Tag Archives: board game brand extensions

Change The Format – 24 of 55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Change The Format – 24 of 55 Features Of Best-Selling Board Games

Let’s face it, this is not the most imaginative of options, but it is arguably the most proven and the most effective path to creating top selling products.

There are many examples we could use, but one which seems to fit really well with this factor is Yahtzee. Poker is a generic game, and although Poker sets seem to have a moment in the headlines every decade or so, it is hard to have anything ownable or unique with Poker sets. You could run licensed Poker sets perhaps, but then you could do a licensed version of anything arguably!

What Yahztee does though is to take a known, generic game play and twists the format to create something more unique and ownable, which can then have a brand built around it. Since launch in 1956, Yahtzee has sold tens of millions of copies, so there is no doubting it is a best-selling game.

The question then becomes what other established Gameplay patterns could be out there just waiting for you to apply a format twist to? Now for everyone who has worked in the games business for a while there is at least one, if not ten, stories of someone who thinks they have reinvented Chess, but these ‘reinventions’ are often a bit lame, make the game less accessible and slower to play and don’t really add value. If you could reinvent Chess in a way which makes it quicker, easier to access, unique and can apply a brand over it you could find a best-seller. But there are of course many other game play formats out there just waiting for adaptation.

In addition, sometimes a company has an existing successful game that has been under extended. Brand extensions are a massive part of the board games business – any board games expert will tell you that – so if you have a successful perennial game there might just be a format change which will allow you to drive incremental sales. But remember Reece’s Law of Brand Extensions – a realistic target for a brand extension game should be 1/3rd of the original games sales. Like all rules there are exceptions to this rule, but you can’t just expect to keep churning out new formats of existing games with no limits, eventually sales start to reduce or cannibalise, but if you set realistic expectations you could just win big.

 

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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Four Proven Ways To Extend Board Games Brands

Four Proven Ways To Extend Board Games Brands

One of the best aspects of the board games industry from a business model point of view is that once you have established a successful board game in the market you can often spin off different versions of that game which stand a better chance of succeeding each time versus launching an entirely new game. This is because both consumers and retailers know and trust both the quality & experience that the brand will deliver.

Taking a quick look at the board games market, it is easy to observe four fairly straightforward ways to extend board games brands:

  1. Spec/price point variance

This way of extending board games brands is simple. You add or remove contents to increase or decrease the price point. Obviously you need to adapt the gameplay & instructions accordingly! This method of brand extension can open up new distribution opportunities: for instance, if you have a premium brand, you may open up discount/bargain retail channels via a down specced version of your game. Or conversely, if you sell primarily in budget retail you might be able to secure listings in upmarket department store chains by creating a special version with a higher specification and higher price point.

  1. Different gameplay format

If the original version of your game is a full board game, maybe you could extend via a dice game version or a cards only game. This way you can add some incremental sales opportunities. Beware though of cannibalisation with this method i.e. if you sell a new dice game version of your game successfully but people just buy that instead of buying the original version of the game that hasn’t necessarily helped you to move forward!

  1. Themed/Licensed editions

The classic example of a board games brand with ‘themed’ editions would be Monopoly. Whether it’s a new version for the Olympics or for a new movie, Monopoly has long since proven that one board game brand can sustain many iterations with a different theme.

  1. Digital versions

Digital gaming is a major business. Digital extensions of board games can be successful and bring new people into playing the original version of the board game. The major challenge though is that the digital world goes far deeper in terms of interactivity, depth and physical environments versus a board game. We’ve seen some dreadful ‘ports’ of board games which just take the same game & stick it onto mobile, console or online gaming. The game then tends to play badly because it is too shallow and basically not a compelling experience on a digital platform, so it can be easy to deliver a bad experience with a digital extension to an established board game.

 

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