Pre-order Declines

 

. I have noticed , and have seen confirming comments from other stores, a noticeable drop-off in preorders of booster boxes, especially draft. Our pre-orders on draft boxes have dropped to nil and our pre-orders on set and collector boosters of new sets of Magic the Gathering have dropped by 80%. I am not sure how much essentially making pre-release weekend into release weekend has to do with this, but it does not appear to have helped. Online sellers cutting the price on booster boxes to $10 to $20 over costs does not help, although, since most online sells appear to adhere to the restriction that they cannot sell until the official release date, that does give brick and mortar stores a bit of a leg up. I am not sure if a week’s delay in receiving product outweighs the extra $40 to $80 the customer pays instore for a booster box. I have read of some stores eschewing the sale of booster boxes altogether, preferring to sell Magic by the pack, which offers a better margin, albeit with a bit more labor and smaller sales. A few stores have even said they opted to drop Magic and other TCGs altogether, preferring to shift their focus to other non-collectible games that generally require much less effort to sell.. if you are going to sell TCGs, and make that your focus, you must invest in a decent singles selection, play space and organized play, all of which cost extra money. Magic has gone through a slump like this before. Of course, there were not so many variations of Magic  for retailers to consider.

Social Deduction Games

 Apparently games such as Blood on the Clocktower, Werewolf, Secret Hitler and Good Cop Bad Cop have gotten prevalient enough that they now have their own game category: social deduction games. In a social deduction game, one player takes on a role in which they attempt to harm the other players or prevent them from winning, while keeping the fact that they are doing so secret. This has been a part of gameplay for a number of years as games like Shadows over Camelot and Saboteur come to mind but the genre has gotten popular enough to warrent a name finally.

CAH Clones

 

1)      Cards Against Humanity clones. We’ve already seen a few of these. Crabs Adjust Humidity from Vampire Squid and Personally Incorrect from Lion Rampant come to mind offhand and I spotted several more either in development or already launched, such as Heebie Jeebies from Zipwhaa. The ones I saw all use the basic Apples to Apples mechanic of having players choose cards and a judge deciding which one is the “best” in anywhere from mildly to highly offensive combinations of cards. This indicates the approaching crest of the popularity of Cards Against Humanity.

 As I tell the students in my Principles of Marketing and Product and Pricing Strategy classes, every new product goes through the Product Life Cycle of Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. During the Introductory and Growth stages, the new product sees heavy demand (assuming the launch is successful) and double or even triple digit sales increases, much like we have seen with Cards Against Humanity for the past couple of years. 

A key marker of when a product moves from the Growth stage to the Maturity stage is the appearance of knockoffs and “me too” products. By this point in the original product’s lifecycle, other manufacturer have noticed its success, decide there is additional unfulfilled demand for it and come up with their own product to fill the perceived gap in the market. Unfortunately, this also means demand for the product has probably topped off and, while growth will continue, it will no long see the outsized increases of the past. Ergo, while we will still see respectable Cards Against Humanity sales, stores won’t see near the levels that they did in the past.

Family Games: The Best 100

 

Family Games:  The Best !00, though out of print is a wonderful book, 380 pages of commentary by some of the top minds in the game industry  (Richard Garfield, Steve Jackson, Kenneth Hite, James Ernest, Robin Laws) on what each feels is one of the most enjoyable and most cleverly designed games from the last one hundred years. Some of the choices are unsurprising.  

Lewis Pulsipher picks Blockus and Will Hindmarch chooses Cranium.  However, there are a number of rather surprising choices as well.  James Ernest opts for Candy Land as a game that appeals to both 3 year olds and professional game designers, while Dale Donovan picks The Omega Virus, which Milton Bradley released in 1992 (and I remember seeing under the arm of every other attendee at that year’s GENCON) for a design that’s “so absorbing, so immersive, so well conceived that it gets right under a player’s skin”.

 Other games chosen include Clue, Great Dalmuti, Magi-Nation and Faery’s Tale Deluxe.  Even Monopoly has a fan in Steve Jackson, who lauds the game’s combination of skill and luck as well as the fact that it has one of the first official expansions for a board game, Stock Exchange, which released in 1936 and the first electron expansion for a boardgame, Monopoly Playmaster, released in 1982.

Fuse

 For those of you who like fast moving games and dice games. Suitable for 1 to 6 players, each player pulls a set of cards with different alignments of dice on them. The object is to roll dice, attempting to mach the numbers and patterns rolled with the alignment on the card. Matching a card clears it from the set in front of the player. The players have to remove all of the cards within 10 minutes in order to defuse the bomb. 

The game does have a phone app that provides a snarky timer with sound effects, but the game does not need the timer in order play. Great replay value and a great little game at $29.99

Directions

 No not telling you how to get to the store, although if you need them you can find them here. I am talking about the type of directions on how to use a promotional item a publisher has sent us. Granted, a store can use it anyway it wishes but too often the publisher, and the trading card game companies are especially bad at this, toss their promo items into a box and ship them out without including any information on how they would like them used. Granted, they probably have already informed us via email but having a paper in the box listing what should be int there and how they would like us to use them would certainly help.

Similarly, having packing slips with costs included with shipments would help speed up processing. It is truly a pain to open a box and find a packing slip inside with no information as to cost or MSRP. This means we have to go back to the internet and see if an invoice was sent to us or, as in hte case quite often with Asmodee, go to their website and look up individual information on the cost of the product. Including paperwork would be quite a timesaver.

Beadle and Grimm Dice

 Mildly bemusing that the Beadle and Grimm dice sets spend a lot of valuable package space describing the character class for each dice instead of actually showing the dice. The number one question we have with these dice is: "Uh, what do they look like?" We finally printed out a picture of one of the sets and posted it behind the dice, jsut to give people some idea as to what they are getting. If you are selling a product and its image is very important, be sure to put a picture of it on the package.

Battle for Baldur's Gate

 Commander Legends:  Battle for Baldur’s Gate, the new set for Magic the Gathering released recently  and the results for us, at least, have proved underwhelming, which seems a pattern across game stores with most reports fewer attendees than for a normal pre-release, although several did report selling out of all available product by the end of Saturday. Here, our Friday night event went off with better attendance than expected but no one showed for the Saturday event, even though the other stores running events locally did not start their until later in the day. Here are a few reasons I think we are not seeing the numbers for a normal Magic  Pre-release:

1. This is not a normal Magic pre-release. Although Commander is arguably the most popular format, drafting is a version for which few players opt. Couple that with the variations implemented in a Commander draft that differ from both regular draft and Commander and that can put people off.

2. Too soon. Streets of New Capenna released just a little over a month ago and Double Masters 2022 streets in early July. As I noted before, that’s an awful lot of Magic for the market to absorb in 3 months’ time. (See ‘A Swell of Magic and RIP Scott Bennie’ )

3. Drafting new sets. Anytime a player drafts, they make the choice of either drafting to play or drafting for value, i.e. keeping the expensive cards they open, even though they will not work well in the deck. Unless a player keeps a close eye on spoiler lists and Magic pricing sites, they will not know if the rare they just opened is worth a buck or 30 bucks. That uncertainty will put off some players until they get a better feel for the value of the new set.

Effects of Inflation on the Industry

 Prices were going to start falling as the money from last year’s stimulus checks worked its way through the economy but with the war in Ukraine and sanctions imposed on Russian exports, expect to see them moving up again. Sanctions against Russian mean there are sanctions in place on their international trade against three of the major oil producers in the world:  Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.  The world’s economy has been doing OK with the sanctions against Iran and Venezuela but Europe, last time I checked, gets about 40% of its oil from Russia. The US, currently the number one oil producing nation in the world, has promised to ramp up oil production to help fill the gap left by the expected loss in Russian oil production, although the sanctions may provide exceptions for energy, which makes them much less effective. According to S& P Global Platts, about 75% of the world’s sunflower oil comes from Russia and Ukraine and  just under 25% of its wheat supply comes from the two countries, so disruptions in the supply from both of them will mean further, and longer term, price increases in the food supply. Food is a necessity, games and comics, luxury items. When it comes to how to allocate dollars as prices rise, food will (usually) take priority over entertainment. Although it is doubtful we will see the double digit inflation rates of the late 1970s, the current 7% rate still triples the numbers we have seen over the last 20 odd years and will likely continue for most, if not all of this year

Change is Coming

 

Consider this:  in the past it took decades if not centuries for humans to widely adopt technological change. The printing press, telegraph, automobile. Today, however that change can spread in a few decades or less.  The  smartphone is less than two decades old and, according to BankMyCell already over 80% of the population has one. Similarly, according to DataReportal, social media, also less than 2 decades old, is now utilized by over 57% of the world’s population. Countries and private organizations are installing renewable energy sources at a blistering rate. Polio vaccine took two decades to develop, we managed to create one for COVID-19 in under less than a year.

What’s the point? Change is coming at us faster and faster. What took decades can now be done in a year or two. In the game industry, we have seen a massive ramp up in online board and RPG play, watching other people playing RPGs, card and boardgames have become viable means of entertainment and those selfsame people appearing on the streaming platforms you want cane move sales with just a mention of the game. Witness the effect the games sales of just a mention of the Skull card game on TikTok. https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/50051/rolling-initiative-three-trends-will-likely-continue Only a couple of years ago, only a few games even considered buying and using metal dice in a game, now our store sells 2 to 3 sets a week at a price I would never have thought anyone would pay for a set of dice. Our store has at least 3 Chinese manufacturers contacting us directly want us to place orders for metal dice with them.  10 years ago, there was no way I could feasibly justify purchasing metal dice in quantities to make the buy profitable. Today it is quite feasible.

Similarly with dice towers and dice trays. Both have been available for years but only in the last few years, as a greater number of people sale them in use on various RPG play streaming shows that demand for them increased to the level that made stoking a good selection of them with a dozen or more manufacturers offering both in assorted designs.

So what changes can we expect to see over the next few years? Here are couple of things I think will come about

Reshoring to Mexico—Although not feasible in the immediate future, i.e. next year, I expect to see some boardgame production companies open up factories in Mexico over the next five years and, under the USMCA, companies will see significant tax and cost advantages compared to importing from China. In addition, a much shorter supply chain will shorten the turnaround time. The quicker the US market can get a product, the quicker it can sell, and the quicker channels will need to restock. A shorter supply chain speeds the turnaround process dramatically.

More Kickstarted TCGs-  The success of Flesh and Blood and Metazoo have put dollar signs in the eyes of other creators. https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/49780/witness-greatest-show-rathe-next-flesh-blood-set WE have gotten several solicitations from several companies launching their own TCG with funding secured through Kickstarter and I expect to see a glut of these hitting the market over the next few years. Unfortunately for most of them, the “Ladders in the Mind” concept says that most markets have room for a Number 1 and a Number 2 with all other competitors battling it out for third place. Currently we have three battling it out:  Pokemon, Magic and Yu Gi Oh with no indication of any of the three fading away to give space to an upstart. I expect some to gain attention for several months or a year or two and then fade away, much like the The Crow TCG (You did know there was a Crow TCG, right/)

Change is Coming

 

Consider this:  in the past it took decades if not centuries for humans to widely adopt technological change. The printing press, telegraph, automobile. Today, however that change can spread in a few decades or less.  The  smartphone is less than two decades old and, according to BankMyCell already over 80% of the population has one. Similarly, according to DataReportal, social media, also less than 2 decades old, is now utilized by over 57% of the world’s population. Countries and private organizations are installing renewable energy sources at a blistering rate. Polio vaccine took two decades to develop, we managed to create one for COVID-19 in under less than a year.

What’s the point? Change is coming at us faster and faster. What took decades can now be done in a year or two. In the game industry, we have seen a massive ramp up in online board and RPG play, watching other people playing RPGs, card and boardgames have become viable means of entertainment and those selfsame people appearing on the streaming platforms you want cane move sales with just a mention of the game. Witness the effect the games sales of just a mention of the Skull card game on TikTok. https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/50051/rolling-initiative-three-trends-will-likely-continue Only a couple of years ago, only a few games even considered buying and using metal dice in a game, now our store sells 2 to 3 sets a week at a price I would never have thought anyone would pay for a set of dice. Our store has at least 3 Chinese manufacturers contacting us directly want us to place orders for metal dice with them.  10 years ago, there was no way I could feasibly justify purchasing metal dice in quantities to make the buy profitable. Today it is quite feasible.

Similarly with dice towers and dice trays. Both have been available for years but only in the last few years, as a greater number of people sale them in use on various RPG play streaming shows that demand for them increased to the level that made stoking a good selection of them with a dozen or more manufacturers offering both in assorted designs.

So what changes can we expect to see over the next few years? Here are couple of things I think will come about

Reshoring to Mexico—Although not feasible in the immediate future, i.e. next year, I expect to see some boardgame production companies open up factories in Mexico over the next five years and, under the USMCA, companies will see significant tax and cost advantages compared to importing from China. In addition, a much shorter supply chain will shorten the turnaround time. The quicker the US market can get a product, the quicker it can sell, and the quicker channels will need to restock. A shorter supply chain speeds the turnaround process dramatically.

More Kickstarted TCGs-  The success of Flesh and Blood and Metazoo have put dollar signs in the eyes of other creators. https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/49780/witness-greatest-show-rathe-next-flesh-blood-set WE have gotten several solicitations from several companies launching their own TCG with funding secured through Kickstarter and I expect to see a glut of these hitting the market over the next few years. Unfortunately for most of them, the “Ladders in the Mind” concept says that most markets have room for a Number 1 and a Number 2 with all other competitors battling it out for third place. Currently we have three battling it out:  Pokemon, Magic and Yu Gi Oh with no indication of any of the three fading away to give space to an upstart. I expect some to gain attention for several months or a year or two and then fade away, much like the The Crow TCG (You did know there was a Crow TCG, right/)

3 things for Which I am thankful

 

Since this is the Chinese New Year and I fell like giving thatnks , not that we shouldn’t do it the other 11 months out of the year,  here are 3 things  (aside from health, friends, chocolate, etc) that make me thankful:

1)       Other Retailers, both local and distant. While ‘tis true that life would certainly have remained simpler not having 3 other game retailers open up within 15 miles of us within the past year, I have found them in the area has made me focus more on our product mix and determine what elements of our marketing strategy to emphasize and what to de-emphasize.  Result, our revenues did take a hit over the past year but have now climbed back to the point that they equal sales prior to the other stores opening in the area.  From retailers more distant, I can usually find at least one idea or product to integrate into the store’s marketing mix every month,  often moreso.  Visiting the websites and physical locations or reading the blog posts or online musings from stores like The Fantasy Shop, Gnome Games or Black Diamond Games, among others, proves a useful 15-30 minutes of every week.

2)    3)      The Bits ‘n Mortar program.  Bits ‘n Mortar doesn’t get nearly enough publicity as it ought but this consortium of small RPG publishers still has their program in place, allowing registered brick and mortar retailers to give a PDF of their products to customers when said customer purchases a hard copy of the RPG.  We have customers who purchase Crucible 7 and Arc Dream RPG products specifically from us on a regular basis specifically because we participate in this program.

4)      Munchkin (and Steve Jackson Games). The base Munchkin game still sells reliably week in and week out over a decade after it first released.  Unlike some other game lines (cough-X-wing Miniatures, DiceMasters-cough), Steve Jackson Games manages to keep the almost the entire line in stock through distribution and, although they have run special sets through Target and Barnes and Noble, I have not seen them participate in any deep discounting or “Buy One, Get One Free” silliness such as appeared on the Target website last week.

Space for Gaming

 

One common recommendation proposed by online purchasers to alleviate the travails of the brick and mortar store is to give customers the deep discounts they want while moving to more of an event center or club model, wherein the store provides table space and terrain and other accoutrements and in return the players pay a fee for use of the space. I noticed one poster who said he (or she) would “be happy to give the store a buck or two” as a thank you for using the space. Stores relying on this model in the US have had a notoriously short lifespan and, while some posters indicated this method was wildly successful throughout Europe and they may be  correct. However, when I visited France a few years ago, courtesy of WOTC, and got the opportunity to look at several game stores, I noticed they used the same antiquated model that prevails here in the States, offering both merchandise and event space. In fact, with even higher per square foot rents than found in the US, the more desirable front of the store was given over to merchandise space while event tables got shunted to the rear of the building or even an upstairs location.

Hobby Games

 

I am still not thrilled with using the term “hobby game” as a descriptor for the type of games most boardgame stores stock but it seems the best one we currently have. About twenty years ago, the accepted term was Eurogame or Euro-style game, but as more American publishing houses released games more reliant on strategy than the luck of a dice roll, that term fell out of favor (We did have a customer last year trading in some boardgames who did refer to his collection of “Eurostyle” and “Ameritrash” games). ICV2 defines “hobby games” as those games produced for the “gamer” market and primarily, although not solely, sold through tabletop game stores.

A Brief History of Kickstarter

 Since it looks as if our back copies or Return to Dark Tower are shipping, I thought a look at the history of Kickstarter was in order:

Kickstarter launched in 2009 out of frustration co-founder Perry Chen faced when he ran into difficulties promoting a concert and turned to the Internet for funding.  Finding lots of interest among internet users wanting to support creative types, Kickstarter started as a way for those interested in art and music to provide support to the artists creating it.  Kickstarter supports the company by taking 5% of the proceeds of projects that successfully fund.  For those of you that don’t like Amazon, grit your teeth when you fund a Kickstarter project as Kickstarter uses Amazon to process pledge payments, with Amazon taking another 3 to 5% of the contributions for the handling.  Since launching, Kickstarter has had about 61,000 projects posted to the site and processed over 215 million dollars in pledges   but didn’t hit its first million dollar funding until this past February, when a proposed solid aluminum iPod dock , originally looking for $75,000, raised $1.4 million.  The most successful Kickstarter campaign so far has been for  the Pebble, a watch with programmable faces.   Pebble Technologies originally sought $100,000 to produce 1,000 of the watches and would up collected about $10.3 million, selling about 85,000 watches, enabling the company to add 6 people to its staff within two weeks, tripling the company’s size.

The attention garnered by successful Kickstarter projects such as these, and the Reaper and Giant In the Playground projects, obscures  the fact that posting a project to Kickstarter is nowise a guarantee of success.  In fact, according to Kickstarter, roughly 9% of all projects posted to the site receive zero pledges.  Less than 35% of game projects and 32% of publishing projects successfully fund (the most successful category:  theater.  Over 60% of theater projects launched on the site have successfully hit their funding levels).  Very few Kickstarter projects reach levels that attract the attention of the media, with only seven so far breaking the $1 million mark, as far as I can find.  The most successful Kickstarter projects fall into two categories, 1) they come from companies that already have a base of support for the project and are able to drive support for the project by pushing it relentlessly to that fan base or 2) technology blogs or other media sources find about the project, view it as novel or innovative, and start talking about it, creating awareness of it among potential funders.

There is also the problem of, what happens if a project funds but never gets produced.  In the early days of Kickstarter,  projects were typically musicians seeking funding from fans so they could produce another album.  Today,  aKickstarter project is much more likely a developer  seeking funding by preselling a product before producing it.   According to the terms of service on Kickstarter, if this happens , the creator is supposed to refund all money fund to the backers but the company provides no method for doing so on the website.  Since  Kickstarter never has the funds for a project, operating solely as a facilitator between creator and funder,  the company’s position is that it does not  give refunds and all negotiations must take place between creator and backer. 

According to a recent story on NPR (http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/09/03/160505449/when-a-kickstarter-campaign-fails-does-anyone-get-their-money-back), the designer of PopSockets, an iPod case and cord designed not to tangle while dancing, raised about $18,600 from 520 backers, last February.  Now, the money is gone, spent on legal and manufacturing fees, with no PopSockets to show for it, none likely to appear, and a host of unhappy backers.    Creator David Barnett eventually refunded about $1300 to 40 of them, which only made the 480 unpaid backers even unhappier.

The problem, really, is that Kickstarter is not set up to police itself, similar to eBay in its early days.  The side only does cursory investigation of projects before allowing them to post and, while the terms of use do constitute a legal requirement for the creator to produce or refund, there is no mechanism on the site for enforcement.  All legal disputes are between creator and backer and, given the size of many pledges, backers likely don’t feel it worthwhile to involve the law.

For the moment, Kickstarter is the premier source for crowdfunded projects.  However, unless the company develops better mechanisms for policing itself, it likely will lose that position to a similar website that provides stronger protections for funders.

Are the 1990s Back

 

With the announcement of the introduction of card parallels in Magic sets, I do wonder if anyone overseeing the Magic line at Hasbro/ WOTC remembers the 1990s? https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/49954/wotc-adds-card-parallels-magic-the-gathering During that decade, multiple covers, plastic crystals and lenticular covers paved the way for the comic crash of the late 1990s as The Hollywood Reporter points out Happily those days have not returned, though both Dynamite and Valiant are making valiant efforts to bring them back. Similarly as Slate points out, during the same period, sports cards evolved from a humble hobby pursued primarily by boys to something touted by no less than the Wall Street Journal as an “inflation hedge”. Companies such as Upper Deck and DonRuss introduced autograph cards, swatch cards and other chase cards further driving speculation boom, leading to the eventual collapse of the market and cards that sold for hundreds of dollars now worth a fraction of that.

Similarly, I fear that WOTC/Hasbro has glommed onto the “ collectible” aspect of the collectable card game aspect while downplaying the “game” aspect of it. The introduction of Set Boosters and Collector Boosters do little to enhance gameplay, but instead target the collector market and, while collecting has always been part and parcel of the Magic universe, it was subsidiary to gameplay:  “How will this card improve my deck?” While early sets of Magic did, on occasion, include multiple tyles of the same card, the various season illustrations on Urza’s Tower for example, they were few and far between, with most players happy to have 4 to put into their deck, without worrying about getting all the variants. From what I can tell, WOTC’s current marketing plan, with the introduction of Alchemy  focuses on moving actual play online, as I have had a number of customers comment, while promoting the collectible aspect of the game with a number of variants of each card available with each release. Set boosters and Collector boosters are specifically designed for this market, which, according to WOTC is large enough to drive demand for the two additional varieties of card sets within the past two years to what is essentially a segment of the Magic target market. Add in, by my count, 45 Secret Lair releases in the past year and the Magic market has seen a lot of product flooding into the market within a short period of time.

Unlike the sports cards and comic book boom and bust of the 1990s, most of the revenues from the Magic boom funnel into one company so flooding the market with Magic product primarily  benefits WOTC/Hasbro. Given Hasbro’s current market capitalization of $13.6 billion, according to CNN Business, any implosion of the  Magic market would have serious repercussions to the company, especially since much of its current growth has come from the Wizards division, but would not drive the company into bankruptcy, as were a number of 1990’s era sports card and comic publishers after the implosion of their respective markets. Maybe WOTC has done the analysis as to how much Magic product the market can absorb and has determined the company can safely ramp up its number of releases without oversaturating the market. I hope so.

 

Food Expiration Dates

 Interesting bit of information "best by" dates on food have no consistance and not even the same menaing from state to state. the only product with standarized expiration dates are infant formula. The best by dates were not even originally offered as consumer infromation. They were included on food products in a code that grocers could read to allow them to rotate products so as to move the older packages of food to the front of the shelf and sell them. Consumers leaned about the codes and started inquiring as to how to read them so over time, producers started putting the dates on the package in plain language to use as a marketing tool so that consumers would buy the newer proudcts thinking they were fresher. In actually, this is just a case of marketing affecting consumer behavior, negatively, as now we throw away food that has passed its "best by" date, in in all likelihood the food is still good.

One Successful Game

 Every notice how most designers have one really successful game in them? Although known as the creator of Magic, Richard Garfield has created a number of other games, none of which have attained the popularity of Magic. Gary Gygax co-created Dungeons and Dragons, along with Dave Arneson, which created the RPG industry. Both men went on to create other games but none every acheived the popularity of D&D. Brotherwise games has released several other games besides Boss Monster, but any Boos Monster supplememnt will outsde any of their new games. Even the creator of Wingspan, Elisabeth Hargraves,  failed to achieve major success with her second and third game releases.

Munchkin Sales

 

1)   The base Munchkin game still sells reliably week in and week out over 20 years after it first released.  Unlike some other game lines (cough-X-wing Miniatures, DiceMasters-cough), Steve Jackson Games manages to keep the almost the entire line in stock through distribution and, although they have run special sets through Target and Barnes and Noble, I have not seen them participate in any deep discounting or “Buy One, Get One Free” silliness such as appeared on the Target website last week. I doubted the game would sell when it first released but am happy to be proved wrong.

Deckbuilding Games and the Product Life Cycle

 

An overheard comment about the introduction of yet another deck building game to the market set me to thinking about the number of deckbuilding games, the product life cycle and what the PLC means for this particular segment of the market.

The product life cycle consists of four stages:  introduction, growth, maturity and decline.  All products go through all four of these stages, some at a faster rate than others (roughly 50,000 new products come onto the market every year, only about 10% of them stay in production for more than five years).

The introductory stage of the PLC is always the most exciting part of a product’s life.  The manufacturer has this cool new idea for a great new product(Dominion) or an interesting take on an already existing one (Ascension).  The manufacturer has (hopefully) playtested it extensively, made mockups or prototypes, lined up a production option, either in-house or outsourced and lined up financing, again either through theirself or, quite commonly today, through an exterior source such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo. The manufacturer is also all over Twitter, Facebook, TheyTube and any other media source  to which they can get access, talking about this cool new product and trying to get others to do the same.   During this stage, while their sales increases hit double or triple percentages, their expenses far exceed their revenues.  In short, they are losing money on the product until they hit the breakeven point, at which their revenues cover their expenses. 

Now, they move into the growth stage of the product life cycle.  During this stage their promotional efforts slack off as others have, hopefully, picked up on the buzz their original efforts generated for their products.  This means less expenditure on promotion, allowing they to divert more of the gross profits to cover fixed costs.  If they allocated revenues well, they start making a net profit during this stage.  As their product gets wider notice in the market though, sales start to slacken from the triple or high double digit growth they posted after the launch.  They should still see growth in the low double digits though.

The characteristic of the growth stage that makes me think the deckbuilding category is exiting the growth stage and entering the maturity stage of the PLC is that, towards the end of the growth stage, competition products start to enter the market.  Competitors see how well this product has done satisfying consumers and want a piece of the action, so they enter the market with similar products, planning to capture a share.  Currently, I count a minimum of ten deckbuilding games on the market, with more on the way.  Nothing says more clearly that the market for deckbuilding games has matured than the number of companies announcing their entry into the market.

What happens during this stage?  Profits for early entrants into the market continue to increase as their expenses likewise continue to drop.  However, sales increases drop to single digits and start to decline towards the end of the cycle, as the product moves from maturity to decline.  One sure sign that the market has moved from maturity to the decline stage of the PLC is competitors pulling the plug on their products and announced product launches never making it to market.