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On June 2-3, 2012, the Game Designer Convention in Göttingen, Germany will be held for the 31st time. Since its humble beginnings in 1983, the first – and still largest – convention of its kind has grown to fill the municipal hall in Göttingen pretty well. (There is still some room for further growth, but it is hard to see everything already.) In 2011, over 150 tables were set up so that designers from twelve countries – ranging from absolute newcomers to former Spiel des Jahres winners – could present their latest prototypes.
The event is co-hosted by the Fachdienst Kultur (department of culture) of the City of Göttingen, by veteran game designer Reinhold Wittig, and by yours truly. Reinhold Wittig had suggested a gathering of game designers in the early 1980s, and after some irregular dates in the beginning, it now always takes place on the first weekend of June.
Unlike at many other conventions where publishers have booths and everyone flocks around these (as in Essen or Nürnberg), the roles are reversed in Göttingen. Designers can book a table (for a mere €10 to keep it affordable for everyone), while the publishers send their representatives (editors rather than sales managers) to look around for promising new ideas.
Since most designers don't talk to publishers for an entire day and a half, we encourage them to go around and try out their fellow designers' prototypes or simply get to know one another. In 2011, this worked much better than in previous years; lonely people glued to their tables were rarely seen.
As mentioned before, there is hardly a chance to take in everything. Prototypes range from messy notepapers to lavishly designed pieces of art. Whenever I think I have the most spectacular pieces, others tell me about fascinating games that have completely eluded me. Well, that's what you get for trying to co-organize such an event, present your own prototype, and meet exciting people all at the same time.
On Saturday evening, a spaghetti dinner is held in a nearby restaurant for anyone who is interested. Of course, after the meal, games are put on the tables and it can be a great time to try games which you hadn't been able to look at during the day. It's a very communicative event in any case.
On Sunday, the event runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is open to the public. This doesn't mean that thousands of people fill the halls, but anyone can have a look and try the new games on display.
On Saturday, the "Göttinger Inno-Spatz" is handed out, an award for outstanding contributions to the gaming world. While in earlier years the prize usually went to designers, nowadays it usually goes to organizations or groups of individuals. BoardGameGeek received it in 2010, for instance.
Two prizes are awarded to designers as well. One is the prize for the best unpublished designer, awarded by the Spiel des Jahres jury. Contestants have to be present in Göttingen and submit two prototypes which are tested extensively on Saturday. This award is open only to those who can communicate well in German, as the prize consists of a grant covering four week-long internships at a big publishing house, a small publishing house, an FLGS, and a game designer studio. (This itinerary changes each year to accommodate the winner's needs.) The 2011 award was won by Janet Kneisel, and judging from the output of previous winners, we can expect some published games from her in the coming years.
The other prize is the Hippodice Design Competition prize, for which the results were recently published on BGG News and elsewhere.
In recent years, the Göttingen Game Designer Convention has become more and more international. (I think designers from twelve countries were present in 2011, and we are receiving more and more inquiries from international publishers as well.) I am more than just a little curious about how this will develop in the future.
Those of you who are interested in participating in 2012 can download all the necessary materials here. If you need any additional information, you are more than welcome to contact me directly. Please be advised that due to another large event in Göttingen on the same dates, hotel rooms will be harder to get than usual. Don't let that scare you off, though; if you absolutely cannot find anything, let me know and I will try to make something possible.
PLAY: The Games Festival – which takes place March 24-25, 2012 in Modena, Italy – has more than 15,000 square meters dedicated to games, with hundreds of tables available for open play. More than three hundred events are scheduled, along with sixty tournaments and many conferences, workshops and meetings.
Nearly all of the Italian game publishers will be in attendance, showcasing their recent releases while previewing titles to be released later in 2012. Here's a list of publishers scheduled to be at PLAY along with what they'll be featuring:
If you are intested in information about this year's PLAY or the next one - scheduled for April 6-8, 2013 – please contact me at info@play-modena.it. You can also download a more detailed presentation (PDF) of what will take place at PLAY in just a few days.
(My apologies to Chris for not posting this report sooner. He filed it at the end of January 2012, but I got caught up in Nürnberg, NY Toy Fair, and other things, and this report fell behind the filing cabinet. —WEM)
The end of January means a trip to the Airport Convention Centre to report on the Toronto Toy Show, an annual small trade show for the Canadian market. Board games are only a small part of this event, so the number of board games is small. I will summarize the three major distributors of games in Canada – namely Filosofia, ILOT 307 and Alary Games – and the games I found, then finish with any other games of note from the show.
This is the game company that took over Z-Man Games – namely for the rights to produce French editions of Z-man titles, but also to get more access to the English market. It handles the distribution end of Z-Man Games, while as far as I can tell Z-Man's Zev Shlasinger will continue with the development of games for the English market. The only concern I had was that these guys seemed more concerned about the French editions of games than the English editions since its primary market is Québec and France. We will have to see how this turns out.
Also, the marketing rep told me that the French gaming market seems to like abstracts a lot more than the English market. An abstract like Chromino, for example, sells 5,000 copies in Québec, yet only 24 copies in the rest of Canada, so do not be surprised if more abstracts appear in the Z-Man line.
I did not notice any new games from this publisher/distributor other than the sailing/exploration card game Mundus Novus and a variety of cube-box games from Gigamic: Coyote, Regatta, RÖK, and the dice game Wazabi.
By far the friendliest and most gamer orientated of the three distributors, Îlot 307 carries a variety of smaller card games such as Sobek and Jaipur but also the rather good Québec, which is definitely a gamers' game. Îlot 307 is carrying one new game in the Sobek-sized box called Tschak!, which is a trick-taking game with an element of hand passing. Looks very family friendly.
The small card games distributed by this company are not bad fillers, of which I would recommend Vizia and Sultans of Karaya.
A combat checkers variant in which the power of a piece is determined by a card, so you have some strategy and memory of having to guess what power a piece has. The higher-valued piece beats a lower-valued one and is removed, but both power cards are removed and replaced by a card from the player's hand. Looked like a decent filler and was fairly well-produced.
A Can't Stop-like game from Reiner Knizia in which you are stealing cheese from a central pile based on a die roll. As long as you keep rolling cheese (gain a cheese piece) or rats (lose a cheese piece), you can keep on rolling; if you roll two blanks, however, all your accumulated cheese on the table goes back to the central stock pile. Think of it as Can't Stop Junior.
A quick filler in which you play cards to move your tornado from player to player. The first player to circulate all four of his tornado cards through all the players and back to him wins. The opponents try to stop you, while doing the same thing themselves.
Apart from the titles from these distributors, I found only two more games of note. One was kind of a fun-looking Scrabble-like game from Family Games America, which has released pretty coffee table games like Cathedral. The game was called Mark My Words – Letter in the original edition from German publisher Theta – and is played on a grided mat with letters of different sizes. You try to make words each turn with the twelve letters you have in your hand, scoring points for the length of the word. A pretty-looking filler type game again.
The last title was sort of a quirky-looking Skittles-like game called KOOB. Essentially you line up ten pawn-like wooden men on each side, then toss a wooden stick at them to knock down your opponent's men. The first person to knock down all your opponent's men; plus the central castle piece wins. I am not so sure how many parents would be happy at their kids throwing small wooden sticks at one another, but it looks a lot safer than lawn darts.
To sum up, this is a very small show that has been shrinking for a number of years and was even smaller than last year. I still found some games of interest but even they are getting fewer and farther between as more businesses head to the toy shows in places like New York, London and Nürnburg – but as long as there is a show in Toronto, I will be there.
At the 2012 New York Toy Fair, U.S. publisher Mayfair Games was showing off Giza: The Great Pyramid from designer Dave Heberer, which was released in January 2012 as well as Fréderic Moyersoen's Whitewater and James Spurny's Rocket Jockey, both of which hit retail shelves in the U.S. on February 23. Here's a description of Whitewater:
Quote:
Danger and excitement lurk around every bend of the river in Whitewater. Race down a deadly river, carefully navigating your raft through the obstacles, while trying to keep your paddles and crew inside the raft.
In Whitewater each player directs the actions of four courageous rafters. Each raft in the race contains four crew, with two crew from you and two from another player. Players control the crew within a raft, but also may use Energy cards to additionally help one raft or the other. Dice represent the effects of hazards you encounter, and even your best-laid plans can be spoiled by another raft pushing you a direction you don't want to go. Earn points for getting your rafts and passengers home safely, while navigating through treacherous waters containing rocks, driftwood and the dreaded whirlpool!
As with Friese's Fast Flowing Forest Fellers of a few years back, Whitewater includes multiple boards that can be used to create hundreds of routes, and the bluffing aspect of how much you'll work to move a raft (while hoping the other player does more) is a nice twist. My main complaint is that Mayfair spells the game as both "White Water" and "Whitewater" across its press catalog, its website, and press releases, but that's the obsessive cataloguist in me coming out. Consistency, people!
Oh, my goodness, I remembered to take a picture!
In Rocket Jockey, players use maneuver cards to hop a rocket from one planet to another in order to pick up and deliver goods. You keep the goods card as proof of delivery and receive points at game's end for the number of goods collected (with more points awarded for collecting multiples of the same type) and number of planets to which you delivered goods.
Holy smokes! A second one!!
Other games coming in 2012 that Mayfair has already formally announced are:
-----• Catan: Junior, due in April 2012. Here's my description from a Jan 2012 news item: "The theme of Catan: Junior remains the same as in the German version, with players now being pirates who need to build additional pirate warehouses in order to win the game. Existing warehouses provide resources (wood, wool, rum, sabers, gold) based on the roll of a die, and players need to construct ships in order to reach new locations in which to build warehouses."
In addition to these, Mayfair has three other titles listed on its schedule, two of which were shown at NY Toy Fair in 2011 for release in that year. As with everything, plans change. One of those titles is Simone Luciani's Urbania, which Mayfair now expects to have out in Q3 2012. Here's the game description from last year's catalog:
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In Urbania the city center has seen glory in its past. But the future calls to you for renewal! Build the new city upon the old, and forge ahead with progress, hammering new profits from those old foundations! Plan a new landscape and garner power and prestige to yourself!
The other title is Andreas Steding's Five Points, and here's ye olde description of that game, now scheduled for release in Q4 2012 or early 2013:
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The name "Five Points" evokes images of poverty, rampant crime, decadence and despair. That's true. The Five Points area of New York in the mid-1800s was a lurid geographical cancer filled with dilapidated and inlivable tenement houses, gang extortion, corrupt politicians, dance halls and drunkenness and gambling. This was a place where all manner of crime flourished, the residents were terrorized and squalor prevailed. This is the setting over many decades through the nineteenth century.
In Five Points, players represent members of powerful factions trying to gain influence in the upcoming election. To achieve this, they engage agitators to sow chaos in the streets of New York.
You had me at "lurid geographical cancer"...
Finally is a new version of A House Divided from designers Frank Chadwick and Alan Emrich. This two-player game about the U.S. "War Between the States" – first published in 1981 by GDW, then reissued by Phalanx in 2001 – will have some rules streamlining, according to Mayfair's Ron Magin, and is currently due out in Q3 2012.
Playroom Entertainment and Killer Bunnies go hand-in-hand, and while the U.S. publisher is indeed extending its KB line in 2012, it also has a bunch of other titles on the go, starting with a broader range of games from German publisher Drei Magier Spiele.
Playroom has previously released localized versions of The Magic Labyrinth and (most recently in December 2011) Magician's Kitchen. Now Playroom plans to roll out the following handful of titles, all with rules in English, Spanish and French:
April 2012 -----• Peek-a-Boo! (with the identical Drei Magier title Spiegel Spukschloss appearing in March, making this the first near-simultaneous release in this line) -----• Vampires of the Night
Playroom's Rebekah Zetty showed off two new entries in its Bright Idea Games line from designer Reinhard Staupe, one being Count Me In!, which AMIGO has released in Germany as 1, 2, 3 ... ganz viele!. Here's a description of that game:
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In 1, 2, 3 ... ganz viele! ("1, 2, 3 ... lots!"), players work together to try to lay down cards in the right order. If they complete two rows of ten cards each, they win.
At the start of the game, shuffle the deck of fifty cards – five cards each with numbers 1-10, with ten different images appearing as pips on the cards: horseshoes, mushrooms, springs, and so on – and deal five cards to each player.
On a turn, a player must lay down a card, if possible. Cards must be laid in numerical order, so the first card in a row must be 1, the second card 2, and so on. At the same time, the same image cannot be placed into a row twice. If a player can legally play a card, she does so, then draws a replacement from one of the two draw stacks; if she can't, she lays a card aside out of the game, then draws a new card. (The cards have color-coded icons on their backs – red, blue, etc. – which can aid players in deciding which card to draw.)
If the players create two rows of cards numbered 1-10 before both decks run out and they can't play any more cards, they win; if not, they lose.
A competitive variant is included in 1, 2, 3 ... ganz viele! with players taking cards numbered 1-7 from two colors (e.g., red and blue), then laying them out in two rows. On a turn, a player turns over one of the number 1 cards, then one of the number 2s, and so on. If she reveals a card that shows an image already present on a card revealed earlier, her turn ends and she flips all cards face-down again. If a player reveals cards numbered 1-7 without revealing matching images, she wins the round. The first player to win three rounds wins.
The other Bright Idea Games title is Barnyard Buddies, which has been released under a number of titles over the years. Players reveal a card showing four animals in four different colors and race to find the colored animal not represented on that card. Both titles are due out in June 2012.
Also due out in June 2012 are new themed editions of Reinhard Staupe's Catch the Match. In the original game, players view two cards and try to spot the one item on both cards that are colored exactly the same. (Think Spot It!, but different and released prior to Spot It!) In the new Catch the Match Duo, which comes in four themed versions (farm, safari, space, undersea), you can still play the original game – but you can also flip the cards over and look for two pairs of identically-colored images, making for an even tougher challenge. This quartet of games is also due out in June 2012.
Also scheduled for June 2012 is a series of four Zozzle titles, with the same themes as Catch the Match Duo. Here's a description of that game:
Quote:
Zozzle challenges players to complete a nine-piece puzzle before any opponent, but players will need a good memory to put all the pieces in the right place.
To start the game, the 45 tiles – five tiles each of nine different images, with the nine images combining to form a 3x3 square – are placed face down and shuffled. On a turn, a player turns over two tiles. If the images match and that player doesn't already have that image in her puzzle, she claims one of the tiles, turns the other face down, and takes another turn. If the images don't match or the player has previously claimed that tile, she turns the two tiles face down and ends her turn. Finish your image before anyone else, and you win.
Speak Up! is a new game series from designer Maureen Hiron that combines quasi-educational vocabulary learning in multiple langauges with real-time card-grabbing. Two versions of the game – "In the Home" and "Out and About" – are due out in, wait for it, June 2012. Busy month for Playroom if everything gets out the door! Here's a description of this game:
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In Speak Up!, everyone plays in one of five languages – German, English, French, Spanish or Italian – and not knowing the language won't necessarily be a detriment.
To set up the game, lay out 49 of the fifty cards on the table with the picture side faceup; next to the picture is the name of the item in five languages. The back of each card features the name of some other item in five languages.
To start play, take the card set aside during set-up and read one of the words on the back, say "Markt" (the German word for "market"). Everyone then races to find the card depicting the market, which will also have the various words for "market" next to the picture. Whoever finds it keeps the card, then flips it over and reads the German word on the back. This process continues until all the cards have been claimed. Whoever has the most cards wins!
In May 2012, Playroom extends its Ligretto empire with Ligretto Plus, a version of Schmidt Spiele's newly released Das Ligretto Fußballspiel minus the football because no one in Playroom's target market cares about "football". No one. Not a single person. Zip. Game play remains the same, with players racing to build sums that match numbers on the football field – excuse me, the playing area – so that they can reach the opponent's goal first. Did I say "goal"? Well, I suppose that works in this case. You know, for a supposedly themeless game Das Ligretto Fußballspiel packs a fair amount of theme in its game play.
What else is on the list? Playroom Entertainment has new release dates for a number of items shown at NY Toy Fair 2011 but not released since then. Those titles and their release dates are:
Finally, it's time to revisit Killer Bunnies. The big item on the KB release list, in time for the game's tenth anniversary, is Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot Deluxe Limited Edition, which is due out in October 2012 with a $150 MSRP. This set contains the original Quest game and all ten expansions, along with the dice, pawns and other material included. This item doesn't seem to have new components in it, but it does come in "a high-quality, stylish box" and "the components are specially made just for this limited edition".
Various starter decks for Killer Bunnies and the Ultimate Odyssey are being repackaged in three two-player starter decks due out in April 2012, each of which will include two promo cards. On top of that, Playroom is issuing a pair of "Heroes and Villains" combo starter decks (using KB Odyssey cards) in July 2012 that are playable with either two or three players, with each of those including three promo cards. (Figuring out exactly how to classify all the Killer Bunnies and the Ultimate Odyssey starter decks, expansion decks, and combinations would probably give us a clue as to how BGG can handle collectible cards games and other such complicated beasts. Lots of ways to classify and group titles, but it's not clear what's best. Something to tackle after the redesign is finished...)
Last of all is Psychic Penguins and the Voyage Home, a spin-off title by designer Jeffrey Neil Bellinger that gives the psychic penguins a game of their own.
At NY Toy Fair, SJG's Phil Reed was showing of one of the new Cthulhu Dice colors as well as a solid metal version of the Cthulhu die that will be released sometime in 2012. That thing is heavy! Do not bring it to table if you fear that players will be spiteful when losing.
Reed had an advance copy of Zombie Dice 2: Double Feature, due out in April 2012, and those dice look as nice as the ones in the original game. I recall seeing a tweet from SJG about tests for Zombie Dice 3 – a tweet I can't find at the moment – and it's easy to imagine the game being expanded in any number of ways. That said, Steve Jackson Games is also tweaking the original Zombie Dice game to appear under a new title: Dinosaur DiceDino Hunt Dice, with that title matching its 1996 card game of the same name. Some mainstream retailers are leery of presenting that scrawny rotting zombie on Zombie Dice to their customers, so SJG is reconfiguring the game in a more family-friendly direction for those zombie-averse retailers. Reed pointed out that the footprints shown on the three types of dice match the dinosaurs on those dice – a nice touch.
Reed gave a quick demo of Halloween Dice, due out in August 2012 and another entry in SJG's line of quick-playing dice games. Here's the game description:
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Halloween Dice comes with a set of big orange-and-black six-siders, with custom Jack o' Lantern designs on each face. Your goal: roll those dice and try to reach the lucky total of 13. (Normally 13 is considered an unlucky number, but for Halloween, when darkness and otherworldly things are celebrated, luck stands on its head.)
On a turn, you choose one, two, or three dice and receive respectively $2, $5, or $9, with money being represented by tokens. You then roll those dice. If the sum on the dice equals 13, you end your turn and keep the money you collected. If the total is less than 13, you can stop and pay $1 times the difference between your sum and 13, or you can again choose 1-3 dice (receiving more money) and roll again, adding the newly rolled sum to your previous sum. You again face the same options of stopping or choosing more dice and rolling again. If your sum goes over 13, however, your turn ends and you pay $2 times the difference between your sum and 13!
The player with the most money after three rounds wins.
Finally, Reed showed off the components for the two-player game Castellan – due out in Q3 2012 – and give enough of an overview that I've updated the game description:
Quote:
In Castellan, two players work together to build a castle. Finely-detailed wall and tower pieces link together to form courtyards, and the player who finishes a courtyard claims it with a Keep, scoring points for that courtyard equal to the number of tower pieces surrounding it.
In more detail, each player starts the game with two decks of cards: a wall deck and a tower deck. Each card allows a player to play the components shown on it, with the wall deck cards always depicting at least one wall (and some combination of walls/towers) and the tower deck cards always depicting at least one tower (and again some combination of walls/towers). On a turn, a player can play as many cards as she wants, but she draws only one card at the end of her turn. The goal is to create courtyards – and subdivide existing courtyards – while keeping your opponent from doing the same. Players have the same cards in their decks, so the challenge is all about what to use when. The game ends when all the castle pieces are used up, and the player with the most points wins.
Two different pairs of Keep colors are available in Castellan, so with two copies of the game – and the right combination of bits – up to four players can play.
So, New York Toy Fair 2012 – an event that ended on the previous Wednesday and to which I'm only now getting around to reporting on in detail (aside from my overview of how the hobby and mainstream markets are blurring). I blame children and the diseases they carry. Curse you, little ones!
In any case, now that I can sit upright again without feeling queasy, here's an overview of the new titles from R&R Games. Since I've created game listings for each of these titles, I'll reprint my game description from those pages to make things easier.
First up is Pluckin' Pairs, a party game from Stephen Glenn due out in May 2012:
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Pluckin' Pairs embodies the same spirit as the classic party game Compatibility in that you want to match images with other players in order to score points, but the game play is more free form with everyone competing individually instead of in teams.
At the start of a round, eleven images are laid out on the table. All players secretly pair off images – say, coins and a manhole cover because they're both round, or a mirror and a building because they both reflect light – and write these pairs on their player sheet. One image will be leftover as the outcast.
After everyone has finished, you compare your pairs with those of other players. If no one – or conversely if everyone – created the same pair as you, you score no points for that pair. If only some of the players created that pair, each of those players scores as many points as the number of players who record the pair. (You can optionally compare outcast images as well, scoring points based on who had the same outcast as you.) The player with the most points after a certain number of rounds wins.
Next is Pass-ack Words, a game for four players only from Dave Arnott and Aaron Wiessblum due out in April 2012:
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As the name suggests, Pass-ack Words turns the long-lived game of Password on its head, with players now giving clues that they hope their "partner" will not decipher in the right way.
As in Password, four players compete in teams of two; unlike in Password, you and a member of the opposing team take turns giving clues to the remaining player on the opposing team. How this works is that the clue givers have a device that shows a list of clues. Each turn, one clue giver chooses one of the listed clues, presents it to the opposing guesser, and hopes that he presented it with the wrong intonation so that the guesser won't guess the secret code word. As the crummy clues are used up, the clues will get better and better, so your challenge as the clue giver is to quickly figure out what might give a hint to your partner without giving the thing away entirely – which again is pretty much like Password!
Double Take is a charades game built for two, so to speak. Each round, time willing, two players will present clues for a half-dozen familiar phrases that all have something in common. A sample category, for example, is "Something's Wrong" with the words to be guessed being divided as:
• Play | Foul • In the Closet | Skeleton • Sheep | Black • Gun | Smoking
Each clue giver acts out one side of the card, and since they're facing the guessers, the phrases will be acted out in left-to-right fashion ("Black Sheep", "Smoking Gun", etc.) If someone guesses one side of the card, that player scores – but the clue givers score only after both sides of a phrase have been guessed, so they need to work together – but separately – to make their clues clear.
Alas, I did my usual good job of forgetting to take pictures of anything, being more of a word guy than an image guy, so you'll have to use your imagination to picture how these games might look. I've requested images from the publisher and will get them in the system ASAP.
On Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, I blazed through New York Toy Fair in seven hours and undoubtedly missed dozens of new games on display at the show. I plan to follow up with the contacts listed on the flyers and catalogs and postcards that I scooped up while whirlwinding through the aisles, and I'll scan Toy Fair's virtual press site again to look for publishers and games not already covered in the 2012 NY Toy Fair Preview that I compiled for BGG.
That said, I'm more interested in discussing two broad subjects related to the U.S. game market, both of which came up in multiple conversations with publishers during NY Toy Fair, than particular games, so let's talk about that first, then get to the games in later posts.
Us 1 :: Them 10,000
Subject #1 is the dichotomy at the heart of the U.S. game industry. No, I'm not talking about the tired Eurogame vs. Ameritrash debate. That topic is trite and meaningless, of interest only to those who bathe in minutiae that's irrelevant and invisible to those outside the hobby.
Instead I'm talking about the division of the market between hobby and mainstream game releases, and consequently the division of gamers into hobbyists and the public at large. Hobbyists follow game release schedules, study designers and publishers and the style of games they release, discuss game trends, and build a mental image of the game industry that includes them as an essential part of it. Joe Public, on the other hand, buys a game, plays it with friends or family, has a good time, then puts it away and doesn't obsess over it.
In case you didn't already know, the number of Joe Publics in the world is vastly more than you could ever imagine.
Hobby, Mainstream or Both?
In late 2011 at Toys R Us, after searching in vain for new Cars diecast figures with my son, I visited the store's game section and was surprised by this selection:
Progress?
To be clear, I was not surprised by either the Jersey Shore Trivia Game or yet another version of Jenga, but rather by the presence of the comparatively meaty Jungle Speed between those foamy pieces of game breading. Jungle Speed in Toys R Us? Neat, I thought. Hope that goes well for Asmodee.
Then shortly afterward I saw Jungle Speed on sale at the mainstream department store Target, then at a different Target, then at multiple Barnes & Noble bookstores, and finally at Walmart. How is this possible, I wondered? This little game – this decade-old design that's been kicking around hobby stores – is suddenly all over the place.
At NY Toy Fair, I asked Stefan Brunell from the U.S. branch of Asmodee about this, and he said that success came after finally realizing that the U.S. market is not like those in France and Germany. In those countries, he explained, games are sold in retail outlets of all sizes, and games percolate up from small stores and tiny print runs to medium-sized, then large retail outlets. Games prove themselves over time, then earn a spot in a larger retail arena, then move up again, and so on. (Many games, of course, never graduate to larger outlets, or they advance a bit but then stagnate.)
The U.S. market, by comparison, has no middle ground; every retailer is either big or tiny, so there's no middle ground by which games can become known over time. "Even something like Funagain," says Brunell, is tiny. Thus, publishers need to recognize this division and pitch their games to the large players directly. Asmodee finally did this with Jungle Speed, and the result is that game appearing in mainstream outlets across the country and more copies being sold in the U.S. in three months than in the previous ten years. (In March 2010 on Boardgame News, I had linked to an article in Air le Mag (via Filosofia) that mentioned annual Jungle Speed sales of 200,000 copies. That total was for worldwide sales; Brunell expects Jungle Speed sales in 2012 in the U.S. alone to far surpass that number.)
That success with Jungle Speed has been mirrored in other mainstream retail outlets with other games. The original Munchkin game was added to two dozen Target stores in April 2011 as a test sales program ten years after the game's original release (and domination of sales charts in hobby stores), and sales went so well that by January 2012 the game was available in nearly all 1,500 Target locations. So as with Jungle Speed, a game once thought of as hobby-specific has gone mainstream in terms of its availability – with nothing being changed in the game play itself.
Barnes & Noble has also become an influencer in the general game market. One publisher at NY Toy Fair mentioned that when B&N picks up a title, it orders a thousand copies in one shot – which is a huge number for publishers used to handling print runs that consist of only a few thousand copies in total. Another publisher explained that B&N requested changes in box size (but not the game play) so that the titles would have more shelf presence in their stores, the goal being to have offerings at multiple price points in each game category it carries.
B&N also carries a handful of different Munchkin standalone games. Matt Morgan at MTV Geek interviewed B&N reps in October 2011 about their approach to game selection, and one said, "I'm continued to be blown away by Munchkin." That same article explained that B&N reps rushed to get Fantasy Flight's Civilization board game on shelves in time for the 2011 holiday season, and the game sold out and was reordered. With "at least 3 copies in each of [the] 'A' stores" and 450 'A' stores in the B&N chain, at least 1,350 copies of a complicated hobby game were sold at MSRP to the public at large. B&N also carries (and presumably sells) Gears of War, Agricola, 7 Wonders, Arkham Horror, Days of Steam, Empire Builder, and other titles normally thought of as fairly involved and designed for hobby gamers.
All of which makes me think that the difference between hobby and mainstream game releases might be less than most gamers perceive it to be. I've long pushed for greater public awareness of designer games; in 2006, for example, I sold a write-up on Reef Encounter to Scuba Diving magazine, sold a review of Primordial Soup to the science magazine Discover, and wrote a regular column on games for the (short-lived) Coffee Magazine. I pitched many more game-related articles to magazines and newspapers in the mid-2000s and had some success, with many, many more rejections. Each success was all about getting the right game in front of the right readership, the right market – although I'd argue that many of the rejections also had the right game for the right market, especially Funny Friends for Rolling Stone. C'mon!
In the end, perhaps the only difference between the majority of hobby and mainstream game releases is where they are sold – and with more outlets carrying more designer games, the line between what's hobby and what's mainstream may continue to blur until the dichotomy has even less meaning than it already does. Whether this will happen or not won't be clear for a couple of years, as those buying Civilization and other "hobby" games via mainstream outlets might have been scared away from buying unfamiliar games – or they might be ready to try something new this holiday season. Time will tell...
Kicking Game Sales into the Mainstream
The other subject under discussion at NY Toy Fair was the emergence – or rather, the growing presence – of Kickstarter as a vehicle for game sales for publishers both large and small. While I've backed a number of Kickstarter projects, I've always held reservations about the Kickstarter process itself for three reasons:
• The risk-shifting involved in the publication process, with a publisher not fronting the money to produce a game but rather using funds from customers to do so. At some level, I want to know that a publisher has invested itself in the success of a game and is putting itself financially at risk so that it is, in a sense, saying, "This is how much trust we have in this game. If it weren't as good as we think it is, we would never have brought it to market?" Yes, I know publishers that use their own funds can deliver terrible games as easily as those using Kickstarter – and however you buy a game, you're at risk of not getting something you like – but still that mental discomfort persists.
• The ease with which awful projects rub shoulders with good ones. I know this shouldn't bother me since a project's awfulness says more about the sponsor than about anyone involved in the gaming community, but I still hate to have others furthering the notion that a slapped-together roll-and-move activity – one intended more for delivering eyeballs to sponsors than for delivering game play to buyers – is what I'm talking about when I talk about games. I'm interested in games as a creative pursuit, as an artistic medium, and while I agree that the primary purpose of a game is to play it, I still enjoy seeing what others create and present as objects unto themselves.
• The knowledge that some day a publisher will take the money and run, delivering nothing to buyers and tainting future possibilities for those who want backing for projects of their own.
All that said, talks with a number of publishers at NY Toy Fair had me thinking about Kickstarter from three new angles, one being from the hobby/mainstream angle that I discussed above. I knew from previous discussions with game industry personnel that game publication projects on Kickstarter attract buyers far beyond the BGG audience – but what I didn't know was how large that mainstream audience is. One publisher estimated that the percentage of supporters not coming to a project through BGG, Tric Trac or other hobby-specific media was 60-80%. One way or another, those outside the normal confines of what we think of as the game hobby are finding out about these projects and backing them – and as I stated above every such purchase blurs the difference between hobby and mainstream games.
Another angle to Kickstarter relates to the risk-shifting I mentioned above. Yes, a publisher using Kickstarter benefits by raising funds to cover the cost of game production – but a related and possibly even more important factor is that the publisher has some way to estimate sales for the game in the marketplace at large and can adjust the print run accordingly. If a game barely clears its funding goal, the publisher can cut publication numbers to cover what's needed for the project and basically wash its hands of the game, forgetting about long-term profit to satisfy its immediate obligations, then move on. If a game has more support than anticipated – or support from unexpected locations – the publisher can figure that it underestimated the game's potential and boost the print run accordingly.
Why is this practice important? Because game retailers – both brick-and-mortar stores and online sellers – have traditionally been terrible at placing preorders, leaving publishers in the dark as to how many games to produce.
Asmodee's Stefan Brunell mentioned this during our talk. In late 2011 Asmodee brought it roughly two thousand copies of Eclipse, despite not having preorders to justify that amount, and blew through all the copies immediately. Now Asmodee has an Eclipse reprint of 5,000 copies scheduled for release in the U.S. in May 2012. Brunell says that his bosses balked initially because retailers and distributors still weren't placing reserve orders to justify a print run that large, but he convinced them to do it anyway. What's changed in the intervening weeks between the time that reprint order was placed and today? Eclipse has hit large, everyone wants it, retailers and distributors have finally placed preorders – and now those 5,000 copies are already sold out at the publisher level, with another reprint in the works. If retailers and distributors had done their homework when the game debuted at Spiel 2011 in October and placed orders accordingly, both the initial shipment and the reprint would be larger, and everyone would have a better chance of getting the game. (That said, gamers also tend to be negligent when it comes to placing preorders, and their preorders drive those of retailers and others down the line.)
The third angle relevant to Kickstarter taking on a bigger role for publishers relates to the Kickstarter projects being relatively inexpensive marketing for the games themselves. An active project gets people talking about a game, reading the rules, asking questions, looking for artwork, and so on – all of which brings games to the attention of retailers and distributors, in addition to those who would buy the game directly. One publisher at NY Toy Fair said that while you might think that distributors would be upset by sales lost directly to Kickstarter buyers, they are instead happy that Kickstarter advertises the game more effectively than a sell sheet or a description in their catalog, thereby getting gamers excited about the game and retailers eager to support something that already has a presence in the market. Kickstarter does the work that a distributor might otherwise need to do – or might not do at all, which would leave the game gasping for air among a crowd of indifferent retailers.
Like it or not, more publishers will be using Kickstarter for more games in the years to come, both for off-the-wall projects that might have a seemingly small audience and for otherwise "normal" games that you'd expect to see available through all the regular outlets anyway. As for what those titles will be, watch this space for details!
