Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Top Ten Predictions About Board Games For 2007

1. "The next Monopoly"

Someone will invent a board game related to their work, neighborhood, or some global issue. This person will claim that they showed it to their friends and children, who all loved it. They will have produced 2,000 copies, of which 500 are in stores in their local neighborhood. They will express hope that their game could be the next "Monopoly" or "Trivial Pursuit". A local television station will cover them, right after an expose on a scandal about old people being scammed and right before a quip from the anchorman and then the local weather.

2. "Old classics become digital"

Someone will quip "forget about those old board games collecting dust in your grandmother's closets" and how today's children want to play digital games. Some old classic still not on video (such as Connect Four or Aggravation) will be ported to video amid hooplah. It will fail, because bad board games are only fun to play with people; they're simply bad when you play them alone.

3."Death of board games"

Marketers will predict that board games are a thing of the past and that today's kids want music accessories, video games, and so on.

4. "The real next Monopoly"

There will be 100 new versions of Monopoly. 90 of them will have exactly three articles in some local papers about how much money was raised to pay Hasbro for the license to produce it with the official graphics, and how much businesses had to pay to get on it. 8 of them will be projects by kids or companies using the alternate production companies, like On Board or USAopoly. The remaining 2 will be talked about in 5000 newspapers because Hasbro does something unusual for them, like include RFID chips, allow people to trade money over the Internet or using an XBOX, or come with shiny new gold specks.

5. "How do they live with themselves?"

Someone will produce a game that many other people will consider in bad taste. While 499 other people also will have done this, this one will get Boing Boinged and then Dugg and then receive national attention because a Christian/ Muslim/ Jewish/ Republican/ Womens/ African sub-continent group will insist on boycotting it. Sales will soar as a result for a few months.

6. "Is that like Monopoly?"

99.9% of the population still won't know what Settlers of Catan is. Many great board games will be released for the 0.1% who know what Setters of Catan is.

7. "Look at my teeth"

A Hollywood has-been will put his/her name behind a board game that is essentially another type of trivia/party game.

8. "What a loser"

A fake board game will be created making fun of a celebrity after he or she is revealed to be a bigot or idiot in some way. Several Flash games will also be created in this vein.

9. "Somebody will get rich!"

Someone will create a board game that is supposed to be instructive about finances in some way and retails for over $400. The lesson to be learned from this is that the way to financial success is to create overpriced board games.

10. "Your grandmother's board games"

Board games will surprise all the newspapers who predicted their demise by doing better than expected around the holiday season, prompting many facile articles about old classics such as Sorry, Candyland, and Chutes and Ladders.

Yehuda

Oh wait, that was 2006 ...

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