The Green Bay Packers play the Seattle Seahawks Sunday afternoon in Seattle for the NFC championship, so as the Packers head into the U.S. capital of hobby gaming, which team is flying the gamer geek flag?  The Green Bay Packers.  There’s apparently a significant percentage of the team involved in regular games of Settlers of Catan, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.  The popularity of the game centers on the offensive line (typically among the most cerebral of football positions), where starting left tackle David Bakhtiari regularly organizes games. 

This is ironic, because Green Bay isn’t the city most people associate with hobby gaming, it’s Seattle, where the metro area is the headquarters for industry leader Wizards of the Coast, a wide range of other hobby game companies, gaming show Pax Prime, and video game companies as well. 

Backup quarterback Matt Flynn attributed interest in Catan in part to the lack of entertainment alternatives in Green Bay, but perhaps the mental exercise and experience at strategizing will help the Packers overcome the Seahawks, who are 7.5 point favorites in Sunday’s game.  If the Packers prevail, expect locker rooms around the NFL to become home to more Catan fanatics. 

The Packers’ Catan hobby has also spread to fans, who are mobbing Pat Fuge’s Gnome Games stores in Green Bay to buy the game they’ve heard the Packers talk about, according to the report.  The sales spike started when tight end Justin Perillo mentioned the team’s Catan games on a radio show, and it’s spread from there.  Fuge supported the craze with store signage and bigger inventory, and was rewarded with double his normal December sales on the game.

We feel this is a trend that should spread, and the best way for that to happen would be a Packers victory on Sunday, so from our headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, we say, “Go Pack Go!”