Strat-O-Matic and APBA Keep On Ticking

An anonymous reader writes "USA Today has a great story about the classic baseball games Strat-O-Matic and APBA, enduring in the modern age amid all of the Xbox glitz. Quoting: 'While there are numerous other statistics-based games (such as Diamond Mind, whose creator now works for the Boston Red Sox,) APBA and Strat-O-Matic are by far the oldest and most recognized. And there is something amazing about how these two games have survived for so long. APBA estimates it has sold over 600,000 units of its board game; Strat-O-Matic, over 1 million. Both companies describe their customers as getting older — age 35 and up, a sign of how the electronic era is pushing kids away from board games. In the 1960s and '70s, teenagers were a big part of the customer base. "We have a niche group," says Hal Richman, the 72-year-old founder of Strat-O-Matic, based in Glen Head, NY. "We cannot compete with the Xboxes and the John Maddens and EA Sports and all their graphics. We do it another way. We want the ballplayer to be realistic."'"

Comments

Re:Board games still have teens interest..

[tlhIngan]

It's just that most board games are pretty dumbed down. You also cant get the real good board games/ Card games at most stores you have to go to specialty geky places to get them.

Car Wars, is an awesome board game. settlers of Catan, Carcassone, Munchkin (Yes it's a board game now) etc....

I have personally corrupted many a youth with The above games. The thing is, you NEED 4 or more players that will be very vocal for them to be fun. With Settlers I try to encourage collusion and to try to bend the rules trading, Munchkin the same..

That's about the real problem - non-mass-market board games tend to be only available at either game stores, or online. These days, online is your best bet - the game store I frequent is quite popular as it's one of the few online for Canada (Craving for a Game) - especially since it's one of the few on the West Coast.

In the US, Amazon.com tends to have the games, and if not, eBay and the like. BoardGameGeek tends to have links to eBay searches that have those games. However, nothing online can really replace (I found) the B&M store. Craving for a Game is near me, so I visit it often enough that the proprietor knows me and what I like, so I have a personal recommendation engine (and he has game rentals plus in-store trials, so you can see if a game is to your liking, or wait for game night and play against others - he supplies the games (or you can too), and everyone comes and plays.

Also, if you're in the high-tech field, it's a good way to spend a lunch hour "offline" and away from the screen - depending on the size of your company, you can easily get the requisite 4+ people (at one point we often had to have two games going). The only downside is this eliminates every game that claimes to take 45 minutes or longer (we find that if a game claims 60 minutes per game, it's probably closer to 75-90).

The good news is that the bigger games (Catan, Carcassonne, etc) tend to be available at larger stores (especially large comic book/toy stores). But there are a lot of real gems that you'll only find at dedicated stores.

Our group has settled on two games consistently (but we do try others to mix it up) - The Seven Seals (aka Zing! in English, but its German/French name is Seven Seals), and Frank's Zoo (a delightfully simple game that has a good element of strategy, and is close to Big 2).