Distributors declining games based on BGG ratings

Distributors are now declining to stock games that have less than 20 or so ratings on BGG (with an average rating of 7+). James Mathe of Minion games talked about this on Facebook today and it's being discussed on Reddit.

I think this is a crock of shit. I'm sure this will draw some ire from people on here.

I can understand that from a business perspective. Why stock games that you predict will likely gather dust? I think it's fair for them to use that as an indicator of consumer interest.

bfkiller wrote: I can understand that from a business perspective. Why stock games that you predict will likely gather dust? I think it's fair for them to use that as an indicator of consumer interest.

EDIT: I do think they're being overly narrow in their thinking when only considering games rated 7+, though. There are plenty of popular games with lower ratings than that. Talisman currently has a 6.7 rating, for example.

The problem is people rating shit they've never played, particularly with kickstarter games. People will rate stuff low if dislike the cost of a game on Kickstarter or several people will rate it high because they got a bunch of shit for cheap.

Furthermore, hype from advertising can produce additional ratings and people really wanting to like the game can overlook faults.

Lastly, people rate based on different criteria and different scales. My 7 is much higher than a BGG 7 for instance.

That sounds ridiculous, especially when ratings are so arbitrary.

Ok, maybe I misunderstood. So you're talking about previously unreleased games with less than 20 ratings? Ok, that is stupid, because lots of games simply won't get that many ratings until after they're available in stores.

I'm going with outrageous. This was sort of always the big fear with BGG ratings, that at some point it would mean something besides a consumer "suggestion."

Couple of "from the hip" thoughts:
-Links?
-Kickstarer effect? A visible and hyped game already having the majority of their customers taken care of direct? I've seen numerous KS games gather dust on store shelves.
-Doesn't distributors paying close attention to BGG ratings fly in the face of people saying BGG has only a minimal impact on the hobby and its direction?

Here's the reddit link:
www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/2kq...ething_distributors/

Here's a link to a Kickstarter where the creator is asking for ratings just so he can get it picked up by distributors:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/1044523500/...achery/posts/1027057

The James Mathe post is in a closed boardgame designer group on Facebook so can't link it.

I'm not sure what distributors specifically are being talked about and this isn't some hard rule that they all follow but it's a disturbing trend that is being caused by the number of new games and distributors not being able to buy everything.

This is likely a result of kickstarter unfortunately. This seems like it will hurt the little guy and may cause Kickstarter to push even further towards being dominated by big Companies.

What really sucks is that I don't see how a new publishing company could even get started now without kickstarter. If a new publisher were coming out with their first game, how would they get these ratings? They'd have to go to kickstarter I guess to get people to buy in and ask them to rate the game. Ugh.

I think that Noble Treachery is going to be sitting on a bunch of copies.
136 cartons at 12 copies per carton...1,632 copies. With 257 backers...So maybe 300 copies spoken for?

Makes sense to me.

Established publishers operating in the traditional production model (so not Kickstarter) will be pretty wholly unaffected. No one is going to pass on an upcoming Z-Man or Plaid Hat title because BGG doesn't have enough prerelease ratings of a high enough number. But with the insane glut of titles coming out now, and especially in the case of there being so so many dubious KS titles, why the fuck would you have any interest in picking up games that no one is talking about? The marketplace is so crowded already with big name titles from big name publishers and big name designers, there is only so much a market can handle. 20 ratings on BGG is insanely low for a full production run title that is/will actually move units.

With KS there are tons of games being published in a more hit it and quit it style, where they only really plan to knock out a single small run with no real effort put towards continual sales and the creation of an evergreen title. So as a distributor, why get involved with something you're gonna maybe move a few cases of and then never hear from again?

BGG rating is a reasonable measure of the general ability of a title to actually sell. If you can't manage 20+ ratings there, you aint gonna be selling a few thousand copies, no matter if your core demographic is elsewhere, there is enough bleed over that you will easily surpass that number. And as a distributor looking at literally 1000+ new titles a year (not to mention all the evergreen stuff you need to be dealing with), you need to weed out stuff that's not worth the effort.

So yeah, BGG ratings are kinda bullshit, but they are also an easy way to see the relative interest level in a title that you otherwise have no reason to even bother looking at. This is really only a policy for new small run stuff, no one is all of a sudden giving a shit about BGG ratings for actual full run releases from well established parties with a track record of moving units.

It could make it unreasonably difficult for a new company with decent games to break into the market. Gale Force Nine might have had a tough time getting Spartacus in circulation of retailers or distributors were too focused on quantity of BGG ratings.

I do have to chuckle...People are going to try to game the system with rating recruitment from existing users or new users sent specifically to rate their game. And now due to this policy BGG has to spend extra resources to try to stop gamers from gaming the system to maintain the "integrity" of their rating system.


I hereby offer my services: $2 via PayPal and I'll rate your game.

Really, you can get 20 ratings in half an hour. Promise a car magnet or a special card to people. BGG members are remarkably cheap to bribe.

When retailers start asking for your title they'll stock the game. They are just tired of renting space for turds, especially when P500 copies have already torn up the market and the publisher hasn't spent jack on promotion.

S.

People rate Kickstarter games a 10 because they've paid $300 up front for them. If that's not proof that the BGG system is about as meaningful as Kierkegaard is to a crawfish, then I don't know what is.

Loter is right on the money here, down the line. He wrote pretty much my response to this but I'll add to it anyway.

Distributors like Alliance, Blackhawk and so forth are not interested in developing relationships with "one and done" publishers, nor are they interested in product that is going to be practically DOA by the time it hits retail shelves. I've been to distributor warehouses and let me tell you, the degree of DEAD product that is sitting there already is quite staggering. There is shit there that has been sitting there for 10 years. Piles of copies of Power Lunch, for example. So no, if I'm a product buyer at a distributor, I am not interested in flash-in-the-pan Kickstarter garbage. Sorry, don't mean to step all over that dream you've always have of publishing a game. Even some of the good Kickstarter games I would not in a million years put in my warehouse. Can you imagine sitting on 500 unsold copies of Lyssan or Gunship? God knows how many copies of Myth- and expansions for it- are already gathering dust.

Companies like Alliance actually make it kind of hard for small publishers to get into the chain- they make you pay to ship the product to their warehouse and you have to agree to buy back a certain percentage of unsold product. Some guys get really upset about how that works, but quite frankly it's a way to protect the enterprise from bringing on unsaleable product and tying up assets. It is renting space for turds, like Sag put it.

Plus, the distributors know how Kickstarter works. Almost all of the sales are backers, which cuts out the distributor anyway. There's a very brief period when/if the game gets into distribution where stragglers that missed the campaign might pick it up. But then, you're looking at dead product. Everybody moves on to the next campaign.

That is not something that I as a distributor want to support. So if I'm a product buyer at Alliance or another big distro, I say "no" to any and all Kickstarter titles EXCEPT for the ones that are highly ranked, have a substantial marketing presence and have some evidence that shows me that it's not another Myth.

Of course, this is going to cause the little guys to bitch and whine that the big bad distributors are cutting them out. Too damn bad.

That said, it is a shame that the basis on what is or isn't a viable game is based on BGG ratings, I definitely agree there.

I don't have any contention with a distributor not wanting to pick up a kickstarter game or a store owner not wanting to sell one, I have contention with them using 20 BGG ratings as a metric. That is ridiculous.

Many flops would have passed this test so it's completely arbitrary and doesn't indicate a thing.