(avid gamer here) There is most certainly a "tabletop effect" but by and large it's not all that huge. Crowdfunding helps but that's also not the reason for the

(avid gamer here) There is most certainly a "tabletop effect" but by and large it's not all that huge. Crowdfunding helps but that's also not the reason for the boom imo. In fact some of the smaller campaigns have struggled a fair bit (Incursion feels like they operated at a loss) and the large ones could be published by other means (Zombicide etc.) First of all games are really good these days and second of all games really benefit from online media. There's youtube videos for pretty much all games, online reviews and boardgamegeek as a central hub. It's really easy to get a good feel for the quality of a game these days.