Board Games Are Too Expensive!

 thank you to gamework create for being a channel partner looking for a kickstarter game you missed or 3d printed minis gamework create has a huge selection available all at a fair price use the link in the description below to check out all the gamework create has to offer what's up rockstars today i have a great opportunity to talk to you guys today about something i feel is very important for this industry and for us as consumers and for developing companies as well this is something that definitely needs to be discussed and that's just how expensive this hobby hobby is and how expensive it actually should be let's go and discuss reality versus what should happen

as always a huge shout to my patrons and youtube members it is through their financial support that this channel is possible and that's because i take no money from any game developer so that you know i get i give you my honest opinion and my wallets opinion if you appreciate that and you can even a dollar a month there is a patreon link down below and i greatly appreciate it trust me it helps and it adds up and with that out of the way let's just go ahead and dive right in all i'm gonna say before that is even if you didn't click that patreon link that's totally fine i get it just leave a like on the video to let me know that you found this video helpful or insightful or entertaining in some way i greatly appreciate it and let me know what you think down below as well in fact i'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are now before i say something and then after the video let me know if it made you think at all let me know if it you know changed your mind i would love to hear that i'd love to have the conversation with you guys you guys know i always appreciate that and i'll be down there too he doesn't know how i roll all right now let's actually dive into it now before i talk about any uh specific game know that i'm only using examples and i'm not trying to call out this game or that game there are games i'm covering that i have not played games that i would not play games that i have bought and played and enjoyed okay so i'm not like trying to point fingers or cast blame or do anything like that i'm just trying to talk about specific situations that i notice that i've noticed over time and kind of my feelings and how they've evolved and possible solutions so let's go ahead and talk about this my main statement that i'm going to try and back up right now is this board games can be very expensive especially on kickstarter but in general they're just getting more expensive and i don't think they need to be i think developers are being either greedy or lazy or both when it comes to the price of their games hoping to wow us in other factors instead of being anything that actually helps us as consumers so let me go ahead and just also mention that i have talked briefly in the past about buying expensive games and i've talked about that too and this is kind of an evolution i'm the one that kind of started that talk around the easy pay system on chronicles of drew where if you don't have enough money and this is a super expensive game you can just pay monthly payments for it to afford it because they're getting so expensive so let's talk about that expense now and i'll talk you through kind of my reasoning what i've been thinking of and we're going to start here with aridia alrighty i don't know how to pronounce it i apologize uh rydia r-y-d-i-a is a final fantasy character i know so i tend to say aria but then that sounds weird to me so whatever it is just know that it's freaking expensive now if you look at this it's saying that they are charging for the base game nowthis is the cheapest you can play this game if you want to play this game this is the lowest amount you have to pay 165 and they're saying that's actually 75 off that the retail price i suggest is 240 dollars for the base game there isn't a possible way to lower that cost except there is if you notice here you have these pre-painted player mentors every single player miniature comes pre-painted yes that costs extra yes that adds money to it yes it probably adds value to a lot of people who like to see it pre-painted but that is definitely adding to the cost here and guess what 50 pre-painted monster miniatures every single miniature in this game comes pre-painted and you are paying for that in the base costs there is no ability to not pay for that compare that to dragori games and their teneris adventures campaign where they released both a painted version and a non-painted version or any game from awaken realms that has the sun drop or a non-sun drop in other words it's not forced into the core game so that the core game is cheaper in other words you don't have to pay for something you don't want but if you have the money and you're willing to pay for it and you want to you can pay that extra money that's the difference here is they're forcing that in here so our idea is as expensive as it is in large part thanks to dozens and dozens 50 pre-painted monster miniatures and all the player miniatures and their iterations all pre-painted as well i'm not going to get into card count i'm not going to get into the content i think the game looks awesome okay so i'm not saying this game doesn't look freaking killer because trust me it does but when i see that they think that the base cost should be 240 dollars i feel like stuff should be taken out and added uh otherwise in other words it doesn't need to have all of that in it it can't will the game be lesser if you don't have pre-painted minis why are you forcing that as the bare minimum to where if people would love to play your game and love to experience it but can't afford 300 at retail once they add tax and all that stuff or shipping if they're buying it online then they just don't get to play the game at all because you wanted pre-painted minis in there i feel like companies and i'm gonna move on to other ones i feel like companies are trying to stand out kickstarter is very very crowded and very busy and very big and these big games with these big campaigns with hundred plus scenarios as frosthaven advertises and you know a 600 page campaign and you know a hundred plus hour replayable uh campaign and all this stuff that they they overstuff these with justice you know just to be different just to one up the competition just be bigger and better than everybody else yes you might have another adventure game but eria has pre-painted miniatures yes you might have a game that's a cool campaign but we have this many hours in our campaign versus your that many hours in that campaign which means that many more minions and that many more game tiles and that many more cards and that many more monster stats and that many more delays when you have to actually make that insanely big game i think that's what's happening here and the problem is that it's adding to the cost and a time where shipping is already insane delays are already bigger than the arbor have been it's harder to produce something overseas in china right now because of outbreaks because of coba it's harder to ship something out of there so you end up paying to have it stored there while you're just trying to bid for a ship to get out and then you ended up shipping to other places and all that stuff the business cost alone to these big campaigns is massive massive and i worry that not only is it not sustainable for consumers in other words for us to keep up with backing games that are not it used to be 90 then it was a hundred then it was 120 then then it was 150 now we're at 165 for an acceptable core box game experience that not only is it expensive for us but it's going to end up costing them i don't think it's sustainable you can't just keep going bigger and better ever it doesn't work that way you can't just there has to be a limit there has to be a time where you're like you know what this doesn't make sense to make games like this maybe we'll see that maybe we're not let's move on another one descent is another recent one now i know this says 175 that's the msrp and i know that you can find it online for the cheap cheap price of 140 you might be able to get the steal of 130 now why is descent legends of the dark so much more expensive than second edition why is it that the core box of descent has now almost doubled in price if you paid 98 retail for dissent descent second edition which like a lot of people did you're not paying 180 it's literally double it's twice as much why is that is it because there's a much larger campaign or there's way more minis or there's more 3d tokens more and more i'm seeing this and i i might have another video on 3d tokens and or uh sorry uh 3d terrain i should say 3d terrain and kind of my feelings as they've evolved on it because they have evolved but what i will say is i'm seeing more and more games with these 3d train again to stand out why does this stand out so much more because it's not just another actor of an app you've seen that a million times it's not just a cent you've seen that a million times you own two copies of it i don't have it here anymore you still have two copies of just in second edition right there um so like it's not that it's standing out because it's not only that but it's also these big hips minis you know with the which hips by the way it costs like four times as much to make like it's way more expensive than pvc is it four times as good no is it better yes but again that core box now is getting more expensive because they're making fancy hips miniatures and then that 3d terrain that again is forced on there it's not just by the 3d terrain expansion it's if you want to play descent you have to buy the 3d terrain which means you have to spend more we're constantly trying to stand out and constantly trying to one-up each other at the competition's getting to the point where it's not affordable for us the consumers that's the issue and again i don't think it's a long it's long lived as affordable for game companies as well the market cannot just go more and more expensive and get smaller and smaller as more and more people have to drop out of playing these games if you want a dungeon crawler at this point there's few and far between dungeon crawlers that are remotely considered cheap at this point it's just getting worse not better as they try to stand out as they try to one up themselves as they try to put the bells and whistles so that you back for the bells and whistles probably ignoring the meat and potatoes so anyway descent another example of that even judgment i loved judgment judgment is a fantastic game it's really really fun and they have a neoprene stitched matte core box again i ask why why not put a game pro will your game be worse as a game board now i can understand i can understand that i think judgment really wanted this wanting a premium product and i get that and i understand allusions to other industries like car industries well you got the fancy sports car and he got the fancy or the the the commuter car and then he got the budget car and i understand that but i think we're stopping the budget car we're stopping the economy car so that everybody's trying to be that luxury car and i don't think that's a good idea it's fine to have those but also i want people to realize that they're choosing this you could put the 3d terrain as an expansion just use tokens you could put a regular game board in judgement and not put a uh neoprene mat stitched in there you're choosing to make that you could make a radia without painted minis you're choosing to put that in there they are purposely making this core box as stuffed and expensive as possible to stand out and then the more expensive it is means the higher they can raise it you want to know why our idea is at over almost a million bucks well one of the reasons is because we're looking at almost at a million is because first of all it's made by a developer known to make a great game it looks awesome and it's freaking expensive that third one is the issue make a great game be well known that's fine charge a whole bunch of money for the core box that's the part i have a problem with that was a weird number but you get what i'm saying uh that's that's the one where i'm like yeah better games yeah good development yeah more expensive on purpose rah-rah like i can't get behind that i can't do it anymore the more i see thisthe more it bothers me and here we have a video on it one more one of my favorite game systems the river system based off conan here is that and as you can see i spent plenty of money here so i'm not saying these games are bad i'm not saying i wouldn't back them too i'm right there with you guys right there with you however this was in a time 140 was a lot this was above average the average was you were just starting to see 120 boxes especially like from like come on and stuff like that it was abnormal normally it was at about a hundred at this point it was a little bit higher than the 90 that i think i started out in kickstarter with and it's been upping ever since 140 was like 140 but you got 162 miniatures 54 stretch goals you got two this couldn't even fit in one box this was two boxes of that i love that i get i checked every single day on this campaign every single day i got every expansion i love it i get it i get it but did the core box need to have all of this did it now i think there's extremes right a lot of times i talk about oh like when i was unboxing bloodborne had all the small packages like well that's retail right that's uh arcadia quest arcade quest they always do that too with like the hero packs that come with like two or three heroes the reason you have 12 of those is because in retail you want those smaller incremental add-ons and so i'm not saying you necessarily want that there is a benefit i think of grouping things together especially in like a big box expansion so you can get like a proper campaign and not just you know like penny and dime everything so you don't need to go to the extreme that way but i don't feel like you need to go the extreme that way i think batman gotham city chronicles would have been just as fun with a hundred minis that's 62 minis less 62 of them less i still think it would have been a great game and maybe maybe it could have even gone a little bit lower than 140. so is that the benefit do we want to support something that just keeps going more and more and more and what can we do about it well i did want to point out something here and trespass odyssey so if you notice here right there is the prelude that's what they gave every reviewer of this game it was a prequel to the story so didn't ruin the story before you can introduce you to kind of the big concepts so kind of guide you through that and guess what it was really cool and guess what they decided to sell it at a cheaper cost so instead of that 130 which again is expensive 130 is a lot of money does the core game need to be that way maybe maybe not i'm not saying every game needs to be especially when it comes to like a big boss battler yeah maybe it doesn't need to be that big you know maybe it's just that's just the cost of making these boss battlers that have more than like three bosses in it or something not saying that there's genres and categories for everything i mean people and it can be expensive too but but they didn't say you know what you either pay 130 or you don't get experience and trespass odyssey goodbye peasant come back with more money get a better job go go play some cheapo game good luck on the used market maybe you can play it in 10 years when people are you know selling it for for cheap because they don't care anymore maybe then you can get it or or do you do something like this maybe you can offer a prelude for 70 bucks it allows somebody and this is key too and because again maybe it allows them to that look how the 54 backers 54 packers they now have an entire new sku an entire new packaging process a shipping organization for 54 backers now obviously uh that a lot of one dollar backers may upgrade to that in the pm we don't really get to see a lot of insight into that but that that almost proves otherwise of what i'm saying right and i get that the same with uh offering standees right oh sworn i didn't i didn't pull this up at sworn famously offered standees and miniatures i don't know how many times i see a game like batman or something like that with a lot of minis or even an interest assassin or something like that where people are like primal that's a big one too it's like these are big giant minis why not put standees in there make a cheaper option for those that don't want to spend so much order that can't afford so much not no judging here uh you know maybe they're trying to be more financially responsible maybe they have a limited budget and you going standing means they can get an entire other game in their in their category for that is it worth it well as a consumer obviously the choice more choice is better yes always a hundred percent give options there's nothing wrong with giving options that cost us nothing it does cost custom companies though and i know a lot of you developers watch this stuff so i get it i get it if there's a cost to having an add-on or having another sku i logistically and just factually it does the development time all that kind of stuff goes into that so is it worth it for 54 backers morally maybe financially probably not would those 54 backups have dropped down or would they have upgraded to the 130 don't know don't know would they have allowed the kickstarter to go up higher i don't know and i don't know the answer either that's why i would love to hear what you had to say you heard my kind of two pieces here i think there are ways you can either limit the scope of your game or limit the component quality to have a bare minimum that can be upgraded as in like offering hey you want that neoprene mat here it is as an add-on you want that 3d terrain here it is without pimp out your game but we're not going to require you to pimp out your game to play the core game the core game will be as available as it can be to as many people as possible and that means being price conscious and i'd love to hear what you have to say from both sides so if you're a developer feel free to comment i would love to or email me i would love to hear have a chat with you about this and understand more the process of standing out in today's day is this why you think descent has 3d terrain just to stand out to make a big thing would it have been as impactful if they had shown it and it was the same descent with a flat board with an app or was it that wow factor where we saw it all displayed out there i just walked into a game store just yesterday and they had it on display and it looked darn and impressive and definitely caught my eye is it worth it to send out to have so much content and all these upgrades and three in uh you know minis that change with how things you know how you progress and having it all pre-painted is is is that what's you need to stand out um are you guys finding that do you guys think that do you guys think it's sustainable let me know in the comments below i would love love to hear your thoughts so that's my thoughts i don't know all the answers i don't even know if if this is truly a problem i feel like it is i feel like we're getting more and more expensive and right now there's nothing stopping it there is no finish line to that it just keeps going who's going to stand out from our idea well i don't know but you might have a 180 even more epic her game with even more pre-painted minis and even more of this and even more of that not sure where it stops let me know all right take care guys we have a great rest of your day i'll see you later bye