The Games Market Is Usually One of Losers : But Determined Inventor Thinks He Has the Hook With Fish Format
Ask experts on the toy and game market what the chances are of successfully introducing a new board game--let alone a phenomenal best-seller such as Trivial Pursuit--and they’ll say you have a better chance of winning the lottery.
The $500-million board game market has always been saturated and difficult to crack, industry observers say, but it is even tougher to break into these days with Trivial Pursuit clones crowding the adult market and glitzy video games luring children’s attention away from board games.
“The average guy who thinks he’s come up with a great game idea usually heads straight for a Milton Bradley or a Parker Brothers, expecting that they’ll take his idea and make him a millionaire,” said Larry Carlat, editor of Toy and Hobby World magazine, a leading trade publication in New York.
Watch the Door
“But, in reality, you’ll be lucky if they don’t slam the door in your face,” Carlat said.
Diane Cardinale, a spokeswoman for the Toy Manufacturers of America, an industry trade association, is equally discouraging. Asked about the difficulty of launching a new game, she said, “I would say your chances are practically nil.”
Despite all that, a San Diego landscape architect turned game inventor named Craig E. Allison thinks he can defy the odds. Over the summer, Allison and his partners conceived and developed Strokeamoby, a board game that tries to capture the excitement and disappointment of trying to catch the big one in a bass-fishing tournament.
Strokeamoby boasts the sponsorship of the sport’s biggest promoters, including the Future Fisherman Foundation. Those imprimaturs, combined with the game’s peculiar name (“stroke a Moby” is fishing jargon for landing a hefty female bass) should attract a significant percentage of the millions of this country’s fresh-water fishermen, Allison said.
Allison’s game won’t be available to the public until June. Since giant manufacturers hardly ever accept ideas from novice game makers, entrepreneurs such as Allison usually finance initial production and distribution on their own. He and his partners say they are ready to invest $200,000 to finance the manufacturing and marketing of their game through sporting-goods, bait and tackle shops.
The investors’ hope is that Strokeamoby will sell well enough at $19.95 a game that they will be in a position to sell the game to a major manufacturer such as Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley, receiving royalties from future sales.
A nice scenario, to be sure, but industry experts say the odds of success are stacked against Allison.
“You can’t imagine how many people call us every day believing that they have the idea , the next Trivial Pursuit,” said Stacy Botwinick, associate editor of Playthings, a leading toy and games industry magazine based in New York. “But the truth is, nobody is going to buy an idea.”
But the inventor, if no one else, must be optimistic. Allison, who has launched a game once before, is confident that he’s got a winner. More important than having a novel concept, he said is the fact that he’s already covered the other required game-launching steps, such as financing and distribution.
He believes he’s discovered a rich vein of potential customers. Unlike other sports such as baseball and football, which have more than their share of games, fishing has been overlooked by the game industry, said Allison, who got into the business when he tried to create a one-of-a-kind game for his children a couple of years ago.
“At first, I was a little skeptical about the idea, too,” said Allison, who was approached by co-workers at his landscape architecture firm who were bass fishermen interested in seeing their sport in a board game. He decided to pursue the concept and, after some research, discovered Americans’ love affair with fishing.
“That’s when I realized that there was potential for a huge marketplace,” Allison said. By stocking his game at bait and tackle shops and sporting goods stores, he figures, fishermen can pick up Strokeamoby along with a new fishing rod.
“Have you ever hung around with fishermen? These people can’t leave a tackle store without buying something,” he said.
Still No Guarantee
Allison may have found a niche, but that doesn’t mean the people in the niche will buy his game, Carlat noted. “I’m a basketball freak, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and buy Larry Bird’s basketball board game.”
At first glance, the success of games such as Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary would seem to have helped board games regain the popularity they lost with the advent of video games in the early 1980s. In 1988, for example, board game sales were $512 million, according to Toy Manufacturers of America, up sharply from $377 million in 1982, when video games had their most profound impact.
As a result, many game inventors now seem to think that selling board games is a path to riches.
Not so, Carlat said. “Besides Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary, how many other hot board games can you name? The sales of those two games have really skewed the picture,” he said.
“It’s so difficult to attract board game buyers,” Carlat said. “You’re competing against so many other things, against movies and other leisure-time activities. People don’t seem to realize that games like Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary come along maybe once in a lifetime.”
Nevertheless, with hopes of duplicating such success, game inventors, large and small, are introducing many adult-oriented board games into the marketplace.
Opened Some Eyes
“What Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary have done is opened the board game manufacturers’ eyes to the adult market,” Carlat said.
Pursuing the older game player also allows game makers to recoup sales they have lost to video-game manufacturers. Children’s games retail for about $10, and most adult games sell for $20 to $30.
As a result, industry officials, expect plenty of Trivial Pursuit clones or “social interaction” games to appear on store shelves.
“When something pops in the toy business, then every major company will come up with a similar product and try to ride the bandwagon,” Carlat said. “What you get is a tremendous over-saturation, and then everybody suffers. I’m afraid that’s what we’re beginning to see. People in the game business are notorious for killing the golden goose.”
With game inventors rushing to pitch their winning ideas to manufacturers, industry experts say that selling a game concept, traditionally a difficult task, will become even harder.
“Selling a game idea is probably one of the hardest things to do,” said Cardinale, the Toy Manufacturers of America spokeswoman. Because major manufacturers have a staff of game inventors, they rarely accept unsolicited ideas, she said.
Sticking With Their Own
“Besides, if they take outside ideas, they would have to pay the inventor royalties. If one of their own comes up with a winner, all they have to do is pay that person his regular salary.”
Cardinale added: “You have to realize that a manufacturer puts a lot of money behind the introduction of a new product. They’re not going to take a risk on an unproven concept.”
So how does a novice game inventor get a game out on the market?
“Go out and pound the pavement,” said Botwinick, the associate editor of Playthings. “Go store to store in your neighborhood. You’ve got to start small. Until you can prove that your product sells, you won’t be able to get the attention of the big game makers.”
In addition, industry experts strongly urge aspiring game inventors to attend toy fairs--particularly the one sponsored by the Toy Manufacturers of America--where retailers and buyers come in droves, hoping to find next year’s best-seller.
“Essentially, if you want to get something to the American buyer, you have to come to our show,” Cardinale said. The group’s show is the largest toy trade fair in the United States--second largest in the world--and attracts more than 17,000 buyers and 1,100 exhibitors annually.
Advertising Space on Board
Allison plans to attend TMA’s toy fair as well as other exhibition shows, but said his planned “instant-distribution network” will allow him to worry less about finding distributors at such fairs. He is trying to sell 16 game spaces on his game board as advertising slots for fishing equipment manufacturers.
“According to my plan, the manufacturer actually becomes part of the board game,” Allison said. “A player could land on a certain spot that actually features a manufacturer’s logo.
“Whoever buys advertising space will have vested interest in having the game do well. The manufacturer can sell the game to his established network of dealers along with his other products. Once I get manufacturers to advertise on my game, I get an instant-distribution network.”
Allison has contacted more than 300 fishing equipment manufacturers with hopes of landing their ads on his board. The inventor is charging $100,000 per game space and has not yet signed any advertisers. But he emphasized that he and his partners will put up $200,000 of their own money to finance the game if the “distribution network” idea fails.
About a year ago, Allison launched a board game called Skaters Only for skateboarders, using the same instant-distribution concept with a partnership he has since left. Eight skateboard equipment manufacturers paid $8,000 each to advertise on the board. The partnership declined to say how the game is faring now.
Whether Allison will succeed this time remains uncertain, but “what he’s trying to do is certainly a very acceptable strategy,” Carlat said.
More important, industry experts say Allison has the right “mental approach” for the game-launching business.
“Sure, I would love to be a millionaire,” Allison said. “But I’m not greedy. Trying to develop a game is a game in itself. I’m having fun doing this.”
