Going Mainstream?

I've just read this article that got flagged up on a google + group about Board Games. Apparently board games, especially the kind I like to play (i.e. not monopoly) are not getting increasingly popular. This may explain why I struggle to find so many of them in the shops. I do like playing board games and I can even go and play them in a pub in town.

But this begs the question, if board games are getting more popular, am I getting more mainstream?

For most of my life I have been a gamer of one sort or another, a sci-fi fan, a Star Wars fanatic and just a bit too nerdy for people to take me seriously. Over the course of the last decade though things have started to change. The sort of shops that I frequent (comic books, games, miniatures, models, and the like) used to be full of geeky, bespectacled nerds. Whilst there are still a lot of us about (I lost my beard) they are no longer the only group. There are even girls and more normal people to be found here.

Possibly it's games like Pokemon that have brought more people into the fold in more recent years at least although MTG has obviously had a big effect, The fact that games are more common on the high street has also helped. In my town there is a Games Workshop, Waterstones, my FLGS Netherworld and even Graigner Games (which traditionally sells console games). It's a fairly big town but none of these shops depend on their entire living on games (other than GW). This is odd because most of the towns of a similar size do have a shop that sells a much wider range of games than is available here.

Most of the stuff I play is still pretty much for geeks. If I was on a date, it would not be the sort of stuff I would lead with, It would be a fifth date conversation at least. Nor is it the kind of thing I would generally let work know about. I don't use my real name on here for fear of potential employers googling me. Many of my friends are a lot more open about their gaming activities but then they work in computers and I have spent most of my working life in Local Authorities. Whilst it's not the most mainstream of hobbies it is not thought of as badly as it once was. It's still not so mainstream. So I guess that whilst the world of geekdom is going more mainstream, I am not.