Today, the Deerfield resident’s closet is overflowing with dozens of board games, thanks to a generous friend who gives the family a new one every holiday....

Recently they discovered a more sophisticated type of Monopoly game called Acquire, invented in 1962. They like it because it requires more skill; players buy and sell stock instead of properties.

The Warshawksys are seemingly experts at choosing the best board games. Indeed, Erik Arneson, of About.com’s Board and Card Games forum, chose Acquire as one of the top five best entries for Games Magazine’s Hall of Fame, in addition to Diplomacy, Scrabble, Risk and Taboo.

I often think there are no gamers in the media. What will it take to get ‘one of us’ to write a column in the regular news… every time we get a media watch report it is one of two things:

Reporters that mock games (usually with tongue in cheek disbelief that they actually are covering board games)

or

Inept attempts to do what they think is just enough to please the editor

The truth is, I haven’t seen one article in ‘regular’ print or TV news that hasn’t made me wonder about their incompetence in all of their other news stories.

Of course, if we were paying them, like some of those new-fangled News-Item-That-Really-Is-An-Ad-But-We-Are-Covering-It-Like-It-Is-News items I’ve seen recently.

Wow… I feel bad for people that still pay attention to regular news all of a sudden.

Sorry about the rant… we need all the press we can get.

The article’s “oddity” comes from the fact that the author of the article is unwittingly conflating the board game market as a whole with a subset:  board games sold in adventure/hobby (and comics) stores.  Comics & Games Retailer is a trade publication from the publishers of the Comics Buyer’s Guide.  It is given freely to specialty comics and games retailers.  It contains news and columns of interest to retailers and sales data based on surveys conducted by the magazine augmented by retailer comments.  This survey data is, of course, not all that rigorous, since it is self-selected.  The extent of the board game coverage in the magazine is the list of five games that appears every issue.  More important segments to hobby game retailers such as RPGs and CCGs are covered in more detail, and comics are covered in even more detail, since games were only included in what was originally called Comics Retailer in the 1990s when comic shops started carrying a little game called Magic:  The Gathering.

So, this reporter was handed a recent issue of Comics & Games Retailer by a retailer or industry person he was interviewing for this article, and he dutifully transcribed all of the board game coverage included in the “statistics”, which is the top five list.  Obviously, this reporter either didn’t realize that stores like Wal-mart do not fill out the survey card in Comics & Games Retailer, or he (or the editor) didn’t want to confuse people with the distinction between These Games Of Ours and board gaming as a whole.

I once stirred up a pot on this subject, arguing that journalists sound very knowledgeable on subjects I know nothing about, but come across as incredibly naive on subjects I know a lot about.  This article is a classic example.  The author just doesn’t know his subject - and probably doesn’t have the time or incentive to get smart in the area.

Now it is conceivable that Hasbro has 80% of the game market while still not having the top selling game if Hasbro simply has tons more DIFFERENT games.  Let’s say that Settlers sells more than vanilla Monopoly (which I doubt).  OK, but Hasbro has 1,000 versions of Monopoly, and more of Risk, Stratego, and Pretty Pretty Princess.

>Hasbro has 1,000 versions of Monopoly

Well, Hasbro licenses hundreds of versions of Monopoly, but companies like USAopoly and Late for the Sky actually publish most of them.

As for numbers, one number I have heard is that Rio Grande sold its two millionth game sometime in the last year.  This is after almost 10 years of operation.  On the other hand, a commonly quoted figure is that in the past 80 years of mass production, 250 million copies of Monopoly have been sold.  This would average out to 3 million a year, but let’s say somewhere between 1 million and 2 million in the USA.  In one or two years, Hasbro can sell enough units of Monopoly to equal Rio Grande’s entire unit sales.  I don’t think most hobby gamers understand how small their slice of the market is.

Just to emphasize JTJ’s point, assuming the numbers are accurate: “In one or two years, Hasbro can sell enough units of Monopoly to equal Rio Grande’s entire unit sales” over the past ten years. That difference is indeed impressive.

Eric

Yeah, but we got all the good games!!!! ^_^

The reporter has also obviously never seen a mancala board.