How To Create A Best-Selling Board Game

There is no easy way to create a top selling board game. Statistics are against you as much as anything else. Due to the low barriers to entry in the board games business there is an ever-increasing proliferation of games in the market. To put this in context, the average board games company looks at somewhere between 400-600 new game ideas each year to launch anywhere between 1 to 10 new games each year, some review as many as 2000 new games each year. Consumers of board games products have an exceptionally large choice – a quick search on Amazon reveals more than 10,000 board games (this is without looking at cards games, dice games and other formats of games).

Therefore, you are very unlikely to create the next best-selling board game. However, there are some ways to increase your chances:

1.       Be Prolific – very few people ever got far on one game. There are of course some very notable exceptions, but our team knows dozens of professional board game creators, and nearly all of them are prolific. Over the course of time originators could be expected to create more than 100 board game concepts and gameplays. Clearly most games created don’t get any traction, even if they get to market they are unlikely to stay in the market for long, so the most effective way to give yourself a chance of creating a best-selling game is to be prolific.

2.       Be Great At Selling – this is an obvious factor, but nevertheless critical. If creators spent as long refining their selling skills as they do tweaking the finer points of gameplay then more of them would have best selling games in their portfolios.

3.       Jump On Trends At The Right Time – the most obvious example of this would be What Do You Meme, which has been remarkably successful. Memes had been around for some time when this game was launched, but that’s actually the key success factor – trend based games need to be carefully timed to be fresh and new while also being in the minds of enough people as a relevant trend. Go too early on a trend and it does not click with enough people, go to late and the market is already full. Cultural trends grow at different rates, so it is rarely possible to predict when is the right time. So again, repetition will deliver the best chance of launching the right game at the right time at some point in an originator’s career.

4.       Gameplay Is King – while trends and themes can drive strong upfront sales, what propels a game ahead and establishes it as a top selling perennial classic is gameplay experience. You need players to want to really push the game on their friends and to want to play with new people all the time. This organic growth is by far the strongest underlying factor in building top selling games. Perhaps the most powerful example of this in recent times is Dobble from Asmodee. It seems so simple, but if you watch the energy levels of a group of people when they play this game you can see why so many people are so actively passing the game on to friends and families, which in turn explains why Dobble is now one of the best-selling games.

5.       Stand Out From The Crowd – one of the most fundamental changes in the board games business over the past few years has been the increased volume of new games on the market each year. Therefore, each new game has to fight for attention and shelf space alongside an ever-growing number of perennial classic games. Sometimes achieving standout is about the game concept or theme, it can also be around a celebrity or influencer co-operation, but there needs to be something about your game and the way it is launched that contributes to standing out, otherwise regardless of how good your game is you are likely to be trampled underfoot by the volume of competition scrabbling for attention.

Nobody said it would be easy! Our team knows people working for decades to try to launch a new best-selling game without ever achieving it but following these 5 points should help to increase your chances.

We run a Consultancy business helping board games companies to grow. We have experience of most major board games markets around the world and our team has developed more than 200 board games including versions of classic games like Monopoly, Clue/do, Risk, Game of Life etc. For more information on our services (including our Export sales Consultancy) please just click here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services/

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Why New Board Games Companies Are A Threat To Established Games Businesses

Barriers to entry have never been lower for the board games business. This has led to a proliferation of games products on the market and also of games companies. Whereas a new company would once have had to bang down the ever-resistant doors of retailers with unapproachable buyers and telephone switchboard operators who would resist at all costs aiding a new supplier, things today are in many ways easier for new entrants to the board games category.

It is completely possible to validate consumer appeal and propensity to purchase in reality ahead of seeking to sell to traditional retail businesses or to traditional board games distributors. Crowd funding sites and direct to consumer sales channels have revolutionised the gateway to the board games business to the degree that there have never been more games on the market before.

The challenge then comes down to elevating your company and products above the noise of everything else that is out there. For new companies this is an easier task which they can structure the business around as they grow, versus incumbent players in the market, who tend to have still a retail focused mindset versus a consumer-focused mindset. Board games companies which are relatively new today have many advantages versus established companies who are more beholden to their retail buyers and to their accompanying sales teams and company structure which inherently has to put traditional retail first avoid the traditional business model, and therefore is at least partly in conflict with competing routes to market.

There are numerous ways that established board games companies can manage this situation. They can form spin off divisions more focused on selling direct to consumers, they can form partnerships with other companies, and they can make acquisitions to bring the new starter mentality and consumer centric approach under their own roof.

What we see going forward though is that it will be risky to rely on the same old ways of doing business going forward. We nearly got through this article without mentioning Amazon, but it’s hard not to mention that Amazon still has huge growth ahead with more rollouts and ramp ups in more countries around the world. This is guaranteed to provide ongoing momentum for direct-to-consumer businesses (we classify Amazon as direct to consumer even though they are a retailer, because they are more of a self-managed selling platform versus traditional retail).

It would be an exaggeration to state that going forward the only constant is change, because board games are here to stay, and so are many of the traditional elements of the board games business, but nevertheless there can be no doubt that the future looks quite different. While the market position of games category leaders will remain strong, there will be an ongoing bubble of new entrants coming into the market increasing the competitive pressures on those companies who lack flexibility, as well as a perennial product line to rely on. We therefore predict a round of acquisitions ahead of established companies buying challenger brands and companies who can help them future proof their businesses.

These are interesting times!

We represent leading board game factories in China & India. We have saved our clients more than $10m over the last decade by connecting them with reliable factories with the right certifications who can offer more cost-effective board games manufacturing. For more information, just get in touch.

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5 Ways Germanic Games Companies Can Export More Board Games

Germany (along with neighbouring Austria & German speaking Switzerland) is one of the biggest board games markets in the world. Board gaming is a major social pastime in Germany, to a level that is way beyond most other markets. Whether that’s devoted parents spending time playing games with their children, or adults playing the latest deeply immersive board game, the reality is that the Germanic peoples truly embrace board game playing. There is no better exemplification of the strong marketplace than the Essen Spiel show, which in normal (non-pandemic) times sees more than 200,000 gamers descend to play games, get crushed by the crowds (!) and to enjoy gaming after hours. To put this in context, Gencon gets only around a third of these visitor numbers, despite the USA having a much larger population than Germany.*

The challenge for German speaking board games companies is that the type of games which work in the market there don’t always travel all that well, certainly not compared with the apparent ease with which a successful game in the USA, UK or France can sometimes sell across different countries and cultures. We have worked with more than dozen board games companies in German speaking countries, and our team has many close friends working within the board games trade there, but the reality is that many Germanic games don’t travel so well. There are two primary reasons for this:

1.       Deeper, more complex game play as standard.

2.       Artwork style which does not translate as well to other markets vs the prevailing art style from other countries.

This is quite a risky article for us to write, because we don’t want to offend our many friends, colleagues and clients in Germany, so we certainly don’t make these points to offend people. But in order to help German board games companies export more games and grow profitably, we need to state the truth as we see it. The standard level of complexity and depth of instructions tends to be beyond the attention levels of mainstream potential game players in other markets.

Additionally, although artwork is highly subjective, there are definitely prevalent art styles from country to country, and these can be quite different. Many of the games which sell very well in the German market have pack designs which don’t automatically translate to other cultures quite as well as from some countries.

Having started with explaining why we think German games companies don’t export as many games as they could, we will now take a look at 5 ways in which they can sell more games overseas:

1.       Develop some simpler but equally compelling gameplays – those German speaking games companies who have enjoyed some degree of export success tend to have success with the simpler games in their portfolios. This does not mean that you can’t still develop games to the level required for success at home, but it just means allowing some thought and development resource to be directed to the export markets. If the necessary expertise is not available in house for this, there is a myriad of freelance resource out there of exceedingly high pedigree and capability.

2.       Consider creating ‘export’ artwork variations on priority products –

Where a company is keen to sell particular games overseas we have seen more success achieved when the company is willing to adapt the original version of the game as required to meet the prevailing needs of the export market.

3.       Develop games to brief for other markets – then see how they can be adapted for the market in Germany. One feature of the board games business in Germany is the proliferation of board games products. So many new games come to market every year, and nearly every company has multiple new titles coming to market every year. Surely there is capacity to develop a minority of titles focused on export markets first, German markets second?

4.       Be flexible if you can’t be bespoke - On games which can’t easily be changed for overseas markets, ensure maximum flexibility on trading terms, MOQs etc to give the games their best chance of finding good distribution.

5.       Run analysis on which types of games work well in BOTH German speaking countries and outside the region – there are some types of games which work across both German speaking and non-German speaking markets. If your team hasn’t analysed all games which exported well from the German market to see what they could learn, we do recommend running that exercise to create clarity on what gives the best chance of achieving success both in and outside the home market.

In conclusion, the reality is that German speaking markets represent less than 10% of the global board games market, therefore to maximise their chances of growth, focusing on what is needed for success overseas should prove more successful in the long term versus only selling the games which have already met the needs of the German speaking markets.

*https://www.dicebreaker.com/topics/essen-spiel/news/essen-spiel-2020-covid-19-unchanged#:~:text=Essen%20Spiel%20takes%20place%20in,Gen%20Con's%20approximate%2070%2C000%20visitors.

We help board games companies grow profitably. To date we have delivered c. $90m in new sales revenues for board games across the world. We have also saved our clients around $10m in manufacturing cost savings. Our work has helped more than 100 companies. To find out more about what we do & the services we offer to help board games companies profitably grow, just click here: www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services