7 ms·

We’re in a golden age of board games

128 points by andrewl 4y ago

boberoni 4y ago
https://archive.vn/r5zP6 https://archive.vn/r5zP6
ars 4y ago
I wish board games cost $20, not the $50 they charge. For $50 I have to be careful to make sure any game is an awesome game, and indecision means I don't buy very often. If they were cheaper I would be more OK taking a risk on a new game.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  The cost of production should be much lower? Wonder if they could sell much higher at cheaper prices so the volume is actually incremental. Hope someone tries.
- makeset 4y ago
  Still cheaper than a family trip to the movie theater here, so worth it to me even if played for just one night.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
    Indeed, harsh reality. Movie theater pricing is extreme.
- solardev 4y ago
  You can often find them used on board game geek, or try them out on boardgamearena first FYI
- gsatic 4y ago
  They could probably do better if they targeted schools. While having Fun seems to be the primary goal, there is a whole lot of Learning happening in many Games.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    How do you even publish a game that will resist kids at a school? They will bend the cards, lose the pieces, tear up the manual.
    - Razengan 4y ago
      Sounds like a niche waiting to be mastered, then.
    - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
      You can deal with bent cards and give copies of the manual, filing away an original. You can make sure all the pieces get put back in the box. You can make sure to give them to appropriate ages: High school kids (aged about 14-18) are going to be more responsible than 5th and 6th grades (ages 10-12). I mean, they let us use computers in a computer lab - you know, back when mice had an actual, easy-to-steal tracking ball. We had to turn the mice upside down so the teacher could see that we didn't steal it. Similar things can be done here and it isn't like they'll be playing games with the frequency that we used to visit the computer lab. If this all fails, though, you can play digital versions. My game group does plays online sometimes and while it might not work well with everything, it does work.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Plenty of games have been marketed to and played in schools. Games like Extinction: The Game of Ecology [1970][1] were only available for schools. I spent my entire middle school years playing Wff 'n Proof[2] games, like Equations, On-Words, and On-Sets, where we competed on our knowledge of math, English, and symbolic logic. [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8434/extinction-game-ecology https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8434/extinction-game-eco... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Games
      - shagie 4y ago
        Admitting that I splurged a bit when seeing this one - https://montrosebiology.bigcartel.com/category/games https://montrosebiology.bigcartel.com/category/games (the card game is in the $20 to $30 price range). Food chain island ( https://buttonshygames.com/products/food-chain-island https://buttonshygames.com/products/food-chain-island ) could also be something that could show up in a grade school room. It could also be further laminated for additional durability.
- kuboble 4y ago
  Check if you can borrow board games from libraries around you. In my area it is the case and I use it frequently.
- tnel77 4y ago
  Personally, I go to https://boardgamegeek.com/ https://boardgamegeek.com/ and filter for games based on what I’m looking for and then I sort by reviews. Add them to a list on Amazon and keep an eye out for sales (across multiple retailers), especially around Black Friday.
- shagie 4y ago
  There are a lot of board games in the $20 to $30 price point (and even many under that). Going by Amazon prices, Azul, Splendor. Deep Sea Adventures is a press your luck game. Scout (also from Oink) is a... rummy with interesting hand management. Red Seven is one that got a fair bit of play at the office table (Asmadi games). Chatty Party if you want a cross between Excel and Cards against Humanity. Ticket to Ride is an excellent train connection game. Racoon Tycoon hasn't hit the table yet, but it looks interesting. New York Slice gamifies "one divides, the other decides" and is something that allows for younger players. Forbidden Island is an accessible cooperative game. On the topic of cooperative games, The Crew takes tick thing games in a cooperative direction. Fox in the Forest is an excellent two player trick taking game. --- I admit to a bad case of FOMO with bard games. In the 90s and early 00s, I played board games in the MtG place in the San Antonio shopping mall in Palo Alto... and there were so many great games that I had played that were out then. I realizes there's a sampling bias because those were the games that people brought that were enjoyed... so now I have a low threshold for impulse buys on board games.
  - smhg 4y ago
    I would add The Castles of Burgundy to that price range list.
    - lazypenguin 4y ago
      One of my favorites and easy enough for new board gamers but the new print hurts my eyes!
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  Well, when it was cheaper I bought various garbage board games and encountered a nice different problem: they take a lot of space. So, no matter the price, space is a problem. That being said, I wish they costed just 50$: plenty of them (especially those with miniatures) cost 100+ and maybe you have to buy sleeves and maybe some "adapter" to fit everything in one box once expansion are bought. Another lesson learned is: never buy expansions. There are some very rare exceptions.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    > Another lesson learned is: never buy expansions. The last game of Carcassonne we played was the first game after we'd just purchased the big box with all of the expansions. It was just... too much.
  - askvictor 4y ago
    Japan has something of it's own game renaissance going on (some games make it big in the West), but space is a major consideration there. So almost all Japanese games are very compact (often, but not exclusively, card based)
    - morelisp 4y ago
      This view is somewhat biased by what games are small enough to bring over to NA/EU conventions to sell and pitch, and the lower price range of games publishers are willing to take a chance on. This in turn created some expectation that "good Japanese games are small" and became self-reinforcing in terms of what NA/EU publishers were willing to pick up. Yes, some designers like Pawn and Seiji Kanai keep working mostly in that small-box style (not unlike lots of NA/EU designers), but e.g. Hisashi Hayashi's or Yasushi Kuroda's games weren't small "because of Japan", they were small because they didn't have money to make big ones!
    - brindy 4y ago
      If storage space is a consideration checkout the range of “Tiny Epic Games” by Gamelyn Games. I have about 20 decent games taking up the space of 3 or 4 “normal” size ones.
- Fricken 4y ago
  My city has 3 board game cafes you can go to to try out various games. Pre-pandemic there were more.
  - Jedd 4y ago
    I wish there was some way you could have said what city/country you were talking about.
- squaredot 4y ago
  I know a lot of people who are passionate about board games, I hang out with a group of board game players from time to time, and I am quite an enthusiast myself. The complaint about prices is relatively recurring, but I don't think it's justified most of the time. People complain that some games are expensive, often referring to the quality of the material they offer, for the finishes, comparing it to other similar games, $100 seems to be a hard barrier to digest psychologically. When you buy a game, you buy an idea, a design. The cost is in the design, in the innovative mechanisms in it, and also a little bit in the illustrative art, but I think only secondarily. If a game costs me $120 but I play 20-30 games with three or four other friends, is it really expensive? If a game costs $30 but after 2 games I have already exhausted the game strategies and mechanics, was it really a good purchase? P.S.: The fact that many buyers use the appearance of a game to judge the appropriateness of its price leads to a very unpleasant consequence: manufacturers, in order to justify the price of a game, produce it in a box that is twice as big as it needs to be, because if the game is big it justifies a higher price, and so we end up with libraries infested with games that take 2X or 3X the space needed.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    There's really two separate issues in the pricing. - Games are getting a much higher production level than the past, and this costs more. Sometimes this is good, but often it isn't necessary, it's just to pad out margins. At least you can see where the money is going, but it makes everything less accessible to kids, people with a casual interest, and anyone with limited cash on hand. - Prices have just plain gone up. Yes, I can understand why a small-publisher POD title or a box of custom plastic is $100 even if I wish there were other options. But why has Catan gone from $25 to $60 MSRP even as the components have dropped slightly in quality? Bohnanza from $10 to $20? RftG, $20 to $35? These increases are a) largely pre-pandemic, b) since ~2015, tracking overproduced editions and industry consolidation rather than general inflation, so the cause is not really a mystery.
- pharmakom 4y ago
  Board games have little resale value, so that’s an option. A classic game has literally thousands of hours of play. I have a Catan set used almost weekly for 10 years. Reviews are crucial.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Board games sell for nearly as much or more than you paid for them. Resale value is fine. The real problem is weight; board games are heavy enough that reselling for the same price amounts to taking a $20 loss on postage. That's why it's better to buy them 10 at a time than one at a time if you're doing it through the mail.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      As someone who spent a big chunk of time in 2021-2022 trying to get rid of boardgames I don't want anymore, there's a lot working against reselling used games. It's a market where outside of the top ~100 games, a specific product can be hard to find for an individual even when shipping works out. This is also why math trades are popular - but 2020-2022 made popular venues for those more difficult too, and the breadth of games means that while any given math trade is going to contain some hard-to-find games, it's probably not going to contain your hard-to-find one. It's also a market for lemons. Lots of resellers don't even know if they're missing a critical piece, which printing/edition they have, if expansions are included, if it was a counterfeit to begin with, etc. Buyers have little way to distinguish people who know what they're selling from those who don't without lots of time investment. This also discourages market-makers from helping solve the logistical problems.
- barbs 4y ago
  I suggest going to boardgame meetups to try games before you buy. I also recommend the second-hand game market to both buy games cheaper and sell on games that you don't want anymore, keeping costs low. I fine-tuned my collection in this way.
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  Would very much recommend looking on Facebook Marketplace. It has been a source of 90% of our board games for this exact reason. We also use Board Game Geek and some youtube videos to get a feel for things as well.
irrational 4y ago
Eh, I think the golden age was 5-8 years ago. Between the increased prices, increased shipping, increased consolidation (Asmodee) and so much moving to crowdfunding sites; without the games being tremendously better, I feel like we are in a silver age, at best.
- sethd 4y ago
  I agree that it feels like we are post-peak. It probably depends on preferences but from my perspective the golden age started tapering off ~10 years ago. It could also be that we’re in the “here to stay” phase the article also suggests. So if we are in a silver age, as you say, let’s hope that it lasts a long time. :)
jimmySixDOF 4y ago
I have been a little bit astonished lately to see reasonably deep dives into board games that don't at least mention the possibilities Augmented Reality and digital immersion will bring to the table. Efforts like TiltFive are here today and widely available enhanced vision systems are not far off. I get that the anti-digital ink-on-cardboard ethos runs pretty deep; but you can get the best parts of both worlds. So, while I do like and agree with this article about a general resurgence, I just think we haven't even scratched the surface of a golden age yet.
- the_lonely_road 4y ago
  That’s like gluing wheels onto the side of a horse to call it a horse car. Horses are still thriving to this day as a hobby but that doesn’t change the fact that cars ate their lunch. Board games are much the same but if you are going to add a digital component, meaning you have already embraced the cons of the digital format, why not just go all the way and play the vastly superior video games to get all of the benefits of the format?
  - adammarples 4y ago
    Computer games still don't have the shared experience of gathering around the table with a few beers. Board games still have their place.
    - kibwen 4y ago
      The problem is finding a way to inject a digital experience without completely obliterating that feeling of analog togetherness. VR headsets, even with AR passthrough modes, are still too clunky, uncomfortable, and expensive. Meanwhile, the most popular way of achieving AR in practice is to use one's phone, but having everyone stare at their phone during a whole event feels almost as alienating as being physically isolated in the first place, because we're primed to think of our phones as tools for physical isolation.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
MrDresden 4y ago
Me and my partner both gave each other a boardgame, unbeknownst to us that the other was also doing so. And a sibling gave us a boardgame as well. We are in our 30's and have really never stopped playing boardgames with our friends. But I don't think there have been this many boardgame gifts underneath the tree since my childhood.
siquick 4y ago
I’d love to play more board games but only know one, maybe two people who would be interested. Can anyone give some good two player games?
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  Dominion is an EXCELLENT card game and has tons of expansions to keep it interesting. We have now accumulated almost 7 sets buying most of them used off marketplace!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- thelibrarian 4y ago
  7 Wonders Duel is great, and even better than the very good original. Patchwork is a very good space-filling tiling game. Its theme and premise may sound boring, but it is fun and very competitive. The small city-based Ticket to Ride variants play two players very well, and are also good with 3 or 4 players. Tak is a great abstract strategy game for two players. Concordia is an excellent game, and plays very well with two players on small maps (e.g. Cyprus or Egypt).
- lawn 4y ago
  There are so many different kinds of games that might or might not appeal to a person, but here are some that you can look up to see if they catch your interest: - Radlands - Brass Birmingham or Brass Lancashire - Spirit Island - Food Chain Magnate (beware, highly unforgiving) - 7 wonders duel - Great Western Trails - Wingspan
- Tomte 4y ago
  7 Wonders Duel is good. My favorites are Terraforming Mars and Through the Ages. Both are very good at 2 players. Puerto Rico is an older one, and it's great, and it has a separate 2 player rule set.
- captn3m0 4y ago
  In addition to 7Wonders:Duel, mentioned here already, a few other good ones are Jaipur, Patchwork. I've also been enjoying Kingdomino recently, which works equally well as a 2 player game (2-4 players on box). You might like this list[0], which uses BGG's "best for X players" vote, but BGG is biased towards heavier games. [0]: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/48970/best-two https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/48970/best-two
pessimizer 4y ago
We're really not, but we were from like 1995-2010, which inspired a rollup of the industry by private equity (pretty sure every game in this article is owned by the Asmodee Group, or whatever they're calling themselves now.) Now it's an endless wave of samey overproduced trash that intends to generate "IP."
- MattDemers 4y ago
  >Now it's an endless wave of samey overproduced trash that intends to generate "IP." Can't wait for the movie adaptations and shipping.
- rtpg 4y ago
  Yes this is a puff piece. But like... Carcasonne was 2000. There has been amazing progress in game design and depth. So many games that have wide audiences and that are just fun and well designed, that would not have been published 20 years ago because it would not fit into the right mold. For every "game meant to get 20 expansions", we have a wealth of very good replayable games that exist well on their own. For every game meant to launder 20 different kind of components, you get 4 wonderful games sold at cost and that are actually fun, with the tactileness being the flavor on top. I kind of agree that lots of games are OK with making their boxes "too much" nowadays (if only from a practical perspective of it being too big and just a lot of trash). But I think almost everybody at the creative level is just earnestly excited to make board games. Business people want to make business, but that's the same in every industry.
- cianmm 4y ago
  First I've heard of Asmodee Group, but from a quick Google they own a remarkable number of games (that they call "IP"). A quick note that they at least don't own Wingspan, the first game in the article. It's by an independent publisher called [Stonemaier Games](https://stonemaiergames.com https://stonemaiergames.com) who "grew up" on Kickstarter (and openly considered it a marketing tool in later years) but vocally moved away because the founder found the experience too stressful. They make some great games and I recommend checking them out! I particularly enjoy Viticulture, and Scythe if Fantastic, if you can find people to play it with.
miiiiiike 4y ago
I love board games. I started playing board games in 1995, have a little over 600 now, and have run all kinds of events over the years. We are not in a golden age. Back in 2013 I was invited to a dinner with the Asmodee brass during Toy Fair. They laid out their plans for the company and industry. It all came to pass very quickly. By Gen Con 2016 you could feel that the wheels were coming off. The opening moments of Gen Con 2016 were hectic. This was the first year where you could pay $10 to get into the show floor a little early and the people who didn’t know were furious. Seafall, Cry Havoc, and Scythe were getting their pre-releases and when the gates opened it was the usual stampede but what was different were the lines. People were pretty rude, it was rough. I watched a YouTuber walk perpendicular into the Scythe line, which was blocking the walkway, shout at the people in the line, and then start physically moving people apart when they didn’t get out of the way fast enough.. And here’s the thing. None of those games were very good. We can argue the point on Scythe, but Seafall is considered a massive failure and Cry Havoc was rethemed to the point of illegibility before release. A gaggle of people being rude over terrible games they were told they “needed” to buy was the end of the “Golden Age” for me. Every year since has felt worse. Asmodee gobbled up some of the best companies and now it’s changed hands multiple times. The studios are just logos on a box now, they’re shells of what they were. I’ve played dozens of games over the past two years and they aren’t like they used to be. If they’re not outright dull or poorly designed, they usually feel like copies of imitations of better games. I’ve had a subscription to Game Trade Magazine forever. Each month I tear out the blurbs of the games I want to buy. For the past two years I’ve been tearing out fewer and fewer ads. I tore out one page in the December 2022 issue. The game didn’t even look that good. I’ve basically stopped buying new games. The ideas just aren’t there. Board games aren’t going away, but this isn’t 2000-2015 either. But also, who cares? The excitement is draining from board games and RPGs but other things like Warhammer and GMT/historical war games are getting more interesting. RPGs and board games are just overexposed and need to rest for a bit.
- morelisp 4y ago
  The historical game space is the most interesting and vital it's been since the 70s, but you wouldn't know it from any of the "golden age" articles largely hyping the latest low-interaction euro or unbalanced area control minis game. RPGs... we'll see. Streaming has completely changed that market and I'm not sure its carrying capacity is in any meaningful sense tied to the number of players anymore.
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
The golden age of board games seems to have started around 1995 with the release of settlers of Catan, and has only gotten more golden since then. We’re probably in the diamond age of board games by now.
musicale 4y ago
Are there any competitive 3+ player games that aren't either parallel solitaire or kingmaking/vote who wins? Neither one of those seems fun to me. Nor do "social" deception games. And 2-player competitive games seem to devolve into steamrolling unless the players are (very) evenly matched.
- MattDemers 4y ago
  Oddly enough, this is a similar dynamic with certain video games. Either the game is so chaotic that skill doesn't feel rewarded, or skill is so rewarded that unless you have the exact same skill, and you're only learning/playing with each other, someone is inevitably going to get better and start crushing the other. I don't think that's an inherent flaw with the game itself, but with things like Fighting Games you have to still feel like you're having a good time (and be able to do cool things) while losing.
thesquib 4y ago
I think we are in a golden age of games personally. You can argue prices of new games have gone up, or have got worse, or whatever. And that may be true, but there are many many thousands of great games released over the last few decades that are great. Board games don't necessarily get better with new releases, the technology largely remains the same.

128 points by andrewl 4y ago

https://archive.vn/r5zP6 https://archive.vn/r5zP6

ars 4y ago

I wish board games cost $20, not the $50 they charge. For $50 I have to be careful to make sure any game is an awesome game, and indecision means I don't buy very often. If they were cheaper I would be more OK taking a risk on a new game.

hackernewds 4y ago
The cost of production should be much lower? Wonder if they could sell much higher at cheaper prices so the volume is actually incremental. Hope someone tries.
makeset 4y ago
Still cheaper than a family trip to the movie theater here, so worth it to me even if played for just one night.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  Indeed, harsh reality. Movie theater pricing is extreme.
solardev 4y ago
You can often find them used on board game geek, or try them out on boardgamearena first FYI
gsatic 4y ago
They could probably do better if they targeted schools. While having Fun seems to be the primary goal, there is a whole lot of Learning happening in many Games.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  How do you even publish a game that will resist kids at a school? They will bend the cards, lose the pieces, tear up the manual.
  - Razengan 4y ago
    Sounds like a niche waiting to be mastered, then.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    You can deal with bent cards and give copies of the manual, filing away an original. You can make sure all the pieces get put back in the box. You can make sure to give them to appropriate ages: High school kids (aged about 14-18) are going to be more responsible than 5th and 6th grades (ages 10-12). I mean, they let us use computers in a computer lab - you know, back when mice had an actual, easy-to-steal tracking ball. We had to turn the mice upside down so the teacher could see that we didn't steal it. Similar things can be done here and it isn't like they'll be playing games with the frequency that we used to visit the computer lab. If this all fails, though, you can play digital versions. My game group does plays online sometimes and while it might not work well with everything, it does work.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Plenty of games have been marketed to and played in schools. Games like Extinction: The Game of Ecology [1970][1] were only available for schools. I spent my entire middle school years playing Wff 'n Proof[2] games, like Equations, On-Words, and On-Sets, where we competed on our knowledge of math, English, and symbolic logic. [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8434/extinction-game-ecology https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8434/extinction-game-eco... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Games
    - shagie 4y ago
      Admitting that I splurged a bit when seeing this one - https://montrosebiology.bigcartel.com/category/games https://montrosebiology.bigcartel.com/category/games (the card game is in the $20 to $30 price range). Food chain island ( https://buttonshygames.com/products/food-chain-island https://buttonshygames.com/products/food-chain-island ) could also be something that could show up in a grade school room. It could also be further laminated for additional durability.
kuboble 4y ago
Check if you can borrow board games from libraries around you. In my area it is the case and I use it frequently.
tnel77 4y ago
Personally, I go to https://boardgamegeek.com/ https://boardgamegeek.com/ and filter for games based on what I’m looking for and then I sort by reviews. Add them to a list on Amazon and keep an eye out for sales (across multiple retailers), especially around Black Friday.
shagie 4y ago
There are a lot of board games in the $20 to $30 price point (and even many under that). Going by Amazon prices, Azul, Splendor. Deep Sea Adventures is a press your luck game. Scout (also from Oink) is a... rummy with interesting hand management. Red Seven is one that got a fair bit of play at the office table (Asmadi games). Chatty Party if you want a cross between Excel and Cards against Humanity. Ticket to Ride is an excellent train connection game. Racoon Tycoon hasn't hit the table yet, but it looks interesting. New York Slice gamifies "one divides, the other decides" and is something that allows for younger players. Forbidden Island is an accessible cooperative game. On the topic of cooperative games, The Crew takes tick thing games in a cooperative direction. Fox in the Forest is an excellent two player trick taking game. --- I admit to a bad case of FOMO with bard games. In the 90s and early 00s, I played board games in the MtG place in the San Antonio shopping mall in Palo Alto... and there were so many great games that I had played that were out then. I realizes there's a sampling bias because those were the games that people brought that were enjoyed... so now I have a low threshold for impulse buys on board games.
- smhg 4y ago
  I would add The Castles of Burgundy to that price range list.
  - lazypenguin 4y ago
    One of my favorites and easy enough for new board gamers but the new print hurts my eyes!
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
Well, when it was cheaper I bought various garbage board games and encountered a nice different problem: they take a lot of space. So, no matter the price, space is a problem. That being said, I wish they costed just 50$: plenty of them (especially those with miniatures) cost 100+ and maybe you have to buy sleeves and maybe some "adapter" to fit everything in one box once expansion are bought. Another lesson learned is: never buy expansions. There are some very rare exceptions.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  > Another lesson learned is: never buy expansions. The last game of Carcassonne we played was the first game after we'd just purchased the big box with all of the expansions. It was just... too much.
- askvictor 4y ago
  Japan has something of it's own game renaissance going on (some games make it big in the West), but space is a major consideration there. So almost all Japanese games are very compact (often, but not exclusively, card based)
  - morelisp 4y ago
    This view is somewhat biased by what games are small enough to bring over to NA/EU conventions to sell and pitch, and the lower price range of games publishers are willing to take a chance on. This in turn created some expectation that "good Japanese games are small" and became self-reinforcing in terms of what NA/EU publishers were willing to pick up. Yes, some designers like Pawn and Seiji Kanai keep working mostly in that small-box style (not unlike lots of NA/EU designers), but e.g. Hisashi Hayashi's or Yasushi Kuroda's games weren't small "because of Japan", they were small because they didn't have money to make big ones!
  - brindy 4y ago
    If storage space is a consideration checkout the range of “Tiny Epic Games” by Gamelyn Games. I have about 20 decent games taking up the space of 3 or 4 “normal” size ones.
Fricken 4y ago
My city has 3 board game cafes you can go to to try out various games. Pre-pandemic there were more.
- Jedd 4y ago
  I wish there was some way you could have said what city/country you were talking about.
squaredot 4y ago
I know a lot of people who are passionate about board games, I hang out with a group of board game players from time to time, and I am quite an enthusiast myself. The complaint about prices is relatively recurring, but I don't think it's justified most of the time. People complain that some games are expensive, often referring to the quality of the material they offer, for the finishes, comparing it to other similar games, $100 seems to be a hard barrier to digest psychologically. When you buy a game, you buy an idea, a design. The cost is in the design, in the innovative mechanisms in it, and also a little bit in the illustrative art, but I think only secondarily. If a game costs me $120 but I play 20-30 games with three or four other friends, is it really expensive? If a game costs $30 but after 2 games I have already exhausted the game strategies and mechanics, was it really a good purchase? P.S.: The fact that many buyers use the appearance of a game to judge the appropriateness of its price leads to a very unpleasant consequence: manufacturers, in order to justify the price of a game, produce it in a box that is twice as big as it needs to be, because if the game is big it justifies a higher price, and so we end up with libraries infested with games that take 2X or 3X the space needed.
- morelisp 4y ago
  There's really two separate issues in the pricing. - Games are getting a much higher production level than the past, and this costs more. Sometimes this is good, but often it isn't necessary, it's just to pad out margins. At least you can see where the money is going, but it makes everything less accessible to kids, people with a casual interest, and anyone with limited cash on hand. - Prices have just plain gone up. Yes, I can understand why a small-publisher POD title or a box of custom plastic is $100 even if I wish there were other options. But why has Catan gone from $25 to $60 MSRP even as the components have dropped slightly in quality? Bohnanza from $10 to $20? RftG, $20 to $35? These increases are a) largely pre-pandemic, b) since ~2015, tracking overproduced editions and industry consolidation rather than general inflation, so the cause is not really a mystery.
pharmakom 4y ago
Board games have little resale value, so that’s an option. A classic game has literally thousands of hours of play. I have a Catan set used almost weekly for 10 years. Reviews are crucial.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Board games sell for nearly as much or more than you paid for them. Resale value is fine. The real problem is weight; board games are heavy enough that reselling for the same price amounts to taking a $20 loss on postage. That's why it's better to buy them 10 at a time than one at a time if you're doing it through the mail.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    As someone who spent a big chunk of time in 2021-2022 trying to get rid of boardgames I don't want anymore, there's a lot working against reselling used games. It's a market where outside of the top ~100 games, a specific product can be hard to find for an individual even when shipping works out. This is also why math trades are popular - but 2020-2022 made popular venues for those more difficult too, and the breadth of games means that while any given math trade is going to contain some hard-to-find games, it's probably not going to contain your hard-to-find one. It's also a market for lemons. Lots of resellers don't even know if they're missing a critical piece, which printing/edition they have, if expansions are included, if it was a counterfeit to begin with, etc. Buyers have little way to distinguish people who know what they're selling from those who don't without lots of time investment. This also discourages market-makers from helping solve the logistical problems.
barbs 4y ago
I suggest going to boardgame meetups to try games before you buy. I also recommend the second-hand game market to both buy games cheaper and sell on games that you don't want anymore, keeping costs low. I fine-tuned my collection in this way.
darkwizard42 4y ago
Would very much recommend looking on Facebook Marketplace. It has been a source of 90% of our board games for this exact reason. We also use Board Game Geek and some youtube videos to get a feel for things as well.

irrational 4y ago

Eh, I think the golden age was 5-8 years ago. Between the increased prices, increased shipping, increased consolidation (Asmodee) and so much moving to crowdfunding sites; without the games being tremendously better, I feel like we are in a silver age, at best.

sethd 4y ago
I agree that it feels like we are post-peak. It probably depends on preferences but from my perspective the golden age started tapering off ~10 years ago. It could also be that we’re in the “here to stay” phase the article also suggests. So if we are in a silver age, as you say, let’s hope that it lasts a long time. :)

jimmySixDOF 4y ago

I have been a little bit astonished lately to see reasonably deep dives into board games that don't at least mention the possibilities Augmented Reality and digital immersion will bring to the table. Efforts like TiltFive are here today and widely available enhanced vision systems are not far off. I get that the anti-digital ink-on-cardboard ethos runs pretty deep; but you can get the best parts of both worlds. So, while I do like and agree with this article about a general resurgence, I just think we haven't even scratched the surface of a golden age yet.

the_lonely_road 4y ago
That’s like gluing wheels onto the side of a horse to call it a horse car. Horses are still thriving to this day as a hobby but that doesn’t change the fact that cars ate their lunch. Board games are much the same but if you are going to add a digital component, meaning you have already embraced the cons of the digital format, why not just go all the way and play the vastly superior video games to get all of the benefits of the format?
- adammarples 4y ago
  Computer games still don't have the shared experience of gathering around the table with a few beers. Board games still have their place.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    The problem is finding a way to inject a digital experience without completely obliterating that feeling of analog togetherness. VR headsets, even with AR passthrough modes, are still too clunky, uncomfortable, and expensive. Meanwhile, the most popular way of achieving AR in practice is to use one's phone, but having everyone stare at their phone during a whole event feels almost as alienating as being physically isolated in the first place, because we're primed to think of our phones as tools for physical isolation.
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MrDresden 4y ago

Me and my partner both gave each other a boardgame, unbeknownst to us that the other was also doing so. And a sibling gave us a boardgame as well. We are in our 30's and have really never stopped playing boardgames with our friends. But I don't think there have been this many boardgame gifts underneath the tree since my childhood.

siquick 4y ago

I’d love to play more board games but only know one, maybe two people who would be interested. Can anyone give some good two player games?

darkwizard42 4y ago
Dominion is an EXCELLENT card game and has tons of expansions to keep it interesting. We have now accumulated almost 7 sets buying most of them used off marketplace!
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thelibrarian 4y ago
7 Wonders Duel is great, and even better than the very good original. Patchwork is a very good space-filling tiling game. Its theme and premise may sound boring, but it is fun and very competitive. The small city-based Ticket to Ride variants play two players very well, and are also good with 3 or 4 players. Tak is a great abstract strategy game for two players. Concordia is an excellent game, and plays very well with two players on small maps (e.g. Cyprus or Egypt).
lawn 4y ago
There are so many different kinds of games that might or might not appeal to a person, but here are some that you can look up to see if they catch your interest: - Radlands - Brass Birmingham or Brass Lancashire - Spirit Island - Food Chain Magnate (beware, highly unforgiving) - 7 wonders duel - Great Western Trails - Wingspan
Tomte 4y ago
7 Wonders Duel is good. My favorites are Terraforming Mars and Through the Ages. Both are very good at 2 players. Puerto Rico is an older one, and it's great, and it has a separate 2 player rule set.
captn3m0 4y ago
In addition to 7Wonders:Duel, mentioned here already, a few other good ones are Jaipur, Patchwork. I've also been enjoying Kingdomino recently, which works equally well as a 2 player game (2-4 players on box). You might like this list[0], which uses BGG's "best for X players" vote, but BGG is biased towards heavier games. [0]: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/48970/best-two https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/48970/best-two

pessimizer 4y ago

We're really not, but we were from like 1995-2010, which inspired a rollup of the industry by private equity (pretty sure every game in this article is owned by the Asmodee Group, or whatever they're calling themselves now.) Now it's an endless wave of samey overproduced trash that intends to generate "IP."

MattDemers 4y ago
>Now it's an endless wave of samey overproduced trash that intends to generate "IP." Can't wait for the movie adaptations and shipping.
rtpg 4y ago
Yes this is a puff piece. But like... Carcasonne was 2000. There has been amazing progress in game design and depth. So many games that have wide audiences and that are just fun and well designed, that would not have been published 20 years ago because it would not fit into the right mold. For every "game meant to get 20 expansions", we have a wealth of very good replayable games that exist well on their own. For every game meant to launder 20 different kind of components, you get 4 wonderful games sold at cost and that are actually fun, with the tactileness being the flavor on top. I kind of agree that lots of games are OK with making their boxes "too much" nowadays (if only from a practical perspective of it being too big and just a lot of trash). But I think almost everybody at the creative level is just earnestly excited to make board games. Business people want to make business, but that's the same in every industry.
cianmm 4y ago
First I've heard of Asmodee Group, but from a quick Google they own a remarkable number of games (that they call "IP"). A quick note that they at least don't own Wingspan, the first game in the article. It's by an independent publisher called [Stonemaier Games](https://stonemaiergames.com https://stonemaiergames.com) who "grew up" on Kickstarter (and openly considered it a marketing tool in later years) but vocally moved away because the founder found the experience too stressful. They make some great games and I recommend checking them out! I particularly enjoy Viticulture, and Scythe if Fantastic, if you can find people to play it with.

miiiiiike 4y ago

I love board games. I started playing board games in 1995, have a little over 600 now, and have run all kinds of events over the years. We are not in a golden age. Back in 2013 I was invited to a dinner with the Asmodee brass during Toy Fair. They laid out their plans for the company and industry. It all came to pass very quickly. By Gen Con 2016 you could feel that the wheels were coming off. The opening moments of Gen Con 2016 were hectic. This was the first year where you could pay $10 to get into the show floor a little early and the people who didn’t know were furious. Seafall, Cry Havoc, and Scythe were getting their pre-releases and when the gates opened it was the usual stampede but what was different were the lines. People were pretty rude, it was rough. I watched a YouTuber walk perpendicular into the Scythe line, which was blocking the walkway, shout at the people in the line, and then start physically moving people apart when they didn’t get out of the way fast enough.. And here’s the thing. None of those games were very good. We can argue the point on Scythe, but Seafall is considered a massive failure and Cry Havoc was rethemed to the point of illegibility before release. A gaggle of people being rude over terrible games they were told they “needed” to buy was the end of the “Golden Age” for me. Every year since has felt worse. Asmodee gobbled up some of the best companies and now it’s changed hands multiple times. The studios are just logos on a box now, they’re shells of what they were. I’ve played dozens of games over the past two years and they aren’t like they used to be. If they’re not outright dull or poorly designed, they usually feel like copies of imitations of better games. I’ve had a subscription to Game Trade Magazine forever. Each month I tear out the blurbs of the games I want to buy. For the past two years I’ve been tearing out fewer and fewer ads. I tore out one page in the December 2022 issue. The game didn’t even look that good. I’ve basically stopped buying new games. The ideas just aren’t there. Board games aren’t going away, but this isn’t 2000-2015 either. But also, who cares? The excitement is draining from board games and RPGs but other things like Warhammer and GMT/historical war games are getting more interesting. RPGs and board games are just overexposed and need to rest for a bit.

morelisp 4y ago
The historical game space is the most interesting and vital it's been since the 70s, but you wouldn't know it from any of the "golden age" articles largely hyping the latest low-interaction euro or unbalanced area control minis game. RPGs... we'll see. Streaming has completely changed that market and I'm not sure its carrying capacity is in any meaningful sense tied to the number of players anymore.

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

The golden age of board games seems to have started around 1995 with the release of settlers of Catan, and has only gotten more golden since then. We’re probably in the diamond age of board games by now.

musicale 4y ago

Are there any competitive 3+ player games that aren't either parallel solitaire or kingmaking/vote who wins? Neither one of those seems fun to me. Nor do "social" deception games. And 2-player competitive games seem to devolve into steamrolling unless the players are (very) evenly matched.

MattDemers 4y ago
Oddly enough, this is a similar dynamic with certain video games. Either the game is so chaotic that skill doesn't feel rewarded, or skill is so rewarded that unless you have the exact same skill, and you're only learning/playing with each other, someone is inevitably going to get better and start crushing the other. I don't think that's an inherent flaw with the game itself, but with things like Fighting Games you have to still feel like you're having a good time (and be able to do cool things) while losing.

thesquib 4y ago

I think we are in a golden age of games personally. You can argue prices of new games have gone up, or have got worse, or whatever. And that may be true, but there are many many thousands of great games released over the last few decades that are great. Board games don't necessarily get better with new releases, the technology largely remains the same.