geek-news.mtv.com/2012/06/11/eclipse-board-game/

Wow. Lots of great discussion going on here with Mr. Defanso's article and Thrower's Founding article and I just wanted to try and get some more going.

Is this another step towards mainstream/success/acceptance by a squarely hobby board game? Or just another flash in the pan?

I'm not even talking about Eclipse's merits as a game, but the fact that MTV has a subsection talking about it with somewhat informed depth and an interview.

Thoughts?

My gut reaction is this:

Hobby board games are not mainstream by a long shot. However they have become/are becoming an accepted facet of "geek culture" along side sci-fi and fantasy books and movies, comic books, and video games.

Outside of geek culture, more people will become aware of the existence of such things but will really know next to nothing about them much like most people would know the name "X-men" but couldn't really tell you much about it.

Right, I'm not saying they are yet. It's more a step in that direction.

I guess I'm more questioning what "success" means as brought up with Barnes recently. Is Eclipse successful because it's sold out, hot on BGG, AND/OR written about on MTV geek? Should it be?

Similar to Settlers in Target - how should this be valued?

To me it's great in the current landscape of board game access. When I was a kid I not only saw a TV commercial for HeroQuest, I saw it and others from MB on store shelves. Now the coolest games (from my 10 year old self viewpoint) I see there are the lego ones, maybe Stratego? I know there's the internet now, but is that how kids these days are getting introduced to gaming?

I think for eclipse to hit mainstream, they are going to seriously need more of a print run than a few thousand. They will need to be picked up by a larger publisher. 3000 copies is not going to get into the mainstream mindset.

I suspect 3000 would be the scrap pile for a game like Monopoly.

I think there are some games that will cross over into the mainstream but hobby gaming itself will never be mainstream.

Ska_baron wrote:


There's a bit of a difference between the kids games and the later stuff. I had Heroquest, Fireball Island, and so on growing up. It was easy for kids to get worked up about new things back then because advertisements were freely allowed to target children without the company jumping through hoops (not sure if this changed in the US as much as in Canada). Flashy Ameritrash games died with the Toys 'R Us era as kids overwhelmingly moved on to video games. There's just no way you could excite a kid with Mutant Chronicles over Gears of War 3.

The games that make it ~big~ in geek culture will move on to places like Chapters, Calendar Club and Walmart in the gift section. Cute family friendly games like Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride and Settlers. The nerd culture itself will continue to be a subgroup that most people will be introduced to in highschool, or more likely, college. Before college I hadn't heard of any modern games that weren't sold in large retail.

Some specialty stores like Bradley's carry a few of the more obscure games like Agricola. I wouldn't exactly call that making it big, but that's probably as good as it gets for a hobby game. I really doubt Eclipse will be mainstream, ever. It's too complicated and expensive for a soccer mom to pick up on a whim for her 10 year old son.