Which tabletop games have the best chance of becoming evergreen games? These games that are so well received–not just in terms of ratings, but in terms of actual sales–that they are reprinted time after time, year after year.
I posed this question in 2014 and in 2019, and I thought it was time to revisit the topic. To compile the following list, I looked at ICv2’s bi-annual articles containing the top 10 bestselling hobby channel board games and card/dice games. As ICv2 notes, “The charts are based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers.”
I also wanted to add some data from an online game store, and the only list I could find was presented by Tom Vasel in late 2021 using Game Nerdz data. To qualify for this list, a game must have appeared at least 3 times on these lists, which span from spring 2018 to fall 2021.
On the surface, this data would indicate that your game has the best chance of being an evergreen game if it plays from 2-4 players in around 45 minutes and is a medium-weight game that costs around $50.
Let’s dig a little deeper under the surface too:
- Solo modes: 6 of these 21 games include solo modes. While the other games indicate that it’s possible to have an evergreen game without a good solo mode, I think it increases your chances more than the data shows. I wouldn’t publish a Stonemaier game without a robust solo mode from Automa Factory. I also think that have a game play well at 2 players is really important.
- Playing Time and Weights: There’s a pretty wide array of playing times and weights on this list. It says to me that each of these games have the right lengths/weights for their respective audiences, not that 45 minutes is the actual sweet spot for an evergreen game.
- Price Still Matters: I think the price of these evergreen games is crucially important. You can run a big Kickstarter with a $100+ core reward level, but a significant portion of your lifetime sales of that game are going to be during the crowdfunding campaign. That’s fine in many cases, but if you want an evergreen retail game, $40-$60 is a great target.
- Crowdfunding: 6 of these 21 games originated via crowdfunding. I don’t think this really indicates either way that starting with a crowdfunding campaign is good or bad for a game, but I think it does say that you don’t need to crowdfund for your game to get the attention it needs to become evergreen.
- Spiel des Jahres: At my count, 7 of these 21 games won a major award via the Spiel des Jahres. I think the Spiel des Jahres does a good job at selecting games that appeal to a lot of people (in most regions, I do not think winning this award is a driving force behind sales).
- Intellectual Properties: 5 of these 21 games are based on IPs. I don’t think IPs are necessary at all for games to be popular, but this shows that IPs are no longer the impediment they once may have been for a game to be widely embraced by hobby gamers.
- Abstract vs Thematic: It’s a little difficult to qualify some of these games into abstract and thematic categories, but I would say that the vast majority of the games on this list are theme-first or theme-forward games.
- Competitive vs Cooperative/Team: 15 of the 21 these games are competitive and 6 are cooperative or team-based games. So I guess you have a slightly better chance if you design a competitive game, but I wouldn’t worry much about this. Pandemic wouldn’t be Pandemic if it were competitive.
- Campaign: There are campaign versus of several games on this list, but of the actual evergreen versions, there are very few games on this list that are campaign games (Gloomhaven…and maybe Marvel Champions has a campaign in the core box?). I discuss campaign games in detail on another recent post., and I think the biggest reason they’re not here is (on some level) a lack of interest in replayability after a campaign is over compared to the sheer replayability of most games on this list.
- Ease of teaching/learning/setup: One commonality shared by most of these games is that they’re very easy to get to table, whether it’s the first time or the 50th time. I think this and other accessibility factors play a huge role in whether or not a game will become evergreen. Eleven of these games have shorter rulebooks (9 pages or less).
- Aesthetics: As Gerald notes in the comments, 11 of these games have joyful/playful art, and even 5 of the games with more serious art use bright, fun colors.
- Roll and Write: Unless I’m missing something, there isn’t a single roll-and-write game on this list. Maybe there are just too many out there? I still have a good feeling about Rolling Realms’ future either way. :)
Future Predictions
In 2019, I predicted that Root, Sagrada, The Mind, Wingspan, Quacks, Welcome To, Just One, 7 Wonders, and Parks would make a future list. I was around half right. Most of those games did indeed show up on at least one of ICv2’s lists from 2018-2021.
I’m not sure that I see many newer games on ICv2’s recent lists that may eventually become evergreen. I’m a little surprised that The Crew doesn’t show up on their lists. I think Cascadia and Canvas have a good chance, as do Ark Nova and Lost Ruins of Arnak.
Stonemaier Games
We only publish 2 new games each year at most, so my goal is that each of those games has the potential to become an evergreen bestseller. That isn’t why I make games, but it’s still one of my targets I aim for.
Currently, Wingspan and Scythe are on this list, and the only other game of ours to appear on ICv2’s list even once was Charterstone. I’m a little surprised neither Viticulture or Red Rising cracked the list at all, as Viticulture is by all measures an evergreen game (we continually print it) and Red Rising had a very strong first year (over 100k sold already).
I think great gameplay and presentation will trump any specific category noted above, so we’ll always aim for that. I’ve also tried to keep our prices on the lower side, with the MSRP-equivalents for our last 3 retail releases being $60, $20, and $40. Our games have been running more on the medium-light side, and I think we’re going to see a swing back to medium over the next few releases.
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I’d love to hear your thoughts about evergreen games! What do you think about the above data and observations?
Also read: Insights from Our 2021 Demographic Survey
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I looked the length of the rulebooks for all the games on this list, and a few other things. Another interesting way of looking at it was games with attacking vs game with peaceful building.
Rulebook size
Note: * Small page size counted as 9 pages or less
Codenames 8*
Catan 15
Azul 6
Gloomhaven 52
Pandemic 8
Ticket to Ride 4
Exploding Kittens 10*
Coup 7*
Wingspan 12
Marvel Legendary 22
Root 24
Quacks of Quedlinburg 8
Betrayal at the House… 15
Scythe 31
Boss Monster 11*
Dune Imperium 14
Unmatched 15*
Superfight 2
Dominion 16
Century 2
Marvel Champions 23
9 or less pages: 11
19 or less pages: 5
20+ pages: 5
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Attacking vs Building
Codenames: ?
Catan: Building
Azul: Building
Gloomhaven: Attacking
Pandemic: CoOp Attacking a virus and it attacking you
Ticket to Ride: Building
Exploding Kittens: Attacking
Coup: Attacking
Wingspan: Building
Marvel Legendary: Mixed coOp attacking with building
Root: Mixed attacking with building
Quacks of Quedlinburg: Building
Betrayal at the House…: Attacking
Scythe: Mixed building an attacking
Boss Monster: Attacking
Dune Imperium: Mixed building and attacking
Unmatched: Attacking
Superfight: Attacking
Dominion: Building
Century: Building
Marvel Champions: CoOp Attacking
7 Building
9 Attacking
4 Mix
1 ? (scoring for your own while hoping your opponents have a self inflicted attack?)
It’s 14 to 7 if you view it as some form of attacking vs peaceful building (but it should be noted that Catan, Azul, and Quacks can have moments that are not entirely peaceful that somewhat feel like a mild attack).
I wonder if sale stats from other regions of the world would also be dominated by games with attacking in them.
Jamey, do you know what percent of game sales revenue for you comes from the USA and what percentage comes from the rest of the world?
This is a really neat analysis! There’s more attacking on the list than I would have assumed (I would have guessed, as you found, that shorter rulebooks are more accessible).
Around 80% of our sales revenue comes from the US.
Wow, 80%. If 40% or more came from the rest of the world it would haven been useful to find out some countries attacking/building preferences, but no point (from a sales point of view) with it being so low. Does that 80% figure roughly mean that 80% all the physical units of Viticulture are in the United States and only 20% are outside? You mentioned you have localization deals which I guess could possibly mean more copies of some of your games could exist outside of the U.S. than the 20% revenue suggests.
“Does that 80% figure roughly mean that 80% all the physical units of Viticulture are in the United States and only 20% are outside?”
It’s close to that, yes, but the lower revenue from localization partners is a factor, so it’s probably closer to 70% of all units are sold in the US.
Thanks. It looks like Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest has a great chance to become an evergreen. I’m sure Viticulture will still be selling years from now even if it’s not a big evergreen like these, maybe it can be called a lasting-turquoise :)
Art type Joyful/fun vs Serious
Codenames Joyful
Catan Serious but colorful
Azul Joyful
Gloomhaven Serious
Pandemic Serious but colorful
Ticket to Ride Joyful
Exploding Kittens Joyful
Coup Serious but colorful
Wingspan Joyful
Marvel Legendary Joyful
Root Joyful
Quacks of Quedlinburg Joyful
Betrayal at the House… Serious
Scythe Serious
Boss Monster Joyful
Dune Imperium Serious
Unmatched Joyful
Superfight N/A *
Dominion Serious
Century Serious but colorful
Marvel Champions Joyful
Joyful: 11
Serious with bright fun colors: 4
Serious: 5
Colors: 15 to 5 for bright joyful colors vs “serious” colors.
* Superfight not counted
Jamey,
In addition to price, replayability and accessibility, I think it would be hard to overstate the importance of familiarity. Have you read Ryan Holiday’s “Perennial Seller” or Everett Rodgers’ ” Discussion of Innovations”? Both emphasize the importance of maintaining familiarity while creating freshness or newness.
Ryan describes this in terms of breaking the mold on just one or maybe two aspects a product.
Scythe is a great exemplar. It had a clever top-down action-selection structure that limits AP but did take several games to master. It had really striking art with a fresh take on steampunk. And everything else was new-ish but not so new as to feel utterly unfamiliar or to require much play to master.
Wingspan is another example. Action-chaining wasn’t entirely new, but integrating the building of those chains with an unreliable ecosystem that doesn’t always provide needed cards/resources (which you can only get by timing your drafts) felt fresh, particularly in the context of round goals and objectives (which also weren’t totally new). The art also is very fresh yet familiar–as I commented on the Wingspan page last week, the art bears a wonderful resemblance to classic ornithological engravings and illustrations.
When designing or publishing a game, I take these considerations as a caution to remember that we are serving humans. And humans like a certain level of familiarity. In fact, they *need* a certain level of familiarity if they are to adopt a product or service.
I’m sometimes tempted to innovate in *every* possible aspect of a game. Then I recognize that instinct in me as ego talking. I remember that I’m not designing for my own benefit, I’m doing it for other people’s benefit. And then I ask myself where they’d enjoy a fresh experience, while achieving familiarity elsewhere.
-Chris
Thanks for those recommendations, Chris. I’m not familiar with them, but I like the value of familiarity. I think that’s one of the reason Star Wars episode VII worked so well for me. :)
This post really got me thinking. As a customer, my ‘evergreen’ games are the ones which persist in my collection, surviving my periodic sort outs. This is slightly different to the definition based on units sold. An evergreen game for me would be one I can play a lot for several years, a game that stays fresh enough for me to come back to time and time again. Bearing that in mind, it would need several features:
1) Solo Mode: I appreciate your commitment to solo modes as this is the only way I play (my friends and family are either baffled by my hobby or favour ultra competitive games which I dislike).
2) Quality Components: I don’t mind a bit of wear and tear, but components have to be physically robust enough to stand up to hours of play over several years. There also needs to be a commitment to professionally created artwork and graphic design.
3) Variability: the games I keep coming back to are the ones with complex puzzles to solve, ones where the tantalising search for the perfect solution is continuously challenged and thwarted by agonising choices.
4) Culture: games are cultural objects and reflect the values and assumptions of society. For a game to be evergreen, it must therefore maintain its integrity into future societies which do not yet exist. This demands close attention to issues such as inclusion, diversity and sustainability in order to avoid becoming a game ‘of its time’ and trapped in the past.
If I lost my board game collection, my first replacements would be my three evergreens: Pandemic, Scythe and Lord of the Rings LCG.
Thanks for this breakdown, Lesley–I appreciate the analysis, and I really like that you included Culture on your list.
As a long time collector of Stonemaier games, the shift from medium to medium-light weight games has not gone unnoticed. What brought the shift toward medium-light and why are they going back to medium weight now?
Seth: I wouldn’t say there was anything intentional behind the shift. Rolling Realms wasn’t originally designed as something we’d publish, and Libertalia came out of nowhere as a special opportunity. Red Rising’s mechanisms are simply what we thought were the best fit for a game with 13 different suits/colors.
My own gut instinct is that having a solo mode have zero impact on “potential evergreenness.” I think it’s great that you support it and personally value that option, but I suspect 90% of copies sold are never played solo. Moreover, the extra stuff in the box makes teaching a little bit harder (“what are this cards for?”). Since solo modes add unit costs to ever game shipped, I wonder if it wouldn’t be a win-win to sell the solo mode separately (if you could avoid the backlash from people who believe this would be a “money grab.”). I any case I love to see any data about solo mode usage.
Our data indicates that around 11% of people are primarily playing our games solo. That’s a pretty significant number to me: https://stonemaiergames.com/5-insights-from-our-2021-demographic-survey/
I’m unlikely to but an evergreen game here just to play solo, but if its a game I love then I might end up playing solo even if it’s not my primary play method of play just because it’s such a good game. Looking at you Gaia Project.
One other thing I just thought of – the BGG rankings depend on volume as well as score. A true solo game needs to sell 1 copy per player, but a single copy of Catan is likely to reach 3 or more people (and some dog eared copies are probably in the high 20s). Since you don’t need to own a game to rank it on BGG this might suggest solo games are even more underrepresented than the data suggests.
Regarding the costs of additional solo components, they are typically pretty minimal and I’d say give value well beyond their cost.
Long live automa factory I say 😄
Thanks for the data point. I can see why you invest in solo modes for your games, but I still think it isn’t a meaningful contributor to “evergreen” status. I would be surprised if Wingspan sales are even 5% lower in the alternate “What If… Wingspan didn’t include a solo mode in the box” universe (apologies to Marvel).
Respectfully, that data is restricted to people who a) are subscribed to a boardgame publisher’s email list, b) subscribed to the email list of a publisher that strives to include solo modes, and c) took the time to complete a survey from said publisher. In essence: people far more likely to be hobbyist gamers and interested in solo gaming. The majority of evergreen games listed here are casual or gateway games, and so i suspect the significance of solo modes may be a bit inflated.
It’s exciting to see solo gaming become a more popular pastime, but i would wager it’s a bit early to include it as even one of the top ten factors that determines a game’s success in the market.
Interesting article as usual, Jamey.
Based upon the availability of games is retail stores in my country(Denmark), I must say that your list is vastly different from what I would have expected. Where are “love letter”, “cards against humanity” and Agricola for instance? These games are readily available in book stores and supermarkets in medium to large shopping cities in Denmark.
After this surprise, I had to look up the definition of evergreen on the internet (English is not my native language) and I can see that evergreen usually refers to music that gets played year after year. So I must say that I struggle a bit with games being an evergreen, if they are less than 5 years old.
Does that mean that Wingspan or Marvel Champignons LCG aren’t evergreens? Well, I’m not sure that you can determine this when they are so young, so I think that your analysis will be a lot firmer if you eliminated these younger games. Perhaps you could look at them exclusively, to see if younger games had something in common, which identified potential new evergreens.
This segmentation also leads to my second observation, when reading your article. Are you comparing apples to oranges (inadvertently). Is the characteristics for an evergreen coop game the same as for an evergreen competitive game? Or how about light-weight games vs. complex games? Is it even possible to infer something about evergreen by comparing “Exploding kittens” with Scythe. The things that make Exploding kittens interesting is vastly different from what makes Scythe ticks, in my experience.
In conclusion, I would say that an evergreen game has to be at least 5 years old and it must have been reprinted at least 3 times, either in the original language or by being published in 3 or more languages.
In order to avoid mixing oranges and apples, I would separate the games into major archetypes (based on BGG rank types) and look at all the data within each archetypes and possibly add a little more data about each game, which is only important for that archetype. So for instance I would definitely split Cooperate games and competitive games into different groups. For competitive games I would also divide by weight (based upon BGG) and then I would imagine that each of the areas you list above would become much more firm in the conclusions.
Definitely, this is just one way to look at and analyze evergreen games. I encourage others to compile and share their own version of this report too! :)
I have no doubt whatsoever that Wingspan will be played 10 years from now. It is a timeless classic.
Makes me wonder: do evergreen games tend to have “gateway” quality–tending to bring new people into the hobby or at least be something you can talk your non-gamer friends into trying?
Kirke: That’s an interesting observation, and I think it applies to many of the games on this list.
“Around half of Germans have up to ten analog games in their household. Quiz and knowledge games, logic games and games of skill are particularly popular. The majority of Germans consider a price of up to 20 euros for board games to be reasonable. When buying card and board games for children, the fun factor in particular is crucial for parents when deciding on a purchase; at the same time, the games should be age-appropriate and easy to learn. Around 80 percent of children from Germany thus have puzzles and brainteasers as well as cards and board games at home. The best-known of all board games is ‘Mensch ärger Dich nicht’, almost 90 percent have already played this classic game, closely followed by the worldwide bestseller Monopoly – according to a survey, this is also the most popular board game in Germany. The classic board game is distributed by the American games manufacturer Hasbro and sold in 37 languages in over 100 countries.”
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Lena Graefe auf Statista 25.01.2022
Definitely is your list an interesting statistic, but I think this list is from the “ivory tower” of the gaming scene and not from the villagers who live around it.
Really interesting to see this data as it develops. Keep it up, thanks very much!
I’d probably call most of these games “evergold” games (yes I just made that up), meaning these are upper echelon titles. There are many evergreens that sell year after year and are not on this list. So I’m not sure this is a representative sample, but still helpful to look at nonetheless.
I think most publishers would tell you there is no magic formula. I often find evergreens to have some trait that most would think kills its chances of being an evergreen. Why? Because it means it is innovative and doing something really different.
Just today I saw a mention of Wingspan and how most publishers might have rethemed it to cthulu or fantasy or what not. But the perfect integration of a lesser used theme with a luxury presentation made it a magical product everyone had to have.
Of course most evergreens have the characteristic of being a great game, and that is probably the most important one of all.
Another important thing to realize is that every game has those that dislike it. I imagine most people have played one of these games and really disliked it. That’s totally normal.
I’m a huge proponent of using data, but when it comes to figuring out the magic formula of making an evergreen, that’s the catch, there is NO magic formula. If there was, games like Gloomhaven, Nemesis, and even a solo only game like Hostage Negotiator probably would never have been made because on paper, none of them make sense to even have a chance of being an evergreen. But somehow they are.
In this case my advice (fwiw) is to throw out the data and just make something unique, do something different, and standout in as many ways as possible, but most of all through gameplay.
Yahtzee has got the roll & write evergreen title in an iron grip. It’s still a solid game after all these years, I think it’s one of those games we all played before discovering gaming as a hobby.
First, this is really interesting to see. So thanks for this analysis. Have you considered looking beyond the top 10? Where I’m going with this is that without the actual sales units to do a year over year comparison, are you comparing apples to apples? Board games as a category in hobby games sold N units in say, 2005, to pick an arbitrary year? Anecdotal evidence is that board games sell N+ games now. So are games that are evergreen in 2005 still selling in similar volumes? Are new games selling at higher volumes that happen to be below top 10, but that still makes them a good seller?
I think Stonemaier gets a lot of mentions in social media and your games sell well because you focus on good games that have quality over quantity (as in not having 30 different new titles each year including 2 iterations on Monopoly). So in a sense the entire catalogue is “evergreen.” I just bought Euphoria six months ago and we’ve played it a couple times. I saw it mentioned, especially in discussions of other Stonemaier games, and said “we need to try this.”
I’d love to see beyond the top 10! ICv2 doesn’t make that data publicly available, though.
Thanks for sharing that about Euphoria. :) It’s neat that a game released back in 2013 is still being experienced by people today.
One thing I wonder is how some of the categories match to the overall population in relation to the conclusions you’ve drawn from their showing. What I mean by that is, you say that because only 6 of the 21 games are co-op you have a better chance if your game is competitive, but that only seems to follow if more than a quarter of games overall are co-op. If less than a quarter of all games are co-op then it would seem as though being co-op actually raises your chances of making the list over averages.
Also, the community is an important aspect!
Unmatched has a vibrant community of players creating a lot of content.
Root that broke the rules and made the whole game free for PNP.
Also, Exploding Kittens by The Oatmeal, already had a huge following.
> I’m a little surprised neither Viticulture or Red Rising cracked the list at all
Well, it’s an evergreen game to you and your team. Congrats!
Interesting data, Jamey. I think one thing that can’t be understated here is the fact that many (though not all) of these games have managed mass-market penetration. By my count, at least 13 of them could be found on the shelves at my local Target. I’m sure many of them are also carried by Barnes and Nobles and possibly Walmart.
I have never seen SuperFight anywhere except Target, to be honest, but it remains in regular circulation there and I suspect is very successful there. And, of course, some of these have ‘introductory’ versions. Obviously this list has gaps: I don’t see Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne or several other games on the list that I would otherwise expect.
I’d be interested in seeing that mass-market data too. Ticket to Ride is indeed on the list, but it Carcassonne didn’t appear on any of ICv2’s lists (maybe they classify it differently?)
I think one thing that people in the boardgame community miss out on is “replayability.” To me, this is one of the most important metrics for any games. I guess we can all agree that boardgaming is a bit of marketing gone wrong, as it cajoles you to buy more and more.
However, when I buy I ask myself, can I sit down and play this game for a 100 hours and not get tired of it – or just relegate it to less played slot. That’s the single most important thing to me and my group – yes, there are clear exceptions.
Charterstone and Pandemic Legacy evidently TONS of fun. As are most legacy games, to be fair, but they also cost dearly.
Buying Wingspan, Gaia Project, Scythe, Dice Throne, Gizmos, Twilight Imperium, Glomhaven – evidently heavy games – comes with inexhaustible replayability.
Games such as Paladins/Architects are less so and less intriguing to us, for example. But we do play a lot of strategy/thinking games. So, to me – replayability plays a huge role in picking a game – recently Brass Birmingham. Just make it fun to play again and again and again, that’s what gets me!
I completely agree, and I’m going to add a comment about replayability to the section about campaign games. I’m actually surprised that Brass Birmingham isn’t on the list, as I know it’s sold extremely well.
2 things:
1. Your games on this list are the 2nd and 4th (tied) highest MSRP. However, you don’t have an MAP that I know of, which allows the actual price for a retailer to be on par with some of the MAP-strapped games.
2. You say 6 of them have solo modes but I think 8-10 could be played solo. Example: Pandemic’s official minimum is 2 but plenty play it at 1. Solitaire Games on Your Table aggregator shows The Cure + base on their 2020 or 2021 lists and it’s in the People’s Choice Top 200 (at #36) in the 1-Player Guild.
Nice write-up! Thank you!
I also think some of your MSRPs are off, particularly on Asmodee titles (though they were probably correct when these lists were made) as TtR and Catan are both now $60, Pandemic is now $45,
Any others? I’m happy to fix them if I messed up any.
I don’t know that you actually need to change them because I believe they are recent (<3 months) price increases. That means the data you looked at had them at those prices, probably.
Guess it’s just a product of inflation and Asmodee’s price increases over the last 12 months or so.
Yeah, Pandemic is definitely a solo game even though it’s not listed on the box. There are 5 Pandemic titles on the People’s Choice Top 200 solo games and vanilla Pandemic is #36.
Root has 2 different official solo modes, but I think they’re in expansions.
I really appreciate that you keep you prices on a more wallet friendly side of things. How with the amazing production values you have I don’t know.
Most evergreen games are light and streamlined for their genre. Scythe isn’t a light game but compared to most 4x games it is easy to teach and game play feels very smooth.
Hi, first of all, congratulations on summarizing this. This is public service like other articles that you share. Quite interesting and it is one for publishers to reflect. If i may, there is a market geographical segment (Europe vs North America) to understand if the behavior is the same and what is the size of each market. I also think that nature themes that Wingspan “created” are a trend and that pure eurogames with less theme will loose traction. Even Cascadia, which in an abstract game, won so much because of the theme. Finally don´t expect that many games that have more than 3.0 in BGG to be evergreen and i think this is due to the maturity of the players. Between selling to the general audience or selling to 3.5 and above players, the publishers will choose the first. The exceptions are Gloomhaven (lots of people want to try #1), Root (the fluffiest wargame there is) and Scythe (a mix between a solid resource management race game with a conflict twist and a design that is one of a kind). All the best and yes, Viticulture deserved better.
Honestly my belief is that the average North American still has no idea that games like Wingspan even exist. I talk to friends/colleagues/peers about board games all the time, and when I use the words “board game”, they think of Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, and Trivial Pursuit. If they did know about newer types/genres, these types of games would really spike (Wingspan, Viticulture, Scythe).
You’ve hit a nice sweet spot for the average person (medium weight) for your titles to become gateway games. My thoughts here are that once people are “hooked” with titles like these, many will be willing to dive deeper with an Eagle-Gryphon-like approach to publishing, and be more willing to pay $200 for a good top quality game. I think Scythe may be a decent middle-ground for this. I think you really want to hit the right price-point to get maximum exposure and therefore sales, but still not getting the average joe into the hobby.
Helpful and insightful thoughts. The mention the next few releases swinging back toward medium weight excites me. Really enjoy most of your games but the heavier end of your releases is where my favorites lie. Scythe, Viticulture, Tapestry and Wingspan.
I wonder if a big part of becoming evergreen is simply playing well with 2. When I first got into board games it was with numerous two player games of scythe with my sister and even more two player wingspan and terraforming mars with my wife. It’s still far more common that I can play a board game two player than I can get a larger game night together. Certainly games like wingspan and TM that work great at 2 are the ones I’m most likely to recommend to someone starting out, as for those of us with partners who also game, two player time is just an order of magnitude more readily available than 3+.
This is where I think the future of board gaming will largely lie after having gone through a pandemic. Something fun for a couple to do besides veg out on the couch watching netflix.
I completely agree, Glen. Well said.
Board games have an interesting dynamic where if one player in a play group owns a copy of a game, everybody else has access to play without buying their own copy. I think the factors that make people more likely to buy their own copy are ability and desire to play at lower player counts and ease of entry. If I play a 2 player game with a friend before everybody has arrived at game night and he likes it, he might buy a copy to play with just his partner or a child. But a multiplayer game, it’s pretty unlikely he’d by a copy because what are the chances he’s playing games and me who owns a copy isn’t in that group. Similarly, if we play a good game with a lower barrier to entry, he might need 4+ other people, but there’s a chance that family or other friends might be in that group.
Fascinating data analysis. Does this also mean that all future games you publish will be 45-60 minutes, also lighter than Scythe and Tapestry?
No, that’s not the conclusion I drew.
That’s good. I thought that might be the case when you said “we only publish 2 new games each year at most, so my goal is that each of those games has the potential to become an evergreen bestseller”, and there is only five games on the list with the time over 60 mins. But I suppose you can be slightly out of the evergreen average range on one of the four data points and still have a chance like Betrayal with a min player count of 3 and the other data points not going out of range. Congrats on creating two evergreens so far, that is quite and achievement!