Tabletop Scholars

🎲 BGA Conference (Spring 2026 postponed – stay tuned for new date)
📍 The Strong National Museum of Play, Rochester, NY

Connecting Play with Purpose

The Tabletop Scholars Conference brings together practitioners across education, mental health, healthcare, community engagement, corporate training, and creative fields to explore how commercially published tabletop games can transform learning, professional practice, and community engagement.

Over three days, professionals will come together to evaluate commercially available, nominated games to determine whether they qualify for BGA Accreditation due to their ability to be a valuable tabletop play experience in their profession. Based on their ratings, we will bestow our accreditation on that game and promote it for use in that field.

🏆 Who Are the Tabletop Scholars?

Tabletop Scholars are official members of the Board Game Academic community with advanced education and/or experience in their field of practice. They have experience utilizing games in their profession, but do not need to be members of the game industry. They have a passion and a keen insight for using tabletop games as a powerful opportunity for play to better their profession.

Each year, practitioners, educators, counselors, and other professionals gather to evaluate newly released tabletop games. Rather than focusing only on entertainment, our evaluators assess each game’s practical value in classrooms, therapy sessions, community programs, and other professional settings.

We’re excited to welcome:

  • K-12 teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, coaches, and after-school leaders
  • College and university faculty, staff, administrators, and student group leaders
  • Therapists, healthcare professionals, vocational counselors, and social workers
  • Business leaders, HR professionals, community advocates, and group leaders
  • Librarians, historians, curators, and other experts in their fields

Evaluating the Future of Games in Practice

Participants commit to giving every assigned game a thoughtful and fair evaluation.

Awarding Excellence in Practice

Experts in a range of fields review games according to criteria that emphasize professional use:

  • Accessibility & Inclusivity
  • Relevance to Context / Educational / Professional Value
  • Engagement & Player Experience
  • Learning / Therapeutic / Social Engagement Outcomes
  • Ease of Implementation / Component Quality / Overall Value

Games that pass the review process receive Board Game Academics Accreditation, a mark of recognition that they meet rigorous standards for practical application in a professional practice. Accredited games are granted the right to display the Board Game Academics Accreditation emblem on packaging, websites, and promotional materials. 

About Board Game Academics

We are Board Game Academics, a group of tabletop gamers and academic professionals of various stripes. Our mission is to combine research and gaming in novel ways. This multi-disciplinary project takes the form of an academic journal and two annual conferences to better critically examine the role of gaming across society, education, and beyond, and to evaluate commercially available games for practical applications. We are mainly focused on the historical, cultural, and systemic exploration of games as they relate to themes of race, gender, nationality, (de)coloniality, ability, sexuality, and class. In bringing these areas closer together, we hope to encourage meaningful discourse between academics, researchers, and gamers. 

 Scholarship in this field is also relatively new and constantly developing, with ideas from our community of gamers and guiding discussions and research discourse. We encourage gamers and interested parties of all types to come along as we explore how people relate to and experience games together.