Why Legacy Designs Are Developed By Jerks

....who have finally created a way to sell more games by destroying their value on the secondary market:

Because vinyl stickers (like you get at oil change places) are cheap, and boards/cards are polished-like surfaces that they’d stick to. I tested it last night.

If a game shipped with sleeves (like Mystic Vale) then cards with stickers could be preserved in perpetuity.

So, this is really a slick way to reduce the value to zero in the secondary market.

Is expected resale value part of the equation when deciding to buy a game?

Not really a factor for me but I always bust the shrink and punch the games I buy.

I realize it is for some but their thinking is alien to me.

That could be a side benefit they actually weighed, but I think there's a psychological aspect to ripping up a card or permanently marking a board that's integral to the Legacy experience.

It's very counter-culture to everything else going on in the industry and there's an emotional reaction to such concepts.

Ignoring these (or believing they are an accidental byproduct and not one of the main features) is a mistake in my opinion.

Legacy games are still a pretty small part of the hobby. Just ignore it and don't buy them.

Daviau spoke to this (on this site I believe) when he created Risk Legacy. His goal was to have the permanent change be a way to bring players in on the artistic process of completing the game. More than a few (including me) asked about reversible changes as an alternative, and he was of the opinion that that wouldn't invest the players in the game the way he was hoping for.

So, here's my take on this. Risk Legacy sells for $42 new, likely the cheapest Legacy game out there. I'm a whole lot more comfortable with a Legacy title that's built more cheaply and sells for $29.99 than I am with a Legacy game that is built to look like a museum piece and sells for $79.99. If the entire industry wasn't spending so much to increase "component quality" resale value just wouldn't matter very much.

I guess Gloomhaven counts as one, but you can get the $10 pack of vinyl stickers. Or just use the app.

Other than that, I have yet to see any Legacy games that interest me.

We did play Destruction Magic back in the day...I once burned a Benalish Hero that got fireballed.

So, here's my take on this. Risk Legacy sells for $42 new, likely the cheapest Legacy game out there.

Pretty sure you can get the hotly anticipated Seafall for about five bucks.

In with the "permanence is its own thing" crowd.

Considering most of the Legacy games (and indeed most games in general) go on to be blown out for 75% discounts at some point, worrying about depressing secondary values seems like a non-issue to me.

With a few exceptions, games are like comic books 25 years ago. People are talking about "secondary market" while it's all being printed so fast and wide that it's literally not going to be worth the paper it's printed on. The only things of value are the ones that stay rare because of licensing fuckups.

I don't bother with Legacy games, because they're trying to replicate the "group of friends play the shit out of the one game they have, customizing as they go" feel from when I was a kid. But I have way more games than friends to play them with, so I don't need that nostalgia hanging over my head.

The “secondary market” has already crashed. It’s -hard- to sell anything but the hottest, most recent games for more than about 75 percent of their value. I have a few fairly current $50-$60 titles I can’t shift for TEN DOLLARS.

About three years ago I started to see this very sharp decline in demand for older (I.e. <6 months) titles. Now it’s gotten to the point where I am inclined to state that the secondary market is all but dead for older titles. The people that want old RGG games or whatever already have them, newer gamers don’t care about the older stuff, and everybody is waiting for reprints rather than buying the old versions.

There are exceptions to this of course...I’m sure plenty of used games exchanged hands at Essen, for example. And you can buy lots of second hand stuff on the BGG auctions and what not- for pennies on the dollar.

Cost of shipping is a huge factor. It’s about a $14 minimum at this point. More than the value of the games.

Contrast this with Warhammer...when I put a Warhammer item up for sale, as long as I price reasonably, I can be practically assured of a sale within 24 hours. I can post a couple of spare bits sprues and flip them 20 minutes after posting them.

charlest wrote: That could be a side benefit they actually weighed, but I think there's a psychological aspect to ripping up a card or permanently marking a board that's integral to the Legacy experience.

It's very counter-culture to everything else going on in the industry and there's an emotional reaction to such concepts.

Ignoring these (or believing they are an accidental byproduct and not one of the main features) is a mistake in my opinion.

This. The first time I ripped a card in Risk: Legacy was actually a big emotional wrench. The other players couldn't quite believe I was going to do it, but I got on with it and it proved quite profound. A deliberate rejection of material value in favour of those of art and friendship.

Now, scrawling on the board feels like a small but purposeful rejection of capitalism. In destroying something you're actually owning it in a far more important sense than it merely being yours.

It's part of a small but wider movement of such things - books like "wreck this journal" etc. I've had the notes to write up a piece on this for ages but there's always too much to do.

MattDP wrote: Now, scrawling on the board feels like a small but purposeful rejection of capitalism.

Capitalism thrives on disposable products.

A much easier and more impactful way to reject the consumerism and materialism of modern hobby games is to not buy them.

ChristopherMD wrote: Capitalism thrives on disposable products.

But these aren't disposable. That's exactly my point. My copy of Risk: Legacy is mine, a box of memories that I would never consider getting rid of. It's one of the least-disposable things I own.

Michael Barnes wrote: A much easier and more impactful way to reject the consumerism and materialism of modern hobby games is to not buy them.

Well, yes. But a journey of a thousand miles starts with tearing a single card, or whatever.

I’m betting rock bottom prices you find on these things have nothing to do with no secondary market or anything else like that. No, I think it’s because by and large, they have a limited audience. If we crudely divide the hobby up into two groups, Gamers Who Know Better and Gamers Who Don’t, Legacy game’s appeal to neither when you get down to it.

Gamers Who Know Better, which I like to think I fit into, don’t want to play something that couldn’t have been properly playtested for all possible scenarios. There’s just no way. For every claim of “Pandemic Legacy was amazing!” I’ve heard, I’ve heard just as many if not more stories about Legacy games going off the rails in terms of balance before they had finished. I have no interest in playing something that requires house rulings and the like when I’m only halfway through the damned thing.

Gamers Who Don’t Know Better, especially newer ones who get caught up in the endless barrage of games released nowadays, they may not be thinking about the balance implications, but the long term commitment isn’ for them either. This is going to sound like a gross generalization, but these people rarely play games more than 2 or 3 times. They get sucked into that FOMO and that’s it. I see ALOT of copies of Gloomhaven for sale with the disclaimer that the first mission has been played.

The genre had a couple of big hits, one right out of the gate, and because it takes so damned long to get these things out, we’re now seeing Legacy games coming out that have likely been in the works for awhile. It’s an artificial popularity that really only earns and legitimacy when it’s a game that someone sees and says, “I haven’t played one of these yet because I don’t like game X, but I like game Z so I’ll give this one a shot.”

For all the bitching about KS this place does, which I kind of disagree with, this is the trend I want to see end above all others: campaign games of any kind. Play fucking D&D and be done with it, you nerds.

I disagree and really want to get a group for Betrayal.

Come on Pete. You know destroying things is fun.