Boardgames are the new Comic Books

Msample wrote:

Mr. White wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote:

Mr. White wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: I'm telling you all, small cons among friends are the way to go.

This is also something I've started doing. I noticed when I would go to cons...I would spend the time gaming with friends anyway...so why not save the money and run it at the house?

Every year now I host a 'Pit Con'. Kick the wife and kids out for an extended weekend. I've run this on four occasions now. The first three were sort of haphazard, slap some board games we like on the table affairs, but this past year began something different.

We rent a beach house in the off-season, usually with 5-8 bedrooms. Sleeps 20. The entire cost to attendees is $125 including food and lodging, Thursday afternoon through Sunday. Bring the games you want. This year I've vowed to get the short scenario of D-Day at Omaha Beach in and a game of Warriors of God in, either against myself or anyone who wants to try it. I'll never get those in on a game night.

I thought Warriors of God is considered a player friendly wargame? Easily doable in an evening. No luck getting it to the table? Shame.

WoG is a very quick game once you get the hang of it. However some players really dislike the chaotic nature of it, not accepting that the sheer number of die rolls tends to mitigate bad luck. Sure , you can get outlier cases where almost all your leaders die, but even then you might watch your opponent suffer the same fate the following turn .
Its a great game.

You know, the box is small, the map is paper, there's no minis . . . it really has nothing going for it except for the kick-ass gameplay and rich narrative. (Would it have killed the publisher to include a crown for the player that wins initiative?)

My group didn't even want to crack open Core Worlds. They're generally only receptive to games that have a particular look to them, and frankly, games that are new. Warriors of God is ancient by my current game group's standards. Truth be told I'll corner one of them in a weak moment and get them to play, and then they'll be impressed and want to get a second shot at it. That's how my group works. You'll beg to get a game played, people will buckle under, and then they'll become fans of it.

I have to cop to a similar attitude. Kickstarter games have a look to them as well, a shinier box cover, B+ art, really pointy corners, they say stay-away to me when I see them and I usually capitulate to that. Truth be told, on occasion a kickstarted game is a solid play and I shouldn't lump it with all the rest. I may be the most up-tighty guy in my group, just for different things.

Ten years ago, I was having a great time with boardgames. I was running a Call of Cthulhu campaign at the time, and if the players got too bogged down trying to sort out clues, we would end the session early and break out some boardgames. And sometimes we would just get together to play boardgames, and everybody always wanted to play at least one game of Arkham Horror. My players liked my boardgames, but weren't buying or bringing their own games.

Nowadays, I don't have a regular rpg group, and when I invite folks to play boardgames, several are bringing their own games. One of them has pretty good taste in games despite his preference for Euros, and has a knack for bringing games that even I like. Some of the others are F:ATties, so I tend to like their games. One friend has become a sucker for bad Kickstarter games, and another one is now in mindless acquisition mode. Even so, I am still enjoying boardgames a majority of the time when I get to play.

With two local game shops within three miles of home, I should do more gaming at the shops. However, I've got a few home projects that will keep me pretty busy for the next 3 months.

Msample wrote:

Colorcrayons wrote: M:tG has illustrated this quite well recently. They just pump shit out... over and over and over... all while the quality in physical components degrades along side the quality of card design. They are losing consumer confidence that they once enjoyed, and now when something new comes out it is discarded out of hand because the wallets are exhausted and people are tired of being jerked around.
Their example may be small, but one could call them a microcosm of the industry.

I wouldn't call MtG small by any means considering they keep many game stores afloat. I heard the last release was too close to the prior one and the common wisdom is that it was a misstep, but they don't anticipate and huge downturn. I do wonder if MtG customers are starting to get sucked into the overall gaming hype and diverted by other games out there that if nothing else, slightly erode their spend on MtG.

I didnt mean to imply that magic is small. It was more geared towards how their one product can so effectively represent an example of a microcosm of boardgame economy.

I am a recently returning player in the past two years. In that time, there has been such a flood of product that its been pretty dizzying even by hardcore collector standards. There is a definite universal sense of exhaustion among the consumer base regarding wallet fatigue and not being able to enjoy what they have for a moment before Wizards shoves another thing to buy down your throat.

Add to that the quality issues in how poor the design has been in the many of the sets, and its been dismaying.

I am no longer that type of consumer of Magic goods and havent been for over a decade. But when I do manage to go out and enjoy a couple games of Commander, there is a loud tenor in the room of dissatisfaction among the consumerbase in present and potential future products. Wizards gets it right occasionally, but again, its throwing shit against a wall to cover the wall in a lot of shit.

Sagrilarus wrote:

Msample wrote:

Mr. White wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote:

Mr. White wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: I'm telling you all, small cons among friends are the way to go.

This is also something I've started doing. I noticed when I would go to cons...I would spend the time gaming with friends anyway...so why not save the money and run it at the house?

Every year now I host a 'Pit Con'. Kick the wife and kids out for an extended weekend. I've run this on four occasions now. The first three were sort of haphazard, slap some board games we like on the table affairs, but this past year began something different.

We rent a beach house in the off-season, usually with 5-8 bedrooms. Sleeps 20. The entire cost to attendees is $125 including food and lodging, Thursday afternoon through Sunday. Bring the games you want. This year I've vowed to get the short scenario of D-Day at Omaha Beach in and a game of Warriors of God in, either against myself or anyone who wants to try it. I'll never get those in on a game night.

I thought Warriors of God is considered a player friendly wargame? Easily doable in an evening. No luck getting it to the table? Shame.

WoG is a very quick game once you get the hang of it. However some players really dislike the chaotic nature of it, not accepting that the sheer number of die rolls tends to mitigate bad luck. Sure , you can get outlier cases where almost all your leaders die, but even then you might watch your opponent suffer the same fate the following turn .
Its a great game.

You know, the box is small, the map is paper, there's no minis . . . it really has nothing going for it except for the kick-ass gameplay and rich narrative. (Would it have killed the publisher to include a crown for the player that wins initiative?)

My group didn't even want to crack open Core Worlds. They're generally only receptive to games that have a particular look to them, and frankly, games that are new. Warriors of God is ancient by my current game group's standards. Truth be told I'll corner one of them in a weak moment and get them to play, and then they'll be impressed and want to get a second shot at it. That's how my group works. You'll beg to get a game played, people will buckle under, and then they'll become fans of it.

I have to cop to a similar attitude. Kickstarter games have a look to them as well, a shinier box cover, B+ art, really pointy corners, they say stay-away to me when I see them and I usually capitulate to that. Truth be told, on occasion a kickstarted game is a solid play and I shouldn't lump it with all the rest. I may be the most up-tighty guy in my group, just for different things.

Somewhere recently some guy was totally shitting over a game, I can't remember which one it was. He was like "cardboard chits are totally ghetto, this game sucks .

Actually it was the new edition of HANNIBAL. Which I specifically declined to back not only because the original edition is perfectly serviceable, but because swapping out the leader stand up counters for minis with embossed Strat and Tactics ratings on the base was totally unnecessary and makes it harder to discern the ratings and leaders name, which are critical in the game. ( plus the publisher was making changes for the sake of fucking changes ). They included leader markers ( shitty ones IMO ) as a STRETCH goal FFS. The publisher was/is so tone deaf I refuse to buy anything from the twit.

But sadly bling is what it takes to get some peoples attention these days, ergonomics, cost, and bulk be damned.

I'll admit to overlooking games due to components at times. ANGOLA, one of my all time favorite games, originally was published by Ragnar brothers and to put it bluntly, was fucking ugly and third world looking. The MMP edition was much nicer ( albeit still like WARRIORS of GOD, "just" map and counters ) and once I played it I was hooked. But that is rare for me.

Once in a while, I happen to notice that there is a Twin Cities AmeriTrash group at BGG. Then I read through a few pages of their recent posts, and see that they are an odd hybrid association of grognards and cultists of the new, with no recognizable F:ATties.

Shellhead wrote: Once in a while, I happen to notice that there is a Twin Cities AmeriTrash group at BGG. Then I read through a few pages of their recent posts, and see that they are an odd hybrid association of grognards and cultists of the new, with no recognizable F:ATties.

I'm a member of TCAT. I even designed the logo/microbadge. I'm just not active. But I vouch for Chad. He is a good guy. True ameritrash at heart.

But they really should post here and not there. *shrug*

Another thing you guys should remember is the average age of the hobbyist purchasing the stuff.

As a close friend of mine says, back then in college we have plenty of time and few money. So we milk the heck out of what we can buy. These days we have more money, but time is a luxury. So we sedate ourselves by buying more.

It's possible that the market is just responding to this.

EDIT: My last purchase was Castles of Burgundy back in 2016, which I really like. Since then my purchases have been miniature related.

I got in the habit a few years ago of not buying new games at all, mostly because we just didn't have a lot of money. Fortunately I was pulling in review copies and so I still had fodder to trade and sell off for money if it came down to that. Then that became too much of a hassle, so now I just don't buy more than a game or two a year, maybe a D&D book from time to time. I also sometimes chase down old games that I played for a long time but never owned. Actual new releases almost totally pass me by. It's just as well I stopped reviewing stuff, I woudn't even know where to start any more.

The thing about the volume of games being released now is not that there aren't enough good games. There are still plenty of them. The problem is that it's become REALLY hard to sift through the volume of releases to see what I might even like. The hotness on BGG changes so quickly, and new games are launched on KS relentlessly, and all of them seem to be ideas rather than fully formed games, and I'm sure as heck not buying someone's idea.

I can afford the odd $60 game. I might even get something bigger if I have the funds, like after a tax return or something. But something like a $200 Kickstarter? No, that's pretty much right out without much consideration. Something that big and that expensive is an anchor for me, pure and simple. It's only going to be a very expensive thing for me to tote around with me through my whole life, and it's just not worth it.

That's what gets me about this collecting mindset. It's the sheer amount of space you need to commit to your games. It's WAY worse that comic books or DVDs or whatever. My view here is almost entirely due to having moved around a lot, and having sold off a huge chunk of games for space and shipping considerations, but I think it's a legitimate thing to ask. Where does one even PUT 1000 games?

I'm sorry, I feel like I'm getting a little judgy. But this is becoming an increasingly sensitive subject for me, because I'm moving around the world in like two weeks, and I feel like the opportunity to sell off a bunch of games, subject them to tropical humidity, ship them around the world, is an exercise in not letting them rule my life. I am extremely thankful for that.

san il defanso wrote: Something that big and that expensive is an anchor for me, pure and simple. It's only going to be a very expensive thing for me to tote around with me through my whole life, and it's just not worth it.

You make a great point about the anchor. Besides just being a personal anchor, these Kickstarters are so big that moving them on through a trade or sale becomes too damn expensive to ship. Sell them fast or pray that they are still desired between prints (like Cthulhu Wars).

Maybe a better analogy would be music. Decades ago, you could turn on the radio and hear plenty of good music. Much of that music is still well-known and respected, showing up in modern movies and tv shows. Downloading kind of messed everything up, forcing bands to tour to make any money, which takes away from down time and studio time to come back with more music. The internet made it easier for everybody to get their music out there, but harder to make money, and more challenging for people to find the music they would enjoy the most. Radio is a wasteland, with each channel a separate genre, and much of what airs is either cover tunes or mediocrity or both. Likewise, the gaming industry went from a limited number of successful publishers doing most of the games, to a wider range of small companies, to the current sorry quality of Kickstarter games coming out at firehose velocity.

Thinking over the games I’ve actually bought (that weren’t comped) over the past year and excluding GW/Frostgrave stuff...it’s really just:

- Quest for El Dorado- probably my favorite game of 2017, Knizia back at top form.
- Dungeon Degenerates- a KS that I waited for release/reaction on, a one of a kind title
- Potion Explosion- my son REALLY wanted this, now my daughter loves it. Great family game.
- The Borg expansion for Ascendency- haven’t played with yet but it should revitalize a recent favorite
- SW Destiny- best dice game
- Santorini- another great family game and only $20 at Target
- Mechs vs. Minions- one of a kind, direct only release ww’ve Gotten a lot of play out of

So I’ve done pretty good. No $300 Kickstarters. And I actually still have and want to keep all of the above!

This thread has devolved into the typical bitchfest that we all love, but the original topic still has more to explore. I would specifically be interested in how the used game market fares in this more ephemeral climate (if it is true and not anecdotal). The high value of used games historically has been used to justify lavish spending where the entire purchase is not seen as an expense -- only the depreciation.

In addition, due to the limited print availability at any one time, it is possible that those with "complete collections" are meant to sit on the sidelines while the newbies go through the initial collection build up with all these new games available in the current market state. I still think there are too many, but it's an obvious response to massive increase in hobby spending.

At one point I went back and complied a list of some of the FATiest recommendations and found that many were out of print. From a publishers perspective, I wonder how much more money is in printing new hotness vs. a reprint of a solid 7.5 game simply due to hype.

I totally get the frustration with people always bringing new games to the table. This meta in the hobby is as entertaining as playing sometimes. Even listening to podcasts feels hobby positive until you realize it is the equivalent of watching QVC. (Sorry podcasters!) I probably listened to 3000 hours of board game podcasts until quitting cold turkey last spring. Haven't had a drag since and I feel much better about the hobby.

There's a thread on BGG about how much of a factor FOMO is in people's decisions, and as I was reading and replying to it I found I was able to articulate something I'd been feeling for some time.

For me the default value of a game is not getting it. If I'm looking at one, and reading reviews (I don't like video reviews) I am looking to see if there's a reason TO get it that overrides the default of not getting it. I already have plenty of reasons right out the gate to not get any game; I want an overwhelming reason to put those aside. (And yeah, a few times the reason has been "screw it, I'm just gonna grab this.")

For too many gamers, it's the opposite. Existence implies need, unless there's an overwhelming reason NOT to get it. And too many reviewers I've seen, particularly some of the ones that made me stop watching videos, accommodate this frame of mind.

Where this comes into FOMO is that it can frame the question from "should I get this?" to "should I get this NOW or LATER?" This fuels both the toxic consumption aspect of this hobby as well as increasing FOMO.

Now pair this with "shelf of shame" threads on BGG, where people show off their vast amount of unplayed games. Many will say, "okay, this is nuts, I need to actually play some of these things" but that then becomes the scene from European Vacation, where they have 15 minutes to visit the Louvre.

I'm sitting at a computer all day, and if I wanted to spend that time playing games, that would be tough. But I can EASILY spend it buying games! And I can even look at "hot deals" and such to convince myself I'm saving money by doing so!

And I can watch videos and listen to podcasts where the worst they'll say about a game is "it might not be for everyone" but almost never "there is no reason to buy this". (And even if they DID say that, nerds love to declare how "critics don't know what *I* like" and "I'll have to see for MYSELF if this milk is truly sour because my tastes are extremely unique and against the gran and ooh, Batman!")

Finally, regarding the current glut of games, I'll once again bitch about the bastardization of Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is crap". Whatever its initial intended meaning, it's now an excuse to luxuriate in crap. And the implication, that the other 10% is therefore gold, is also wrong. At least 90% of everything is crap.

I used to work in the department that handled email marketing. Yes, I helped send out spam mail. And here's what I could never get across to sales: if we send out 100 emails and get 5 responses, that's not a 5% response rate. That's 5 responses. It's not given that if we up to 1000 emails we'll get 50 responses. There may only be 5 respondents out there. Same with a glut of games. More games doesn't mean more good games, it just means more games. That's it. There's no law of nature or Sturgeon that indicates the additional amount will mean additional good ones.

I use the same rule for buying games ... probably buying anything (some things in life do just hit me between the eyes and say BUY, but very few). Sometimes I will even sit and wait when I probably have enough on the Pro side to buy and turn around and it's gone ... and sometimes I think that I subconsciously do that on purpose

But Dave, with crowdfunding we no longer have to allow all of those mean old, money grubbing, know-nothing publishers to withhold, block, or ignore all of these amazing games that would otherwise never see the light of day. The PEOPLE get to decide what gets published, and some dude’s lifelong dream to make fucking Maximum Apocalypse can finally come true.

I mean think about how much better the world has become with Kingdom Death in it.

I swear to fucking god, people think that the “health of the hobby” is directly proportional to the number of games available to buy. While gaming’s value as a creative medium completely goes down the shitter.

Something I was just thinking of too is how the consumption aspect of the hobby, combined with crowdfunding, isn’t just fracturing the player base and diluting discussion...it’s also feeding into and supporting this horrendous sense of “geek tribalism” for lack of a better term. If you back Batman for $300, you become part of that tribe. You go to that page on BGG and announce that you are in. You join with others in talking about the campaign and what the game might be like. You join with others in acting like your $300 loan entitles you to a degree of ownership or agency over the finished product. You join with others in shouting down dissenters from outside the tribe.

You have found a sense of belonging and comradarie based on the media you consume, which is the basis for modern “geek” culture.

So it’s no wonder that people feel validated and comforted by joining these pop-up game cults. Then the game is released, the next pop-up game cult is announced, and everyone moves on to the next one to experienxe that sense that no, they won’t be missing out and that they belong to an elite tribe of “backers”.