The Crowdfunded Board Game Renaissance

An anonymous reader writes: FiveThirtyEight has an article about the surging popularity of new board games, which is being boosted by campaigns on crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Since Kickstarter came online in 2009, board games and card games have accrued $196 million in pledges, 93% of which went to successful projects. That's even better than video games have done, at $179 million and 85%. For an industry whose yearly sales don't tend to break $1 billion, those are impressive numbers. The article attempts to explain their success: "Designers show up, explain their game idea on a Web page, often with photos and a video, and ask for pledges. That lets a designer learn, in real time, what the demand for his game is. ... Second, they are democratizing tools. Internet crowdfunding has done the same thing for game designers that blogging platforms did for writers: turned them into publishers."

Comments

Designers ! Publishers

[pr0t0]

Internet crowdfunding has done the same thing for game designers that blogging platforms did for writers: turned them into publishers.

Perhaps, but most of the board game Kickstarters I see are from publishers; and often large ones at that. Most designers will tell you, if you are interested in being a board game designer, do not attempt to publish your game. The amount of work involved is all-consuming as publishers do far more than simple distribution. As a designer board game enthusiast, I listen to a fair amount of podcasts on the subject like The Dice Tower and The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast. Board Games Insider, however, is by the CEOs of Portal Games and Stronghold Games, and is all about the business of board games not the playing of them. It's a really interesting look behind the curtain and I highly recommend it.

Re:Designers ! Publishers

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Most designers will tell you, if you are interested in being a board game designer, do not attempt to publish your game. The amount of work involved is all-consuming as publishers do far more than simple distribution.

Interesting. Can you elaborate? What kind of tasks are involved? What makes them so difficult?

Re:Designers ! Publishers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, the amount of times I've seen devs go back and forth in this industry is pretty crazy. "I'm tired of not having any time to actually develop games and am instead spending all my time on publishing! I'm going with a publisher!" "I'm tired of a publisher butting in on MY game design and making too many/few copies and/or not supporting it well, I'm going to publish myself!"

Re:Designers ! Publishers

[KatchooNJ]

I should point out that two of my favorite games from last year were both self-published. Paperback and Xia: Legends of a Drift System were stellar games, and were each done basically by a single guy pursuing his dream. Paperback is an excellent word game that will even draw in people who dislike most word games, like Scrabble. Xia's production was nicer than most games out there and will forever sit proudly on my shelf. :-) Those metal coins and painted, plastic space ships really are amazing. The world needs more sandbox-style board games. heh ;-)

Re:Designers ! Publishers

[Anonymous Coward]

Straight of thin air ... managing IP, marketing, store placement, skimming off the top, and maximizing executive compensation.

Re:Designers ! Publishers

[joeblog]

I have some first hand experience at this. More years ago than I care to remember, I designed and self published a game (just googled it and came with an entry for it at Board Game Geek at https://boardgamegeek.com/boar...)

It was a very educational experience and lots of fun, but you have to treat it as a hobby. Nowadays, I'm striclty into putting games up via the web -- no printing costs, no distribution problems (uhm, also no money ... made or lost)

Re:Designers ! Publishers

[taustin]

Designing the game is not the same as designing the physical product. You have a nice map board in Photoshop, but you have to figure out how to get it printed on paper, mounted on cardboard, etc. And somebody has to do the pre-production work on the rules - the layout and page design.

And they you have to deal with printers, and, if you're at all successful, a fulfillment center (Exploding Kittens got together with Cards For Humanity and started a fulfillment company to handle the 17 train cards full of cards).

Then there's marketing. Running the Kickstarter is a full time job to promote, and that's peanuts compared to the time you have to spend shilling for the product after it's available for retail.

None of those things, individually, is actually all that difficult, but it all takes time, and the business end of things requires a completely different set of skills from the game design end. And if you don't have that skillset, you'll lose your shorts, and end up with a game so expensive nobody will ever buy it.

It can be done, and people do it, but if your passion is game design, pay somebody else to do it for you. Otherwise, you're not a game designer, you're a publishers, and that's a full time business.

Re:Designers ! Publishers

[LongearedBat]

More years ago than I care to remember, I designed and self published a game

I see what you mean. From the link...

Game of the Second Boer War commencing October, 1899.

Real interaction

[new_01]

People are craving real interaction. A couple decades of staring at screens and we all are realizing we don't want to raise our families by passing on the habit. There's value in gaming, the shared goal of competition. The problem is that we lost something during those years. The face-to-face personal interaction gave way to internet connected walls. No more humanity, replaced with avatars and emojis and the simulation of real human connections. Nothing shows the glaring difference from what we've become than a live game of poker. Where part of the game is to master the art of being human. It's why writers and directors think we'll still be playing the game hundreds of light years from here sitting abort starships across the table from androids and aliens.

Just another hipster fad.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is shaping up to be yet another hipster fad. It's just like all of the others. Hipsters find something "obscure" or "vintage", then proclaim their "love" of it (they've always thought it was "cool"), and waste huge sums of money on the fad (while simultaneously bitching about how deep in debt they are).

The first major fad was wearing 1950s-era glasses, sometimes even without lenses in the cases of those hipsters who don't actually need prescription eyewear! Then it was wearing lumberjack clothing, and growing a large beard. Then it was listening to vinyl records. Then it was drinking craft beer. Then it was riding bicycles with a 1930s/1940s-era design. Then it was "artisanal" bread. Now it's board games.

If there's one thing we can be certain of, a new hipster fad will be coming along any day now.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the new fad be reposting decade-old troll posts on vintage news-for-trolls sites? GNAA will live again.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[KatchooNJ]

Except this "fad" has had a huge resurgence/boom in recent years, and has truly been going strongly for the past twenty years (in the U.S.), with the introduction of Eurogames (German games) to the American audience. (Settlers of Catan usually gets the credit for being the first big Eurogame to hit it big in the States back in 1995.) Board games were always something Americans played, but all we knew were the likes of games like Monopoly, Risk, Sorry, etc... Those games can be fun for a bit, but they often outlast their welcome before long. The world was simply waiting for designer board games...

Games are much more refined now and there is a ton of variety, so basically anyone can find something they like. Wargames? Sure, we have plenty... Deep strategy games?... yup! Amerithrashy fun with lots of minis and dice?... of course! Card games?... well, duh. Abstract games? Word games? Party games? Yes, yes, and yes! We are currently in the real golden age of boardgaming. There has never been a better time to be a fan of board games. I play in a gaming group weekly and we don't have any people I would label as hipsters... we're basically all geeks/nerds. heh Everyone there is a programmer or works with computers in some way. The hobby seems to attract that type. :-)

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[Anonymous Coward]

The definition of "hipster" is "someone who offends me by being interested in something".

Every single whiny complaint about "hipsters" (such as the parent post) demonstrates that this is the only thing it has ever meant.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's obviously not the case. The GP gave very specific examples of Hipsterism. These are traits that are very specific to the Millennial generation; those who are now between 20 and 35 years old. We typically don't see people older than that engaging in these behaviors, nor do we see younger people engaging in them, as well. As a Hipster, it's understandable that you may not recognize the fact that your behaviors are, to put it nicely, pretty fucking idiotic. But it's irrelevant that you choose to ignore the fact that Hipsters are a specific, identifiable group who collectively fall for really dumb fads. The reality will remain reality regardless of what you mistakenly believe.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's obviously not the case. The GP gave very specific examples of Hipsterism.

The GP gave specific examples of fads he didn't like, and declared that anyone who had the nerve to like them to be a hipster.

These are traits that are very specific to the Millennial generation; those who are now between 20 and 35 years old. We typically don't see people older than that engaging in these behaviors, nor do we see younger people engaging in them, as well.

Yes, we do. Fads have always existed and always will. By focusing specifically on a certain subset of those fads that offend you and ignoring the ones that don't (because those fads are things you like), you inadvertently prove - just as the OP did - that "hipster" means exactly what I said it means and nothing else.

As a Hipster, it's understandable that you may not recognize the fact that your behaviors are, to put it nicely, pretty fucking idiotic.

First, I'm not into any of those things that you and the OP are whining about. But even if I were, none of them are "idiotic", because that word doesn't mean "stuff I don't care about" - and yes, that IS what you mean. Having different tastes than you do doesn't imply anything about intelligence. Believing in such a link, however, says some very unflattering things about yours.

But it's irrelevant that you choose to ignore the fact that Hipsters are a specific, identifiable group who collectively fall for really dumb fads.

That's not a fact, it's a stereotype. You've never met one of these people. At best, you've passed by someone on the street wearing a flannel shirt and decided that he "obviously" acts like a Portlandia character all the time. You don't actually know any "hipsters" at all. You'll lie and claim you do, but nobody will believe it - not even you, as much as you want to.

The reality will remain reality regardless of what you mistakenly believe.

Yes, and the reality is that "hipster" has never, ever meant anything other than "I am angry that you like something I don't". The OP proved it, you proved it, and now you're about to prove it again.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[LaurenCates]

I'm not sure that's right, at least in this case.

I'm in my 30's and I know plenty of people, both older and younger, that DO play board games and card games, because they grew up with those and are passing them on to the kids in the family.

It's not an all-consuming thing, nor something we talk about a lot when we're not actually planning for a game night, but we don't really regard playing games as a metric of social status. Maybe it's because a lot of us are engineers or programmers or (in my night life) athletic types that enjoy competition, but it seems to me a lot of people I know just like games.

But go ahead and bag on what everyone else likes as being "uncool", hipster.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[tnk1]

The difference between "hipster" and some other interest is that hipster things seem to be done for some sort of style statement. Wearing pointless glasses, or riding old bikes or being a "lumbersexual" is just a style, not a hobby or an interest.

I suppose you could have fad board games, but actually playing board games doesn't mesh with a "hipster" style over substance mentality. People have been playing things like Eurogames for years, and for other games like Axis and Allies and more adult themed board/card games, people have been playing those games for decades.

When I was younger I liked playing board games of that type, the only real problem was finding people to play them with. Now that I'm an adult, I can find people who I can enjoy them with. There's absolutely nothing hipster about it because it doesn't really impart any sort of style statement. And for the most part, its the same old gamers who I was used to playing games with in the past. I haven't noted anyone sporting style statements at game night, unless you consider the black t-shirt to be a hipster style.

Now, if people who identify as hipsters happen to have become interested in board games, good for them. But saying that board gaming is a hipster trend would be like calling steak a hipster trend because hipsters all started to like steak. Both board games and steak pretty much stand alone from those who are actually partaking of them.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is some truth to that, but my wife is decidedly not a geek/nerd, but she enjoys playing games with me. True, most of the games we play are not heavy games like Agricola, but they are still euro-style games. Our current favorite is Splendor. It's such a quick game that we can crank thru a bunch of rounds before going to bed.

The thing I most love about euro-style board games is you usually don't know who is going to win until the very end. With the old traditional games, like Monopoly, you usually knew who was going to win long before the game ends which makes the game tiresome for the non-winners. Plus I love playing with my wife since usually she wins about half the games and I win half the games. It would be boring playing with someone that I could beat everytime.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[drinkypoo]

I suppose you could have fad board games, but actually playing board games doesn't mesh with a "hipster" style over substance mentality.

Shouldn't it? It used to be big in America a while back, and it's less convenient than video gaming. Sounds right up their alley.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[tnk1]

Well, put that way, I can see why they'd be interested in it.

For all of that, I don't see much in the way of hipsters when I play. It's mostly people who grew up in the 80's and 90's who used to play games like this when we were younger.

Now that they have kids, they can't always commit to RPG campaigns or things like that. They want to have a reason to be social and have people over that is a lot more fun than a cocktail party or whatever else adults might do to be social when they invite people over. :)

I don't have the problem of children, but since most of my friends now have them, it's something to do when visiting and socializing and it's a lot more likely that the women will play too, if you pick the right game.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[techno-vampire]

Wearing pointless glasses, or riding old bikes or being a "lumbersexual" is just a style, not a hobby or an interest.

No. A style is something that you do or wear that tells the world what you are and shows your individuality. All of that is just a fashion; it's people saying, "Me too!"

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slowcooking is a hipster trend, Listening to obscure bands (preferably using old technology) is a hipster trend. Stuffing your own sausage is a hipster trend. All these things has been around long before hipsters.

I see no reason that board gaming couldn't be a hipster trend. Not that it is where I live right now, but it could become one. That doesn't make everyone who plays board games a hipster, just as not everyone with a beard is a hipster.

Re:Just another hipster fad.

[KatchooNJ]

Ah! Yes, Splendor is also in my collection. :-) Definitely a fun one. I also like how zippy and easy it is. Definitely a good "gateway" game that you can easily get non-gamers to play too. Then they become gaming junkies before long and have 5 huge bookshelves full of games inside of a year. heh ;-)

Predictable

[Daetrin]

Since Kickstarter came online in 2009, board games and card games have accrued $196 million in pledges, 93% of which went to successful projects. That's even better than video games have done, at $179 million and 85%.

Board games are much more predictable than video games. You need to spend approximately as much person-power figuring out the rules to a board game as you do to a video game. However the art requirements are probably the equivalent to that of a comparatively simple puzzle video game. (Which is not to say that they don't both require good art design to be effective, just that they don't need to come up with designs for dozens of worlds and hundreds of enemies, like you might in an RPG.)

After that however, you're pretty much done with the design. You don't need programmer to develop the entire platform. You need to play test the game itself, but you don't need a QA team continuously checking a whole list of things like "is it still possible to walk through the wall in quadrant three if you do a charge attack while crouching?"

You _do_ need to find a manufacturer to produce the components, but unless you've come up with something really crazy that's pretty much a solved problem. I'm sure that trying to find the best build quality you can for a decent price is a lot of _work_, but you're not going to ask them to change the color of a piece and then be surprised the next day to find that the game now crashes if you try to perform a certain move with that piece.

Board games are also much less prone to feature creep. Too many video games kickstarters get a lot of money and then decide to expand the scope of the game. Or they just fall prey to the natural temptation to add features during development. Very rarely do people working on a board game stop and say something like "but wouldn't it be cool if we also added a mini-game where you capture and train monsters?"

So if you can clearly explain your concept to the audience then they can be very confident that you'll be able to pull it off given proper funding (assuming that your intentions are honest of course) and pretty confident that what comes out at the end is similar to what they were promised at the beginning. That's reflected in the 93% success rate and feeds into the relatively high enthusiasm compared to the size of the total market.

Re:Predictable

[Anonymous Coward]

Board games fit absolutely perfectly with what KickStarter was intended to do. Movies and video games absolutely 100% do not and should never have been allowed on the site in the first place.

The idea behind KickStarter is that you're supposed to have a finished product, ready to be sold: say, a board game. But you have a problem: you can't afford to create enough of them to sell. For the sake of argument, let's say you can only afford to create 100 boxes that would cost you $40 each to print and assemble, which means that you'd have almost no profit margin. That's no good. KickStarter is the solution: it literally kick starts your product, allowing you to get enough orders to cover an affordable production run, getting the cost per unit down to the point where you can sell them at a reasonable price.

That's why board games work with KickStarter and video games don't. With digital downloads, there is absolutely no "minimum number of orders" required to make a production run of a video game make sense. It just doesn't match the model at all.

Tip of the wedge in action!

[snarfies]

Looks like the proliferation of Kickstarter games has started trickling down to related projects.

For example, somebody made meeple pillows (Meepillows) and put them on Kickstarter: The project exceeded its five-figure goal in under three days. And per Kikcktraq, its trending to over $80,000. (https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/faust1138/meepillows-an-assortment-of-colorful-large-plush-m/)

So now we're talking almost six figures worth of demand for game-related pillows, which leads me to think there may be six-figure demand for other game-related projects as well. Would other pillow projects bring in six figures? Maybe at this point they would!

There is a reason...

[Lumpy]

Hasbro has no interest in anything for adults. All the big board game makers are ran by morons. They told the CAH guys to go to hell that nobody would ever buy their card game.

It's proof that large corporations do not have a clue how to bring products to the world anymore and are old worthless dinosaurs that are no longer needed.

Re:There is a reason...

[tnk1]

Yes, big corporations are engines for reproducing a popular product en masse. It takes a lot of effort to make them able to be truly creative.

Re:There is a reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

[Hasbro] told the CAH guys to go to hell that nobody would ever buy their card game.

Source, please? I suspect that anything they actually said was closer to "we don't want to sell this because we don't want our brand associated with it", which is a far cry from "nobody will buy that".

Re:There is a reason...

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

Hasbro owns WotC. So, Hasbro makes Axis and Allies, Lords of Waterdeep, Risk, Acquire, and Vegas Showdown (among others.) If it ever actually happened, Hasbro told the CAH guys they weren't interested for much the same reason that LGS's don't stock the product - while the game is amusing if you are 18+, it's not the kind of thing you want on the shelf when you have pre-teens wandering around.

Skewed results

[ArhcAngel]

I suspect the results aren't balanced since Exploding Kittens came out this year.

Re:Skewed results

[Anonymous Coward]

Now THAT's a game designed by people who didn't play any game in the top 100 of boardgamegeek.

My Favorite

[Charliemopps]

Well, the obvious thing to do in this thread is to rave about your favorite game right?

I have a 7yr old, so we needed to find a game we'd all like, and the whole "who wins?" bit turned into an issue with a kid that age.
We finally stumbled on "Castle Panic" which is quite frankly an amazing game.
Dice Tower review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's actually incredibly fun despite being cooperative. Everyone gets to talk about how they should approach defeating the monsters. Kids get super excited when they kill monsters. I highly recommend it. And yes, even adults enjoy this games.

Re:My Favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

and if you're done with it, add one of the expansions (the dark titan or the wizards tower) into the mix to make it a lot harder.

Re:My Favorite

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the recommendation.

Except for one problem...

[Bohnanza]

...somebody is selling you a game based only on a list of components and a "theme". Except for a few that have been vetted by serious publishers, most "kickstarter" games I've played have been dreadful. Most should have been trashed after the first playtest. Many probably didn't GET a first playtest. Why bother, if everyone has ponied up their cash already?

Re:Except for one problem...

[Bucky24]

I've had similar experiences with a few games, some that were just really terrible and clearly had never been tested (and some that never got completed either). But I've also had some really good games come off of Kickstarter. You just have to be really careful about what you back. Projects that have a very clear description tend to be better then those that just list some components and a theme, and those do exist out there. Some of the better projects actually have gameplay videos (using concept pieces) that can give you a good idea if the game will actually be good or not. In the end it's still rather hit and miss, but not every game on Kickstarter is going to be bad.

Re:Except for one problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then perhaps you are funding the wrong type of games? I've played several games from kickstarter that were dreadful, but the ones I've sunk my money into had a pdf of the rules posted, along with gameplay videos and reviews so I could watch people actually playing a reasonably finished version of the game. I'm waiting for two games to hit kickstarter that I've played demo versions of at conventions; both of them have been soliciting feedback at multiple regional gaming conventions since 2013.

If you are funding someone who has a neat idea, yeah, it's going to fail, because it typically takes years of playtesting and refinement to turn a neat idea into a good game (and people who have never done it before will often have no idea how hard it is to write clear rules and debug a complicated game). The successful good games are finished and tested ones, that have hit the point where they need money to buy custom shaped meeples and hire an artist to make the cards pretty, and are thus perfectly capable of giving you a downloadable copy of the game that you can print out and play before the kickstarter even begins if you are willing to test it out using cards you printed at home and cut out by hand and recycled pieces from your old copy of settlers or carcassone.

Re:Except for one problem...

[polar red]

you have to check the game reviewers. dice tower, rahdo runs through, drive through review, and many others.

Not Just Board & Card Games

[Guy From V]

Ye olde pen and pap'r role playing games are thriving in the crowdfunding environment. White Wolf's classic World of Darkness line, which ended over a decade ago making way for their new revamped (rimshot) 2.0 version has been resurrected (groan), bought and licensed from the clueless buffoons at CCP games who absorbed WW. Under the Onyx Path label many original authors and developers have used Kickstarter campaigns amazingly effectively producing some excellent quality stuff that's at least as good as the original, I think even better in some cases. Projects usually get 100% funding within hours and most of the projects I followed and sent money to capped off at ~ 200-300% or more. Shadowrun, BattleTech and Call of Cthulhu are all doing well in crowdfunded ecosystem plus the massive amount of independent projects and project lines is staggering. Even better, the [total dogshit]:[pretty good] ratio has been steadily rising as well.

Re:Not Just Board & Card Games

[taustin]

Roleplaying games have the advantage of having always been an industry of amateurs. Other than a couple of big companies - TSR/Wtoc/Hasbro, White Wolf for a while, and Steve Jackson - it's all been some guy in his garage, happy if he breaks even but not expecting to make a living at it.

That means there's a lot of experience out there with the business model, for newbies to draw on, and it also means the market has realistic expectations as to production values. Good content on a Xeroxed page is perfectly OK for most gamers, so long as it is good content.

There are elements of that in the board game industry, but it's a lot less pronounced, because the barriers to entry in to the market are a lot higher. It's always been the case that rpgs can be published at a the copy shop, but board games need reasonable quality cardboard map boards and plastic playing pieces.

Re:Not Just Board & Card Games

[Guy From V]

I want a Crossbows and Catapults remake.

for more information

[polar red]

check out BoardGameGeek.com, it contains a list of nearly 80,000 games/components/expansions.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/b...

Re:for more information

[KatchooNJ]

Great site! Despite the horrible design. heh (Pain in the ass to navigate well until you get used to it.) I'm on BGG daily. Great for news, forum chatter, rules clarifcations, and homemade additional rules or handouts. Often the designers hang out on there and will directly answer questions about their games, so it doesn't get much more useful than that. :-)

Just because the volume has increased...

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

Certainly doesn't mean that the quality is there. Most purely crowdfunded games I've played have fallen into the category that Steve Jackson's games filled 2 decades ago - at best, they are fun once or twice, but beyond that, they are defective (and downright unfun.) The only difference is that it's so easy to get high-quality stuff manufactured now, the game doesn't literally fall apart after you play it.

It certainly doesn't help that the established industry has basically turned into a card game business in the last 5 years. The deck-building game concept was fun and novel back when Dominion landed, but it seems to be 90% of the 'new' product now. Even worse, card games lend themselves much more naturally to expansions, and people are repeating the same mistakes that were made decades ago with Netrunner and Magic.

Re:Just because the volume has increased...

[KatchooNJ]

...and people are repeating the same mistakes that were made decades ago with Netrunner and Magic.

Heh... you make it sound like gaming's Vietnam.

Re:Just because the volume has increased...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read some reviews before buying then, they're all over BBS. Or maybe you can have a friend print the World Wide Web site HTTP://WWW.boardgamegeeks.com for you.

Target even stocks newer board/card games now, at the end of the isle separate from all the monopoly, risk, jenga stuff.
I figure if a big retailer vetted it, and it's not just from a giant mega publisher, it's probably a decent game.

Not saying it works every time, but I feel safer making an impulse buy there than a game store.

MtG

[KatchooNJ]

Don't forget the big (flagship) Wizards of the Coast product... Magic: The Gathering. Most people lump card games in with board games, so that one counts, as well. ;-) Definitely one of the most successful games of all time... and is responsible for keeping many a game shop in business today.

Re:MtG

[Anonymous Coward]

They passed on MTG because they found it impossible to monetise the sale of soap and deodoramt to MTG players.

Preach it brother

[Bruce66423]

As someone who has been playing board games more than 40 years, the present generation are brilliant compared with the old ones. Having spend many an interesting evening 30 years ago over what are now obsolete ones, I can promise you that the new generation ones are worth finding out about; we got a taste of the good stuff in the past - but now the same things that took 10 hours are packed into 2 without ANY loss of interest.

Re:Preach it brother

[KatchooNJ]

Testify! lol Yeah, I also have been gaming for about the same amount of time, so I can definitely agree. When I was a kid, we played Risk like something was wrong with us. lol We played it daily. Then Axis & Allies came out and we left Risk in the dust. I still have huge nostalgic love for A&A. heh Played a ton of the old Avalon Hill games like Dune, Up Front, Kremlin, Britannia, Diplomacy, 1830, Merchant of Venus, Acquire, Origins of World War II, etc... Loved them! Some still are fun and playable today (basically the ones I listed), but many show their age if you crack them out today after playing modern board games for a while. While some old games, like Cosmic Encounter, still are awesome to this day, they are the exceptions and most people will elect to play something from the past 15 years rather than something from 40 years ago. heh

P.S. I'm not actually a "brother", though. heh I'm the rare female gamer from back in the day. Hard to know that online, so I completely understand. ;-)

Re:Preach it brother

[allcoolnameswheretak]

most people will elect to play something from the past 15 years rather than something from 40 years ago.

If you only look at the last 15 years, you will miss some great games, like "El Grande", and of course the classic, "Settlers of Catan" which was released in 1995.

Jeez, time passes quickly.

Re:Preach it brother

[KatchooNJ]

most people will elect to play something from the past 15 years rather than something from 40 years ago.

If you only look at the last 15 years, you will miss some great games, like "El Grande", and of course the classic, "Settlers of Catan" which was released in 1995.

Jeez, time passes quickly.

Oh, I know... but it does seem true that most modern board gamers I see are very "cult of the new" and only want to play the new hotness. heh Most of the gamers in my board gaming group are like this. Meanwhile, I'm the wacko in the group with ancient-ass wargames and whatnot. heh My collection spans from (I think) the 40s until today. heh :-) If you include something like Chess or Go, it goes even further back. ;-)

TheGameCrafter

[preaction]

You don't even need Kickstarter, there are print-on-demand self-publishing for board games. Generally, board game publishing requires minimum runs in the thousands. A few years ago, I worked on the first version of TheGameCrafter, which makes it even easier. Then, once you've got a few prototypes, you can move it onto Kickstarter for a full production run.

Exploding Kittens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exploding Kittens is a game I can get behind! I don't care what it is about, I just love the name.
Signed,
Dog Lover

Cards for Humanity

[fluffernutter]

I just found out about it the other day. I'm sure I was the last one.

Re:Cards for Humanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that related to Cards Against Humanity?