The Biggest Problem With The Board Gaming Industry - According to Bryan

hello and welcome to gamergate my name is brian and today i want to have a conversation about our industry and why we should expect more from the publishers of which we are buying our lovely board games from if that sounds like something you want to talk about stay tuned for that let's just go and hit it so right off the bat i want to say that i'm not going to be naming any like specific publishers within this i don't think calling out specific people is necessarily a healthy medium to do but i do think there's a lot of issues within our industry especially what i deal with which is mostly kickstarter product that i think i am very upset with and just getting fed up with how things are handled within our industry again this is not a statement saying that this is a every publisher does this i just think it's a common occurrence and i think uh there is a period i would say that we consider ourselves in the golden era of board gaming when i when i joined board gaming as a focal point of my hobbies i was always told oh we're in the golden era of board gaming and i believed it we have so many board games now comparatively to what we saw in 2000 2000 2005 2006 and i was like we have reached a point where board gaming there's so many cool ideas but i'm kind of starting to see the facade crack a little bit and i think it's because there's a lot of immaturity or lack of professionalism in some publishers behind the scenes uh where they where they just don't quite know what they're doing with themselves especially when they're given at times such large quantities of cash up front and i just kind of want to talk about that experience and and as someone who covers kickstarters not as a living but i've been doing this for almost three years now where i'm talking about different products coming out all the time i get to see how things are running over that course of the period so i'm going to talk about that too many companies i said are poorly run and poorly managed and a lot of times it's just a small group of people who have a vision or a passion to create a game ask people for a help with funding that game and then don't know quite how to manage those funds and produce a product that is finished and complete and that's what i'm looking for is i want to finish and complete product over the course of the period especially for entrusting hundreds of dollars to these people so i want to talk about some of the things i think are lacking within the industry and what i'd like to see more of and maybe if you guys have any comments or questions or you know other things you'd like to add leave in the comment section down below the first thing i want to talk about is communication communication is incredibly important we're taught that the most important thing in any type of relationship is communication and when you are forming a relationship with a company when you're backing you're giving them your money you're you're entrusting these people with your funds to create the product they said that they're going to create for you and when the communication then dies or is lacking it creates doubts and uh same thing as if it was a marriage or a or a relationship if you're dating someone where you start to wonder what's going on you start assuming things you start questioning things and these are things that as a company publishers need to be more direct about with their communication style even if there's nothing to update update with what's going on tell us what the progression is of your current track what are you actively working on right now the standard updates oh well nothing to happen but here's a picture of a mini those aren't sufficient you're you're not being very clear with us of what you're doing or what your plans are and what's happening behind the scenes why is it that we had so many production games take two years plus to produce and some still have yet to even fulfill what are you guys doing on the back end to make things happen a lot of companies are now using the shipping or the price inflation that is incurred within the last six to nine months but a lot of these companies were funded in 2020 with their products so what have you been doing for nearly two years what has been happening we need better communication regarding that one of the things that really frustrated me i was reading a another publisher's update and they start using terms like logistics and and preparation and preparation and logistics and and it's like what does that mean stop using key terms stop using industry jargon and be clear what you mean by these things when you're discussing logistics are you talking about the shipment the freight the transportation the warehousing what's happening tell us what's going on that way as a backer i have a clear understanding of what's happening with my product that way i know if i'm going to receive it or if there's something going on in the in the end i think this leads into my second thought with communication is a lot of companies like to wait until they are in a real bad spot which means they have basically exhausted all of their resources that they can think of and now they're in a spot where they need to ask us for money we're getting to a lot of situations now where you're seeing companies asking for additional funds to complete their shipping and their freight i think a lot of people are upset about that because of the way it's being handled by the publishers if the publishers have been more upfront through the entire process saying hey so we are in the middle of manufacturing things are looking good we're going to have manufacturing according to our schedule by the end of december and then we are gonna be looking at getting a boat scheduled for february and then maybe when january comes around say hey okay so the freight boat liner that we've got lined up it's about fifteen thousand dollars per container more expensive than we were calculated at least as people are aware that things have been moving along and we're not just being dropped on the ball on us as if hey by the way you might not have known but the other shipping increases and i know you guys need to be aware of it but we need money now otherwise you're not going to get your game it just seems like a poor way of doing it and i understand that the companies do have increases of cost so don't take this video of me talking about this saying that i'm an understanding of the situation these companies are in i i'm very well aware of the situation there and my industry that i work in uh real in full time in real life deals with shipping and manufacturing and and production issues all the time so i'm well aware of what's happening with this with this current situation but i i also think that there's a lack of professionals in terms of how these companies relay the information to us or are being proactive and i think that's the other part i want to see more proactive communication if you are running into situations where you have something happening where something is uh occurring that's going to be a a roadblock or or something that's a problem instead of just saying this is the problem i want to know what you're doing to actively fix it what are you going to do to solve your problem i'm not going to name a name of another company but there's one that basically said we're out of money and we don't have your cash we don't have the cash to send your game so we promise you you'll get your game we just can't say when what are you doing to earn cash what is the game plan when can i expect it can i as a backer pay a little bit more to get my game shipped is my game sitting somewhere in a warehouse these are things i'd like to know but they just kind of like you know they just don't let you know enough um and i think that's because they're either scared of the response scared of uh the unknown and i think a lot of companies uh don't don't be proactive it's because they're they're hoping it'll be it'll solve itself i know a lot of companies with the shipping crisis when when cargo containers are costing 25 or 30 thousand dollars instead of letting backers know hey we're not shipping right now because of the cost of the product they were just saying we're waiting we're waiting we're waiting they're waiting for the costs to come down in the meantime they're incurring holding fees in in storage fees while their product sits on a pallet somewhere and then they're hoping that this problem is going to resolve again be clear with backers let us know what's going on that way we can we can know exactly where we're at the other part that i want to talk about not just communication is quality control quality control has been so poor i feel like lately that it's and it's almost like a given or something to expect what i mean by that is again i i mostly deal with kickstarter products but it's kickstarter games that are coming in half baked most the time these games will have beautiful minis and aesthetics the game will look incredible but as you start reading the rule book you'll see misspellings or contradictory statements or things that don't make sense imbalanced characters just in general poor quality control and then being told a month or two later after fulfillment hey we know we should have had our game uh spent some more time in production we made some mistakes we are going to hire an editor we're going to hire a a project manager to handle these things it's like what were you doing before we gave you 400 500 a million dollars to produce this game and you haven't even taken the time to get it edited to get it proof read to make sure the game is balanced with everything that you're doing with it being told that oh we're going to do a second edition is never fun a game that i love i don't want to say i don't want to name names i hate it i hate naming names but the games that i love be coming out and saying hey here's a second edition it really does stink because now as a backer i have to invest more money one that i will name because i've been very vocal about it and it's what kind of started me down this path of being kind of cynical at sometimes was my joan of arc game that i spent a lot of money on from mythic games and when it arrived it was dead on arrival the game was just so poorly designed and and played that it was just a waste of money and it's like man i invested over 400 in this game that just sits on my shelf and if it was just a little bit more care put into the development the design the the rules then we could have a good game and so i think there's a definite lack of behind the scenes quality control happening that needs to be addressed and then when you play a game that is managed well when you have a company that has a stellar production staff behind them that takes the time to play test their game ship it to different people to get independent play testers that's that drives me nuts why don't companies get more independent play testers you need to get outside your box get outside your little production bubble find people that are willing to play your game there's plenty of people to play for just a copy of the game you don't have to pay him just give him a copy of the production game i know people who do it for free but you need those people to play your game so they can tell you what's wrong with it they can tell you what's happening there's other games i've played that i've i've played myself for review told the company hey these are some problems that need to be addressed the game needs some work on xxx or whatever and then c ship and there's no changes it just makes you wonder do they even care why why do they even ask your opinion what is it maybe your opinion doesn't matter i don't know so anyways that's one thing i there's some more stuff i want to talk about i don't know if i want to go down that rabbit hole too much really i just want to say i'm very disappointed lately with how the industry has been shaping up with i think a lot of money being infused into our into our industry without people having a very good sense of being business people and then not knowing what to do with all this money and then kind of floundering a little bit i want to see board gaming grow i want to see us be the hobby that i know it can be the top best enjoyable hobby i i'm still surprised at how little people are aware of the space that we're in this hobby is an incredible experience i don't know why the more people don't enjoy gathering on a table playing board games i know there could be a space for this to be as big as you think it could be but i think the companies have to catch up a little bit and and clean their clean their axe up a little bit make sure that they are acting in good faith doing everything to the best of their ability remember to communicate and we'll be there so this is brian from game brigade hope you guys like this video i know it's kind of a random rant and tangent but i want to talk about it so i'll talk to you all very soon bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Game Brigade

Views: 3,561

Keywords: best board games, board games, board game, board game discussion, talking tabletop, talking table top

Id: vbMt3t4w8mM

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2022