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Let's Talk: Board Game Economics!
- ChristopherMD
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- Away
- Road Warrior
The hobby seems like prices keep going up, but supply keeps going up too. Not just Kickstarter games with presumably limited runs and costing more than retail versions would. FFG puts out X-Wing, Armada, Imperial Assault, etc with tons of extra content for extra bucks. There's more board games coming out all the time while you can get cheap ones I'd say the trend has definitely been prices going up. Especially when you add in expansions/add-ons. How is this being sustained? Do you think it qualifies as a bubble where board games are being overvalued? Is there a larger amount of game buyers than I imagine there is and the market could handle more games?
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The people that buy Settlers of Cataan and Ticket to Ride for $30.00 - $35.00 at Target. A ton of non-gamer friends of mine own these games - they would never pay more than $40.00 for a board game, but they'll pull down their copies of the aforementioned games, or apples to apples, Uno, etc a couple times a month with company. They will never pay more than $40.00 for a game. They will play good games. They love it when I bring over good games. They could care less about mini's, expansion packs and spaceman spiff and dragon slayer Grognar themes. But they are never going to pay more than 40 for a game.
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- hotseatgames
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Completionists are their own worst enemy.
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- SuperflyPete
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The expansion thing is kind of good, kind of bad. Kickstarter is kind of the anti-expansion; you pay for everything in one blast, drop a week's pay, but get it all. The FFG model is to murder your debit card with the death of a thousand swipes. A 40$ starter, then 15$ per expansion, and each expansion has something that feeds into a different one, creating artificial demand.
Here's what I'd do if I had any influence on anything, ever: I'd sell a 50$-60$ base game, and then just publish 12$ stand-alone expansions quarterly, like Runebound 2nd Ed. Drop in expansions that don't require or augment other expansions, really. Once a year, bam, new map, maybe some new characters. That's the fairest method for the consumer if you want the balance between support and affordability.
Me, at this point I'm so far removed from all of this...I buy a couple games every couple months or so, if something really whiz-bang pops up, I'll Barnes Fire Sale buy it, because say what you want about the man, but he's a hell of a salesman.
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I do think product churn will start to sap the interest of even the masses sooner or later, and this might cause a slow in boardgame buying. Since indie games became big in the videogame realm there has a been a huge amount of games being released each quarter but the industry appears to have plateaued. A lot of indie developers go out of business or run very close these days. I could see a situation where some boardgame publishers go bust, though i doubt it will affect kickstarter because even if a dozen games fail and dozen more hopeful designers will fill their place.
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I don't know that I'd call Kickstarter anti expansion. We're starting to see games like Cthulu Wars launch expansions, and some of the tiered offers basically allow you to buy what would be a base+expansions all at once. KS certainly is less expansion focused than say FFG, but the average spend of a KS customer on a project is probably not much lower than the average FFG customer in many cases.
I think part of what is driving board game sales is also the number of games banking on popular IP like Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. Those properties will lure in new players more easily than the latest design from say Feld/Wallace etc .
I do wonder how much longer it can be sustained though . Is the amount of incremental content coming out greater than the number of new gamers entering the hobby ? It seems that way. And more and more people I know are cutting back on what they are buying,including myself.
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- SuperflyPete
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- Space Ghost
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