The Board Game Industry Is Burning – and It's Their Own Fault

I have rarely read a smugger blog post than this one. While the author isn't wrong about Final Frontier and their ultimately doomed practice of completing Kickstarter N with the funds from Kickstarter N+1, I find it hard to believe that companies like Cephalofair or Stonemaier are unaware of an escape hatch as simple as using a different freight code.

If you want a better discussion about tariffs and their impact on the Boardgame Industry:

https://stonemaiergames.com/the-math-of-tariffs/

As others have said, avoid this article. It doesn't add anything meaningful to the discussion.

Stonemaier has had so many people questioning the HTS code used they have commented on it as well. Turns out the website the highnoongame.com author relied on for giving tariff amounts is just not updated.

"The fact is that the tariff for 9504.90.6000–tabletop games–exported from China to the US is 145%."

Which undermines pretty much the entirety of the OP article.

Fun read, smug but I enjoy some opinion and life in my reading.

I don’t think people producing games being hobbyists rather than business people is quite the negative I feel this post presents it to be.

Penny Arcade posted about their business person negotiating nuclear disarmament in class. Kiko's strategy was to show them a fake, "See I disarmed," while holding onto the real one. And people fell for that, and he won.

So we reward that thinking in reality, of awareness of things, and how to get the goal, and while our board games have complex mechanics and people who live and breathe gameplay and testing, the minutiae of business concepts are eye-glazing afterwords.

How do we bridge that gap; and I'm not only referring to hobbyists. What kind of cognitive disruption gets us to address avidya:

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The "enemy" is avidya, which literally means "un-seeing." Avidya is motivated refusal to engage accurately with actuality.

https://meaningness.substack.com/p/living-beautifully-cuttin...

Ah yes, I'm sure we all want Hasbro making our indie board games because they're adults who pay someone to optimize their shipping costs.

It's kind of wild to be this smug about a technicality (um ACKCHUALLY it's under THIS code and not THAT one, can't you even read lol) and act like anyone should just be ready for historically high tariffs applied on the whims of an autocrat when you were formerly doing business in one of the most business friendly countries on earth.

People trusted logistical partners to do their job, and it was evidently misplaced, but to act like being caught off guard by all that is laziness is cringeworthy. Comes off like they have an axe to grind.

And while the blog post was informative about some nuance of the import situation, the author's tone is annoyingly smug and takes entirely too much pleasure in criticizing others in their industry; it's enough to turn me off of buying anything from them.

I feel like we need to use escrow more. Stuff that verifies that the buyer has the money before the seller produces the product. It's like the buyer confirming that the seller has a factor before buying. It makes it symmetrical. Then, whatever happens, the seller knows if they fulfill the contract they will get their money. Or at least have the amount equal to the costs so you aren't stuck holding the bag if they tank.

The comments on this article debunk many of the claims of the article itself. So far, the comments have not been deleted.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43748216