/pic7897109.jpg "Embracer’s Sales, Senet’s Award, and Why CoolStuffInc Stopped Selling Board Games | BoardGameGeek News")
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• On BoardGameWire, editor Mike Didymus-True interviewed CoolStuffInc founder Jerry Sunkin about why that online retailer stopped selling board games. While Sunkin lists a number of factors — the growth of Kickstarter, the increasing number of games being released, the introduction of MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) plans by publishers — Amazon takes the lion’s share of the blame. Here’s an excerpt:
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“I’ve got a little over 200 employees, and I can’t take that kind of loss, where they’re perfectly willing to just throw their weight around… if they were just doing it based on, ‘Here’s this great service that we offer’, or whatever, I certainly would not have a problem. However, for me, it took a turn when they started targeting us specifically. And like I say, we proved that this is what they were doing – we would put, say, very strange prices on a board game, you know, $22.42 or something like that. Within an hour they would have the exact same price.
“So it’s one thing to have to compete, it’s another thing to be targeted, you know, by an 800 lb. gorilla… We can sort of co-exist, but only on their terms. And their terms were unprofitable for us.”
Sunkin says that Amazon started pushing heavily into board games in the mid-2010s, and in response CSI diversified its business, founding Quartermaster Logistics in 2016 to provide shipping and crowdfunding fulfillment to publishers, then expanding this operation in 2023 with Quartermaster Direct, which provides worldwide distribution for dozens of smaller publishers.
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• In November 2023, Dan Jolin won a BSME (British Society of Magazine Editors) Award in the category of “Editor of the Year — Independent” for his work on the quarterly magazine Senet, which focuses on “the craft, creativity and community of board gaming”.
Issue #13, pictured at left, includes a history of the microgame from Ogre to Oink, a showcase of British artist Alex Crispin (Escape The Dark Castle), an interview with designer Adam Kwapiński (Nemesis), an essay from Matt Thrower about the lack of Christmas-themed games, an essay from John Ankers on what he learned about parenthood from playing Root with his son, and previews and reviews of new and upcoming games.
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• In Science, Valerie Thompson reviews Daybreak, the co-operative game from Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace that publisher CMYK debuted in November 2023. An excerpt:
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Daybreak rightly focuses on societal-level climate mitigation strategies, emphasizing collective actions, such as rewilding, the implementation of universal public transportation, and increasing the efficacy of ocean shipping, rather than individual responsibilities, such as recycling or having fewer children.
The article is behind a paywall, but it’s only a single page and if you squint right, you could probably make it out.
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• In mid-November 2023, Asmodee‘s parent company Embracer Group released its interim report for Q2 of its 2023-2024 fiscal year, with the report covering July-September 2023.
Net sales for the entire company increased by 13% to SEK (Swedish Krona) 10,831 million (approx. US$1.04 billion), with its PC/console game sales decreasing by 5% (from SEK 4,097 million in Q2 2022/2023 to SEK 3,909 million) and its tabletop game sales increasing by 25% (from SEK 3,247 million to SEK 4,070 million). An excerpt from the report:
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I wondered why Star Wars: Unlimited was scheduled to debut in March 2024 given the lack of large conventions at that time, but perhaps that date is meant to coincide with the end of Embracer’s financial year, ideally giving the company sales to highlight in that category.
Another geek-related report excerpt:
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