Let's Talk: Board Game Economics!

NOT about Economic Board Games. Those suck.

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?

There is a larger amount of game buyers - That are pretty much being ignored atm.

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.

Just take a look at some kickstarter comment threads or BGG forum posts. There are tons of people who will buy whatever you throw in front of them, especially if you can artificially make it look like it is a limited offer.

Completionists are their own worst enemy.

I think the audience is expanding so there's room. But there is an eventual bubble on the horizon once the remaining internet geek types are absorbed into boardgaming and games keep getting released.

There's enough supply and enough demand; game prices aren't set on standard economics at retail. I mean, if people would stop being consumerist gluttons and maybe play their games more than a few times before becoming bored and having to buy 10 new one, then demand would fade. But alas, as long as there's addicts, the smugglers will continue to jack up prices for "the good stuff" and the rest of us who only buy 1 game a month or so are stuck holding the bag.

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.

FFG started expanding Runebound 3rd with slightly bigger mini-expansions than before: one new scenario (inspired by Descent's Labyrinth of Ruin campaign) and one new adventure pack. The catch: each expansion now comes with a new hero, but retails for US$17.

Have game prices gone up that much? I don't really buy many games these days and I'm not hooked in on any minis lines, but to me your average euro or AT box game seems only slightly more expensive than they were 5 years ago, which can mostly be accounted to inflation, and shipping costs. My guess is there are more games getting bargain binned so games charge a little more at launch to try and make back their print cost even if they bomb and get flogged at a loss later. I don't think boardgames will go into a financial bubble as there still simply isn't enough money in the industry. Equally i don't think prices are anywhere near high enough to do serious damage to the industry.

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.

While some decry the FFG expansion model, I think its pretty smart business on their part. The $15 add ons are basically impulse purchases, and help drive traffic in brick and mortar stores, a focus of theirs given the recent ( and controversial ) wholesale pricing policy. This encourages retailers to stock their products and then buy into other parts of their catalog.

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.

There are several overlapping hobbies involved here. There are the people who play a lot of boardgames. Some adopt a lifestyle game like Magic the Gathering or Warhammer 40K or one of the FFG Star Wars games, and that is most of their gaming. Some belong to the Cult of the New and are constantly playing new games in a desperate search for whatever initial thrill they got from playing boardgames, and those folks end up buying a lot of games. Some people don't even seriously try to play all their games, and they are really more into the collecting aspect of the hobby. Some folks don't buy or play boardgames a lot, but they occasionally pick up a major hit like Settlers or Apples to Apples. I think that most of the current spending in the hobby is coming from the above groups, and the Cult of the New and the collectors are the ones doing most of the Kickstarter spending.

Hanabi, Codenames, and the X-wing mini's game are starting to show up in Target. Barnes and Noble often has a ton of stuff, but who knows how long they'll survive. The Tuesday night group I go to is growing steadily, and is probably at least half women. I think there's still room for a lot more expansion in the market, even if a lot of it will be in the lighter end of things. Exploding Kittens was pretty damn big, and some of those guys might eventually find less awful games to play. I don't think a crash is coming any time soon. If anything, I think we might see more acquisitions and mergers like F2Z and Asmodee are pulling. Has CGE been bought by anyone yet? With the success of Codenames I could see someone doing that and making it have deeper cultural penetration. Vlaada might have some more accessible titles in the pipeline.

You know, forum Avatars are actually free of charge, yet some people (I won't' name names, but his initials are JEXIK) don't buy them. I'd recommend a cool photo of you tossing some dude in Uki-goshi but depending on where in the technique you are, it might arouse Barney.

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