Author Archives: admin

LET PEOPLE PLAY A ROLE – 22nd OF 55 FEATURES OF BEST-SELLING BOARD GAMES

Let people play a role – 22nd of 55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Board games can offer escapism for players. Indeed, before the advent of video games, this was a major part of playing board games – getting so ‘into’ the gameplay that all else outside the game disappeared. Nowadays of course it is harder to get people this deeply immersed and focused on a board game due to all the other noise and gadgetry around us.

But roleplaying can be a powerful way for people to learn about others, to empathise, to fantasise, and merely to have fun. Dungeons and Dragons is a classic example of how taking on a role and stepping into a fictional world can be very compelling. Today Dungeons and Dragons is heading towards the 50th anniversary of launch, and the underlying strength of the gameplay pattern and mechanisms remain as strong as ever.

At the lighter end of the spectrum that ol’ favourite Game of Life stands tall. Players take on a new persona and follow their character through life’s ups and downs, through life stages and try to head into a happy retirement. Game of Life has sold tens of millions of copies since launch back in 1960, and several generations have enjoyed playing their way through their own life journey with this iconic board game.

Game of Life proves that role playing doesn’t have to be for hard core gamers only.

Get People To Exercise Their Brains – 21/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Get people to exercise their Brains – 21/55 Features of Best-Selling Board Games

People like to stretch their Brains, and they especially like to prove they are smarter or know more than their friends and family, so brain teasing Games can work really well. There is a reason why Scrabble has been one of the best-selling games of all time, total sales reportedly exceed 150 million copies.

It’s not just Scrabble though – Boggle is another word game which has enjoyed considerable success over time. And of course, then there is the Sudoku phenomena when it seemed like everybody was buying games testing their numeric problem-solving ability.

There is no way you could describe these types of games as high-octane or as highly entertaining, but they do allow us to test our mental acuity, to prove how clever we are, to compete with others and to develop and sustain our brain power.

This type of game then offers much potential for high sales levels.

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/

Sign up now for our free BoardGameBiz newsletter offering insights, news and analysis of the business of Board Games. We’ll also send you a free copy of our book ’55 Features of Best-Selling Board Games’ – just click here to sign up

Pander to the urge to dominate – 20/55 Features of Best-Selling Board Games

Pander to the urge to dominate – 20/55 Features of Best-Selling Board Games

If you looked at the media reports about board games, they would tend to suggest that because board games are a positive activity which encourage social interaction, and have a range of other benefits that players play games for entirely worthy reasons.

But just because board games have positive benefits does not mean that the darker side of the human psyche remains in the bottle during playing board games. There are plenty of gams which encourage (sometimes vicious) competition. Monopoly, for instance, is a game which is all about dominating your opposition financially and putting other players out of the game. Risk is the ultimate game of megalomania, the game is about conquest and crushing your opponents.

People tend to be full of contradictory characteristics, but also families tend to be made up of people who view game playing differently from each other. There are plenty of people around who love to play games because it gives them an opportunity to compete and win against those closest to them.

The fact that the two games listed above have sold hundreds of millions of units should be good enough proof to show that games which appeal to our basest competitive instincts can be vastly commercially successful.

Chuck Some Technology In The Box – 17/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Chuck some Technology in the box – 17 of 55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Featuring the new technology of the moment can be a great way of driving Sales.

There’s no reason why you can’t add in a gameplay feature needing people to refer to / use their smartphones, social media or whatever else is the current hot technology.

The key point though is that whatever technology is added in needs to enhance the gameplay experience. Very simple mechanical technology can provide a thoroughly compelling gameplay, whereas sometimes having super high tech with the massive development costs that go along with that can look whizzy but be confusing or not deliver a great experience.

The way to have success with technology added to board games is to focus first and foremost on why people play board games, and how any tech can improve that play experience. People play board games for social interaction, so how can an added element make that social interaction better? For example, there have been several board games featuring a lie detector, and while the technology behind lie detectors and the efficacy of lie detectors is perhaps questionable in terms of accuracy, that almost doesn’t matter with social experience. The point is to deliver fun first and social interaction second.

Make a Game Around a Celebrity – 16/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Make a Game Around a Celebrity – 16/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Celebrities are a huge part of societal culture nowadays. They are well known and tend to have massive social media communities and followings which be accessed to sell merchandise.

Board games based on celebrities are not new – our research found an Elvis Presley game published in 1957, an MC Hammer game we think was launched in 1991 and a Britney Spears version of Twister in 2012.

It’s kind of obvious how this works, find someone really famous, pay them bucket loads of money, slap their face on the box and off we go! But beware, the secret is to fit the Celeb together with Gameplay that makes sense.

This type of game tends to be quite hit and miss, just because the person is famous doesn’t automatically mean that fans will want to buy a board game based on that celebrity, but a celebrity that fits well with a particular game format or as a brand extension can lead to commercial success.

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/

Sign up now for our free BoardGameBiz newsletter offering insights, news and analysis of the business of Board Games. We’ll also send you a free copy of our book ’55 Features of Best-Selling Board Games’ – just click here to sign up

Find A Way That Kids And Adults Can Play Together – 15/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Find a way that Kids and Adults can play together – 15/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

It can be a major frustration factor in playing family board games when the Adult has to keep losing to ensure the kids remain happy, so Games which balance out the Adult advantage can sometimes sell well. For instance, family targeted versions of Trivial Pursuit often feature different questions for children, and harder questions for Adults, or sometimes the nature of the Game/License makes it easier for the kids to win i.e. in a Disney edition of Trivial Pursuit, kids generally know more of what’s happened in their favourite Disney films, while the adults tend to have a hazy memory of the films they watched as kids themselves.

There are plenty of examples of a family game being aged downwards by simpler rules and themes e.g. Monopoly Junior and Clue/do Junior editions. But creating a game play that can genuinely prove compelling for both children and parents can open up big opportunities for board games. So many ‘Family’ games are really pitched at children and patients playing along to aid the development of their children. BUT if you can deliver a fun and compelling social experience for both within the same game you might just be onto a winner!

Get Your Players To Recruit Other Players – 14 of 55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Get Your Players To Recruit Other Players – 14 of 55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

One of the best strengths of board games as a business is that you can usually rely on people playing your game recruiting other people into buying and playing your games (as long as your games deliver a compelling and recommendable play experience!).

It takes a lot of money to sell consumer products via marketing and advertising. Why would you spend big bucks on traditional marketing when you can instead invest in incentivising your existing core players to recruit other people to buy and play your game?

Word of mouth/played at a friend’s house is a proven major factor in driving Games sales. Our team has conducted dozens of consumer research projects looking into why people buy and play with Games, and in every study we completed over more than two decades, recommendation, social proof – call it what you like – is the primary factor.

So, in order to ramp up sales of your board games, could you build a marketing program based on encouraging and even facilitating this word-of-mouth effect?

Become The Opposite – 13/55 Features of Best-Selling Board Games

Become The Opposite – 13/55 Features of Best-Selling Board Games

When you have a best-selling board game in your portfolio, you often find out that there are some flaws in the game. Despite the obvious commercial appeal of the game, sometimes the gameplay experience or the positioning of the game in the market open up some obvious possibilities to compete with the successful game by taking an opposite position in the market.

By way of an example, if you read online consumer reviews, many people state that the main versions of Trivial Pursuit take too long, and for some (but not all), can be too serious. This is despite the fact that Trivial Pursuit is one of the top selling board games of all time and is usually one of the first games mass market gamers get out to play when they have a social occasion.

Going back in time a while, Trivial Pursuit faced a strong competitive threat from upstart game ‘Wits & Wagers’, which made trivia game play more accessible by adding a gambling element which means that the smartest person doesn’t always necessarily win.

For every fantastically successful game out there, there is a gap in the opposite positioning to that game…therein lies a huge amount of opportunity!

Slap A License On It – 12/55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Slap a license on it – 12 of 55 Features of Best-Selling Board Games

People buy brands they know and trust, they also buy merchandise based on loved programs, movies, comics and more. Sometimes licensed board games can become best sellers based on this. Often given as a gift to someone who has a particular affinity to a particular brand, licensed games are not always renowned for their high-quality gameplay.

There are though many co-branded Licensed games whereby a well known and often much-loved board games brand will have a version featuring a License. Some good examples of this would be the Disney Monopoly or Disney Trivial Pursuit editions produced by board games giant Hasbro in conjunction with Disney. The trick is normally in ensuring that there is a good fit between the licensed and the existing board games brand – for example, Monopoly with it’s family friendly image may not be well matched with merchandise for a gory horror movie! One of the best examples we have seen was the Risk board game edition with a Lord of the Rings license featuring the territories of Middle Earth, and unsurprisingly because of the fantastic synergy between the existing board game brand and license in that instance the product was a commercial success according to reports in the trade press at the time.

There are of course risks with Licenses, the most obvious risks are financial. Royalties and minimum guarantees can make even a successful game unprofitable. Moreover, utilising a License is not a guarantee of success. Just walk-through discount stores used as clearance channels for overstocks by Games companies and you will see plenty of Licensed Games in there at 25% of their original price!

Market The Hell Out Of It – 11 of 55 Features of Best Selling Board Games

Market The Hell Out Of It – 11 Of 55 Best Selling Board Games

Frankly, some games succeed because of the level of Marketing that goes behind them, if the Marketing stopped, the sales may stop, but if you have the money to do it in the first place, big Marketing spend often = big sales (although not always big profit!).

One of the quirks of the board games business is the overlap with the rest of the toy business (the toy business looks at games and puzzles as a sub-category of toys). This means that many toy companies also have some games and puzzles in their portfolio. The interesting thing to note here is that the marketing model for toys is all about dumping as much stock as possible on retail shelves and in e-commerce warehouses, and then promoting simple but compelling key product features to children via mass market media (both social media platforms and TV advertising (yep, TVCs are still a big part of toy company marketing plans).

The difference though between board games and the rest of toys is that toys are normally designed for children to play with on their own, with other people normally not required. Games are above all a social experience and are typically a parentally driven purchase, which is a very different communication target for advertising – parents want to hear about educational and developmental benefits and about creating golden family moments.

Those toy companies who also sell board games tend to follow the classic toy marketing method i.e. heavy stock dump into the market and a lot of marketing investment.

The reality is that long term success in board games is normally driven by organic year on year growth, but there is no doubt that you can shift a lot of boxes with heavy marketing investment!

Board Game Biz

Board game business news, analysis and insights