The Hobby

Tales from the Tabletop

Filmmaker Simon Ennis describes being fascinated with subcultures, and in The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop, he shows off a subculture of which he is a part: the world of board gaming. The film premiered in 2024 at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas.

As Ennis recounts in an interview, it was at “Gen Con” 2018—“the largest annual event dedicated to tabletop gaming and culture in North America”—that he discovered the “jaw-dropping” world depicted in The Hobby:

“I had no idea that this world was so big and that it went in so many different directions, that people were so passionate, had their own language, that this was just a real subculture….”

Ennis captures the subculture in all its funkiness, lovingly communicating why board games have an “enduring appeal” and highlighting not just board game players but collectors, promoters, reviewers, and designers. One film critic, describing her own “painfully shy” 12-year-old—who invents and plays board games—wrote:

“Sit down and play a board game with him, and after a few minutes he will reveal his personality in a way that he typically can’t in a classroom. That’s why I cried when I saw The Hobby.”

Reportedly, Ennis and his group of board gaming friends survived the isolation of the Covid period by playing board games in a cabin in the woods.