Bling it up, Buttercup

Not everyone has to own everything. It is in fact a statistical improbability at the best of times, let alone during a cost of living crisis.

In Maslows hierarchy of needs, a blinged up version of Tsuro? Pretty far up the pyramid. But then to most people boardgames themselves are pretty far up that dang pyramid.

If 3500 boardgames are released each year, nobody is buying them all.

Of course, when a best loved game gets blinged up, its a lot harder to resist. “If you truly loved me you would upgrade meeee!” screams Castles of Burgundy from my shelf. “But if I TRULY loved you, surely I’d love you the way you ARE?” I reply.

Well loved.

Lived in.

People often refer to blinged up versions as heirloom versions – versions that could, hypothetically, be passed down through generations as yet unborn, sharing the love of Catan or Burgundy down through the ages. And yet the bling age is a relatively new thing. Who knows how it pans out. How many years before an even more blinged up version is released, now featuring blinged up expansions?

Catan gets a Seafarers/Knights blinged up expansion later in the year.

But blinged up versions also remind us that we are poor. Poorer than we should be. When I started in the games industry my contemporaries were folks like Christian Petersen. Turns out savvy games publishing was a much better bet for millionaire status than games retail.

It was UK Games Expo last weekend, which meant I ran another Game Table Gauntlet. I don’t consider myself rich enough to afford a dedicated game table, after an incident at Essen when I realised the price of the game table I was looking at was in fact only the 10% deposit.

People do own tables the price of cars. Go back a few years and that table is more expensive than my first house.

I like the fact that our hobby is comparatively cheap. D&D in particular can be literally decades of entertainment for the cost of one players handbook. It’s an interesting question: what IS value?

What is worth?

Value is in the eye of the consumer just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A lot of the time I’m arguing that my store and my staff add value and justify a higher sticker price than a store where maybe they care less or stock less but certainly charge less.

And that’s kind of my issue.

Blinged up games is a bad look in a cost of living crisis. You end up having conversations with people about how they have just spent a thousand pounds on a Kickstarter while they are arguing about buying a game at a quid over MSRP. Nobody is prepared to see value in paying staff more, say.

Blinged up goods have to be expensive. Caviar tastes like the worlds worst sherbet. I’d rather have a cream soda than a glass of champagne. We consume the things people tell us have value conspicuously because that’s how we know they have value.

Because other people can’t consume them. That’s the point of luxury.

To complain about the price is missing the point. Castles of Burgundy and Tsuro were, for many years, stupidly cheap. Almost deliberately, insultingly so. You could buy them both for less than £20 each while the vast majority of games cost more.

For an industry this is not a kindness.

People would compare newly released games against castles of Burgundy and use its price as an argument why games were over priced. “Why can’t this or that game be £20 if the excellent castles of Burgundy is” followed closely by “you are ripping me off!”

Well, sadly no.

Why wasn’t Catan the cost of Castles of Burgundy? How is it now £50? How is Blingundy now hundreds? Castles was half the price it should have been and now it is ten times the price it was. Whichever way you sliced it, it was still a great game. Whether you own the blinged version or not, or play it eating caviar and quaffing champagne or while sharing a bag of chips its still a great game.

Because that’s the value of games, ultimately.

It’s the playing of them.

I play D&D with miniatures. I like that tactility of miniatures in a 3d space. I own Dwarven Forge and Warlock Tiles. Will Blingundy give a more pleasurable tactile game experience? Will it be more visually attractive? Will I enjoy playing it ever so slightly more?

I think we all know the answer is probably yes.

Is that ‘more’ quantifiable into value?

If its a hot day and you are sat in a car without air con, you suddenly see the value in having it. Bum cold? Seat warmers. You can live your life without them. They don’t add to the experience of going from point A to point B, except when they do.

At the end of the day the ultimate way of blinging your gaming experience is having cool friends to play with. Because however much money you spent or however much money you saved, having friends who put up with your bullshit and share a bag of chips with you is worth more than anything.

And you can’t put a price on that.