The "There is nothing better to play" theory

No--because I don't think "there is nothing better to play" is actually true. Granted, the video game industry is filled to bursting with copycat FPS, RTS, and RPG titles. Granted, 80% of the publishers out there refuse to back and/or market games that don't fit neatly into one of those bins.

However...somehow, every year, great games to appear in defiance of these categories. Last year we had Katamari Damacy and Shadow of the Colossus.

Film works the same way. Every summer you can count on the big studios' brainless and formulaic blockbusters, but you can also rely on smart films from various independent film makers and big-studio art-house production companies.

TV takes this to the extreme: for 3 years, the medical/lawyer dramas reign supreme, the next 3 sees dominance from reality shows, after that come the sitcoms, etc.

In each case, as the old market begins to stagnate, someone strikes out with a new concept that taps a lucrative market and results in a genre boom which eventually plays itself out. It never goes away, but it comes and goes over the course of years.

This slow but steady turnover keeps these industries alive. No matter how much you like Star Wars, if that was the only movie you could see, you'd get sick of it. The few-but-vital "creative risk" projects that come out each year drive this process by providing people "something better to play". They vote with their wallets and the publishers follow suit.

The board game situation doesn't exactly parallel the video game and/or movie situation. First of all, board games are social experiences, while movies and most video games are not. Is Monopoly a fun game? That largely depends on who's playing. Even more complicated is the fact that, if I pull out Monopoly, the pool of available players is much larger than that for a game of Settlers of Catan. So which is the "better" game?

Second, the audience for games like Monopoly differs significantly from the audience for Eurogames. In this sense, movies offer a nice parallel: Monopoly is a "summer blockbuster" game and Settlers of Catan is an "arthouse" game. Blockbusters attract a lot more people and are a lot easier to please. Arthouse games usually require more of their audience and, as a result, appeal to fewer people. So, would people play Settlers (a "better" game) if they knew about it? Depends on the person.

My gut tells me that Eurogames, if properly marketed, would reach more people than they currently do, but still not enough to convince companies like Hasbro to invest in them heavily. Guillotine is a great example: as an "indie" game, it sold very well (hundreds of thousands of units, I believe). When Hasbro bought the company that published it, they axed the game because it was a "poor" seller. I think they may have started printing it again, but I'm certain they do so in much smaller runs than they do for Clue.

It seems that "there is nothing better" might be rephrased "what we have is good enough". People know Monopoly and Clue, and they get what they want out of them. When you buy them, you already know how to play and you know what kind of experience you will have. Given that most people probably have 6 games in their closet, it seems unlikely that they'll experiment with unknowns like Tikal and Wallenstein. For this type of person, would those games be "better", anyway? That's probably too subjective a question toask.

Mark