My main two hobbies are writing and board game design right now. I've been in a local writer's group for probably going on a dozen years now, and have been designing games for about half that (although only seriously the past three years).
While I've made several pretty good friends from the writer's group, and gotten a few things published through them, some useful critiques, encouragement, etc, I don't think I've gone anywhere near as far with that I have in less than half the time in the game industry.
I think part of that is the act of writing is completely solitary, whereas game design, while it has solitary parts (working on manuals, sell sheets, thinking long and hard about what direction to take the game, making prototypes, etc), the process tends to be highly collaborative.
I.e. I'll playtest your game, then you'll playtest my game. After (or sometimes during) the game, we'll brainstorm new ideas, go over what works, what doesn't, maybe change the rules mid-playtest, etc.
Whereas in my experience with writing, you might share a passage from time to time and get some feedback on it, or recruit someone to beta read something you've written, but it's a lot slower process and a much bigger commitment (if you're writing novels at least). It could take them several weeks to finish your book (if they ever do at all), and if they suggest anything structural, like "I don't think taking the book in this direction worked here", you might have to rewrite half the book to incorporate that change and see if it makes it better.
Short stories are easier, and I've gotten some good feedback on my short stories before.
But even the heavier board games out there tend to require no more than about 3 hours of a player's time (still a lot, even to me, I prefer about 90 minutes or less), but you could still make an Saturday afternoon of it, including an hour of feedback, and get home in time for dinner.
And not only that, but you'll often get multiple people's feedback with one playtest session.
Much, much harder to get a commitment for as long as it takes to read a book. And unless you set up storytime hour where you read out the book, just about everyone you recruit can only experience it by themselves, so it's a lot more work to get that feedback from people.
While I've made several pretty good friends from the writer's group, and gotten a few things published through them, some useful critiques, encouragement, etc, I don't think I've gone anywhere near as far with that I have in less than half the time in the game industry.
I think part of that is the act of writing is completely solitary, whereas game design, while it has solitary parts (working on manuals, sell sheets, thinking long and hard about what direction to take the game, making prototypes, etc), the process tends to be highly collaborative.
I.e. I'll playtest your game, then you'll playtest my game. After (or sometimes during) the game, we'll brainstorm new ideas, go over what works, what doesn't, maybe change the rules mid-playtest, etc.
Whereas in my experience with writing, you might share a passage from time to time and get some feedback on it, or recruit someone to beta read something you've written, but it's a lot slower process and a much bigger commitment (if you're writing novels at least). It could take them several weeks to finish your book (if they ever do at all), and if they suggest anything structural, like "I don't think taking the book in this direction worked here", you might have to rewrite half the book to incorporate that change and see if it makes it better.
Short stories are easier, and I've gotten some good feedback on my short stories before.
But even the heavier board games out there tend to require no more than about 3 hours of a player's time (still a lot, even to me, I prefer about 90 minutes or less), but you could still make an Saturday afternoon of it, including an hour of feedback, and get home in time for dinner.
And not only that, but you'll often get multiple people's feedback with one playtest session.
Much, much harder to get a commitment for as long as it takes to read a book. And unless you set up storytime hour where you read out the book, just about everyone you recruit can only experience it by themselves, so it's a lot more work to get that feedback from people.