Sigh @warzan

Another prediction for hybridization gaming? 3 times failure so far and not by small business or clueless companies. I predict the apps from FFG will fail as did all the previous iterations despite massive backing from known boardgame reviewers for the same reason everything else has previously failed, the players will realize it is just an app and they do not need the physical components to play the game, so why have the physical components in the first place.
Digital integration will happen at some point when the virtual interface will become commonplace, but it will never take over the physical aspect of the game, it will be an accessory like we have now the laser pointers, not a crucial game component.

I am wondering sometimes if you bring the subject and honestly go at it without any research, just go with guts feelings, not a bad approach just curious.

Now les go on the main meat, personally I am not happy the “digital game companies” big CEO with their large baggage for failure and destroyed development studios come across to the boardgaming industry and it will create a turmoil especially since they try to handle the physical games industry as if it was a digital games industry, two different worlds with two different set of rules in the hands of people who have not shown to be quite as competent as their place should be, first thing they did was to create the minimum msrp and digital or physical stores dichotomy controversy, ignoring that most of the retail industry has moved for a really good reason to the hybrid sales model for very good reasons a decade now.

Moving on games longevity, there are two reasons why a game has longevity and it is common to both worlds of game creation digital and physical, the game is either easy, engaging or the IP is so good that it engages people, puzzle games like candy crush, Sudoku, Dixit ectr have an easy concept to grasp, really easy mechanisms to explain and their popularity, longevity and plethora of clones comes from this, a simple elegant design that can be engaging just by adding more complimentary elements to it, or simply more of the same, engaging games are sports games, chess and magic and well as poker gives the framework to dominate another player by skill an elegant way to duel and on modern games the slight imbalance makes them even better because every competitive player seeks that slight edge over their opponent, finally it’s the IP, if you manage to make the player think of your game when they do not play the game, you are set, this can be done in many ways, like having extremely difficult to complete games needing careful coordination, or, make a world that is so intriguing the players invest in it.

IP is the most difficult, but also the most crucial way to solidify your games legacy through the decades, if your game inspires to have fans theorize about the aspects of the world, make fan art, fun fiction, cosplay and even porn set in the fictional world you created, you know you have the setting that will endure forever (if you do not mess it up irrecoverably, for example the command and conquer franchise), IP is also what interest us from a board games/ wargames perspective, 40k is not a 30 years old game, it is not even a few months old game, it is a 30 years old IP that has evolved to keep the players engaged, the game plays and feels completely different from Rogue Trader that debuted it, yet the core of the IP is still the same and the strong IP it created back then is what caries it forward and will carry it forward, sure the models are not the best out there, but are good enough, the rules were never the most balanced or the best written, but are good enough, the setting was and will always be controversial and misunderstood, but it has sold novels to non-gamers, created award winning digital games and a passionate community about the lore than never rolled a dice and maybe never will.

This is what 40k is and this is why 40k will be, a parallel if you like to why Fantasy died, same models, same rules, a forgettable IP, for all its controversy and mishandling, age of sigmar gave WHFB what it lacked a unique IP, AoS is not the blunt generic fantasy IP were its most original moment were the scaven and how undead were created (just their creation, everything else about them was generic) but a vibrant post-apocalyptic world with unique elements, is it enough to save it? I really do not know, but hey the new IP gives the world a far better chance than the old IP.

The same can be traced on many games that survived a decade or more, sure been the first, like 40K been the first and for quite some time the only real sci fi IP on the market (yes, Laserburn I know you were out before that but you were really just a rules set), helps a lot and been uncontested for over a decade helps even more so, as is gaining that critical mass of players, but even then, when GW did their best for almost a decade to kill themselves, 40k survived and carried them through seer strength of IP alone and I am honest here to say that if GW had two games with the IP caliber of Warhammer Fantasy and not Warhammer 40k, we would not have GW at this point.

This is the reason you see even Magic, who frankly does not need IP to carry it, heavily invest on a coherent IP since Fallen Empires and expanding it ever since, one of the weakest sets ever created sold simply because people wanted to read the story the little 1-3 line non crucial text on many cards of that set told.

Of course games can have many aspects on them and survive for a long time, or be a pure form of just one like chess, backgammon and poker, but as I said above I believe for the complex boardgames and wargames the IP is the most crucial factor in their longevity (outside the company that created it going nuts and shooting them in the foot).

Now concluding to clarify, IP for me is everything but the rules, the art, the story and the sculpts (who are a physical representation of the images) is what the IP is, the rules are non-copyrightable and non-crucial in my opinion, yes, having a good rule set that transfers the IP on the game table is a big bonus and in the present highly competitive environment not having a good ruleset is almost a death wish, but still it needs to be good enough and not the best out there if your IP is strong.