Reply To: Kickstarter rising costs, the end to big box games What will the future be ?

[captainventanusParticipant 4936xp 1]

Depends what you think the Golden Age was about?

If it’s about designers or small companies being able to take an idea to market and raise the capital to realise something that otherwise would not have been possible then no it’s not over.

If it’s about getting a tower of boxes filled with masses of plastic for a few 100 $/€ and a shipping cost more akin to something ordered off the internet when in fact its more a freight item then yes that’s over.

The relative low cost high ‘value’ of the early years of the big box games came from low labour and material costs in China along with cheap freight and companies (not all, but many) glossing over the game design in favour of pushing mass material. The novelty of getting these impressively large looking games that would not be possible to sell in general retail owing to their size, coast etc.. – perfectly good reasons – was powerful. In addition the Kickstarter process side-stepped the VAT issue for a significant part of the market and thus made games look cheaper than they should have been.