“Hello! We’re here for some game recommendations.”
“Happy to help! Can you name a few games your family has played in the past that you’ve really enjoyed?”
“Sure! We love playing Monopoly and Risk!”
(Insert record scratch)
See, what people mean when they say this 99.98% of the time is that they have had fun with their family, and Monopoly or Risk (or Clue or whatever) were on the table at the time. They haven’t had fun “with” the game, they have very fond memories of being together with people they love, and the excuse to do that was a game that they all probably had a miserable time with… but they don’t know that. They just know when Monopoly comes out, everyone gets to sit at the table for 3-7 hours. And that can be nice!
But it’s very hard to explain that to customers. People don’t like being told they’re wrong, especially about subjective things (“What do you mean I don’t like Monopoly!? You weren’t there!”), and so finding a way to open the possibility that the game itself can be fun, and that you will want to pull it out more often because you enjoy the entire aspect of it… tough sell. And the biggest hurdle is almost always complexity, and not “real” complexity but perceived complexity.
Some people think Risk is complicated. What they mean is that it’s long and has several rules that just don’t make sense (the cards). But crossing the bridge from stuff like Risk, Monopoly, and Clue over to unquestionably better games like Catan, Ticket to Ride, or Carcassonne can feel overwhelming.
For the people that dig in their heels and refuse to open up to Euros, the recommendations are almost always the same: Five Crowns, Sequence, Rummikub, Qwirkle, Bohnanza, and Codenames.
For people willing to go a little more complicated, but not much, then we go Kingdomino, Hanabi, Coup, Love Letter, or Cockroach Poker Royal.
And for the people willing to give it a go, Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Azul, and Sagrada.
I normally also give them the “This game won the Spiel das Jahres, literally translating to ‘Game of the Year’ award. There are hundreds of board game awards and all of them are meaningless except this one. Doesn’t mean it’s the greatest game of all time, but they are almost always bright, colourful, elegant, enormously replayable, and fun!” speech, so that if I’m not around next time and they enjoyed Kingdomino and/or Codenames, they know what to look for next time.