Last week on the Stonemaier Games monthly e-newsletter (subscribe here), I shared a demographic survey with our subscribers. I’ve done this a few years in a row now, with the intent being to learn more about our followers so we can better serve you in the future. I try to focus on questions with actionable results.
As usual, I’ll focus on data where a significant change happened compared to previous years, as well as new/revised questions. First, a few quick notes:
- You can see my analysis of previous years’ data here (2022), here (2021), here (2020), here (2019), here (2018), and here (2017).
- This data is specifically from those who choose to follow Stonemaier Games, so it is not necessarily representative of the greater gaming community. I welcome the sharing of any other survey results in the comments.
The first insight is the significant decrease in participants of the survey (1665 this year compared to 4,138 last year). The difference is attributed to the lack of a financial motivation to fill out the survey (last year there were five $100 gift cards to our webstore at stake). The reason for the change is that shareholders theorized the data might be skewed by those participating to win a prize instead of to offer their sincere responses.
However, interesting to me is that even with the decrease in respondents, the answers remained almost exactly the same this year for all questions. This tells me that the data isn’t skewed by using a small prize as a motivator for participation; it’s just a little nudge for someone to spend 2 minutes of their day doing something they wouldn’t otherwise have done. At the same time, given that we received such similar data, perhaps 1600 or so respondents are enough for us to gauge the preferences of our 45,000 newsletter subscribers.
The second insight is a new question I added to the survey. Over the last few years, we’ve operated under the assumption that our customers like that the gap between paying for a newly announced game and receiving it is just a few weeks (i.e., we don’t crowdfund our games). But crowdfunding campaigns continue to be hugely successful, so I wanted to ask a question to challenge this assumption.
As it turns out, most of our customers (80%) would prefer to receive something within a month of paying for it, though there are some who are happy to wait (perhaps because they have enough unplayed games to last them 6+ months or they like to eagerly await the things they preorder for several months).
The third insight is that compared to last year, more people bought directly from publishers and on crowdfunding platforms and fewer people bought from online and local stores.
I’m not entirely sure if I should continue to ask this question, as the shift in preferences doesn’t actually change anything for us: We will continue to offer our games in a variety of places so people can buy them in their preferred way (crowdfunding being the only exception).
The fourth insight is a decrease in the number of respondents who primarily play games with kids/family and an increase in those who play mostly at two players. This reinforces my opinion that all of our games should shine at 2 players (in addition to 1, 3, 4, 5+ players).
The fifth insight is a new question we decided to ask to see what types of games people are (a) buying and (b) not getting to the table. Now that we have this data, I’m not entirely sure what to learn from it. For example, 59% of people have heavy games on their shelves. Does that mean they’re less likely to buy more heavy games? Or does it mean that they love heavy games and want more?
The sixth insight is a repeat of a question we asked last year, and there’s a pretty big difference here. The number of respondents in the saturation/completion stage significantly increased, and the number of people in the growing/collecting phase significantly decreased. As a game publisher, that is concerning, though it also means we need to do a better job at inviting newcomers into the hobby.
The seventh insight is that the top two platforms for playing digital versions of tabletop games switched positions, with Board Game Arena overtaking Steam. This speaks to the subscription model of BGA, a desire to play against humans instead of the computer, and the significant increase in the number of games on BGA. I think this means we’ll start to see fewer fully digital tabletop ports, as they require a lot of time and money and may not have the return on investment that developers are hoping for.
Stonemaier Games’ strategy for BGA is that we are happy to put the core versions of our games on the platform (if BGA is interested and has a developer available) after a game has been available on the tabletop for 3+ years. I’m genuinely surprised to see some 2023 releases appear on BGA, as I struggle to see how the upside of the boost in players (and the increase in BoardGameGeek buzz and ratings) outweighs the decrease in tabletop sales (our demographic survey indicates that only 4% of people who play a game digitally are likely to then buy that game for the tabletop; that’s how many people answered “6+” to the question, “How many digital versions of tabletop games did you play this year that inspired you to buy the physical game?”).
I have absolutely no problem with people playing digital versions of games–I host a BGA game night every other week myself–but I just have to imagine that it’s going to result in a lot of newly released games sitting in a warehouse for a long time if people can just play those games on BGA instead. I’m keeping an open mind about this, though!
A few key results that did not change from the 2022 survey:
- Gender: Respondents were mostly male (82%).
- Location: Respondents primarily live in the US (65%), Europe (17%), Canada (10%), and Oceania (5%).
- Campaign Games: Respondents are not playing many different campaign games, with 77% having played 2 or fewer campaign games in 2023.
***
Huge thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey! What do you think about these results (and how creators could act on them to better serve you)?
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.
53 Comments on “7 Insights from Our 2023 Demographic Survey”
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[…] method seems to have resonated well with our customers. In our recent demographic survey, most of our customers (80%) said they would prefer to receive something within 1 month of paying […]
[…] 1. Accessibility trumps just about everything else: I love that Adam ends this list with the concept of accessibility. This is a big topic, but I distill it down to this: I want to do everything in my power to make our games easy to get to the table. This starts with the price and extends to the moment you open the box, try to learn the game, teach the game, and remember the game after not playing it for a while. This isn’t limited to simple games: There are many complex games where the designer and publisher have gone above and beyond to create an intuitive user interface, amazing tutorials and rulebooks, and removing all exceptions and tiny rules that players need to remember. Every now and then I look at my shelf of opportunity of unplayed games (or the games on my shelf that I played once and haven’t played again in months) and ask myself what it is about those games that has made them difficult to get to the table. In fact, it’s something I asked in our recent demographic survey: […]
Regarding digital games translating to sales of physical copies, it seems that there is a flaw in the reasoning if the data presented in this post is the only data you are using (Question “How many digital versions of …”):
You don’t take into account that people may not ever have played/bought a game in the first place if it weren’t for the digital version; That means the digital version doesn’t technically take anything away from physical sales.
For example, if I played 10 games digitally in 2023 and only bought the physical version for 2 of them, then you cannot draw any actionable conclusions from the apparent 20% “conversion rate” without knowing whether I would have ever played/bought the physical versions of the other 8 games in 2023 in the first place.
There are 4 cases:
1. Games I played digitally, also bought physically, and only discovered due to the digital version. Net benefit to publisher.
2. Games I played digitally, also bought physically, and would have bought physically even without playing digitally. Neither benefit nor loss to publisher.
3. Games I played digitally, did NOT buy physically, but never would have bought/played physically anyway. Neither benefit nor loss to publisher. Importantly, you don’t know the fraction of this category, if I understand correctly.
4. Games I played digitally, did NOT buy physically, but otherwise would have bought physically. Net loss to publisher.
You need to weigh (1) against (4) but are currently “unfairly” mixing (3) into (4), right?
I think (3) may indeed be a very big category. Trying a digital version is incredibly quick and easy, compared to setting up a game physically and, for non-solo games, gathering a gaming group or partner.
Of course, this data is very hard to actually measure, and there are many interacting factors, as you recognized (digital version may translate into more buzz, attention for physical version may translate to buzz for digital, etc.). The data would probably also vary depending on weight of the game – on the very heavy side (Voidfall, TI4, Gloomhaven), I can see digital taking away from physical versions. For mid-weight, I’m not so sure.
I wonder if it would be an interesting experiment to make a digital version available right at release (or even before, during preorder!) but only for a limited time (2-3 months?). Then you could compare sales rates across the two time windows: If it goes up significantly after pulling the digital version, that may mean the digital version previously kept players from buying, and vice versa. I’m unsure whether people would be angry – perhaps with clear prior commuincation, it would be fine to pull a digital version? But still, correct attribution of any impact remains tricky.
There were a total of 3 questions in the survey about digital games, not 1:
–If you play digital versions of published tabletop games, which platform(s) did you use on at least a monthly basis this year?
–How many digital versions of tabletop games did you play this year that inspired you to buy the physical game?
–How many tabletop games were you considering buying this year until you played the digital version (convincing you NOT to buy the physical game)?
Suggestion on our; “How long…” question. All the questions assume you want the game ASAP with the way this question is asked. I would like to suggest you change the last option to “…12 months or more”. I like ordering a game (Pre-order/Game Funding/Kickstarter/etc.) and enjoy the surprise when they show up in the future.
I’m happy to choose that option. Is that your preference?
Insight 1: Quickly looking at the number of respondents for the last several years, the other year with around 1k respondents was 2019. In 2017 and 2018 there was a random prize and the numbers were about 3-4k. So I think you’re right – incentives are literally incentives. At least you know a good chunk of Stonemaier fans can be incentivized. And with 3k additional respondents the sample size is large enough that probably the number people filling out the survey randomly just for a chance to win will become insignificant.
I would suggest that the results for insights 5 and 6 would both be related to the decision not to offer a prize incentive. For insight 5, perhaps those who completed the survey without an incentive may be those who are more invested in the hobby, rather than those casually subscribing to a newsletter. Such gamers may have more heavy games they are interested in but haven’t had the right group to play with. (I have such games.)
The same could explain the difference referred to in insight 6. The fewer respondents could reflect gamers who have been in the hobby for a while and have a pretty well-refined collection already.
Just a few thoughts that come to mind. Thanks for sharing the results. I too find things like this quite fascinating.
I had a similar thought regarding insight #4: perhaps it’s simply the case that parents (who are in a position to play board games with a kid) have less free time to fill out a survey, but will take the time so if given an incentive.
Meanwhile, those who are childless and live in a 2-member household are more than happy to spend several minutes of their copious free time to fill out a survey.
(A cursory Google search reveals plenty of reporting and research to support the idea that parents have fewer minutes to spare in a day compared to their childless counterparts — something that many parents probably already know intuitively based on their own experience.)
As someone with kids, and one who usually likes to complete the survey but didn’t get around to it this year, 100% this. I also was planning to comment with a similar explanation but I never found the time, haha.
I can imagine there is a similar explanation for more ‘casual’ gamers who have not filled out their collection (still building it), are also ones who are less likely to have filled out the survey this time.
I wonder if the benefit to publishers from BGA depends a lot on how well known the game already is. I.E. a lot of people in the board game sphere will have heard of Expeditions coming out, so offering it right away might cannibalize sales. But for a more obscure game, even just 4% of people who play it on BGA might be a huge sales boost since likely 99% of the people who played it on BGA would have never heard of it otherwise (for an example, I think Sea Salt and Paper has been doing very well, and I think the hype for the physical release largely came from people playing it on BGA and enjoying it in the preceding year).
On the flipside, there’s also no downside for a lot of games, since any game that was only made available through crowdfunding often has few or no physical copies available for buyers after the campaign, so even if 100% of people who played it on BGA opted to keep doing that rather than buy a physical copy, there wouldn’t be any actual sales lost.
hi Jamey
A very interesting article, as it can be difficult to get statistics on board games .It is a bit worrying that less people seem to be playing board games as families. I think it is hard to get 4 or 5 people who will get together for a few hours to play a board game, maybe that is why the two player games are the most played. I wonder will you consider changing your own requirements for games that you might consider publishing, as in two player games. Thank you for sharing this very helpful data.
Kieran Henry
Thanks for your thoughts! All of our games include a strong focus on 2-player play, so there’s no need for us to change our requirements. :)
The reality for insight seven for me is that I almost exclusively play games on BGA that are ones I think I’d never get to the table enough to justify the expense in person: games like 6 Nimmt or Ark Nova that where I live it’s just hard to imagine regularly getting either a large enough or a dedicated enough group together to play more than once or twice a year.
-Part- of the reason that more heavy games are hard to go to the table is that the Millennials, which I think is the generation most involved in the computer games boom, is a big part of the customers group, and we (myself being 1990) are currently raising children.
At least that is the case with me and my wife. We were twice blessed with that joy. That, though, means that when we are able to take Tapestry to the table, it feels like christmas.
Now we are mostly sneaking a game of Rolling Realms, Azul, Dice Miner, Cartographers and others, only after our 2 mischief makers went to bed.
The next big challenge of the industry, as a whole, would be to invite the Gen Z and Gen Alpha to the table.
My humble prediction is that, as much as we want to play games like Tapestry, Dune: Imperium, Endless Winter, Eldritch Horror and alike, there will be a raise in popularity of 30-45min. replayable games with small engine building element.
Interesting, and thanks so much for sharing. I haven’t read your previous survey posts, and I’m surprised that 2p / solo accounts for almost 50% of the primary way Stonemaier people were playing games, given the nature of your library! That is a very important insight. #6 resonates – the hobby saw a huge boom the past few years and probably will naturally hit a saturation point. It might be sooner than hoped. Combined with #7, you’re right – it’s a scary thing for the whole industry and means greater competition and pressure.
On the flip side, around 30% of your respondents said that they played on BGA in the last month, but only a small number (5%?) said that this was their primary venue. That suggests that BGA is probably playing a supplementary role for most gamers and isn’t likely to cannibalize physical sales (though it might turn someone off to a game they might otherwise impulse buy? Probably not a bad thing in the long run).
I know this is an informal survey, but if I can cheekily offer some feedback on the phrasing of questions: My instinct is that Insight #2 is going to be skewed by the wording of the question. Nobody prefers to wait longer for something; I think (?) the intended dig was to find out how long people are willing to wait without feeling let down. But it doesn’t ask that, really – it asks for their preference.
#3 and 4 have structural issues; most of the categories aren’t mutually exclusive, depending on how you read them. Some sort of ranking or percentage assignment for each option would give a lot more detail than the pie charts. For example, I bought from Amazon, direct from publishers, kickstarter, a local game shop, convention, and independent online storefronts this past year. My primary was the indy online shops but that was probably 30-40% of my spend. The survey would just say that I shop there, primarily, which is sort of misleading.
Sorry, for clarity: From the way the questions are asked, we can only guarantee that 30% of respondents played on a digital platform (not just BGA). Because respondents could choose multiple platforms, you can only take the biggest category as a baseline. There are well over 1500 responses to the question about favored online platforms; the actual percentage who played on digital venues was probably closer to 50-60%+, but that’s an assumption.
This article is very interesting. First of all, Jamey, I would love to know how you use this data, as long as you can disclose anything at all. You say at the start that you try to focus on “actionable results”. Would it be possible for you to share how you used this data in the past and whether the consequences were what you expected based on the survey data or if you were surprised?
Second, I hope that you have somehow ascertained whether the respondents to these surveys are representative of the much larger group of customers that buy your games. Many times, newsletters subscribers and blog lurkers are but a tiny speck of the larger public, and not always representative.
Anyway, thank you very much for letting us into so much of your entrepreneurial space. You are beacon for many.
As for your second point, I mention this early in the post (both the second bullet point and in the first insight).
I try to only ask questions that have actionable answers. Sometimes they’re specific questions like how people might feel about a specific type of game or expansion for an existing brand, and sometimes it’s just little adjustments, like what we’ve learned about digital games.
I’ll add my personal data point of 1, that often digital and physical games often fill a different space for me and don’t actually compete with each other. I’m usually playing digital games asynchronously with strangers, acquaintances, or people who are geographically distant. I also find that I have a specific preference for some games digitally or physically, based on how the mechanics translate. Based on those two factors, I think I rarely buy a game because I have access to the digital version, but I absolutely never decline to buy a game because I have access to a digital version.
I also realize that I have a fortunate personal situation that does not apply to everyone. We have adequate means to more-or-less purchase any game we want, and have a thriving board gaming community in our local area.
Hi Jamey, love you bro.
Here’s some thoughts in my estimation to add to your results and query…
The significant change in 4th and 6th Insight are directly related to the lack of financial motivation.
Insight #4 directly correlates to families. We are financially stretched. Singles and couples without kids have considerably more money to spend on their hobbies than married couples with children. (Statistical trends.)
You offer us $100 to show up… we need it, we like it, we try for it. You don’t offer us $100 to show up, the second area we’re more stretched on shows up: Time. We’re much more likely to skip the survey.
Your games are also thematically very appropriate for families so this is very relevant to your company’s gaming profile.
Insight #6 is less connected, but I see a relationship. If you’ve lost, lets say 4000, families from your survey… (which surely isn’t the case, but it’s clear a large %age of who you lost is family)… but for the argument’s sake… Well, we’re not saturated on games. We can’t afford to be. Kids want legos and race cars and dolls and …food. So if the people who needed the money didn’t show up to the survey, it’s the same people (families or not) who can’t afford to be saturated… or perhaps even to be ‘growing’.
I suspect year over year, that $500 makes a huge difference in the results of SOME questions of your survey, by affecting the respondents: Those that would most appreciate some freebies right now, and those that don’t even shop for the best value before purchasing. (Or any gradient there-of).
While I could be quite wrong, when I read your 4th Insight, it struck me immediately why that one was notably different than last year’s.
Best regards!
John Wrot!
Very interesting data, Jamey. For the 6th insight of “what stage of the gaming hobby are you in” I’d infer (from the growing/collecting decrease and the downsizing/culling increasing) that some of the changes in last years responses and this years may be due to the economic state of the world. I do think you are correct though that making sure the hobby is approachable should never be overlooked. I think SM does a great job with this through table presence and the ability to teach your games quickly. I’ve found (from my small sample size) those seem to be two of the bigger factors when trying to grow the hobby.
That’s a good point about how we need to take into account the state of the world, Sam. Teaching/onboarding is really important to us, as you noted.
What are your thoughts on putting expansions for your games on BGA (or other digital platforms) ? I suggest that quite often, and is my experience, is that despite buying expansions, it is much harder to get them to the table, particularly where you are the main gamer in the group, and want to play alot more than the rest of the group. Online is where we can find players who are like minded and want to play more than our physical games (for whatever reason), and I think online would therefore be a larger hunger for expansion content. Assuming devs are happy to develop it, would you allow it?
We like BGA as a way for players to discover and learn our games, and expansions aren’t necessary for that. Given the time and resources we put into creating expansions, we’d like people to discover them on the tabletop.
Just a thank you to Jamey and his team for making this kind of information available publicly. All the advice and info he has shared over the years, and continues to share, is really appreciated by us smaller creators!!
My pleasure, Mike! I’m glad this is useful for you.
I find these surveys fascinating every year. A few thoughts:
1. I think the financial incentive to participate is not needed.
2. I /prefer/ a short wait; I /do not mind/ a longer one.
3. It has been tough finding a good game store. I had a great one in Iowa; there is nothing really close now that I live in Maryland. I am hoping to find one, but the one recommended to us is about a 45 minute drive.
4. My kids have grown up. Everyone I play with these days is an adult — even my kids.
5. I have a bunch of games I want to get to the table. And now that I am significantly closer to my gaming group, I am hopeful this will happen. But, yea, I think I own games in all of those categories that I have purchased relatively recently and have yet to get to the table.
6. I am still buying games. But spatial constraints mean that I tend to have to remove some things from the shelves in order to get new stuff into them. This means that many things I bought as ‘cult of the new’ have not managed to be lasting hits with me or my game group. We do still have quite a few classics in the collection.
7. Given the distances involved, although most all of my game group would greatly prefer to game in person, we utilize BGA and Steam as a band-aid. Over the years, it has become apparent to me that I much, much prefer implementations on BGA over Steam. In my experience, bugs are hammered out more quickly, and games are never really left abandoned or stripped of their capabilities. I have experienced both on Steam.
A. I am male.
B. I live in the United States.
C. We have five campaign games queued up now that we are all living closer together.
Thanks as always for trying to better serve the community. This is an amazing company!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these insights, David! You make a good point about kids growing up, which reshapes how people answer that question. :)
Regarding the seventh insight, a friend and I played Forest Shuffle on BGA and both of us bought a copy at PAX this past weekend. If we haven’t played on BGA it’s very likely I wouldn’t have considered it.
I do very much enjoy the social aspects of in person gaming so while I like playing online, I’d much rather play in person if possible.
And not all of the people we play with are on BGA. So for me, it’s is a tool to refine my collection and not a replacement. Look for new games to play and possibly buy or pass on. Because of this I’ve bought Forest Shuffle, Innovation, Planet Unknown (and others). And I’ve passed on Barrage, Troyes, Humanity, Carnegie (and others).
Thanks for sharing this, Sean! I love Forest Shuffle and Planet Unknown.
I’m not sure your data on campaign games necessarily supports that people aren’t playing many campaign games. As an avid campaign game player, I can still only play around 2 a year… in the age of gloomhaven and high content kickstarters, this can’t be only me, right?
Gregory: You’re right that my question doesn’t account for how much time people are spending on campaign games; the question is about how many different campaign games people played this year.
I personally think that although 4 percent of people will buy a game they have played on BGA that the data is probably a little messed up by the volume of games on board game arena vs a larger game on it. For example I don’t see board game arena hurting HEAT or Apiary (if it were on there, I’d be playing it daily) but what it does do is hurt sales of much smaller games.
I had so much fun with potion explosion for example, that I bought it due to being able to play it. But the smaller weekly releases get hit hard because you’ll find out whether it’s to you and your groups tastes much quicker and it won’t build natural momentum.
I think the best example of online subscription release working wonders is something like rocket League, I would have had zero intention on even playing that (PlayStation not tabletop but feels appropriate) and that game is alive and well because the hype built quick and everyone could bring all their friends along for the ride.
I like the model of waiting to release on a subscription platform to maximize the physical copies but personally feel like 3 years (you have the data so obviously better decisions can be made) may be to long to keep the game talked about and among people’s top 10s etc.
One last thought on arena (as long as it stays alive or something like it) it’s a great resource to keep older games from disappearing forever. I recently had to watch a YouTube video for a game that had no manual. Was released 10ish years ago and the publisher pulled their page down and the manual couldn’t be located on bgg.
So maybe it’s useful for a digitized preservation of games that are being otherwise no longer serviced.
That turned into a wall of rambling text. Whoops
I see what you’re saying, Pete. We tried to quantify it in the question by asking how many games people had purchased as a result of playing it on a digital platform, and only 4% of people said that they had purchased 6 or more games. That’s about purchase quantity, not about the quantity of games on BGA.
You’re right that 3 years may be too long, and I’m open to reducing that timeframe (but not to within a few months of the game’s tabletop release).
For the shelf of opportunity question, you might almost need some other question about the reason those games are on there. For instance, I only have one game on my shelf of opportunity, and it’s an abstract visual game. It was a gift to us years ago, and it turns out it wasn’t a good selection for us because my husband can’t differentiate the colors due to his colorblindness. However, my son might play it with me in a year or two, so my reason is “don’t have the right group to play it with yet” and “have too many other games that we prefer.” Someone else’s reasons might be “don’t have enough time to play them” or “got overwhelmed by the rulebook,” etc. The reasons might give you actionable data or may just reveal spending habits.
I can’t recall if I selected refining or saturation for my game collection status, but either one involves being selective about purchases. I think something that holds true for most game purchases I make (or games I put on wish lists) is that they tend to do something new. Usually it’s a novel approach to an existing mechanism or theme, a new way of combining familiar mechanisms so they feel fresh, or (if I am really lucky) a mechanism or theme I haven’t played a game around before. I don’t really need another version of something that is simple to what I have, so as a game customer, I’ll be more likely to check out a game if it’s innovative in some way.
*similar to what I have
Thanks Julie! I agree that the shelf of opportunity question needs a follow-up question to understand the results.
One question that I was expecting to be on the survey, but wasn’t, is kind of the opposite of the seventh insight. Specifically, I wanted to be able to answer the question, “are you more likely to play/purchase a digital game after playing the physical game?” To which I would have answered yes. I own in many digital games, but not a single one that I own did I not physical game first to know that I enjoyed it. Now, admittedly, a few of the digital games I own, I played the physical version owned by a friend, not myself. But still counts as a mark in favor of digital games.
This is exactly how I approach digital games as well. I just did a quick inventory of the digital games I own: 40 total digital implementations of board games (android and steam), and only 4 were purchased before I owned or played the physical game. Of these , 1 of them I IMMEDIATELY went out and bought the game after playing it digitally (Wingspan), and the other 3 are on my digital shelf of shame. Those last 3 I just cant bring myself to play because if I have to read through rules or a tutorial, I’d rather do it for a physical game. The other digital games I own, I will pull them out when I don’t have time or can’t play the physical game for some reason, and want to squeeze in a session, or I have a friend that owns them and it doesn’t make sense for us to both have a physical copy of the game.
Rob: We have a very similar question on the survey, but perhaps there’s a nuance I’m missing. The question is: “How many digital versions of tabletop games did you play this year that inspired you to buy the physical game?” It’s a quantifiable version of the question you pose here.
I think the difference may be that your question asks about buying physical games AFTER playing the digital version, but Rob says the physical games usually come first for him, and they inspire him to buy the digital version second.
Ah, I see!
Ryan: Yes, that is correct. Maybe you and I are a very small subset, but I’d rather play a game physically before going and finding it online or in an app somewhere. I’d be curious to know if our view is a one-off or if there are many more like us that use digital to supplement our physical copies.
I play games on BGA but primarily with friends from college who live cross country who I can’t play games with otherwise. And I find that if we try new games and I really enjoy them then I’m suddenly looking for physical copies of those games to own as I prefer to play with real games and real people when I’m able too (family & friends who I live near). I may be in a minority but BGA has inspired me to purchase a dozen or so games a year over the last couple of years I’ve been using the tool, sometimes ordering games from Europe that are not available in the US.
That’s great, Kelly! I appreciate BGA as a way to introduce people to our games and for them to play games with friends worldwide.
My insight is I didn’t see the survey, but I did see the rolling realms promotion which was above the survey link and I clicked on the promo add which redirected me to the website. Hours later when I got back to the email I closed it without reading it fully. I don’t think I was a champion last year, but I thought I participated in the survey, but I don’t have the email anymore to compare.
Thanks Alaena! You’re right that it wasn’t at the top of the newsletter, and I can see that people may have been distracted by the new realms. :)
Fantastic survey. I agree with just about every point, except BGA use resulting in physical sales. I have purchased many physical copies of games after trying them on BGA, including Tapestry.
Thanks Scott! I’m just looking at the data we collected, but it’s great that you’re part of the 4%. :)
I was recently contacted by Tabletopia saying that they’d develop my second game for $500 but would only charge me if my campaign is successful.
Have you ever heard of anyone doing this? They gave me this link which seems to suggest that quite a few people do end up taking them up on their offer. (https://tabletopia.com/games?category=kickstarter)
Interesting! We work with Tabletopia for all of our games, and I think that’s a generous conditional offer.
Got it, thank you Jamey!!