Hey all! Just got done reading a quick editorial and figured I would share. It mostly traces back the roots of the modern board game and mini game success to German board games in the 80's and 90's which has finally attained a global foot hold and is now rapidly expanding in terms of products and popularity.

For those for whom the article is TLDR, here is the part that I thought was cool and kinda sorta directly relates to Armada. (the rest of the article is almost exclusively Euro boardgames and their influence)

"According to ICv2, a trade publication that covers board games, comic books, and other hobbyist products, sales of hobby board games in the U.S. and Canada increased from an estimated $75 million to $305 million between 2013 and 2016, the latest year for which data is available.

Hobby-game fanaticism is still very much a subculture, to be sure, but it is a growing one. At the 2017 iteration of Gen Con—North America’s largest hobby-gaming convention, in Indianapolis—turnstile attendance topped 200,000. For the first time in the event’s history, all the attendee badges were purchased before the event began."

Needless to say, now is an exciting time to be a hobbyist. 400% growth in sales just the last 3 years?! Astounding. I understand the category is broad, and this doesn't just include mini games, but I think the thing that brings people to physical table top games, whether Catan or Armada, is the allure of interaction and enjoyment with other real humans in a social environment, rather than pwnin newbs on a computer. While Armada specifically may grow slower than a standard board game, a growth of that magnitude still bodes incredibly well for the future of not just Armada, but all mini games.

Link to the whole article.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/german-board-games-catan/550826/

100% agree. In a time where people have fewer social interactions (some days, I speak to maybe 5 people total) the appeal of activities that require you to be social is increasing.

It was one of my recommendations for the people at Wizards of the Coast when they were working on the D&D 4th edition "all online" gaming apps and whatnot. I told them that even though you might find a small market for that kind of stuff, people are playing role playing games, tabletop, board, etc because they specifically want to be in a room spending time with people.

Not to hijack the article, but it's also why I'm a proponent of low electronic footprints in games. Stuff like the board game XCom requiring an app to play made me and a number of other friends reconsider the purchase (most didn't end up buying it).

Gaming is in a good place. If people continue to be decent human beings, it's only going to continue to grow.

Outdated, pretentious load of crap.

6 minutes ago, GrandAdmiralCrunch said:

Outdated, pretentious load of crap.

Don't hold back. Feel the anger inside you.

6 minutes ago, GrandAdmiralCrunch said:

Outdated, pretentious load of crap.

It was a little pretentious. Especially the quotes from Phil Eklund. But I take editorials with a grain of salt for just that reason. I MAINLY posted for the quoted sales figures which astounded me, and didn't feel right stealing the quote without citing the article. YMMV, but the intention was less of a book club discussion of article and more a discussion of the exciting place Armada and similar mini games are in and it's potential for growth in the future.

3 minutes ago, Mad Cat said:

Don't hold back. Feel the anger inside you.

Don’t worry, my chains have been broken.

The one thing I worry about is the saturation of the market. I have a dedicated play group that gets together once and sometimes twice a week. And I still have games that we haven't played. Its a good/bad problem to have.

2 minutes ago, GrandAdmiralCrunch said:

Don’t worry, my chains have been broken.

Are you sure you don't need one of these and a lie down?

9 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

It was a little pretentious. Especially the quotes from Phil Eklund. But I take editorials with a grain of salt for just that reason. I MAINLY posted for the quoted sales figures which astounded me, and didn't feel right stealing the quote without citing the article. YMMV, but the intention was less of a book club discussion of article and more a discussion of the exciting place Armada and similar mini games are in and it's potential for growth in the future.

Eklund did make High Frontier. So I give him a lot of leeway. That game is magic.

5 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

It was a little pretentious. Especially the quotes from Phil Eklund. But I take editorials with a grain of salt for just that reason. I MAINLY posted for the quoted sales figures which astounded me, and didn't feel right stealing the quote without citing the article. YMMV, but the intention was less of a book club discussion of article and more a discussion of the exciting place Armada and similar mini games are in and it's potential for growth in the future.

This part in particular: But the gulf between the traditional American games of yore—“Ameritrash,” as the genre is dismissively referred to by the board-game cognoscenti—goes beyond the divide between militarism and pacifism

FFG games , (Including Armada) would fall pretty heavily on the militarism side. I don’t think they should be treated dismissively. The whole euro vs. amer argument is a good 15 to 20 year’s out of date. Both genres have grown exponentially and there is a great deal of cross breeding between them.

4 minutes ago, Mad Cat said:

Are you sure you don't need one of these and a lie down?

Nah, I’m good. Help yourself though.

5 minutes ago, GrandAdmiralCrunch said:

This part in particular: But the gulf between the traditional American games of yore—“Ameritrash,” as the genre is dismissively referred to by the board-game cognoscenti—goes beyond the divide between militarism and pacifism

FFG games , (Including Armada) would fall pretty heavily on the militarism side. I don’t think they should be treated dismissively. The whole euro vs. amer argument is a good 15 to 20 year’s out of date. Both genres have grown exponentially and there is a great deal of cross breeding between them.

Agreed, editorial perspective. But again, the sales figured are North America exclusively. Where both euro AND american games are popular and successful. Weed through the bias, it's a good time to be gaming.

16 minutes ago, GrandAdmiralCrunch said:

This part in particular: But the gulf between the traditional American games of yore—“Ameritrash,” as the genre is dismissively referred to by the board-game cognoscenti—goes beyond the divide between militarism and pacifism

FFG games , (Including Armada) would fall pretty heavily on the militarism side. I don’t think they should be treated dismissively. The whole euro vs. amer argument is a good 15 to 20 year’s out of date. Both genres have grown exponentially and there is a great deal of cross breeding between them.

Ameritrash is such a perjorative term, too. Pretty much if it doesn't have wooden tokens, little to no player interaction, and a VP system, it's been called Ameritrash. Let people enjoy playing games. This is spot on why I think people get put off by gaming. When a sub-culture has no problem making fun of something you like by calling it "trash", they're going to find that people don't want to be a part of it.

The real design shift brought on by eurogames was the idea that everyone gets to play the whole time.

Too many games from the 80s and earlier had "knock-out" mechanics. This would result in people who showed up to play the game having nothing to do while everyone else finished having fun.

The "militarism" angle is just editorial guff.

Games Workshop was the highest-performing stock on the London Stock Exchange in 2017 ...

Phil Eklund (who is a great guy and a literal rocket scientist) designs games that are quite different from the short-rules, low-complexity mechanics (but high-complexity strategy) Eurogame archetype. They probably should have interviewed Alan Moon, since Ticket to Ride's first-year sales probably exceeded the combined lifetime sales of all of Phil's games, was the first American game to win the Essen Game of the Year award, and broke the German game distribution model by refusing to give the huge German mass-market stores fire sale discounts for the Christmas season.

24 minutes ago, GrandAdmiralCrunch said:

This part in particular: But the gulf between the traditional American games of yore—“Ameritrash,” as the genre is dismissively referred to by the board-game cognoscenti—goes beyond the divide between militarism and pacifism

FFG games , (Including Armada) would fall pretty heavily on the militarism side. I don’t think they should be treated dismissively. The whole euro vs. amer argument is a good 15 to 20 year’s out of date. Both genres have grown exponentially and there is a great deal of cross breeding between them.

I think that argument is framed by those of buying and writing age 30+. That age group distinctly remembers the only games to play being the Milton Bradley and Parker Bros games. Even among those only a few played the Warhammers and DnDs realitivly speaking. Who are really the granddaddies of these newer games. So yeah in my mind there is still some disparity between euro and american games, even though thats not really the case anymore.

TLDR old man syndrome

10 minutes ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

Ameritrash is such a perjorative term, too. Pretty much if it doesn't have wooden tokens, little to no player interaction, and a VP system, it's been called Ameritrash. Let people enjoy playing games. This is spot on why I think people get put off by gaming. When a sub-culture has no problem making fun of something you like by calling it "trash", they're going to find that people don't want to be a part of it.

Again I think the term ameritrash directly refers to the elderly games like risk, Monopoly, ect. Multiplayer game with low depth high steamroller potential, realitivly simplistic by today's standard. Not that they don't have a place, but in this day and age with so many better games that have the same concept, they really do show thier age. I like them, I grew up on a them, but they are kind of outclassed in this day and age. Not that they should be bashed as hard as they are, but I can see why some do bash them.

10 minutes ago, Noosh said:

Again I think the term ameritrash directly refers to the elderly games like risk, Monopoly, ect. Multiplayer game with low depth high steamroller potential, realitivly simplistic by today's standard.

Ameritrash is a dated term, but is still used often and is applied to everything from risk to Twilight imperium. It's generally applied to games with lots of theme, bits and confrontational player interaction. Basically it's a pejorative way of saying not a euro game.

I wouldn't put much stock in ICv2 though. They write a lot of trash and definitely have a very obvious editorial slant when it comes to how they think the board game industry should be.

27 minutes ago, ricefrisbeetreats said:

Ameritrash is such a perjorative term, too. Pretty much if it doesn't have wooden tokens, little to no player interaction, and a VP system, it's been called Ameritrash. Let people enjoy playing games. This is spot on why I think people get put off by gaming. When a sub-culture has no problem making fun of something you like by calling it "trash", they're going to find that people don't want to be a part of it.

Ameritrash was coined by fans of the genre, perhaps by Michael Barnes (creator of Fortress Ameritrash), on BGG when they felt that the site was being dominated by Euros.

It is a divisive term, but not in the way you present it.

Games are games and plenty of us can enjoy playing a wide spectrum. But cliques exist no matter where you go or what you do. There are always going to be gatekeepers. Best to avoid them and do what you enjoy, nobody needs to live up to someone else's idea of what a true fan is.

50 minutes ago, n815e said:

Ameritrash was coined by fans of the genre, perhaps by Michael Barnes (creator of Fortress Ameritrash), on BGG when they felt that the site was being dominated by Euros.

It is a divisive term, but not in the way you present it.

Yeah, I'm not familiar with the origins of the descriptor, just that when I hear it, it's coming from a big fan of Eurogames trying to talk down to someone who likes something that doesn't have the Eurogame feel. It's got that "this thing is bad and you should feel bad for liking it" sound to it.

Thanks for the info though! The more you know, right?

Queue references to the timeless struggle between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea.

30 minutes ago, RobertK said:

Queue references to the timeless struggle between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea.

At least we can agree on one thing.

"What have the romans ever done for us."

Ameritrash is one of those labels that got adopted by a specific community, people saw the word in print without understanding the connotation/history, and started using it in the way that the word would make you expect that it would be used.

For myself, I recently sat down and played the combined Axis and Allies 1940 Europe and Pacific games with 3 friends. AA is probably one of the shining examples of pure Ameritrash.

We played for about 10 hours and agreed to end the game once we realized that it was going to take about 30 more.

But it was so great

Putting ameritrash in scare quotes and specifically highlighting as a term that gets thrown around isn’t endorsing it, but highlighting it is there. I can’t speak of it being 20 years out of date because I only encountered for the first time less than a month ago.

And yes, axis and allies is one of the critical games that embodies what is meant by the term, and I say thst as a long player of the game, who owns many different variants and has played them all. The general principles that animate many modern board games make them so much more fun to play.

I loved Axis and Allies. But it sucked to get knocked out early.

36 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

I loved Axis and Allies. But it sucked to get knocked out early.

I was almost the 6,000th like.

Forever 5,999

But yeah, it's the worst getting booted early.

I prefer some of the more freeform games like Twilight Imperium, Forbidden Stars, and Star Trek Ascendancy that kind of have balance of power requirements that encourage players not to let people knock players out, as that makes it harder for them.

AA you're just locked into goals.