Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at LifeHacker, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Melissa Kirsch, editor-in-chief of Lifehacker. And I'm Alice Bradley,

Lifehackers deputy editor. And today we're talking about games. Game nights are having a moment.

In the past few years, board games and card games have become a billion-dollar industry. And on

Kickstarter, tabletop games are exponentially more successful in gaining funding than even video games.

Later on in the episode, LifeHacker's staff writer Nick Douglas, an upgrade producer Levi Sharp,

will talk to Brian Lewis about Magic the Gathering.

Brian, also known as the Professor, is the creator and host of the YouTube channel, Tilarian Community College,

where he discusses all things related to the collectible card game magic.

So it really is like a combination of chess and poker.

But here now to discuss the rising popularity of game nights and how you can start your own

game night, if you're so inclined, is Seth Scott.

He's a video game

designer whose recent game membrane was just released for the Nintendo Switch. In his free time,

Seth hosts game nights for his friends. Hi, Seth. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. Why do you think game nights have become so increasingly popular in the past few years?

I think there's been this kind of revival of board games and card games in the last five to ten years.

And a lot of that I think has to do with things like Kickstarter or these other outlets people are getting to produce their games in small,

but also up to large quantities and get their games out there where

before it was maybe a little too expensive instead of having to go to a store and pick from like

the 10 biggest name games you can kind of go online and find like something more tailored to what

you exactly want instead of like all right I guess we'll play Monopoly again because just like

...