Today I Learned

Me too. My guess is that the marketing was targeted mostly towards kids.

inb4 OP is on the marketing team

Well you wouldn't have spent any money on it and they're raking in the dough, so yes actually.

If you aren't the kind of person to blow money on a shitty mobile game, an effective marketing campaign won't target you.

Even funnier, I told my kids it was the most expensive video game and they said, "oh because of Chris Pratt?"

Apparently the ads all featured Chris Pratt.

Literally every big store that sells boardgames constantly have like 10+ different versions of it. I don't know who the hell all these Monopoly fans are that are apparently not just buying Monopoly, but buying enough different versions to make it viable to keep offering them, but someone is keeping them in business.

I can only assume new parents of young kids just getting something they remember from when they were a kid. But that can only be half the story. I don't believe that these people are becoming Monopoly collectors buying up every alternate version that comes out.

Say the line, Joyce

Personal favorites:

• Spartacus - Perfectly captures the essence of the gratuitous Starz series. You take the role of Domin(us/a) of a Ludus, a school of gladiators, and strive to become the most influential in the city. You do so by bidding against competing players to acquire talented gladiators/slaves/equipment, using them to win gladiatorial combat against others in The Arena, and of course conspiring against your fellow Domini when they've overstepped their bounds.

If you do play this game make sure to use "the blue dice variant" for combat which fixes the main flaw with combat. The game length is also very adjustable by changing the amount of influence a player needs to win so you can go for an epic 3-4 hour game or a quick 1-2 hour phone booth knife fight.

I can't say enough about how much I love this game. It's always a good and loud time with players constantly interacting in often literally pokey ways :>

• Lords of Waterdeep - A relatively vanilla worker placement game with a pasted on D&D theme but my favorite way to introduce people into the world of hobbyist board games. The game is very well done and so simple to teach so folks can stop learning and get playing fast. Literally have a few workers to place each round on spaces to get the things. Use those things to complete quests to get points. After 8 rounds whomever has the most points wins.

It's always gone over well with new players and I personally still enjoy the game but with some expansions that add a bit more crunch to things!

• Quest for El Dorado - A deck building race through the jungle that's incredibly easy to teach and a favorite of younger kids (6+) getting into the hobby. You use various cards you acquire to get through the different terrain types of the jungle before your opponents do or use them to acquire even better cards. The skill in this game comes from being able to survey the path ahead and acquire the right cards to most efficiently get you through your desired path and knowing when it's time to stop focusing on building your deck and just race.

• Just One - Incredibly approachable even for people that aren't into hobbyist board games. One person trying to guess the mystery word using one word clues given by the other players (works best with 4+ players). The catch is any duplicated clues are removed so you've got to think of clues no one else is likely to use! We often round out our board game nights with this if there's at least 15 minutes to spare!

Spirit island is a game where "the spirits" have been living in harmony with humans on the island for generations, but now, new invaders are showing up with guns and cities and destroying the balance. You take the role of the spirits resisting the invaders to defend the island.

Gloomhaven is a massive experience that simulates a small group of adventurers dungeon delving in a fantasy world.

Terraforming mars is about.... Terraforming mars. Win historical recognition by making the greatest contribution to humanities most ambitious project.

Here's one starting point: https://boardgamegeek.com/hotness

That website (boardgamegeek) has a lot of other resources for finding different types of games that might appeal in different ways.

I honestly feel kind of proud that I've never heard of it. Off the grid and shit.

Imagine what a gaming company with a $1billion budget for the game itself (and execs who stay the fuck out of the way instead of repeatedly changing direction...cough...EA.....cough) and a marketing budget for whatever they actually spent on the game. We could have had Cyberpunk 4154 with a bit left over.

You are not entirely wrong. It's a boubble where no person involved benefits from saying "hey, is our budget too big?" It's basicly given, that any known brand have negative ROI on it's marketing, but we are all, so brainwashed with need for growrh, that that we know only one solution to decreasing results. Throw more money at it.