Tag Archives: board game business

Let Kids Play At Being Grown Ups – 46/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Let Kids Play At Being Grown Ups – 46/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

One of the most fundamental underlying foundations of the entire toy & game industry is that children like to play at being adults – from toy stethoscopes allowing children to play at being doctors, through to toy workbenches, children playing as adults is a major theme.

The same applies with board games. If you look at some of the all time best-selling board games, several iconic games follow this same path of children replicating and playing at being adults. Just to name three – Operation, Game Of Life and Pay Day. Operation is again back to kids playing with stethoscopes, except in Operation they go one step further they have been promoted to the role of surgeon! Game Of Life is at the very core of the gameplay a simulation of adult life. Pay Day (one of our favourites) is a simple family game based on the concept of replicating the monthly cashflow cycle of a salaried worker.

 

We run a Consultancy business for toy & game companies. We work with major companies through to start ups. For more information on how we help toy companies grow their distribution around the world: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/blog/toy-co-growth-booster-program/

Give People A Knowledge Test – 30/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Give People A Knowledge Test – 30/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Trivia is a long-established board games genre. In fact, according to Board Game Geek, the first trivia game was The Traveller’s Tour Through The United States which released c. 1822.

Proving how much we know is a really interesting game play format. Trivial Pursuit is of course the best-known trivia game as well as the highest selling with over 100 million copies sold since launch back in 1981. When Hasbro purchased the brand back in 2008 for a reported $80m from their long-time licensor Horn Abbot, you can bet that Horn Abbot saw the value in games based on testing the knowledge of players.

The additional advantage of trivia games is just how easy they are to extend – if we again look at Trivial Pursuit, there have been many different versions testing both general and specific knowledge including a Family edition, a Disney version, Star Wars editions and much more.

The challenge today of course is that there are so many trivia games out there already, and the format is considered to be completely done i.e. hard to tweak or twist to add any real innovation. That being said though, we have seen that every few years someone does manage to tweak the formula and create something new compelling and commercially appealing based on giving players a knowledge test.

 

We run a Consultancy business helping board games companies to grow. We have experience of most major board games markets around the world and our team has developed more than 200 board games including versions of classic games like Monopoly, Clue/do, Risk, Game of Life etc. For more information on our services (including our Export sales Consultancy) please just click here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services/

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