Tag Archives: board games

Allow Kids (and Big Kids) To Bash Or Crash Something Frantically!

Allow Kids (and Big Kids) To Bash Or Crash Something Frantically!

48/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

If you hadn’t already noticed kids love smashing and bashing things. Games which allow them to exercise this urge without censure sell by the bucketload. Two of the best examples of this would be Hungry Hungry Hippos and Whac A Mole.

Hungry Hungry Hippos launched back in 1978. Industry veteran Fred Kroll reportedly discovered the game in Japan and licensed the international rights for the game. After selling those rights to Hasbro, Kroll was able to live comfortably from the resulting royalties. The game has sold many millions of units over time. The long-term success of the game is based on the impulse of kids (& big kids) to bash things and to compete in a frantic fashion.

Physical games can be massive sellers, as long as the play is frantic and compelling!

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Why Board Games Sell Better In Some Countries Vs Others

Why Board Games Sell Better In Some Countries Vs Others

Board Games are a cultural product. Like books, movies or music they come from somewhere and someone. Therefore, each game is heavily influenced by the culture of the creator and of the company publishing the game.

Of the many reasons why board games succeed or fail, one of the most important is cultural fit. Board games are most often based on a combination of a). social interaction dynamic i.e. the process of playing the game and b). content. Both of these factors vary from country to country and from culture to culture. In terms of the gameplay dynamic for instance, we could compare the mass market gamer of Germany with the average person who buys and plays a game in the UK. In Germany, what would be considered a family game which children could play and enjoy is (taking a general view) far more complex than what would be seen as the right level of complexity in the UK. From a content point of view also, culture can have a massive impact. Games with trivia content for instance only tend to work on a global basis when they are based on a global entertainment franchise which is all about the show, or when the topic is universal…but even then the content may need some local tweaking.

Artwork is another cultural point of difference. Quite often when we work with companies looking to sell more games outside their own country we have to help them to understand that artwork styles vary a lot by country – the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Japan – these may all be markets in which you want to sell your game but if you are using an illustrated box front it can be quite hard to find a global pack design which appeals equally in each market and does not look out of place.

The media landscape also varies significantly by country and therefore by culture. This can have a massive impact – product placement for instance offers great opportunities to promote some types of board game – for instance advertising a gameshow based game during the gameshow itself or in the advertising break can be extremely effective in terms of driving sales. The challenge though is that media and advertising regulations vary by country.

Therefore, if one of your primary goals is to secure global distribution for a game, you need to incorporate this into your planning and product development process from the start to ensure you end up with a product which meets those goals.

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The Important Role Of Pay Off And Climax In Board Games

The Important Role Of Pay Off And Climax In Board Games

There are many different reasons why people play board games and various different parts of board games play which are enjoyed. People aren’t all the same, so they choose to play and choose what to play based on often quite different motives. Historically at least, the archetypal driver of board games play for families was the mother of the household who would want to use board games as a way to bring the family together. While much has changed in society in recent decades, this role of the matriarch of the household is still a strong driver of board games play. But even then, this is an over simplistic characterisation of what drives interest in playing board games. Everybody is different, and therefore they are motivated by a number of other factors, and their choices tend to be different based on the complexity of the human spirit and personality.

Having said all that, one fundamental perennial factor is that those games which deliver a pay off moment along with a rising climax seem to appeal to something universal in all of us. A classic example of a game driven by pay off and climax would be Jenga. Jenga is a game which tests dexterity and visual analysis of a structure, which doesn’t sound that exciting, but the climactic build up to the crescendo of the tower collapsing is a thoroughly compelling factor.

More broadly though, aside from just the sheer climax of a game like Jenga, many long-term classic games deliver a pure moment of someone winning and someone losing. There are many examples of board games that don’t have this of course, but those games which don’t have a big pay off tend to need a really strong and engaging theme or a really compelling and engaging social interaction built into the gameplay.

When you launch your next new board game , perhaps you could view it from the lens of whether it is delivering a compelling build up to a major event or win for one or even better all of the players! If we go back to the example of Jenga, the moment the tower collapses is a fairly shocking event for the person who touched the tower last, but for everyone else it is a moment of relief and ‘schadenfreude’ (meaning taking pleasure in the humiliation or suffering of other people!). There are many ways in which board game mechanisms can deliver this type of climactic event, and that is a long-term proven driver of commercially successful board games.

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The No. 1 Marketing Factor In Selling More Board Games

The Number One Marketing Factor In Selling More Board Games

There are plenty of complicated marketing plans out there for you to try to persuade people to buy your games. There are certainly plenty of companies willing to take your money for advertising across many media.

There is however one fundamental marketing activity which nearly always works for games which are compelling to play. That primary activity is getting people to play your games! This won’t work of course if your product is all glitz and promise but lacking in compelling gameplay – you need to have a good game for this to work.

The reason why more board game companies don’t spend as much time, energy and money as they should do in getting people playing their games is because it takes a lot of hard grind and a willingness to think laterally and not just to follow the crowd. Parts of the board games business are driven by massive toy companies who have the typical model of launching by selling as many boxes into retail as they possibly can and then spending 15-20% of their forecast revenue on mass market media campaigns.

Hasbro as the long time biggest board games company in the world tends to follow this classic toy business approach, but then they have some massive advantages that you won’t have – they have so many of the all time classic games brands that tend to sell themselves and keep performing year after year.

Hasbro’s Wizards of The Coast (WOTC) business is a better model on how a games specialist business should run marketing though. Massively under rated and under reported, WOTC was bought by Hasbro primarily for Pokemon trading cards back in the day, but came with the unexpected long term hit trading card game franchise Magic: The Gathering. There is no doubt that Magic is a great game, but when that underlying awesome gameplay is combined with structured grass roots marketing (which is all about getting people playing the game and looking to buy more cards to upgrade their deck) you get a powerful formula as follows: great gameplay x game play stimulation x building a fan community.

One of the reasons why Asmodee has built such a brilliant business over the last decade or so, when they moved from being primarily a distributor with some own brands/products in the French market and a few other toeholds around Europe to being the biggest games company which isn’t also a toy company! One of the fundamental drivers of Asmodee’s success has been the practise of gameplay demonstrations – at festivals, in stores and in other locations. We attended an outdoor music festival in the north of the UK last year, and needless to say Asmodee had a tent there getting people playing games. When Asmodee brought Dobble over from France (where it had become a top selling game), there were some who laughed at the idea that such a quirky unusual looking and unusually named game could establish a presence in the cynical, label/license and mass retail driven UK market. A few years later and Dobble is a MASSIVE success in the UK board games market. The path from start to success was not driven by media spend, online metrics or any of those other factors – although they may have played a part – the success was driven by getting people playing a game which is simple enough that nearly anyone can play, but so compelling that nearly everyone becomes heavily immersed in the game.

That is the type of game which people will go out and encourage their friends to buy and play, and this is exactly the formula for organic growth in the board games business.

The challenge is that it takes time and effort to find ways to get people actually playing games instead of just buying them and leaving them in the shrink-wrap in a cupboard. But for long term success, building brands and organically growing games with great gameplay away from the pressure of needing instant HIT level sales via mass market retailers becomes the only logical step.

How many games has your company launched with the strategy of nurturing and taking years to grow sales based on the most fundamental factor of letting great gameplay speak for itself?