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Hacks and Variants

Board Gaming in 2020 Will Be DIY

A Reply to Ignacy Trzewiczek

Everybody makes their own fun. If you don’t make it yourself, it isn’t fun. It’s entertainment.

- David Mamet, ‘State and Main’

Ignacy,

I read your call for insight about the future of the board game industry. As a board game junkie AND a former fortuneteller, I am uniquely qualified to realign your compass. Here’s the short version:

Sales of new board games will TANK this year. Mainly because…

1. No one has any money.
2. No one has time to play the games they already have.
3. Kickstarter resentment.

This has been in the making for a while. In late 2018 Meeple Like Us committed to a “Depth Year”. They vowed they wouldn’t buy new games until they’d played all the games they already owned. If memory serves me they got more than a little encouragement on Twitter. This year I saw some similar commitments.

There’s going to be a particular rejection of Kickstarter games. The parade of miniature-heavy Kickstarters with backer-only add-ons never sat right with a lot of gamers. Plus the lag…