 38,000 in the 2010s.

The report, titled Monopoly to Ark Nova: An Empirical and Cultural History of Modern Board Game Design (1930–2025), was created by members of the LudIA research group at the European University Miguel de Cervantes, together with a researcher from the University of Valladolid.

Study co-author Azael Herrero, who posted a long summary of the research and the team’s conclusions to BoardGameGeek, said, “One result that I find particularly interesting is the stability of the median maximum player count.

“It remains four players in every historical period. Despite enormous changes in production, mechanisms, themes, and audiences, four players continue to represent a central configuration in board game design.

“The mean maximum player count nevertheless increases in recent periods, suggesting greater representation of party games, large-group games, and titles offering more flexible player ranges.”

While solo gaming provides the study’s clearest illustration of how the hobby has evolved, the broader picture is one of increasing diversity in game design.

The researchers found the number of documented mechanisms expanded from 69 during the 1930s to 192 in the 2020s, suggesting designers have dramatically broadened the range of tools available to them.

Rather than replacing older ideas, however, modern games increasingly combine multiple established mechanisms into hybrid systems – a trend the study says is reflected in the changing role of dice.

Roll-and-move dominated games throughout the 1930s to the 1960s, appearing in roughly a quarter of all titles in those decades, before steadily declining to the point where it no longer features among the ten most common mechanisms in the 2020-2025 period.

Dice themselves remain widespread, of course, but are now more commonly used for action selection, resource production, drafting, risk management and other strategic systems than for simply determining player movement.

The research also traces the changing influences that have shaped modern hobby gaming.

Simulation and wargames introduced mechanics such as hex grids, movement points and simultaneous action selection during the 1970s and 1980s, before the Eurogame boom of the 1990s and 2000s saw hand management, tile placement, set collection, drafting, auctions and area majority become increasingly common. Solo gaming, cooperative play and variable player powers then rose sharply during the 2010s and early 2020s.

The researchers also found BoardGameGeek ratings have increased over time, alongside modest rises in complexity and playing time, although they cautioned that these trends should not be interpreted as evidence that modern games are objectively better than earlier designs.

Instead, they point to factors including the site’s hobby-focused audience, changing player expectations, greater visibility and recency bias for newer releases and the influence of marketing and self-selection.

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