a game in the crowd
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, August 12, 2006
INDIANAPOLIS – The company responsible for marketing successes such as Dungeons &Dragons and Magic the Gathering is betting its newest game will develop the same cultlike following.
To make sure Dreamblade, a science-fiction game, hits it big with players, Wizards of the Coast Inc. is backing the game’s release with a half-million dollar tournament circuit. That’s on top of the $2 million the Renton-based company has spent to develop and market the game, which debuted Thursday at a science fiction convention in Indianapolis.
Still, Dreamblade, which is played with miniature sci-fi character figurines, faces a crowded marketplace where manufacturers and their strictly low-tech games battle for players plugged into iPods, cell phones, computers and PlayStations.
The board game, which lacks a memory chip, control panel or any other electronic feature, is like chess with monsters, warriors and other creatures battling on a paper board.
“They really want to make this the hot new thing,” said Marcus King, the owner of the store Titan Games in Battle Creek, Mich.
Gamers and store owners say success of a game has more to do with its design and construction than its publicity. A game has to be complex enough to be intriguing and appeal to the most cynical of hard-core fans, but still fun and easy to understand.
About 25,000 gamers were expected to descend on Indianapolis this weekend for the annual confab known as Gen Con where dozens of hobby game manufacturers will be hawking their latest products. Despite years of development and carefully orchestrated publicity, most of those games will fail within the first three years, according to industry officials.
In the 10 years since the meteoric debut of the trading card Pokemon, industry insiders say the game industry has become more competitive than ever, especially as the popularity of traditional board games wanes. But it’s still $2 billion in sales annually, compared to a $10 billion video game market.
Manufacturers know if they can excite players at conventions such as Gen Con, they’re likely to find scores of fans who will spend thousands of dollars each year, ensuring a game’s future.
“Everyone now has visions of this mass-market success,” said James Mishler, managing editor at the trade publication Comics &Games Retailer. “If you put in $2 million in mass marketing alone, you have to make back $5 million or $6 million in sales just to break even with that level of advertising. It’s a level and a kind of marketing that we haven’t seen in this industry for very long.”
Retailers and developers blame hard-to-impress consumers for the tightening mainstream game market. Others cite poor literacy rates that keep players from reading sometimes voluminous rule books.
“Five years ago, you couldn’t keep board games on the shelf,” said Jay Witten, the warehouse manager at Gamestation in Leitchfield, Ky. “Kids are into this technology, and board games might be a little too slow for them because we’re a hustle and bustle society.”
That’s why manufacturers have their sights set on the hobby game industry – a niche market known for its devoted fans, complex rules, role-playing games, historical plots and sci-fi themes.
With dozens – and by some estimates even hundreds – of new games launched each year, getting the games into the hands of players has become even harder.
“How are these games going to move off the shelf if no one shows them how to play and we don’t do any TV advertising behind it?” said Matt Mariani, director of marketing at game maker Out of the Box Publishing Inc. “The black hole is getting bigger because retail stores are being more selective.”
