Distributors declining games based on BGG ratings

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.

Michael Barnes wrote: 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.

Yes, exactly. The logic makes perfect sense. It's just the measurement technique that is a little ridiculous. And as I believe you've said before, I think anything that makes BGG more or less the "official" place for boardgames is a bad thing.

charlest wrote: 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.

aw man, that's terrible. Do BGG ratings really have such a strong correlation to sales? This will result in BGG ratings being further manipulated than they already were maybe.

Transformers: Age of Extinction was universally-pandered and received awful ratings and reviews. Scoring very low on rottentomatoes and such. Yet, there is always a market for everything and tons of people that don't give a crap what other people have to say so tons of people went to see it and it made a ton of money.

I would think the same would hold true for boardgames. Someone might try to re-awaken the Nightmare franchise and even be dumb enough to still run it on VHS-tapes. The cover would have a pic of Ken B holding up his finger saying, "Rebuketh me not, peckerhead!" and even though it would score a low 2 on BGG, it could sell like hotcakes, who knows?

Back when I went to the GAMA trade show, there was this booth there set up by this tiny company that was publishing this horse racing game. I like horse racing games, so I sat down with them to take a look at it. The game was horrible. The two guys that made it obviously had absolutely no clue about the games industry, they had no clue about what trends were in design, they had no clue how to design and manufacture a good-looking product. They knew, I think, that they were sunk before they had left the dock. I was the only appointment they had for the day. They had the hungry desperation of time share salesmen, trying to find some way into a sale but knowing that their product was not anywhere near the quality of what FFG was showing on the other side of hall, within eyeshot of their booth. Nobody was going to touch that game- especially not Alliance or one of the major distributors. It was low visibility, unattractive and designed in this insular bubble by people who had some kind of access to venture capital that was going to be flushed down the toilet.

These days, those guys would put that game up on Kickstarter and if it were whored up enough with stretch goals and funny videos, they'd do $100k with it. Same exact game that would be DOA at retail.

It's like I keep saying- if you're looking at a game and saying "this would never be published by FFG or Z-Man _and_ it is EXACTLY the kind of game and subject matter that companies like that handle...then there is likely a reason or mulitple reasons why those companies SHOULDN'T publish it. If it takes crowdfunding to realize a product, then it likely does not have marketplace viability REGARDLESS of BGG ratings. Especially when the drop-off in sales with board games is so quick and so sharp.

Kickstarter products SHOULD NOT be in retail at all. The business model does not support retail, especially B&M. B&M stores rely on consistent, quality product and things like organized play and in-store support. Kickstarter is about direct sales from some dude that has this "awesome" idea for a game- or a publisher that is using the crowdfunding fad to cover a production up front. It's all hype. Witness Myth. I feel for CSI, they can't seem to give away their copies of it. Who knows how many they are sitting on.

I know some of you guys have Kickstarter projects and as always I hope you guys get to buy a gold house and a rocket car from your proceeds- best of luck. But I think that _without exception_ that distribution should be actively excluding these products simply because there is no viable metric for determining the marketplace sustainability of any of these games or the "businesses" that are publishing them.

If I'm a sales rep with a distributor, I'm not going to even try to sell this kind of shit to my accounts- and then deal with these folks that bought 20 copies of some junk ass Zombie game that they can't sell and now want to return...but it was on the BGG "Hot" list or whatever and had 20 ratings and a 7+ average...until it came out and the production was fucked up, the rules were incomplete, the game smelled like mold, was six months late, etc. etc. etc.

Even the top-tier Kickstarter stuff- Alien Frontiers, Star Realms, and so on- I would even be very, very wary about putting those in a warehouse unless I had multiple accounts asking for it and I had confidence in the product lines to have a sustained interest.

I'll tell you what, this isn't a distributor issue, this is a publisher issue.

I think what this guy is quoting may be a summary of a longer conversation that essentially said, "we want a product that has a footprint in the market." I think most Kickstarter designers are thinking they aren't going to do any significant promotion, any significant advertising. A couple of "Press Release" threads on BGG and a banner ad for a month during the Kickstarter, not afterwards. Once they have the boxes in their hands they think they're done. They're thinking that word of mouth will move a thousand units.

So the designer comes to the distributor intending on an arranged marriage and saying up-front "I'm done with my part of the deal, you carry it the rest of the way." The distributor has no interest because you can't sell a product no one knows exists. If it's Days of Wonder or ZMan there's advertising, and contests, presence at retailer conventions, promo copies for stores, etc. The distributor is only on the hook for what their job title describes.

Moral of the story -- publishers do shit for you other than printing, that's why you go with a publisher instead of printing it yourself via Kickstarter. If you don't like it, you can distribute it yourself too. That's going to make the decision about whether to advertise or not a little bit clearer.

S.

I don't think this will affect actual publishers with a start up strategy that much. The thing is, if someone has a serious business plan and a good product i doubt distributors would dodge them. There is a reason Stronghold game started out with reprints, there is a reason Gale Force Nine went with popular nerd IPs. They needed to go for games that were guaranteed to make solid sales even if their companies were unknown. Both have been successful and others could follow. Imo this conversation is a polite way of a distributor saying why on earth would be pick up your product. You do need to give a reason for someone to do business with you. Both Gale Force and Stronghold have done that within recent memory. I don't see why someone can do a ks and just expect to compete on an even level with the big boys just because they had 200 preorders and a 'cool concept'. It is in the execution. Take Myth, i've not played it, but from comments in some respects it seems to be a fair enough game. It just has a terrible rule book. And that is the reoccurring theme with KS games. THey might be competitive on some metrics but completely flop on others. And in a market this competitive that is enough to sink the ship. You need more than just a great game idea, you need to deliver it to the top standard. IMO small ks publishers could go the war game route. Many small war game companies do not use distributors. Case in point Nuts Publishing. They only sell their games through their own website and rely on word of mouth. It is slow growth and it is not going to make you rich, but it is viable for a one man band who is passionate about their hobby. In my mind this is where KS games belong. If there is the market for them it will come to you. If you publish a few thousand copies put them in the attic and sell em off through your own webpage.