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A Visitor at EndGame
Apr. 29th, 2009 11:54 pmWe had an interesting visitor at EndGame today, a German gentleman by the name of Tom. I played four games with him over the course of the evening: Einauge sei Wachsam, Hab & Gut, Palast Eschnapur, and Cambria. As you can guess by the title, three of those games were German titles that haven't yet made it to the States yet, and yes indeed it was Tom who brought them.
There were a few things over the course of the evening that struck me as huge differences between German culture and our own.
The first was Tom's explanation of why he was in the area. He said he'd worked at the same company for 20 years, and now he was on a two-year trip around the globe. He'd been in Australia recently, and now he's in our area for 8 weeks. That is just so non-American-culture that I can't even believe it. Give up your job and travel around the world for 2 years? Wow. I gotta say, I respect it.
The second was Tom's statement that he's a game reviewer. That was as he was in the process of dropping these three German games on the table, one after the other, asking for comments as we played each. They were games he'd been given to review at Nurnberg, and really pointed out to me how different the game hobby is in the United States and in Germany.
In the US I find that about a third of the board game companies have regular review programs, about a third would like to get reviews of their games but aren't proactive about it, and about a third would rather die than send out a review copy. Conversely, in Germany, it sounds like Tom gets more than he knows what to do with.
I think the difference is that in Germany most of the game publishers are large enough that they have full marketing teams and understand the weight that marketing and branding effort can lend to their products, while in the US most game companies are instead run by people who really love their games and may or may not have had explicit training in running a company and who may or may not have much extra staff.
Which produces better products? I think the jury is still out on that one, because more corporate productions can drop down to the lowest common denominator.
Since I love playing new games, my challenge over the next several weeks will be staying on top of my Alea plays while also playing anything interesting that Tom has around.
There were a few things over the course of the evening that struck me as huge differences between German culture and our own.
The first was Tom's explanation of why he was in the area. He said he'd worked at the same company for 20 years, and now he was on a two-year trip around the globe. He'd been in Australia recently, and now he's in our area for 8 weeks. That is just so non-American-culture that I can't even believe it. Give up your job and travel around the world for 2 years? Wow. I gotta say, I respect it.
The second was Tom's statement that he's a game reviewer. That was as he was in the process of dropping these three German games on the table, one after the other, asking for comments as we played each. They were games he'd been given to review at Nurnberg, and really pointed out to me how different the game hobby is in the United States and in Germany.
In the US I find that about a third of the board game companies have regular review programs, about a third would like to get reviews of their games but aren't proactive about it, and about a third would rather die than send out a review copy. Conversely, in Germany, it sounds like Tom gets more than he knows what to do with.
I think the difference is that in Germany most of the game publishers are large enough that they have full marketing teams and understand the weight that marketing and branding effort can lend to their products, while in the US most game companies are instead run by people who really love their games and may or may not have had explicit training in running a company and who may or may not have much extra staff.
Which produces better products? I think the jury is still out on that one, because more corporate productions can drop down to the lowest common denominator.
Since I love playing new games, my challenge over the next several weeks will be staying on top of my Alea plays while also playing anything interesting that Tom has around.