Hacker News Reader

Comment by panzagl | Hacker News Reader

The Board Game Renaissance had started before Kickstarter, but KS has been a multiplier, and has allowed board games to outlast the usual hobby boom-bust cycle. I guess it's still an ongoing question if board games will eventually 'crash' the way wargames, RPGs, and collectible card games did in the past or whether the market will cool gradually and continue to support a couple big players plus a collection of indies, similar to the current PC game market.

View on HN

Yea, the analysis that Kickstarter is driving it is pretty poor, but if you think about why board games are booming, it's a dozens of small things multiplying.

GenCon has been growing attendance every year recently, BoardGameGeek has been around for many years, the Dice Tower has been going for years, TableTop is finishing season 3... There are lots of independent publishers, and crowdfunding models have worked their way into small publishers' business models...compare GMT Games' P500 model, for example.

Personally there's some disillusion with the state of D&D, and it's also true that board gaming is simply better now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. There are better games, different types of games, and people have more points of entry.

I think there's also a spot for board games as a social outlet that requires less commitment than D&D and is more accessible than videogaming; several years ago I used to get together with friends and bring videogame consoles, more recently it's board games (and they're super easy to play with new acquaintances too). I hate to say it but games like Cards against Humanity are, in a way, the Minecraft of board games; it starts with "party" games and before you know it you're playing BSG :)

The last time I went to a major game convention, board gaming was almost nonexistent. There were entire convention halls stuffed with people shuffling Magic: The Gathering cards, but if you wanted to play an old Avalon Hill war game you were SOL.

I'm not familiar with too many current board games, but the modern RPG boom is interesting because each popular game provides a highly distinct experience. It's not the D&D clones and poor designs of the 80s, or the shovelware of the d20 era.

The industry is microscopic compared to videogames, but it is growing, and I think the sheer quality of modern games will help to sustain that growth.

What do you mean by shovelware?

Shovelware refers to things that are (and implicitly shouldn't be) sold by quantity rather than quality. A shovel full of games for only $10!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com