Article project
I'm planning to do an article, interviewing the members of the Finnish Game of the Year jury. I've already received their contact information, now I'm thinking about questions to ask. I'm hoping I'll be able to send out the questions by e-mail today. Let's see how it goes. It'd be interesting to know how they perceive the boardgame hobby.
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Excellent idea. I've mostly wondered why aren't any firms bringing stuff like settles of catan to Finland (translated of course). And there'd be plenty of other games available for translation which'd be great.
I'm not familiar with the history of boardgames in Finland, but to me it seems that the popularity among non-hobbyists has declined. I think it could be easily put into forward motion amongst all the computer games etc. There's strenght in real social interaction instead of talking to a guy via a keyboard and I think this is where the catch should be (or at least partly) in advertising.
or then I might be wrong.
I think the market is too small and thus, the costs are too high. Ravensburger has released some quality games (well, at least Tikal) in Finland, because they can sell the same game in all Scandinavian countries. Tactic games have multi-lingual rulebooks and no text on components. However, these companies mostly produce their own games.
If the game needs Finnish components (like Settlers of Catan does), it's too expensive. I don't know if that's true, but I'm quite sure that's what the game companies think. And so on - it always comes down to the cost. I wonder, how much it would cost to license for example Carcassonne?
It's a shame.
Hmmm yes, and considering how much boardgames cost these days it'd be hard to cover even the marketing expenses. I'd like to know how many LOTR boardgames have been sold (the finnish ones).
Carcassonne is a pretty good licenseable (is that a word?) game. And since it won the important prices recently I think it'd be worthy candidate.
And I'm not sure about the components being the problem. Well, not sure now, but back when I was a kid they'd release stuff like hero's quest, space marines, Talisman etc. which all required translated components. Buuut, given that I had no idea about marketing back then, it's probable that the games didn't sell very well or they rided on the roleplaying craze that was on back then.
Well, if you get a chance to interview the finnish ppl on this it'd be nice to know about the logicstics and is the finnish boardgaming scene anything else than trivial pursuit, monopoly and "ghost castle 2002 for kiddies" -type of stuff to the marketers, buyers and decision makers.