Are board games still in vogue or a thing of the past?

I had read that during the pandemic that board games made a bit of comeback but is this still the case? During this time I did contemplate on re-releasing my board game.
Board games offer face to face interaction. Some suggest they are still good for party group games and family holidays without the TV.
Many years ago I released my board game called Forgery. An art game that centred around spotting the differences from an original art piece and a forgery. The object of the game was in fact to identify forgeries and the player who could purchase and do this was the winner. Players do not need any knowledge of art in order to play the game. You could adapt it for small children and make it more of a ’spot the difference game.
Players were multi millionaires with an aim to collect art pieces using a personal fortune of 200 million to jet around the world .. (the game board) and buy up art works at auctions, however they may be sold a forgery. As mentioned a forgery was worth more than the original if they could identify all the faults and some pieces had up to 8 different things to identify. Much like other board games you could end of in jail, pay lots of tax or your chauffeur could lose the keys to the Bentley or the private jet could run out of fuel.
In total there were 15 paintings - 5 ‘originals’ and 10 forgeries. The artists range from Klimt, Van Gogh, Renoir, Seurat. During pre-production I wanted to include an art work by the artist, Matisse but I wasn’t granted permission. So I created my version inspired by Matisse’s paper cut out series.
The plan would be to have the game continually change with the purchase of supplementary art packs. These packs could centre around art including antiques and packs could have been made around visiting exhibitions that the galleries and museums show.
I started with creating a prototype. Then invested in the services of a Patent Attorney to protect the idea and secure the trade mark name. From this point I worked with a printing design company to help me create a few quality prototypes before making appointments with potential clients. Initially the game was intended to be sold in the shops of major art galleries of the world. I made appointments to meet representatives from galleries and museums in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, London, New York, Boston, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago.
One representative from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston saw the potential of having a supplementary pack of images based on the art pieces stolen from the Museum several years before. She jokingly suggested it could be way of leading to the recovery of the stolen master pieces.
My trip and the representatives I met at the Galleries and Museums gave me sufficient information to go ahead with a plan limited production run of my game. The game’s first client was the National Galley of Australia who at the same time were about to have a visiting exhibition of the work of the English artist, Turner. The plan was to incorporate my first supplementary pack based on Turner’s work. The National Gallery wanted me to contact some of the Galleries who owned the Turner’s works in the exhibit and request permission rather than producing forgeries of my own. Unfortunately, most wanted to charge me rather large sums of money for using the imagery. All except one small gallery in the UK who were happy for me to reproduce a transparency of the Turner work they own providing that I acknowledged the galley’s name in the game’s supplementary pack catalogue.
I achieved my aim of selling my limited production run for the Australian market. However, the cost of producing the game with things like hand made wooden gavels for the game auction, timber board piece movers and producing supplementary packs that would continue to ensure that the game evolved were expensive.
Unless I created art pieces that look like or in the style of the masters. Much like the image of my Starry Night of London, New York, Paris and Sydney.
I have sentimentally kept a number of Forgery games and a number of forgeries still hang on the walls including the Mona Lisa who sits in my office as I write this blog.

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