Retroactive Innovation

One of the many positives of this mini explosion (somewhere between a bathtub fart and an firecracker) of "hobby gaming" is that it's created a market for relatively obscure games that were out of print.

If the BGG-Effect hadn't fetishized Die Macher or Hannibal or Blackbeard (with a tip of the tri-corn hat to Johnny Depp, of course), none of those games would be available now.  Before the Boardgamegeek "community" burned me with Caylus (overwhelming hype, complicated bullshit efficiency engine game), someone did a geeklist of common games among people who'd been "Geek of the Week."  One of their common games was Blue Max, an 80s WWI strategy game, so I figured it must be good and straightforward.