-
W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
-
• Publisher Looney Labs has announced that it's reducing the number of distributors it works with in the United States, going "from dozens of companies" in the hobby market, according to CEO Kristin Looney to just two: ACD Distribution and Alliance Game Distributors. Publisher Services, Inc. (PSI) will continue to distribute Looney Labs' titles to mainstream outlets in the U.S.
As Looney explained in a press release about the change, "the new distribution network will offer better opportunities to fine tune our communications with retailers. The big win for retailers is that our marketing kits and promotional materials will now become available through Alliance and ACD on a subscription basis, something our retailers have been requesting. And when we make short-run items, we will have the ability to offer them to stores through distribution, something we were unable to do with the larger network."
• Along the same lines, in July 2011 Playroom Entertaiment signed an exclusive distribution deal with ACD Distribution. I spoke with Playroom's Dan Rowen at the time and he said, "We're really excited at the opportunities to focus marketing efforts for the retailers, which you don't normally have when you work with a variety of distributors. This deal with ACD provides us with the opportunity to do that. It's nothing that the other distributors did. They helped us grow our line." (I'll note that Looney gave similar props to those cut out of its distribution future: "We have many friends at the smaller distributors who have sold our games for many years, and we do appreciate all that they have done for us.")
Rowen went on, "We can focus our marketing efforts to pass along free product and incentives to stores to run events. We can monitor what's happening, and we'll have more info on which stores are marketing which products in our lines. We can send out more demo units and help retailers sell our products." By "streamlining" internal business at Playroom, Rowen also states that the change should give the company more opportunity to explore sales in the toy and educational markets.
When I asked Rowen whether such exclusive distribution deals could harm the larger marketplace, given that smaller distributors would have fewer titles to offer and thereby give retailers an incentive to go with those who do have exclusives, he said, "I don't think the entire industry is turning that way. I think direct communication through distribution [that is, having direct knowledge of who is buying which products] is going to give us a leg up, and some other companies will find that to be the case as well."
• MTV Geek's Matt Morgan posted a two-part "best games of 2011" series on that site, and the top spots are held by Stronghold Games' remake of Confusion, David Sirlin's Yomi, Risk Legacy and A Few Acres of Snow.
• Designer Rob Daviau answers ten questions, mostly about Risk Legacy, on The Old Board Gamers' Blog.
• Eric Franklin explains "what he does" in a blog post on Gamethyme, giving insights into the localization process that takes a game from one language to another and what can go wrong in the process. An example:
Quote: I ask questions for clarification, and tweak the wording as appropriate. Sometimes the games will go through multiple cycles. To give you an idea what the rules look like when someone don't localize them first, check out Mall of Horror (if you can find a copy). In the case of Ghost Stories, for example, the game itself (and components) was changing faster than we were getting it translated. This led to a great deal of confusion and problems with the final translation. In fact, these two games (more than any other) have driven me to ask more and better questions.
• With Memoir '44: Hedgerow Hell and Memoir '44: Tigers in the Snow both out of print, Days of Wonder has posted all four Overlord scenarios included in those two expansions online for download.
• Jaime Polo interviews designers Henrik and Åse Berg in a blog post on BGG. Interesting to learn that the Rattus prototype had only four role cards in it, with the publisher White Goblin Games asking for more, then still more.
• "Board Games: Commodity Trading Vs. Hobby Vs. Addiction" – that's the title of an article from Pete Ruth at The Superfly Circus, and while he makes a few interesting points in the article, I think he overlooks another option, namely aspiration.
People buy lots of games – many more games than they could reasonably play a number of times before they buy more – because they aspire to be the type of person who does play all of those games, possibly on a regular basis and perhaps even often enough to master all of them. People buy books and movies the same way; they want to be the type of person who has read or watched the classics or who has developed a broad knowledge of the field and can discuss the merits of game A vs. game B with their fellow gamers.
Admittedly, I might be pasting a smiley face on addiction by labeling it as aspiration, but given my relatively positive outlook on life when compared to that cynically negative ne'er-do-well Pete, I'm not surprised that I approach this topic differently. Along the same lines, I'd take issue with this:
Quote: If it's not an addiction or mental issue, why would one continually buy mediocre games and shelve them, knowing they'll be hard to sell and thus will cause financial loss? Why not simply buy only the best games, and forgo the poor ones?
Because I don't know which ones are mediocre and which are the best? Because tastes differ and your "mediocre" is my "best"? Because I like variety more than I like having space? Because I'm more charitable than most and like to explore a game system in depth, even when it's not apparent on first play that something is great?
I'll mention, for example, that at a recent game day I played Guatemala Café five times, and five plays puts me tied for #15 on the Guatemala Café "games played" list, which suggests that it has not been a favorite among BGGers, a feeling reinforced by the 6.33 rating the game bears. Guatemala Café has all the hallmarks of being a pedestrian game, of being something forgettable, of being as Pete puts it a "nebulously themed mash-up game" – and yet it didn't feel like that. Or maybe it did, but even so the other players and I found something compelling enough to have us play again and again.
I had the same experience with Architekton when my brother visited during the holidays. Our first game was kind of blah as we seesawed back and forth on opposite sides of the playing field. "Hmm," we said, after finishing, "is that all it is?" Then we played again and went after one another viciously. Much better! Then we started balancing attacks and defense. Then we tried the supposedly "broken" strategy of sticking it to the first player and found we could defend against that and win.
Maybe an important qualifier as to whether a game turns out to be mediocre or not is the attitude of those coming to the table. If you're ready to dismiss a game as pedestrian or something "churned out by the Euromills", you'll tend to find those qualities; if instead you approach a game with a sense of exploration – if you recognize the presence of one of your fellow humans on the other end of creation and are curious as to why they considered this game worthy of their time – you'll be willing to explore the terrain a bit more and see what there is to see.
Or perhaps, as Pete concludes, "it is indeed either an addiction or mental disorder". I don't know. What do I look like – a doctor?
(PS: +1 for using the proper spelling of "forgo".)
|
|
, still not going to allow me to work less. Gonna have to be OOP wargames, and nobody's picking those up left and right to sell at huge profits regularly I'm thinking. One or two old ASL items or something, but not a common maneuver.
