Tobold's Blog
Monday, March 14, 2022
 
Availability of games over time

Over 30 years ago, around the end of the 80's, I was playing SSI's Gold Box games, PC games like Pool of Radiance with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. I just read that end of this month these games will get a remastered re-release on Steam. I don't think I will try those, even remastered a 30-year old PC game would be rough. But in general, the availability of PC games over decades is rather good. Platforms like GoG have lots of old games, and the oldest game on Steam, Dragon's Lair, is from 1983.

That contrasts sharply with my recent experience when trying to get some board games from a few years ago. I had picked up Dragonfire, a game from 2017, and then found out that it was nearly impossible to still find expansions for that. Then I wanted to try Runebound from 2015, and could only get a French edition, and none of the expansions. Apparently there is a lucrative business on eBay, where people sell board games from a few years ago at vastly inflated prices. Availability of board games over time simply isn't great.

That explains to some degree the FOMO (fear of missing out), which is very prevalent in the discussion of crowdfunded board games on Kickstarter and Gamefound. Not only are there frequently "Kickstarter exclusive" parts to the game. But also not all Kickstarter games make it into retail, and if they do, they often will be in stock only for a limited time. You can always get Settlers of Catan, but a game that wasn't a smash hit might easily disappear and not be available 5 years later at all.

Before Amazon, books used to have the same problem. Shelf-space in book shops is limited, so they stock the latest bestsellers, and the great classics, but not some random book from 5 years ago. Then Amazon came with the Long Tail business model, showing that aggregate demand for those older books was still good enough to make selling them viable, given near infinite shelf-space in mega warehouses. Too bad Amazon never got heavily into board games, when I buy a board game on Amazon it is more often than not from a third party seller.

- posted by Tobold @ 9:14 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
Just as a factual correction, I'd point out that you could always get out-of-print and obscure books, long, long before Amazon or indeed the worldwide web. Whole businesses existed to provide that exact service. I worked in the same offices as one in the mid-90s and it had been going for many years. As the movie Amazon may have streamlined the process but they certainly didn't invent it.

Also, from personal testimony, I can advise you that even now Amazon isn't even close to being the most comprehensive, quickest or cheapest means of geting hold of difficult-to-find books, something i do quite frequently. I have much better luck with obscure, worthless old paperbacks on EBay and if I wanted anything with actual collectibility or value I'd go to abebooks, not Amazon. Amazon are great for the easy-to-middling stuff but not so reliable beyond that.
# posted by Blogger Bhagpuss : 14/3/22 09:36
 
Strike the words "As the movie" from the final sentence of the first paragraph! A thought I didn't complete.
# posted by Blogger Bhagpuss : 14/3/22 09:38
 
Pool of Radiance. Oh man the memories... I loved it, despite it not being the best one from SSI. With a glorious 16-colors EGA video card, it looked fabulous to my eyes.
# posted by Blogger Rugus : 15/3/22 17:19
 
My friend group in college loved the card/dice game Groo and I have been looking for a copy of my own for probably 20 years. It's quite a shame that older board games just sort of disappear.
# posted by Blogger Joe : 17/3/22 00:10
 
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