Wednesday, March 23, 2011

An explosion of Plastic


It seems to me that every new game has some plastic piece in it. I am not adverse to them if they add to the game but I wonder if they are really necessary?

When I rebooted my board game hobby it all seemed to be about wooden cubes and meeples. Plastic mini's were a rarity other than in a Games Workshop box.

My copy of Dungeon Twister and Arkham Horror came with cardboard figures and that worked fine. Yet Mansions of Madness is filled to the brim with plastic figures for the investigators and monsters.

I wonder how the amount of plastic affects the cost of the game? If there were two versions of the same game, one with plastic figures and one with cardboard at a cheaper price what would the sales figures be like?

Personally I don't mind plastic figures but if they are not there or as extras I wouldn't really be that bothered. If the plastic figures could be bought as an expansion that would be nice, especially if they were pre-painted.

Are there any games that you couldn't possibly play without plastic parts? Battlelore comes to mind, yet C&C Ancients works well with sticker'd blocks.

Anyone?

2 comments:

Eric Franklin said...

The price is more than the plastic - the size of the print run also impacts pricing. The larger the print run, the less the cost per item at the printer (and figure caster and so on). It just means they need to sell more to break even.

Dungeon Twister: Prison has plastic figures. That, combined with its relatively small print run pushed the price up quite a bit.

Count Zero said...

Sure, but I wonder how much the plastic figures contribute to the cost of the game.
Things are getting more expensive and I wonder if they are using plastic components to help justify the cost?