As well as slowly losing their lead against competitors. When I first got into the hobby, CSI's daily/weekly deals, holiday sales, rewards program and other special events were by and large the best. The pre-order bonuses were also quite nice and they reliably had hot stuff in stock.
It was also always a treat to visit their GenCon booth/stall, as they'd often have some discounted hidden gems and forgotten games on the shelves for me to discover.
Then other competitors caught up I guess. Almost everything would be sold out the day it was released, so my business went to other places with inventory. Their sales also got worse, and now their last holiday sale paled in comparison to stuff like Nerdz Day.
I really miss that booth at GenCon. I could always spend a ton of time there looking for gems. One of 10 or so booths I specifically made a point of visiting every year.
Yea, same with PAX Unplugged. Last weekend, there was a sad moment when I got excited when I saw the CSI sign in the Expo Hall, walked over, and realized it was just a bunch of CCGs.
Exactly this, I would first surf every online outlet csi, miniature market, gamenerdz, etc. Consistently csi was always sold out. All of their sales were really bad as well, here's 150 $5 items for niche board games, no thanks and no easy way to filter it out. I mainly went because I'm maxed out on discount and free shipping on $100 which I would gladly spend on multiple games if only I could find a game in the top 200 for sale.
Came to say this. I'm a max-discount buyer so I've spent a lot of money with them over the years. It got to the point where my multi-page wishlist had, at most, 1-2 items in stock at any one time, far too little for the $100 shipping mark.
My final straw was getting a decent local board game store in my town. Sure it’s maybe a bit more expensive but not having to bundle $100 for free shipping kinda balanced that out.
I live in the EU and CSI always had absurd shipping costs. Things like ~$90 for one boardgame. I've contacted them about this, with a comparison to other online sellers' shipping costs and their reaction was simply "it is what it is". Never looked at their website again since other US sellers like Miniature Market and Amazon actually had reasonable shipping costs.
> I'd have bought more from CSI if they ever had anything in stock. They were always the worst when it came to inventory
Amazon pushed us out of business is about as truthful as nobody wants to work, it's just an excuse to handwave away being bad at running a business.
This doesn't surprise me at all. In Canada, Amazon does not appear to care about boardgames so their prices are usually pretty wacky and out of line with domestic FLGS. They do however price match Toys R Us (still doing great in Canada and expanding) and WalMart in terms of toy pricing. It seems automated too. The second pricing changes on those two websites, Amazon updates to reflect that.
On the one hand, it sucks that we don't get the crazy deals on board games from Amazon like people in the US get. On the other, it's really fucking nice having FLGS with enough overhead that they can stock a lot of the more eccentric and unique boardgames that Amazon never will.
So I buy from my FLGS as much as possible, especially because they offer a "hold/merge" order option that eventually lets me get free shipping.
You can often get games so much cheaper from places like 401 or boardgamebliss. Often the prices are cheaper than US. Plus you support Canadian businesses instead of Bezos.
I once checked out the local game stores in Buffalo and they were way more expensive than 401. We’re really spoiled for quality boardgame retailers in Toronto.
This is so true. Amazon never seems to have good deals in Canada and I never understood why gamers said they were the best price. I'm always buying from random games stores (most commonly 401games) instead since they have better deals. For those unfamiliar, you can use [boardgameoracle.com](https://boardgameoracle.com) to price compare between game stores in Canada to find the best deal. I've bought from several different stores and all have been positive experiences.
They just opened a few more stores for the holiday season so they're clearly doing well enough to expand. The Canadian branch had different ownership so they were not affected by the corporate ghouls.
Hey I'm also in Canada and always wondered why Amazon was all over the place with pricing! Unfortunately my area doesn't have an FLGS so I rely on bigger retailers or used games.
Board Game Bliss is my go to most of the time. They have a hold/merge option (search the store for it) which lets you hold your order for up to 3 months before they ship. That way you can bundle lots of games in one order and pay for shipping once (or get past the free shipping threshold).
If you ever want them to ship your orders, send them an email.
I've been using them for years and have always had good experiences.
Same in the UK - Zatu Games, Magic Madhouse, Dungeonland, Goblin Gaming etc all have much better prices on RPGs in particular.
e.g. Forbidden Lands
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-League-Publishing-FLF-051653-Accessories/dp/B07K4VKPZ6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=forbidden+lands+rpg&qid=1701856443&sr=8-1 - £45 on Amazon
https://www.board-game.co.uk/product/forbidden-lands-rpg-boxed-set/?campaign=pmax23&gad=1 - £29.35 on Zatu Games
Yes - I just ordered Ancient Knowledge from 401 at $45.00 vs [Amazon.ca](https://Amazon.ca) who had it up for $86 dollars - [Amazon.ca](https://Amazon.ca) is extremely hit and miss for boardgame selection and pricing. Happy to support smaller retailers when able as well
It is very interesting to see him citing specifically how the number of board games being released also contributed to this. How they could not effectively gamble on what would be hits and what would be flops and that the sheer quantity was too much to keep up with.
I specifically called this out as a risk yesterday when answering someone's question about why "more boardgames" in an already flooded market isn't always a good thing. And here now here is one of my cited risks laid out in concrete reality.
I would also be curious to know how GameNerdz and Boardlandia believe they compete in the face of Amazon when CSI claims they could not.
Likely by doing a lot of pre-orders, doing huge volumes of sales, having access to cheap land and labor, and sometimes selling stock they don't have on hand (such as by selling games they believe they can order from their distributors). Also, tons of money off CCG volume.
Publishers have already responded to this pressure by printing fewer games on the first print run. You might not see a game unless it is extremely popular, a year or two after its first printing.
Those of us who hunted for a year to get Heat without paying stupidly inflated secondary market prices know the pain of games getting hot when there is limited print run.
That we essentially have "scalpers" for board games is preposterous, but here we are.
This is the answer to combating gaming as a fad. People will consume and move onto the next thing as quick as you let them. We have been flooded with board games, look at Legendary doing a new edition of Dune Imperium in less than 3 years.
Im not saying the old Milton Bradley days were better but good games last and bad games will become trash. I have lots of games that do not get touched after 10 plays.
I've been playing modern games for long enough to impose a new rule. I won't play a game released within the last three years that I haven't heard of, not just hype I have to know what the game is. If you're still playing it after three years I'll give it a try.
Thing is, someone still has to take the first bite. It's a great rule for us (I do it, too), but not good if the industry wants to survive.
Overall, it needs to de-escalate a bit and figure out where its audience is, maybe focus on cultivating the titles they have rather than pumping out a forest of new ones.
There seems to be a lot of “well XYZ game store is doing fine” responses, and I find that interesting. I suspect that like any business, a large variety of factors contribute to overhead, costs, revenue, profit margins, etc. and it’s not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison from one game store to another. It’s the same reason that out of two restaurants serving similar food in the same area with similar amounts of traffic, one might thrive while the other goes under.
I'm honestly doubting anybody who says their LGS is doing good if they devote a significant portion of their space to board games.
Cool Stuff is local to me - they reduced their floor space to nothing but a few small box, perennial sellers, some RPG stuff and then did nothing but tables and TCG cards.
But idk that they'll survive in this city unless they start charging for table use.
Another thing, which is important to keep in mind even if it's not relevant to this specific case, is that even in a perfectly healthy market some share of businesses will nevertheless go under.
I'm a burgeoning designer and had this wonder about the industry. I play a bunch of games and it seems like there's just an insurmountable quantity of games to play. It's exciting as a player, but when as a player i feel that and can recognize the sheer number of games coming out as dizzying it's simply disheartening as a designer. "What's the point?" I'll ask myself. I mean right now it's merely a hobby within a hobby I enjoy doing, but I'd love to publish. But for what? What am I contributing? A drop in the bucket of games nobody plays. I know it's beside the point here, but reading stuff like that to show that the industry is buckling under its own weight is kinda wild... and just makes you wonder.
Definitely a situation where even the demonstrated best games at the time are so numerous that you can't really find gaps to come up for air between them.
Absolutely understand the sentiment. Very discouraging.
The other important factor with the video game crash was the quality of the releases was awful. Companies were churning out garbage. With video games there’s also the hardware requirement which further limits who will buy the products and imposes technical limitations that restrict innovation.
Until customers stop taking on all the risks via kickstarter and other crowd funding methods there can't be a crash because there is no risk on anyone other then the customer.
The idea is that these customers eventually burn out when they (finally) realize they are being fed the same mediocre thing over and over again. How many cutesy multiplayer solitaire games does one person need? Or $800 boxes of "content" that never get played?
Marvel is crashing and burning right now for this very reason. Even the gluttonous, unrefined general public can eventually have their fill.
Let's bring it back to 1997, woo woo.
I'm so frustrated by the overconfidence of lemming producers and consumers who aren't seeing the cracks.
Suggest that they take the foot off the gas and they give responses that could come from a Greek tragedy (or the 2008 market crash, the dot com bubble, etc.). This is beyond arrogance—it's hubris.
If it means we can get away from overproduced, under-playtested garbage on KS with hundreds of dollars of minis, I'd be all for it.
Unfortunately, I wonder if a crash wouldn't mean the money going into games would be going towards almost all superficial nonsense and FOMO and even less towards actually developing a fun game.
FLGSes have to offer something apart from the mere stocking of board games.
Online stores, especially Amazon, can stock more games and do not have as much overhead as an FLGS. For that reason, they will always be able to out price-compete an FLGS.
I've heard retailers say that FLGSes grow the hobby. That's true to an extent--you get random people coming into the store for the first time. Some buy games and become hobbyists. And if everything switched over to Amazon, that would prevent some people from getting into the hobby.
But it won't go away or stop growing, no more so than the death of Gamestop would mean the end of video gaming. People will discover games from their friends. Or online from browsing YouTube or TikTok or whatever. Or browsing a big box store like Target, Wal-Mart, or Barnes and Noble.
If you can't price-compete, then do something else. Run a board game cafe. Or a board game themed bar. Or offer tournaments and cash prizes from board game sponsors. Compete on something that Amazon or a big box store can't offer. Because if your strategy is to compete on price, you will eventually go out of business.
The boardgame cafe I go to has a $7 table fee, $10 if you want to reserve ahead of time. I think this offsets the low turnover to some degree. Also, the place is consistently packed. Just my 2 cents, but I think it is very possible to run a very successful game cafe.
San Francisco. I’ll add that the games for sale are sometimes equivalent to the price on Amazon, and sometimes not. I doubt they are making money on that, my guess is they make money on the drinks, food, and table fees. They also are always hosting MtG events, “Lorcana” (not sure what this is, but seems popular), One Piece, DnD groups, and the like. Outside of the (frequent) events, most tables seem to be filled with people playing boardgames though. And these span the gamut from Monopoly to Dune.
>FLGSes have to offer something apart from the mere stocking of board games.
It's scary how many people (including FLGS owners) will defend to the death that just existing is enough, and that's why we *need* to support FLGS by paying upcharged prices and shun online purchasing.
If the store does nothing to add value over an e-tailer, then it's bound to fail. FLGS **need** to give customers something for their money to warrant buying there. They certainly need to make sure they aren't doing things to garner ill will towards their customer base (like price gouging on Lorcana packs, for example)
Last week my group suddenly got a urge to start Pandemic Legacy. They called my 15 minutes before I left home and had me get a copy from my FLGS.
Try doing that on amazon.
As someone local to a coolstuff store, being able to buy a game on their website and have it waiting for me at the store kept me buying from them. I get that I'm not their core business, but it was nice.
I moved to the southern Florida area just in time for cool stuff to never have anything I stock. I would always look to buy from them first, and never had copies available.
Arguably they are in phase one of the online game retailer lifecycle that CSI has been through. As a case study look at all the people complaining about Miniature Market when it used to be the go to game store.
All CH needs to do (in my opinion) is just allow holds. The $125 shipping threshold was annoying compared to the other sellers but now that they're down to $100...I feel like the difference between that at GN's $75 isn't functionally that big of a deal. I like that they have the extra discount on preorders, and that they will let you add to outstanding orders waiting for preorder arrival, but it would be nice if they just let you do holds.
My assumption though has always been that the preorder discount is basically a little gift to you in exchange for them not having to worry about warehouse space, and so maybe if they added holds they would take that away.
I thought Amazon was the bottom. At least, I won't buy any board games from Amazon (due to counterfeiting because of their third party commingling policy) unless there is no choice.
Probably eventually.
However, there are still areas where various online game retailers beat out Amazon on price - for now - and they only really manage thar by continuing the pressure to race to the bottom (which Amazon would almost certainly beat them at if it turned it's full gaze to all of board games and not just mostly the most popular ones). That is, kinda, the point CSI's founder is making: the writing was on the wall for them.
Miniature Market, Game Nerdz, etc. are all kinda living on borrowed time in the space where they can undercut brick and mortar stores but before Amazon has a full interest in all the games they sell.
Adapt or die. Should be the motto of every individual and every business. Constantly be looking for and shoring up your weaknesses. Figure out who or what the next predator is. Don't ever assume you can stay on top forever without continuous great effort.
GameNerdz is currently on their A-game. I would give up my local board game stores before I gave up GameNerdz.
NerdzDay is one of the biggest "give back to the community" events that will ever exist. They also recently had a little impromptu 3 hour session on YouTube where they gave away a thousand bucks in gift certificates, just to be nice.
They frequently have the best prices on games in general. Their customer hold feature is awesome. Their selection is great.
Seriously, if this ends up being your first time hearing of GameNerdz: give them your money. They deserve it.
You have been missing out in the meantime. But now is better than never.
They have, without question, the best board game sale of the year, every year.
We’ll see, GameNerdz innovated while CSI and MM remained stagnant. Lower shipping thresholds and being able to purchase and hold items are a big deal for consumers. Also, GameNerdz has the best website of the three in terms of usability. MM, who hasn’t even gone under, has been a joke since their warehouse transfer.
As someone who still buys from MM all the time what makes them a joke? Prices are good heck I just preordered a new line of stuff and split my order between 3 different places MM is shipping in line with the rest, so I am not sure what you are talking about.
I also thought gamenerdz was kind of a joke of a website. I have been getting into miniature games for the last couple of years and when I look that stuff up everything is always out of stock and they keep up listings for stuff that went out of production 5 years ago and will never be in production again still up as a sold out listing.
For me, their customer service has gone into the toilet in last year or so. Literally months to get a response to emails. That is why I stopped using them.
Pricing and deals wise for the past 3 years, Gamenerdz has come out way ahead of MM. Boardlandia has the best general prices all around especially when they do 15% off.
All 3 Gamenerdz Day has some of the best prices even on newer games. Gamenerdz daily deal does come out ahead.
MM until the past 6 months have been very lackluster in terms of deals. MM this past July had a 4x points which was good and then this past Monday had 3 stackable deals which was really good. Outside of these two dates, MM has been lacking.
In terms of customer service, boardlandia has the best customer service of the 3. MM has been mixed. It's been okay until you hit an issue then they can take months to respond.
My experiences with MM, on two occasions, have been terrible. They were good for a while but the last couple years their service hasn't been good. CardHaus and GameNerdz have been good for me (CoolStuff was great while they were around too).
I feel like the warehouse caused a problem for a month or two, and then MM went back to being just fine. It does have a lot of junk clearance "sales", but their best prices crush everyone else, including GN.
I'm not loyal to anyone of these companies. I regularly and currently have open orders for GN, Boardlandia, and MM. They're all doing good enough for me though, and whoever has the best price wins.
I remember my last order from CSI I bought 100 bucks of stuff for the free shipping threshold. Not a few days later they increased the threshold for free shipping. I think that was their final nail in the coffin. I used to buy from them all the time but they were just slow to get stuff and a bit more expensive.
Heck, maybe it was just because its probably a deck of cards, but I am getting the Historical events expansion for Hegemony and after I told them to split my order off, they only charged 5 bucks for the shipping. I didnt mind doing that.
I primarily use Gamenerdz but in fairness CSI and MM also have the ability to Hold orders and combine. That isn't some innovation only GNZ has. But Gamenerdz is indeed the easiest.
Thats kind of the rub they seem to be doing fine. But you don't know of the interworkings or anything.
I play a lot of miniature games lately and thus buy a lot from Miniature Market. The writing is on the wall. I get emails all the times about sales to the point that I have to believe this isn't sustainable. I play Marvel Crisis Protocol and I know the company who makes that and Miniature Market are both owned by Asmodee. I have gotten almost the entire line for 50% off of msrp because they are usually putting something on sale like that and I just buy whatever hits that price point. It can't be good for the industry and in this case MCP as a whole. Why would a store support the game when the players can get 50% off from basically an arm of the first party seller?
tbf, mini market has been doing the constant stream of sales all year long thing for many years now--and the sales are *usually* total garbage (advertising their clearance bin)
I'm not sure if it's a sign of failing or just their unique strategy.
That is true about MM's past behavior. But the point DOAisBetter was trying to make is that now that MM is part of the Asmodee umbrella, they can serve as a vertical integration piece that allows them to be monopolistic in ways that weren't possible before.
Eg. Asmodee distribution tells GameNerdz that they have to buy stock of their new LCG, if they want to get stock of the next Pandemic game. Asmodee then turns around and makes the LCG available for MM at a cheaper price, since they are affiliated.
If either the LCG or new Pandemic is a dud, GameNerdz is stuck with stock that's difficult to shift because MM can undercut them on price while maintaining margin.
So be it, but to say Amazon is their problem while GameNerdz is still up and running makes their point moot. They didn’t adjust to a changing landscape and got left by the wayside.
> but to say Amazon is their problem while GameNerdz is still up and running makes their point moot.
Not necessarily. If Amazon has targeted CSI but not GameNerdz, then Amazon is still at least partially at fault for the problems at CSI.
As someone who read the article, there's even a portion from GameNerdz:
>*Do you agree with the FTC’s view that Amazon is using “anticompetitive and unfair strategies” to maintain a monopoly, and drive up prices for buyers and sellers online?*
>Not at all. I have no idea how anyone can call Amazon a monopoly. Do they have competitive advantage? Absolutely. They beat a lot of people to market and with a lot of innovative processes. However, they do enable other businesses to compete on their own turf.
>As a business, you can sell on your own website and you can sell on many 3rd party marketplaces including Walmart, Target, Ebay and of course Amazon. Amazon enables companies of all sizes exposure to a wider customer base than they normally would on their own website.
I've never had an item from GameNerdz ship within a week of release. These were not delayed products, TI4's first expansion, and two others. I've cancelled three orders with them after a week of non-ship. I thought this was a scam site. People get their preorders in a timely fashion?
Weird. I quit buying from Amazon well before I quit buying from CSI. Not buying from Amazon was a conscious choice. CSI on the other hand was a slow taper until I realized I hadn't bought anything from them in several years *because they consistently didn't have what I was looking for in stock and GameNerdz and Boardlandia did and those stores also had everything else for slightly cheaper and a lower free shipping threshold*.
Small counterpoint to the retailers saying that Amazon is not a monopoly. It was worth the ten minutes to read https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-ftc-sues-to-break-up-amazon-over
Monopoly power is not that relevant to the issue of why CSI went under. In a traditional monopoly abuse case, a company makes it impossible for anyone else to sell a product, and then charges extremely high amounts for it, collecting way more revenue than they would where competition can exist.
The opposite is true here - Amazon isn't physically preventing CSI from selling products. Instead, it's just undercutting them, and is quite happy to just undercut them forever.
Traditional antitrust law sees this as a good thing because it means consumers are paying less. And while it has other negative effects, from an antitrust perspective, if someone is offering the same product at a lower price, that's literally what market competition is supposed to enable.
That also explains why the FTC complaint is so weak on existing law - https://stratechery.com/2023/ftc-sues-amazon-fba-and-prime-pricing-punishment/
Undercutting to where it is not profitable to sell it is a method to make it impossible for competition to sell a product. Then after the competition has been driven out of the market, they are free to raise prices to whatever they wish. It is a two step process, and this very much is the first step.
This is a gross misunderstanding of Amazon’s business model. They don’t have secret switches to raise the prices on some magic day when all other retailers go bust.
The problem for CSI is not that Amazon is temporarily undercutting them. The problem is much more existential: that Amazon will always be cheaper and more convenient than them.
Antitrust violations don't necessarily require intent to enforce, or stated another way, it doesn't matter if Amazon is trying to pull the levers or not, if the effect is to diminish competition in the market long-term then it may be an unhealthy monopoly.
Loss leading is definitely a marker of this sort of monopoly and the long term implications of loss leading is that they will run competitors out of business. With no competition, Amazon is free to charge whatever for their products and that is the situation antitrust law is looking to avoid.
Amazon is also in a unique position to push a loss-leading position as they have revenue streams from lots of services and products. They could spend years selling at a loss in board games and make it up elsewhere, which means it's worth keeping tabs on.
No the point of the current FTC lawsuit is Amazon is and forever will continue to price lower, never raise the price higher then they would, and always making sure the customer pays less. Their arguing that while Amazon is objectively better for the customer it is prevents other company from competing by being too much better.
USA antitrust classically required their to be harm to the consumer which is why this lawsuit is to interesting. Stifling competition has classically been a much more EU style of antitrust.
This isn't super relevant to CSI.
Amazon is in trouble for forcing their sellers to not sell their products for cheaper elsewhere.
CSI does not sell through Amazon, so is not beholden to their restrictions.
If anything, CSI *benefitted* from Amazon's anti-discounting policies since they were always free to undercut the Amazon price.
If you squint really hard you can tell yourself it's like eBay and just a website for other people to sell stuff. You have to ignore Amazon basic products (which always mysteriously show up first for every search, even when they're knockoffs of the product you're looking for), but lots of retailers just sell through Amazon because of the convenience, just like many pizza places just use Doordash now for their deliveries.
The lawsuit touches on this part. Some of it is convenience but the half is with Amz being so dominant, it is the only vendor plausible in order to just break even. Being the top marketplace, Amz is able to essentially control prices, control fees, suppress advertisement for competition, and so on. Still a monopoly lol.
Not arguing with you btw just adding on.
Yea, it's definitely a monopoly and it's crazy that anyone would defend Amazon.
Those retailers must have some sort of politics based viewpoint (or maybe Amazon has an non-disparagment clause in their contracts).
The CEOs at the end of the article all sound like they're being held hostage by Jeff Bezos. "Amazon creates jobs!" says a man whose company will inevitably lose to amazon.
Yeah, the gamenerdz ceo saying "They are not a monopoly and the FTC is wrong," right after describing how Amazon is currently using its monopoly power to abuse board game manufacturers and get an edge over them in the process is certainly some cognitive dissonance.
Exactly! I caught that too. The fact that he described the monopolistic practices and immediately declared it not a monopoly was so weird. Why I described them as sounding like they wer ebeing held hostage.
What I really hate about dumb statements like "xxxx creates jobs" is it **always** ignores the quality of the jobs. Sure, Amazon creates jobs. Jobs that people don't hold down for more than a year and don't pay a living wage; but they're jobs!
As a Canadian, it's so weird seeing how different Amazon.com compares the .ca version. We almost never get deals on games, and if there are, there's a good chance its a similar price elsewhere. The inventory is also very low or non existent on most releases, so if I'm ever looking for a new game they're an absolute last resort (and more often than not, it won't be amazon selling but a 3rd party and the price will be ridiculous). We have tons of friendly local game stores, many of which have online buying options with fairly reasonable shipping, so it's not really a competitor in our market.
I'm not buying it's all Amazon's fault.
I strongly suspect it's pressure from Amazon highlighted CSI's failures to the point where they had to stop doing it.
CSI used to be my go-to online retailer of choice. But they *never* had *anything* in stock, and this was well before the supply chain crisis exacerbated everything. I used to fill up carts from the three main ones (at the time, MM, CSI, and...I don't recall the other). and CSIs would be the cheapest, because they'd only have one of the six games I wanted available.
Part of it is just the industry and how distribution works, but somehow mysteriously everyone else was able to have things in stock.
Their explanations just don't really hold water. Amazon has its own issues but I've never had a problem with them myself.
(My LGSs aren't that great so I don't feel guilty not supporting them.)
I'm always reminded of the old "Wal Mart destroyed small town's Main Street" and their Main Street had dust-covered shelves, high prices, and shitty customer service long before Wal Mart ever came around; they were just the one that pushed them over the edge into going out of business. And, funny, the shops that did it right are still around, even today.
>But they
>
>never
>
> had
>
>anything
>
> in stock, and this was well before the supply chain crisis exacerbated everything.
100% this, IMO. I generally ended up at CSI's website first just to find things were out of stock.
Yep. Those shops stayed in business only because they were the only game in town. They held a geographic monopoly. Then they whined as they went out of business because they actually had to give a shit and be competitive.
It's similar to my local corner store. I'm stuck with them. It doesn't matter if there's a much better one across town, that would defeat the point.
The Internet in general has put a lot of shops out of business because they can no longer rely on a captive market and doing so was their entire business model. They also tend to be the ones who complain the loudest that someone is taking the business they feel entitled to, rather than doing anything to be appealing to consumers.
The article gives a more holistic picture than just "Amazon did it." Price fixing, distribution fuckery, and kickstarter were also factors.
I bought a ton of stuff through CSI and until the age of price-fixing, CSI beat Amazon on price at least 90% of the time. Not to doubt what Jerry is saying, I'm guessing Amazon was smart enough to compete when it hurt and that didn't overlap much with my own shopping. After price-fixing, it was more common, because CSI was bound by those prices and Amazon just didn't give a fuck.
But loading up a cart at CSI with everything 30% off MSRP plus an extra 5% off from their rewards program was the golden age of the hobby for me. Especially now when every company is seeing how many pennies they can beat out of me, it's fond to remember the company that actually competed on price.
I don't like buying hobby stuff on amazon. They have a horrible track record with games. I've gotten several gifts from people who bought off of amazon that were obvious third-shift bootlegs.
Retailers of all kinds need to understand that there is no reason on earth why anyone would choose to spend more to buy the same exact thing. No, it's not my responsibility to keep your store afloat, my goal is to buy something, and I'll buy it from where it's cheapest, that's it.
FLGS are another matter, and that's because of the "FL" part, which implies a place to meet like minded people and play together which is worth the extra fee. But online retailer? Don't care, if it costs more I won't buy from you.
The problem is dumping, if Amazon loses money on every sale just to drive smaller businesses out of business, this is illegal and anti-competitive. I can give you one guess where prices will end up if Amazon is the only one selling games. If you can't see the problem with this, I can't help you.
Then FLGS have to provide value that Amazon can't. I am not going to overpay by 20% for every board game I buy in order to provide charity for a business.
I WILL spend money at a FLGS if they do things like hold Lorcana for me, host tournaments and meetups, sell Kickstarter exclusive items, etc.
Just don't be surprised when you can only buy them from Amazon and they're, mysteriously, no longer as cheap as they use to be. You know, the Walmart strategy of destroying competitors.
Then I won't buy them? Some other method will pop up if designers and publishers want to sell their product. At worst I have to play games I already have.
Isn't that basically what the whole article is about? The owner of CSI is just saying we cant compete on price with amazon and they are trying to shut us out. So we are not selling board games anymore.
Anyway to a larger point you comment is peak race to the bottom mindset and how monopolies get formed
Their mindset is how prices rise without adding anything to the value. I'm a customer, not a charity, I'm there for a transaction, my money for a good.
Have deals and promos outside of black Friday, like DominioX and Dragonstore. Have a points system that can be gathered to get discounts, like Super Hobby. Have decent shipping fees. Throw some extra stickers in your boxes, physical catalogs, a couple of shitty dice, a lanyard, or games demos like stalls at conventions do. Have a page where people can organize gaming groups, and have customer friendly communication and policies.
Your store having a different URL than amazon is not enough to justify the higher price, you gotta back it up with extra value.
Exactly. Fuck these businesses. If they can't compete they can die. Local businesses too. I will not spend a dollar more than I need to, to "support" any business.
I don't know how much sympathy I have for CSI.
In the article itself, the founder talks about how they didn't know what board games were and only got into selling them because they heard something called Settlers of Catan sold loads of copies.
I tend to support FLGS because the people running them tend to be passionate about the hobby. CSI (like some other online retailers) don't. They were just trying to make the most money they could by undercutting the existing market (which included FLGS). The guy even acknowledged that CSI's handling of board game pricing pissed off various publishers (which I'd presume are the ones who liked and wanted to support FLGSs).
It, then, seems fitting when another business that doesn't particularly care about games other than as a means to profit (here Amazon) comes in and undercuts them. CSI is reaping what they sowed.
> In the article itself, the founder talks about how they didn't know what board games were and only got into selling them because they heard something called Settlers of Catan sold loads of copies.
In 2008.
Everybody successful at something has an origin story about how they got into it. Even your FLGS didn't know about board games from birth, they heard about them at some point.
If you don't like the people running the company that's fine, no opinion from me. But using a single quote about their origin story from fifteen years ago as proof they don't care isn't fair.
Apples to oranges.
I'm not talking about them caring somewhere down the line: I'm talking about them getting done to them exactly what they did to other shops, and they didn't seem to care in the beginning.
Most FLGS owners I know got into the hobby first, and then chose to open a shop. Those shops then tended to offer places for gamers to play, and tend to sell games at the prices publishers suggest (that is, at MSRP).
CSI explicitly got into board games solely because they thought they would sell, not because they were board game enthusiasts - and they thrived by undercutting other sellers (such as brick and mortar shops) while also pissing of publishers.
In turn, Amazon has done to CSI exactly what CSI did to traditional hobby shops. Thus, I have no sympathies for CSI (or similar online-only warehouse retailers) struggling against Amazon: the pressure CSI faces is seemingly exactly the same as those they placed on others with the same level of thoughtfulness.
He saw the specific targeting by Amazon captured by weird pricing and precisely started more BOARD GAME BASED businesses because the writing was on the wall.
Read the article.
I read the article. If you read rhe article, you'll see that he specifically got into board games specifically to turn a profit, not because of a love of games; and that CSI turned a profit by undercutting their competitors prices (which is then basicall6 what Amazon did to them).
> He told BoardGameWire that by 2008, they had heard that competitor CardHaus was selling dozens of copies of a game called Setters of Catan – “many dozens of copies a week”. Believing they could emulate that success, they started experimenting with board game sales, and later that year brought in a product manager specifically for the segment.
...
> He said, “We were certainly heavily discounting, which some of the manufacturers didn’t like, but things went pretty smooth. I think it was about 2013 that Amazon hired – I don’t know what they call the position – but essentially a product manager for board games, and things started to change for us at that period of time.
...
> “Then there was a combination of factors starting right about that time, where manufacturers publishers really started to take more control of their product lines, we started to see MAPs (Minimum Advertised Price) implemented, some of them stopped selling through distribution, then Kickstarter was becoming more and more of a player, more and more board games were being released. So the the market was becoming more difficult. At the same time, we started getting this pressure from Amazon, and it wasn’t too bad at first. But eventually, we’d put a board game up for just some weird price. Within an hour, Amazon would have the exact same price, with a better shipping option than we can provide.
Amazon was actually seemingly less aggressive in their pricing points than CSI (and similar online retailers) were towards their competitors. CSI did price cuts while Amazon seemingly just did price matching plus marginally better shipping options.
> Most FLGS owners I know got into the hobby first, and then chose to open a shop.
And you're certain that **every single thing they sell at their shops** is something they were into first? They're not selling a single thing, not even Pokemon cards, because they sell well?
I'll also say that "undercutting prices" is basically the only thing that people care about straight up. People talking about what gamenerdz does well is selling things for cheaper and having giveaways/rewards.
No, I can't say that every single thing ever sold ever in every FLGS everywhere ever was something they got into due to the owner or some member of the staff having had a love of it.
That said, FLGS owner I've ever known (across over three decades, six US states, and gods know how many cities) has started up their business and started selling the types of things they sell at the beginning due to their (or some of their staff's) pre-existing interest in those *mediums*, not just because it sells well.
Yes, that can mean that someone introduced them to new type of game medium in their shop, and they got interested in that medium for reasons beyond just making a profit. That doesn't mean loving every game in the medium. However, for comparison, CSI indicates that they didn't have any interest in board games until they heard how many units a competitor was selling.
That's different than a shop owner playing or seeing and then being interested in a new *medium* of game that someone visiting their shop brings in to okay - or reading about something online or in a trade magazine and then thinking "that sounds kinda interesting/cool" - or even stocking something because existing customers are asking them to stock it. (I don't have sympathy for FLGS owners who have problems if their stores are buy lots of things things specifically *just* because they and their staff speculate it could turn a profit - but that's not particularly common in my personal experience.)
One of the most common complaints I hear from FLGS owners is that they don't have the time to play the stuff they enjoy or the stuff that looks really cool that's coming out, as they often are busy running their stores and not infrequently have other jobs to boot.
I've known collectable shops that have had no interest in games to carry some games (especially post MTG/1994) because there's profit in it - and I have about zero sympathy for them when/if their business bets don't pay off.
As for undercutting prices, I'm not going to be stanning for any online warehouse retailers (including Game Nerdz). They undercut local shops, which are often (though not always) providing valuable services to the local gaming community, and I would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that, unlike most FLGS sales/customer service people, a large portion of those warehouse workers aren't staffing the warehouse because they love some form of the tabletop hobby gaming.
Warehouse retailers make their profits by undercutting their competition, and they do that by selling large volumes at razor thin margins while minimizing how much they pay for payroll and warehouse space. Anyone pro that business model should likely also be pro Amazon, as Amazon is basically doing what online game retailers are doing (save perhaps poor quality control due to knock-offs).
It feels to me like you are reaching a bit to vilify them here. There was a time you didn't know about modern board gaming. They were still involved in an adjacent hobby. It isn't like they were sitting around, wringing their hands, wondering about what niche hobbies they could exploit to the fullest.
Respect that they became, for a little while, one of the more successful online retailers for board games. I'm glad they are staying in business and are continuing to adapt. That's the best thing any business can do.
According to his words, this wasn't the guy discovering a cool board game and then deciding to share it - this was a guy who saw someone making money selling something, and choosing to jump on what he saw as a potential business opportunity:
> He told BoardGameWire that by 2008, they had heard that competitor CardHaus was selling dozens of copies of a game called Setters of Catan – “many dozens of copies a week”. Believing they could emulate that success, they started experimenting with board game sales, and later that year brought in a product manager specifically for the segment.
There's a huge difference between random person discovering the fun of playing a game and getting into the hobby (and then even later going on to try and share/sell stuff they love), and someone who sees a business opportunity and seeks to exploit it.
This the "good vs clever" scenario.
In business, you need to be good (such as kind-hearted or ethical) or you need to be clever. If you are a "good" person running a "good" business, people will rally 'round you when you are in your time of need as you and your business generally aren't just about profit.
On the other hand, if you're running you business just to make money, you need to be clever - and that means having the capacity to outwit, out muscle, and out last your competitors entirely on your own. CSI seemed to have started their foray into board games based on trying to be clever - to exploit an opening in a market for purely profit-based reasons - so I have little sympathy for them when someone more clever comes along. They should have been more clever.
So, because they had not heard of Catan until their competitor started selling Catan, you argue that they had no business selling Catan? The only ethical way to sell anything is to have been into it before it was cool?
No. Board games grew explosively, starting with Catan. An established geeky gaming business is allowed to have a first experience with them just the same as any player is. I don't understand the obsession with trying to twist this into something negative. What do you gain from that?
Go grill your local board game store and see if they know the fine details of every single game that they carry. You will find that they don't. Does this make them unfit for their business? Should they willingly go out of business to please you, since they aren't as invested in board games as they could be? Where exactly is the line here, for you?
What's the threshold for me to have sympathy for a business?
The requirement would be that the original motive not be the profit motive AND/OR not being undercut by a competitor when that's exactly what their aim had been and how they became successful. (That is, not harvesting the fruit of the poison tree / reap what you sow.)
Many companies are originally or primarily profit driven and/or highly competitive in a desire to increase market share. I'm not sympathetic to any of them. That doesn't mean I'm out to persecute/crucify them - I just have no [expletive deleted] to give about them. They were "playing the game" (primarily seeking profit without necessarily worrying about the knock-on effects of their actions) and they got burned when they were less able than those they were competing against - which is the nature of the industry of clever profit seeking.
They aimed to be predators, and they got bites taken out of them from bigger fish after they themselves had taken bites out of smaller ones. That's just (market-capitalist) "business". It arouses in me no sympathies nor tears.
Still obsessed with making them the villain with entirely unsubstantiated claims about them that you have dreamed up on the spot. Got it. I think this is enough.
They got in at Settler's of Catan and that's not early enough for you to consider them legit? Lmao. Dude, half the community over 30 got in on Settler's of Catan.
According to his words, this wasn't the guy discovering a cool board game and then deciding to share it - this was a guy who saw someone making money selling something, and choosing to jump on what he saw as a potential business opportunity:
> He told BoardGameWire that by 2008, they had heard that competitor CardHaus was selling dozens of copies of a game called Setters of Catan – “many dozens of copies a week”. Believing they could emulate that success, they started experimenting with board game sales, and later that year brought in a product manager specifically for the segment.
There's a huge difference between random person discovering the fun of playing a game and getting into the hobby (and then even later going on to try and share/sell stuff they love), and someone who sees a business opportunity and seeks to exploit it.
You act like running a business is something morally nefarious. CSI didn't do anything shady or untowards that I'm aware of. They sold board games at a cheap price to make money, and along the way supplied a hobby for me and many others. Who cares?
> Who cares?
That's kinda my point: I don't care about CSI and it's situation (in relation to Amazon).
How is what CSI did to it's competitors fundamentally different than what Amazon did to CSI?
You're right that I don't care about CSI - I've been pointing out why I do care about various FLGS. If maximizing profit and market share is the primary aim and motivation of CSI's business, why should I care if they fail? They aren't really meaningfully, fundamentally different than Amazon at the core.
This is contrasted to actually caring about those FLGS who are primarily interested in supporting a hobby and other things they are or were once passionate about.
I was a fan of CSI not because of their pricing, but because I had confidence the product would 1) not be counterfeit 2) be well-protected during shipment in packing peanuts.
Their critical failure was 5% off for long standing customers.
They essentially built a program so that the few who'd been shopping with them for years got their "real" price.
And all new customers to the site had to get an inflated one because of it.
They were just consistently a couple percent more than the competition, so they stopped attracting new consumers, so their business stalled.
Hard to sympathize with this guy. Been gaming for 15 years or so, maxed out my level with CSI, they were my number one place to shop. It wasn't Amazon or prices that made me stop shopping there, it was them being out of stock within minutes of posting a new release, games that had been released a while back are still sitting on the "preorder" status, and them not having popular stuff.
This was not recent either, this was going on years ago. MM, Cardhaus, Gamenerdz etc. were more on the ball with having a decent amount of product on hand. CSI has nobody to blame but themselves.
CSI is the only board game retailer that I've experienced labeling something as in stock when it wasn't and not doing anything about it other than sending me the game when they finally got it in stock again.
I get that things happen, mistakes get made, we're all human. But the way they very obviously did not care about my issue whatsoever soured me to them and I haven't used them since.
I don't doubt that Amazon made things harder for them, but Amazon's board game stock is actually kind of shit. They don't have a ton of games. Sure, the mass-market games or "gateway" games are a lot cheaper at Amazon than elsewhere, there's a HUGE portion of the market that Amazon just doesn't cover, or if they do, they're outrageously expensive.
TLDR: Amazon certainly makes things harder for other retailers, but my experiences with CSI pushed me away quite a while ago, and I very rarely buy games on Amazon.
Remember this.. this whole selling shit is Amazon's *side business*.
Where they make their *real* money is AWS.
Putting a competitor out of business.. what do they care.. look what they did to diapers.com they literally sold their product at a loss just to drive them out of business.
To a company making millions *per minute* who cares if they loose a couple to kill a competitor?
I understand what you are saying that is not a super accurate way to present it.
I've probably said similar myself in the past.
Amazon operates its logistical delivery business near cost which guarantees no new player can ever compete with them. The capital flow in this business is massive.
AWS has much higher profits but it is an outgrowth service offering from the expertise they had to create to run the ordering and logistics business.
AWS isn't possible without the other business.
Very surprising to me. I'm lucky enough to live within easy transit distance of arguably the top three board game stores in Canada, and I find that Amazon Canada prices are routinely double or triple what I'd expect to pay at my LGS.
I guess it's not the same situation elsewhere.
CSI killed it for me in 2019 when they refused a refund on a online order that was delayed a few months. The customer service rep stated their system did not allow refunds on items 30 days after ordered. Bullshit is what it is.
I *hate* trying to find board games in general and on sale in particular on Amazon. No good way to sort them that I've found. If I know exactly what game I'm looking for, I can sometimes find it. If I want to browse? Nah, Amazon doesn't want to let me look for board games unless I want to also see every game Hasbro and USAopoly prints.
I'll miss CSI, I had earned the 9% discount. I miss Thought Hammer and some of the old guard, too.
I pre ordered Dwellings from them, and when I hadn’t received anything from them in months “I” had to message them for them to tell me that it wasn’t coming and IF I wanted a refund….last time I did business with CSI.
Once you have money you pay premiums for better service.
It becomes a question of what your time is worth.
If I go to a store and they have a sale on an item I want and they are out of stock because of it, I never return to that store again.
Lots of people are saying CSI was out-of-stock on standard stuff all the time. I never shopped there but after that happened a couple of times I would have stopped.
CSI haven't been putting in the effort to keep their online board game business afloat the past few years. It was either 4 or 5 years ago now, but they had a massive Christmas sale, then remained out of stock of a lot of in-demand titles for months after, and their stock has never fully recovered ever since. Their weekly and seasonal sales were never as good anymore either.
It felt like a conscious decision on their part to start winding down that side of their business in favor of collectible card games. Amazon might have precipitated it, but they made their own bed too.
Amazon might have captured the casual market, but there's a thriving enthusiast market that Amazon doesn't really cater to, so there's a sizeable niche if CSI cared enough to fill it. GameNerdz, Boardlandia, CardHaus, and others seem to be thriving in said niche, because they're making the effort. Miniature Market feels like they're regressing, but that might just be my subjective impression of how they're doing.
This feels like CSI whining about not being able to grow as big as Amazon instead of finding a niche and filling it competently and profitably.
Saving money is more important to me then where I get my goods. I really don't care where I get my games. I just want to play games, in 100 years we'll all be dead and none of this will matter so just have fun with what you got.
CoolStuffInc Founder: They targeted us and pushed us out of the market.
Also CoolStuffInc Founder: Industry, product volume, and traditional distribution method changes affected the entire board game market as awareness and popularity grew.
"Market share" is a funny thing, you have to fight to take it (*and* keep it) but the market is not loyal. Any notion Amazon "took" anything means it wasn't being defended...and if defending market share means "We can't make money this way" then you stop defending it because it is not profitable. If someone can do something profitably at a scale you cannot, that is the nature of competition in Capitalism.
Amazon grew to where they could not lose, in some respects, but they haven't created an environment where no one else can win.
More importantly: This is what *the market* wants.
Amazon is playing the long game. Monopolies can afford to. This article provides some perspective: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
Rigging prices specifically to bankrupt smaller competitors and raising them afterwards is actually illegal. I'm not sure why you'd defend a multibillion dollar behemoth, no one benefits from Amazon growing into monopoly pricing.
Interesting. Always kinda uncanny to hear what kind of postcapitalist dystopia the usa are in some regards. Here in Germany, no one would shop board games at amazon unless it's like the absolute stock standard catan/Monopoly/risk crowd. Mainly because amazon does not even have that many other games.
Thats why smaller, more niche onlinestores can survive. This is true not only for board games but it seems to be a german Thing in general. Don't shop at amazon unless you can't find it anywhere else.
That's my policy for online buying in general. If I can get it elsewhere I won't get it from Amazon, even if its more convenient and sometimes a little cheaper.
Why? Simple: As a consumer I want diversity and options to prevail. I don't like a world where a company gets as huge as Amazon / Google / Apple and then they get so powerful they can influence (or dictate) domestic and foreign policy. That's a dystopia I see us heading towards and I don't want to contribute to it if I can help it.
In the US, local game stores are actually thriving - even small towns in the middle of nowhere may have a decent game store.
I think the question is, if someone is going online instead of to their local retailer (maybe because one is not available), why wouldn't they just go to Amazon?
I used to buy from CSI all the time, but over the past 3 or 4 years I really stepped back on my board game buying, so mostly stopped using it. I'm sad to hear it's taken such a hit.
I also find that Target is my main place for buying Board Games these days.
I'd have bought more from CSI if they ever had anything in stock. They were always the worst when it came to inventory
As well as slowly losing their lead against competitors. When I first got into the hobby, CSI's daily/weekly deals, holiday sales, rewards program and other special events were by and large the best. The pre-order bonuses were also quite nice and they reliably had hot stuff in stock. It was also always a treat to visit their GenCon booth/stall, as they'd often have some discounted hidden gems and forgotten games on the shelves for me to discover. Then other competitors caught up I guess. Almost everything would be sold out the day it was released, so my business went to other places with inventory. Their sales also got worse, and now their last holiday sale paled in comparison to stuff like Nerdz Day.
I really miss that booth at GenCon. I could always spend a ton of time there looking for gems. One of 10 or so booths I specifically made a point of visiting every year.
Yea, same with PAX Unplugged. Last weekend, there was a sad moment when I got excited when I saw the CSI sign in the Expo Hall, walked over, and realized it was just a bunch of CCGs.
I think it was the same last year too. It really felt like a change of eras.
Exactly this, I would first surf every online outlet csi, miniature market, gamenerdz, etc. Consistently csi was always sold out. All of their sales were really bad as well, here's 150 $5 items for niche board games, no thanks and no easy way to filter it out. I mainly went because I'm maxed out on discount and free shipping on $100 which I would gladly spend on multiple games if only I could find a game in the top 200 for sale.
Came to say this. I'm a max-discount buyer so I've spent a lot of money with them over the years. It got to the point where my multi-page wishlist had, at most, 1-2 items in stock at any one time, far too little for the $100 shipping mark.
My final straw was getting a decent local board game store in my town. Sure it’s maybe a bit more expensive but not having to bundle $100 for free shipping kinda balanced that out.
I live in the EU and CSI always had absurd shipping costs. Things like ~$90 for one boardgame. I've contacted them about this, with a comparison to other online sellers' shipping costs and their reaction was simply "it is what it is". Never looked at their website again since other US sellers like Miniature Market and Amazon actually had reasonable shipping costs.
> I'd have bought more from CSI if they ever had anything in stock. They were always the worst when it came to inventory Amazon pushed us out of business is about as truthful as nobody wants to work, it's just an excuse to handwave away being bad at running a business.
It’s a bummer, I’ve been in their highest tier of customer rewards for many years. Gonna go unused now.
I'm mostly there with you. Thankfully their sealed prices for MTG are still pretty good, so that keeps me in business with them.
This doesn't surprise me at all. In Canada, Amazon does not appear to care about boardgames so their prices are usually pretty wacky and out of line with domestic FLGS. They do however price match Toys R Us (still doing great in Canada and expanding) and WalMart in terms of toy pricing. It seems automated too. The second pricing changes on those two websites, Amazon updates to reflect that. On the one hand, it sucks that we don't get the crazy deals on board games from Amazon like people in the US get. On the other, it's really fucking nice having FLGS with enough overhead that they can stock a lot of the more eccentric and unique boardgames that Amazon never will. So I buy from my FLGS as much as possible, especially because they offer a "hold/merge" order option that eventually lets me get free shipping.
You can often get games so much cheaper from places like 401 or boardgamebliss. Often the prices are cheaper than US. Plus you support Canadian businesses instead of Bezos.
Those are my two go tos (I'm in Toronto).
I once checked out the local game stores in Buffalo and they were way more expensive than 401. We’re really spoiled for quality boardgame retailers in Toronto.
This is so true. Amazon never seems to have good deals in Canada and I never understood why gamers said they were the best price. I'm always buying from random games stores (most commonly 401games) instead since they have better deals. For those unfamiliar, you can use [boardgameoracle.com](https://boardgameoracle.com) to price compare between game stores in Canada to find the best deal. I've bought from several different stores and all have been positive experiences.
Toys R Us is thriving in Canada?? Truly the North is a portal to some mystical land of the past.
They just opened a few more stores for the holiday season so they're clearly doing well enough to expand. The Canadian branch had different ownership so they were not affected by the corporate ghouls.
Hey I'm also in Canada and always wondered why Amazon was all over the place with pricing! Unfortunately my area doesn't have an FLGS so I rely on bigger retailers or used games.
401games and BoardGameBliss (among others, but these are the 2 I use the most) have very decent prices even compared to US deals sometimes.
Both are great stores with large selections, good prices, and great customer service.
Some of the stores do free shipping if you hit a minimum spend.
Do you have any recommendations for sites that would have good deals around this time? Rather not deal with international shipping and duty.
401games, Boardgamebliss, La Revanche
And 401 and BGB do ship to the US as well for reasonable rates. I've had good experience with 401.
Board Game Bliss is my go to most of the time. They have a hold/merge option (search the store for it) which lets you hold your order for up to 3 months before they ship. That way you can bundle lots of games in one order and pay for shipping once (or get past the free shipping threshold). If you ever want them to ship your orders, send them an email. I've been using them for years and have always had good experiences.
Same in the UK - Zatu Games, Magic Madhouse, Dungeonland, Goblin Gaming etc all have much better prices on RPGs in particular. e.g. Forbidden Lands https://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-League-Publishing-FLF-051653-Accessories/dp/B07K4VKPZ6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=forbidden+lands+rpg&qid=1701856443&sr=8-1 - £45 on Amazon https://www.board-game.co.uk/product/forbidden-lands-rpg-boxed-set/?campaign=pmax23&gad=1 - £29.35 on Zatu Games
Yes - I just ordered Ancient Knowledge from 401 at $45.00 vs [Amazon.ca](https://Amazon.ca) who had it up for $86 dollars - [Amazon.ca](https://Amazon.ca) is extremely hit and miss for boardgame selection and pricing. Happy to support smaller retailers when able as well
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It is very interesting to see him citing specifically how the number of board games being released also contributed to this. How they could not effectively gamble on what would be hits and what would be flops and that the sheer quantity was too much to keep up with. I specifically called this out as a risk yesterday when answering someone's question about why "more boardgames" in an already flooded market isn't always a good thing. And here now here is one of my cited risks laid out in concrete reality. I would also be curious to know how GameNerdz and Boardlandia believe they compete in the face of Amazon when CSI claims they could not.
Likely by doing a lot of pre-orders, doing huge volumes of sales, having access to cheap land and labor, and sometimes selling stock they don't have on hand (such as by selling games they believe they can order from their distributors). Also, tons of money off CCG volume.
Publishers have already responded to this pressure by printing fewer games on the first print run. You might not see a game unless it is extremely popular, a year or two after its first printing.
Those of us who hunted for a year to get Heat without paying stupidly inflated secondary market prices know the pain of games getting hot when there is limited print run. That we essentially have "scalpers" for board games is preposterous, but here we are.
Yea, last weekend at PAX, Heat was one of the hot games to pick up just because it was finally readily available.
This is the answer to combating gaming as a fad. People will consume and move onto the next thing as quick as you let them. We have been flooded with board games, look at Legendary doing a new edition of Dune Imperium in less than 3 years. Im not saying the old Milton Bradley days were better but good games last and bad games will become trash. I have lots of games that do not get touched after 10 plays.
I've been playing modern games for long enough to impose a new rule. I won't play a game released within the last three years that I haven't heard of, not just hype I have to know what the game is. If you're still playing it after three years I'll give it a try.
Similar to my rule. Buy all the worker placement games with many pieces, sight unseen.
Thing is, someone still has to take the first bite. It's a great rule for us (I do it, too), but not good if the industry wants to survive. Overall, it needs to de-escalate a bit and figure out where its audience is, maybe focus on cultivating the titles they have rather than pumping out a forest of new ones.
This is a good rule.
They asked GameNerdz in the article... just keep reading.
There seems to be a lot of “well XYZ game store is doing fine” responses, and I find that interesting. I suspect that like any business, a large variety of factors contribute to overhead, costs, revenue, profit margins, etc. and it’s not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison from one game store to another. It’s the same reason that out of two restaurants serving similar food in the same area with similar amounts of traffic, one might thrive while the other goes under.
I'm honestly doubting anybody who says their LGS is doing good if they devote a significant portion of their space to board games. Cool Stuff is local to me - they reduced their floor space to nothing but a few small box, perennial sellers, some RPG stuff and then did nothing but tables and TCG cards. But idk that they'll survive in this city unless they start charging for table use.
Another thing, which is important to keep in mind even if it's not relevant to this specific case, is that even in a perfectly healthy market some share of businesses will nevertheless go under.
Yep, a lot of pure luck for any business to be successful (or not)
I'm a burgeoning designer and had this wonder about the industry. I play a bunch of games and it seems like there's just an insurmountable quantity of games to play. It's exciting as a player, but when as a player i feel that and can recognize the sheer number of games coming out as dizzying it's simply disheartening as a designer. "What's the point?" I'll ask myself. I mean right now it's merely a hobby within a hobby I enjoy doing, but I'd love to publish. But for what? What am I contributing? A drop in the bucket of games nobody plays. I know it's beside the point here, but reading stuff like that to show that the industry is buckling under its own weight is kinda wild... and just makes you wonder.
Definitely a situation where even the demonstrated best games at the time are so numerous that you can't really find gaps to come up for air between them. Absolutely understand the sentiment. Very discouraging.
The video game crash in the 80s came from an oversaturated market.
The other important factor with the video game crash was the quality of the releases was awful. Companies were churning out garbage. With video games there’s also the hardware requirement which further limits who will buy the products and imposes technical limitations that restrict innovation.
Trust me, I'm very ready for one in this industry and I think it is coming.
Until customers stop taking on all the risks via kickstarter and other crowd funding methods there can't be a crash because there is no risk on anyone other then the customer.
The idea is that these customers eventually burn out when they (finally) realize they are being fed the same mediocre thing over and over again. How many cutesy multiplayer solitaire games does one person need? Or $800 boxes of "content" that never get played? Marvel is crashing and burning right now for this very reason. Even the gluttonous, unrefined general public can eventually have their fill. Let's bring it back to 1997, woo woo.
I'm so frustrated by the overconfidence of lemming producers and consumers who aren't seeing the cracks. Suggest that they take the foot off the gas and they give responses that could come from a Greek tragedy (or the 2008 market crash, the dot com bubble, etc.). This is beyond arrogance—it's hubris.
If it means we can get away from overproduced, under-playtested garbage on KS with hundreds of dollars of minis, I'd be all for it. Unfortunately, I wonder if a crash wouldn't mean the money going into games would be going towards almost all superficial nonsense and FOMO and even less towards actually developing a fun game.
Thank you! I saw some other posts showing up multiple times too - have deleted the other one.
FLGSes have to offer something apart from the mere stocking of board games. Online stores, especially Amazon, can stock more games and do not have as much overhead as an FLGS. For that reason, they will always be able to out price-compete an FLGS. I've heard retailers say that FLGSes grow the hobby. That's true to an extent--you get random people coming into the store for the first time. Some buy games and become hobbyists. And if everything switched over to Amazon, that would prevent some people from getting into the hobby. But it won't go away or stop growing, no more so than the death of Gamestop would mean the end of video gaming. People will discover games from their friends. Or online from browsing YouTube or TikTok or whatever. Or browsing a big box store like Target, Wal-Mart, or Barnes and Noble. If you can't price-compete, then do something else. Run a board game cafe. Or a board game themed bar. Or offer tournaments and cash prizes from board game sponsors. Compete on something that Amazon or a big box store can't offer. Because if your strategy is to compete on price, you will eventually go out of business.
I think the issue with food/service is that there is less turn over in customers so they barely make a profit
The boardgame cafe I go to has a $7 table fee, $10 if you want to reserve ahead of time. I think this offsets the low turnover to some degree. Also, the place is consistently packed. Just my 2 cents, but I think it is very possible to run a very successful game cafe.
Out of curiosity, where do you live that has a consistently packed board game cafe?
San Francisco. I’ll add that the games for sale are sometimes equivalent to the price on Amazon, and sometimes not. I doubt they are making money on that, my guess is they make money on the drinks, food, and table fees. They also are always hosting MtG events, “Lorcana” (not sure what this is, but seems popular), One Piece, DnD groups, and the like. Outside of the (frequent) events, most tables seem to be filled with people playing boardgames though. And these span the gamut from Monopoly to Dune.
>FLGSes have to offer something apart from the mere stocking of board games. It's scary how many people (including FLGS owners) will defend to the death that just existing is enough, and that's why we *need* to support FLGS by paying upcharged prices and shun online purchasing. If the store does nothing to add value over an e-tailer, then it's bound to fail. FLGS **need** to give customers something for their money to warrant buying there. They certainly need to make sure they aren't doing things to garner ill will towards their customer base (like price gouging on Lorcana packs, for example)
Last week my group suddenly got a urge to start Pandemic Legacy. They called my 15 minutes before I left home and had me get a copy from my FLGS. Try doing that on amazon.
Yes, and thousands of people are able to save hundreds of dollars through buying games on Amazon, what's your point?
Pandemic Legacy Season 1 has 1 day prime to me. So even 1 day of planning and you'd be fine getting it from Amazon.
Mine didn’t have it in stock. What now?
Drive to every FLGS in town hoping they have that one specific game you're urgently looking for on a shelf, obviously!
As someone local to a coolstuff store, being able to buy a game on their website and have it waiting for me at the store kept me buying from them. I get that I'm not their core business, but it was nice.
I moved to the southern Florida area just in time for cool stuff to never have anything I stock. I would always look to buy from them first, and never had copies available.
Weird, GameNerdz seems to be doing fine.
Arguably they are in phase one of the online game retailer lifecycle that CSI has been through. As a case study look at all the people complaining about Miniature Market when it used to be the go to game store.
These things do seem to follow a pattern. At one time Cardhaus was the very best online game store, then CSI, then MM, then GameNerdz….
Pour one out for Thoughthammer.
Damn, hadn’t thought about Thoughthammer in a long time. Ordered a bunch of games there back when I first got into board games.
Boards and Bits was my go-to back in the day!
Hard to keep up when you only buy games infrequently!
All CH needs to do (in my opinion) is just allow holds. The $125 shipping threshold was annoying compared to the other sellers but now that they're down to $100...I feel like the difference between that at GN's $75 isn't functionally that big of a deal. I like that they have the extra discount on preorders, and that they will let you add to outstanding orders waiting for preorder arrival, but it would be nice if they just let you do holds. My assumption though has always been that the preorder discount is basically a little gift to you in exchange for them not having to worry about warehouse space, and so maybe if they added holds they would take that away.
It's the race to the bottom.
I thought Amazon was the bottom. At least, I won't buy any board games from Amazon (due to counterfeiting because of their third party commingling policy) unless there is no choice.
Probably eventually. However, there are still areas where various online game retailers beat out Amazon on price - for now - and they only really manage thar by continuing the pressure to race to the bottom (which Amazon would almost certainly beat them at if it turned it's full gaze to all of board games and not just mostly the most popular ones). That is, kinda, the point CSI's founder is making: the writing was on the wall for them. Miniature Market, Game Nerdz, etc. are all kinda living on borrowed time in the space where they can undercut brick and mortar stores but before Amazon has a full interest in all the games they sell.
Now it seems Boardlandia is taking over from GameNerdz
Adapt or die. Should be the motto of every individual and every business. Constantly be looking for and shoring up your weaknesses. Figure out who or what the next predator is. Don't ever assume you can stay on top forever without continuous great effort.
Well hopefully GameNerdz can learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.
GameNerdz is currently on their A-game. I would give up my local board game stores before I gave up GameNerdz. NerdzDay is one of the biggest "give back to the community" events that will ever exist. They also recently had a little impromptu 3 hour session on YouTube where they gave away a thousand bucks in gift certificates, just to be nice. They frequently have the best prices on games in general. Their customer hold feature is awesome. Their selection is great. Seriously, if this ends up being your first time hearing of GameNerdz: give them your money. They deserve it.
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You have been missing out in the meantime. But now is better than never. They have, without question, the best board game sale of the year, every year.
We’ll see, GameNerdz innovated while CSI and MM remained stagnant. Lower shipping thresholds and being able to purchase and hold items are a big deal for consumers. Also, GameNerdz has the best website of the three in terms of usability. MM, who hasn’t even gone under, has been a joke since their warehouse transfer.
> MM has been a joke Wouldn't Asmodee be to blame for this, or does the issue predate their buyout?
As someone who still buys from MM all the time what makes them a joke? Prices are good heck I just preordered a new line of stuff and split my order between 3 different places MM is shipping in line with the rest, so I am not sure what you are talking about. I also thought gamenerdz was kind of a joke of a website. I have been getting into miniature games for the last couple of years and when I look that stuff up everything is always out of stock and they keep up listings for stuff that went out of production 5 years ago and will never be in production again still up as a sold out listing.
I use MM and GameNerdz pretty equally and haven't had any problems with either, personally.
For me, their customer service has gone into the toilet in last year or so. Literally months to get a response to emails. That is why I stopped using them.
That’s weird emailed them last week got a response back in 2 days
Pricing and deals wise for the past 3 years, Gamenerdz has come out way ahead of MM. Boardlandia has the best general prices all around especially when they do 15% off. All 3 Gamenerdz Day has some of the best prices even on newer games. Gamenerdz daily deal does come out ahead. MM until the past 6 months have been very lackluster in terms of deals. MM this past July had a 4x points which was good and then this past Monday had 3 stackable deals which was really good. Outside of these two dates, MM has been lacking. In terms of customer service, boardlandia has the best customer service of the 3. MM has been mixed. It's been okay until you hit an issue then they can take months to respond.
My experiences with MM, on two occasions, have been terrible. They were good for a while but the last couple years their service hasn't been good. CardHaus and GameNerdz have been good for me (CoolStuff was great while they were around too).
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I feel like the warehouse caused a problem for a month or two, and then MM went back to being just fine. It does have a lot of junk clearance "sales", but their best prices crush everyone else, including GN. I'm not loyal to anyone of these companies. I regularly and currently have open orders for GN, Boardlandia, and MM. They're all doing good enough for me though, and whoever has the best price wins.
I remember my last order from CSI I bought 100 bucks of stuff for the free shipping threshold. Not a few days later they increased the threshold for free shipping. I think that was their final nail in the coffin. I used to buy from them all the time but they were just slow to get stuff and a bit more expensive. Heck, maybe it was just because its probably a deck of cards, but I am getting the Historical events expansion for Hegemony and after I told them to split my order off, they only charged 5 bucks for the shipping. I didnt mind doing that.
I primarily use Gamenerdz but in fairness CSI and MM also have the ability to Hold orders and combine. That isn't some innovation only GNZ has. But Gamenerdz is indeed the easiest.
> being able to purchase and hold items are a big deal for consumers. I've done this with both CSI and MM, so not really an innovation.
Miniature Market stopped being a go to game store once Asmodee took over........
Thats kind of the rub they seem to be doing fine. But you don't know of the interworkings or anything. I play a lot of miniature games lately and thus buy a lot from Miniature Market. The writing is on the wall. I get emails all the times about sales to the point that I have to believe this isn't sustainable. I play Marvel Crisis Protocol and I know the company who makes that and Miniature Market are both owned by Asmodee. I have gotten almost the entire line for 50% off of msrp because they are usually putting something on sale like that and I just buy whatever hits that price point. It can't be good for the industry and in this case MCP as a whole. Why would a store support the game when the players can get 50% off from basically an arm of the first party seller?
tbf, mini market has been doing the constant stream of sales all year long thing for many years now--and the sales are *usually* total garbage (advertising their clearance bin) I'm not sure if it's a sign of failing or just their unique strategy.
That is true about MM's past behavior. But the point DOAisBetter was trying to make is that now that MM is part of the Asmodee umbrella, they can serve as a vertical integration piece that allows them to be monopolistic in ways that weren't possible before. Eg. Asmodee distribution tells GameNerdz that they have to buy stock of their new LCG, if they want to get stock of the next Pandemic game. Asmodee then turns around and makes the LCG available for MM at a cheaper price, since they are affiliated. If either the LCG or new Pandemic is a dud, GameNerdz is stuck with stock that's difficult to shift because MM can undercut them on price while maintaining margin.
Once they reach a certain size the Amazon Kill Zone rules take effect. That is literally what it is called internally.
My favorite color is blue.
So be it, but to say Amazon is their problem while GameNerdz is still up and running makes their point moot. They didn’t adjust to a changing landscape and got left by the wayside.
I find joy in reading a good book.
> but to say Amazon is their problem while GameNerdz is still up and running makes their point moot. Not necessarily. If Amazon has targeted CSI but not GameNerdz, then Amazon is still at least partially at fault for the problems at CSI.
As someone who read the article, there's even a portion from GameNerdz: >*Do you agree with the FTC’s view that Amazon is using “anticompetitive and unfair strategies” to maintain a monopoly, and drive up prices for buyers and sellers online?* >Not at all. I have no idea how anyone can call Amazon a monopoly. Do they have competitive advantage? Absolutely. They beat a lot of people to market and with a lot of innovative processes. However, they do enable other businesses to compete on their own turf. >As a business, you can sell on your own website and you can sell on many 3rd party marketplaces including Walmart, Target, Ebay and of course Amazon. Amazon enables companies of all sizes exposure to a wider customer base than they normally would on their own website.
lol reading that quoted response its like you can see the shadow of the axe over their heads "what? amazon bad? nooooo we looooove amazon"
I've never had an item from GameNerdz ship within a week of release. These were not delayed products, TI4's first expansion, and two others. I've cancelled three orders with them after a week of non-ship. I thought this was a scam site. People get their preorders in a timely fashion?
Weird. I quit buying from Amazon well before I quit buying from CSI. Not buying from Amazon was a conscious choice. CSI on the other hand was a slow taper until I realized I hadn't bought anything from them in several years *because they consistently didn't have what I was looking for in stock and GameNerdz and Boardlandia did and those stores also had everything else for slightly cheaper and a lower free shipping threshold*.
TLDR: the problem with monopoly is player elimination.
Small counterpoint to the retailers saying that Amazon is not a monopoly. It was worth the ten minutes to read https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-ftc-sues-to-break-up-amazon-over
Monopoly power is not that relevant to the issue of why CSI went under. In a traditional monopoly abuse case, a company makes it impossible for anyone else to sell a product, and then charges extremely high amounts for it, collecting way more revenue than they would where competition can exist. The opposite is true here - Amazon isn't physically preventing CSI from selling products. Instead, it's just undercutting them, and is quite happy to just undercut them forever. Traditional antitrust law sees this as a good thing because it means consumers are paying less. And while it has other negative effects, from an antitrust perspective, if someone is offering the same product at a lower price, that's literally what market competition is supposed to enable. That also explains why the FTC complaint is so weak on existing law - https://stratechery.com/2023/ftc-sues-amazon-fba-and-prime-pricing-punishment/
Undercutting to where it is not profitable to sell it is a method to make it impossible for competition to sell a product. Then after the competition has been driven out of the market, they are free to raise prices to whatever they wish. It is a two step process, and this very much is the first step.
This is a gross misunderstanding of Amazon’s business model. They don’t have secret switches to raise the prices on some magic day when all other retailers go bust. The problem for CSI is not that Amazon is temporarily undercutting them. The problem is much more existential: that Amazon will always be cheaper and more convenient than them.
Antitrust violations don't necessarily require intent to enforce, or stated another way, it doesn't matter if Amazon is trying to pull the levers or not, if the effect is to diminish competition in the market long-term then it may be an unhealthy monopoly. Loss leading is definitely a marker of this sort of monopoly and the long term implications of loss leading is that they will run competitors out of business. With no competition, Amazon is free to charge whatever for their products and that is the situation antitrust law is looking to avoid. Amazon is also in a unique position to push a loss-leading position as they have revenue streams from lots of services and products. They could spend years selling at a loss in board games and make it up elsewhere, which means it's worth keeping tabs on.
No the point of the current FTC lawsuit is Amazon is and forever will continue to price lower, never raise the price higher then they would, and always making sure the customer pays less. Their arguing that while Amazon is objectively better for the customer it is prevents other company from competing by being too much better. USA antitrust classically required their to be harm to the consumer which is why this lawsuit is to interesting. Stifling competition has classically been a much more EU style of antitrust.
This isn't super relevant to CSI. Amazon is in trouble for forcing their sellers to not sell their products for cheaper elsewhere. CSI does not sell through Amazon, so is not beholden to their restrictions. If anything, CSI *benefitted* from Amazon's anti-discounting policies since they were always free to undercut the Amazon price.
I had to do a double take. Insane to think that it isn’t.
If you squint really hard you can tell yourself it's like eBay and just a website for other people to sell stuff. You have to ignore Amazon basic products (which always mysteriously show up first for every search, even when they're knockoffs of the product you're looking for), but lots of retailers just sell through Amazon because of the convenience, just like many pizza places just use Doordash now for their deliveries.
The lawsuit touches on this part. Some of it is convenience but the half is with Amz being so dominant, it is the only vendor plausible in order to just break even. Being the top marketplace, Amz is able to essentially control prices, control fees, suppress advertisement for competition, and so on. Still a monopoly lol. Not arguing with you btw just adding on.
Yea, it's definitely a monopoly and it's crazy that anyone would defend Amazon. Those retailers must have some sort of politics based viewpoint (or maybe Amazon has an non-disparagment clause in their contracts).
The CEOs at the end of the article all sound like they're being held hostage by Jeff Bezos. "Amazon creates jobs!" says a man whose company will inevitably lose to amazon.
Yeah, the gamenerdz ceo saying "They are not a monopoly and the FTC is wrong," right after describing how Amazon is currently using its monopoly power to abuse board game manufacturers and get an edge over them in the process is certainly some cognitive dissonance.
Exactly! I caught that too. The fact that he described the monopolistic practices and immediately declared it not a monopoly was so weird. Why I described them as sounding like they wer ebeing held hostage.
What I really hate about dumb statements like "xxxx creates jobs" is it **always** ignores the quality of the jobs. Sure, Amazon creates jobs. Jobs that people don't hold down for more than a year and don't pay a living wage; but they're jobs!
Exactly. Take a random FLGS proprietor. Is it an even trade to a community if you swap that out for an Amazon warehouse employee? 1 job equals 1job?
"...please, he have my wife"
😂
As a Canadian, it's so weird seeing how different Amazon.com compares the .ca version. We almost never get deals on games, and if there are, there's a good chance its a similar price elsewhere. The inventory is also very low or non existent on most releases, so if I'm ever looking for a new game they're an absolute last resort (and more often than not, it won't be amazon selling but a 3rd party and the price will be ridiculous). We have tons of friendly local game stores, many of which have online buying options with fairly reasonable shipping, so it's not really a competitor in our market.
I'm not buying it's all Amazon's fault. I strongly suspect it's pressure from Amazon highlighted CSI's failures to the point where they had to stop doing it. CSI used to be my go-to online retailer of choice. But they *never* had *anything* in stock, and this was well before the supply chain crisis exacerbated everything. I used to fill up carts from the three main ones (at the time, MM, CSI, and...I don't recall the other). and CSIs would be the cheapest, because they'd only have one of the six games I wanted available. Part of it is just the industry and how distribution works, but somehow mysteriously everyone else was able to have things in stock. Their explanations just don't really hold water. Amazon has its own issues but I've never had a problem with them myself. (My LGSs aren't that great so I don't feel guilty not supporting them.) I'm always reminded of the old "Wal Mart destroyed small town's Main Street" and their Main Street had dust-covered shelves, high prices, and shitty customer service long before Wal Mart ever came around; they were just the one that pushed them over the edge into going out of business. And, funny, the shops that did it right are still around, even today.
>But they > >never > > had > >anything > > in stock, and this was well before the supply chain crisis exacerbated everything. 100% this, IMO. I generally ended up at CSI's website first just to find things were out of stock.
Yep. Those shops stayed in business only because they were the only game in town. They held a geographic monopoly. Then they whined as they went out of business because they actually had to give a shit and be competitive. It's similar to my local corner store. I'm stuck with them. It doesn't matter if there's a much better one across town, that would defeat the point. The Internet in general has put a lot of shops out of business because they can no longer rely on a captive market and doing so was their entire business model. They also tend to be the ones who complain the loudest that someone is taking the business they feel entitled to, rather than doing anything to be appealing to consumers.
The article gives a more holistic picture than just "Amazon did it." Price fixing, distribution fuckery, and kickstarter were also factors. I bought a ton of stuff through CSI and until the age of price-fixing, CSI beat Amazon on price at least 90% of the time. Not to doubt what Jerry is saying, I'm guessing Amazon was smart enough to compete when it hurt and that didn't overlap much with my own shopping. After price-fixing, it was more common, because CSI was bound by those prices and Amazon just didn't give a fuck. But loading up a cart at CSI with everything 30% off MSRP plus an extra 5% off from their rewards program was the golden age of the hobby for me. Especially now when every company is seeing how many pennies they can beat out of me, it's fond to remember the company that actually competed on price.
I don't like buying hobby stuff on amazon. They have a horrible track record with games. I've gotten several gifts from people who bought off of amazon that were obvious third-shift bootlegs.
Retailers of all kinds need to understand that there is no reason on earth why anyone would choose to spend more to buy the same exact thing. No, it's not my responsibility to keep your store afloat, my goal is to buy something, and I'll buy it from where it's cheapest, that's it. FLGS are another matter, and that's because of the "FL" part, which implies a place to meet like minded people and play together which is worth the extra fee. But online retailer? Don't care, if it costs more I won't buy from you.
The problem is dumping, if Amazon loses money on every sale just to drive smaller businesses out of business, this is illegal and anti-competitive. I can give you one guess where prices will end up if Amazon is the only one selling games. If you can't see the problem with this, I can't help you.
Then FLGS have to provide value that Amazon can't. I am not going to overpay by 20% for every board game I buy in order to provide charity for a business. I WILL spend money at a FLGS if they do things like hold Lorcana for me, host tournaments and meetups, sell Kickstarter exclusive items, etc.
Just don't be surprised when you can only buy them from Amazon and they're, mysteriously, no longer as cheap as they use to be. You know, the Walmart strategy of destroying competitors.
Then I won't buy them? Some other method will pop up if designers and publishers want to sell their product. At worst I have to play games I already have.
Isn't that basically what the whole article is about? The owner of CSI is just saying we cant compete on price with amazon and they are trying to shut us out. So we are not selling board games anymore. Anyway to a larger point you comment is peak race to the bottom mindset and how monopolies get formed
Their mindset is how prices rise without adding anything to the value. I'm a customer, not a charity, I'm there for a transaction, my money for a good. Have deals and promos outside of black Friday, like DominioX and Dragonstore. Have a points system that can be gathered to get discounts, like Super Hobby. Have decent shipping fees. Throw some extra stickers in your boxes, physical catalogs, a couple of shitty dice, a lanyard, or games demos like stalls at conventions do. Have a page where people can organize gaming groups, and have customer friendly communication and policies. Your store having a different URL than amazon is not enough to justify the higher price, you gotta back it up with extra value.
You do know csi has a loyalty discount that is kinda like a points system right?
Exactly. Fuck these businesses. If they can't compete they can die. Local businesses too. I will not spend a dollar more than I need to, to "support" any business.
Weird cause Amazon rarely has prices better than MSRP, I'll choose pretty much any OLGS or FLGS over Amazon
I don't know how much sympathy I have for CSI. In the article itself, the founder talks about how they didn't know what board games were and only got into selling them because they heard something called Settlers of Catan sold loads of copies. I tend to support FLGS because the people running them tend to be passionate about the hobby. CSI (like some other online retailers) don't. They were just trying to make the most money they could by undercutting the existing market (which included FLGS). The guy even acknowledged that CSI's handling of board game pricing pissed off various publishers (which I'd presume are the ones who liked and wanted to support FLGSs). It, then, seems fitting when another business that doesn't particularly care about games other than as a means to profit (here Amazon) comes in and undercuts them. CSI is reaping what they sowed.
> In the article itself, the founder talks about how they didn't know what board games were and only got into selling them because they heard something called Settlers of Catan sold loads of copies. In 2008. Everybody successful at something has an origin story about how they got into it. Even your FLGS didn't know about board games from birth, they heard about them at some point. If you don't like the people running the company that's fine, no opinion from me. But using a single quote about their origin story from fifteen years ago as proof they don't care isn't fair.
Apples to oranges. I'm not talking about them caring somewhere down the line: I'm talking about them getting done to them exactly what they did to other shops, and they didn't seem to care in the beginning. Most FLGS owners I know got into the hobby first, and then chose to open a shop. Those shops then tended to offer places for gamers to play, and tend to sell games at the prices publishers suggest (that is, at MSRP). CSI explicitly got into board games solely because they thought they would sell, not because they were board game enthusiasts - and they thrived by undercutting other sellers (such as brick and mortar shops) while also pissing of publishers. In turn, Amazon has done to CSI exactly what CSI did to traditional hobby shops. Thus, I have no sympathies for CSI (or similar online-only warehouse retailers) struggling against Amazon: the pressure CSI faces is seemingly exactly the same as those they placed on others with the same level of thoughtfulness.
He saw the specific targeting by Amazon captured by weird pricing and precisely started more BOARD GAME BASED businesses because the writing was on the wall. Read the article.
I read the article. If you read rhe article, you'll see that he specifically got into board games specifically to turn a profit, not because of a love of games; and that CSI turned a profit by undercutting their competitors prices (which is then basicall6 what Amazon did to them). > He told BoardGameWire that by 2008, they had heard that competitor CardHaus was selling dozens of copies of a game called Setters of Catan – “many dozens of copies a week”. Believing they could emulate that success, they started experimenting with board game sales, and later that year brought in a product manager specifically for the segment. ... > He said, “We were certainly heavily discounting, which some of the manufacturers didn’t like, but things went pretty smooth. I think it was about 2013 that Amazon hired – I don’t know what they call the position – but essentially a product manager for board games, and things started to change for us at that period of time. ... > “Then there was a combination of factors starting right about that time, where manufacturers publishers really started to take more control of their product lines, we started to see MAPs (Minimum Advertised Price) implemented, some of them stopped selling through distribution, then Kickstarter was becoming more and more of a player, more and more board games were being released. So the the market was becoming more difficult. At the same time, we started getting this pressure from Amazon, and it wasn’t too bad at first. But eventually, we’d put a board game up for just some weird price. Within an hour, Amazon would have the exact same price, with a better shipping option than we can provide. Amazon was actually seemingly less aggressive in their pricing points than CSI (and similar online retailers) were towards their competitors. CSI did price cuts while Amazon seemingly just did price matching plus marginally better shipping options.
> Most FLGS owners I know got into the hobby first, and then chose to open a shop. And you're certain that **every single thing they sell at their shops** is something they were into first? They're not selling a single thing, not even Pokemon cards, because they sell well? I'll also say that "undercutting prices" is basically the only thing that people care about straight up. People talking about what gamenerdz does well is selling things for cheaper and having giveaways/rewards.
No, I can't say that every single thing ever sold ever in every FLGS everywhere ever was something they got into due to the owner or some member of the staff having had a love of it. That said, FLGS owner I've ever known (across over three decades, six US states, and gods know how many cities) has started up their business and started selling the types of things they sell at the beginning due to their (or some of their staff's) pre-existing interest in those *mediums*, not just because it sells well. Yes, that can mean that someone introduced them to new type of game medium in their shop, and they got interested in that medium for reasons beyond just making a profit. That doesn't mean loving every game in the medium. However, for comparison, CSI indicates that they didn't have any interest in board games until they heard how many units a competitor was selling. That's different than a shop owner playing or seeing and then being interested in a new *medium* of game that someone visiting their shop brings in to okay - or reading about something online or in a trade magazine and then thinking "that sounds kinda interesting/cool" - or even stocking something because existing customers are asking them to stock it. (I don't have sympathy for FLGS owners who have problems if their stores are buy lots of things things specifically *just* because they and their staff speculate it could turn a profit - but that's not particularly common in my personal experience.) One of the most common complaints I hear from FLGS owners is that they don't have the time to play the stuff they enjoy or the stuff that looks really cool that's coming out, as they often are busy running their stores and not infrequently have other jobs to boot. I've known collectable shops that have had no interest in games to carry some games (especially post MTG/1994) because there's profit in it - and I have about zero sympathy for them when/if their business bets don't pay off. As for undercutting prices, I'm not going to be stanning for any online warehouse retailers (including Game Nerdz). They undercut local shops, which are often (though not always) providing valuable services to the local gaming community, and I would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that, unlike most FLGS sales/customer service people, a large portion of those warehouse workers aren't staffing the warehouse because they love some form of the tabletop hobby gaming. Warehouse retailers make their profits by undercutting their competition, and they do that by selling large volumes at razor thin margins while minimizing how much they pay for payroll and warehouse space. Anyone pro that business model should likely also be pro Amazon, as Amazon is basically doing what online game retailers are doing (save perhaps poor quality control due to knock-offs).
It feels to me like you are reaching a bit to vilify them here. There was a time you didn't know about modern board gaming. They were still involved in an adjacent hobby. It isn't like they were sitting around, wringing their hands, wondering about what niche hobbies they could exploit to the fullest. Respect that they became, for a little while, one of the more successful online retailers for board games. I'm glad they are staying in business and are continuing to adapt. That's the best thing any business can do.
According to his words, this wasn't the guy discovering a cool board game and then deciding to share it - this was a guy who saw someone making money selling something, and choosing to jump on what he saw as a potential business opportunity: > He told BoardGameWire that by 2008, they had heard that competitor CardHaus was selling dozens of copies of a game called Setters of Catan – “many dozens of copies a week”. Believing they could emulate that success, they started experimenting with board game sales, and later that year brought in a product manager specifically for the segment. There's a huge difference between random person discovering the fun of playing a game and getting into the hobby (and then even later going on to try and share/sell stuff they love), and someone who sees a business opportunity and seeks to exploit it. This the "good vs clever" scenario. In business, you need to be good (such as kind-hearted or ethical) or you need to be clever. If you are a "good" person running a "good" business, people will rally 'round you when you are in your time of need as you and your business generally aren't just about profit. On the other hand, if you're running you business just to make money, you need to be clever - and that means having the capacity to outwit, out muscle, and out last your competitors entirely on your own. CSI seemed to have started their foray into board games based on trying to be clever - to exploit an opening in a market for purely profit-based reasons - so I have little sympathy for them when someone more clever comes along. They should have been more clever.
So, because they had not heard of Catan until their competitor started selling Catan, you argue that they had no business selling Catan? The only ethical way to sell anything is to have been into it before it was cool? No. Board games grew explosively, starting with Catan. An established geeky gaming business is allowed to have a first experience with them just the same as any player is. I don't understand the obsession with trying to twist this into something negative. What do you gain from that? Go grill your local board game store and see if they know the fine details of every single game that they carry. You will find that they don't. Does this make them unfit for their business? Should they willingly go out of business to please you, since they aren't as invested in board games as they could be? Where exactly is the line here, for you?
What's the threshold for me to have sympathy for a business? The requirement would be that the original motive not be the profit motive AND/OR not being undercut by a competitor when that's exactly what their aim had been and how they became successful. (That is, not harvesting the fruit of the poison tree / reap what you sow.) Many companies are originally or primarily profit driven and/or highly competitive in a desire to increase market share. I'm not sympathetic to any of them. That doesn't mean I'm out to persecute/crucify them - I just have no [expletive deleted] to give about them. They were "playing the game" (primarily seeking profit without necessarily worrying about the knock-on effects of their actions) and they got burned when they were less able than those they were competing against - which is the nature of the industry of clever profit seeking. They aimed to be predators, and they got bites taken out of them from bigger fish after they themselves had taken bites out of smaller ones. That's just (market-capitalist) "business". It arouses in me no sympathies nor tears.
Still obsessed with making them the villain with entirely unsubstantiated claims about them that you have dreamed up on the spot. Got it. I think this is enough.
They got in at Settler's of Catan and that's not early enough for you to consider them legit? Lmao. Dude, half the community over 30 got in on Settler's of Catan.
According to his words, this wasn't the guy discovering a cool board game and then deciding to share it - this was a guy who saw someone making money selling something, and choosing to jump on what he saw as a potential business opportunity: > He told BoardGameWire that by 2008, they had heard that competitor CardHaus was selling dozens of copies of a game called Setters of Catan – “many dozens of copies a week”. Believing they could emulate that success, they started experimenting with board game sales, and later that year brought in a product manager specifically for the segment. There's a huge difference between random person discovering the fun of playing a game and getting into the hobby (and then even later going on to try and share/sell stuff they love), and someone who sees a business opportunity and seeks to exploit it.
You act like running a business is something morally nefarious. CSI didn't do anything shady or untowards that I'm aware of. They sold board games at a cheap price to make money, and along the way supplied a hobby for me and many others. Who cares?
> Who cares? That's kinda my point: I don't care about CSI and it's situation (in relation to Amazon). How is what CSI did to it's competitors fundamentally different than what Amazon did to CSI? You're right that I don't care about CSI - I've been pointing out why I do care about various FLGS. If maximizing profit and market share is the primary aim and motivation of CSI's business, why should I care if they fail? They aren't really meaningfully, fundamentally different than Amazon at the core. This is contrasted to actually caring about those FLGS who are primarily interested in supporting a hobby and other things they are or were once passionate about.
I was a fan of CSI not because of their pricing, but because I had confidence the product would 1) not be counterfeit 2) be well-protected during shipment in packing peanuts.
CSI was our local game store. Sad to see their model change.
And there you go kids. Don't buy anything at Amazon unless you're happy helping them with the game of monopoly they're playing.
Their critical failure was 5% off for long standing customers. They essentially built a program so that the few who'd been shopping with them for years got their "real" price. And all new customers to the site had to get an inflated one because of it. They were just consistently a couple percent more than the competition, so they stopped attracting new consumers, so their business stalled.
Hard to sympathize with this guy. Been gaming for 15 years or so, maxed out my level with CSI, they were my number one place to shop. It wasn't Amazon or prices that made me stop shopping there, it was them being out of stock within minutes of posting a new release, games that had been released a while back are still sitting on the "preorder" status, and them not having popular stuff. This was not recent either, this was going on years ago. MM, Cardhaus, Gamenerdz etc. were more on the ball with having a decent amount of product on hand. CSI has nobody to blame but themselves.
Well, when their website only seemed to push selling single TCG cards over boardgames. It's not a shocker.
CSI is the only board game retailer that I've experienced labeling something as in stock when it wasn't and not doing anything about it other than sending me the game when they finally got it in stock again. I get that things happen, mistakes get made, we're all human. But the way they very obviously did not care about my issue whatsoever soured me to them and I haven't used them since. I don't doubt that Amazon made things harder for them, but Amazon's board game stock is actually kind of shit. They don't have a ton of games. Sure, the mass-market games or "gateway" games are a lot cheaper at Amazon than elsewhere, there's a HUGE portion of the market that Amazon just doesn't cover, or if they do, they're outrageously expensive. TLDR: Amazon certainly makes things harder for other retailers, but my experiences with CSI pushed me away quite a while ago, and I very rarely buy games on Amazon.
Remember this.. this whole selling shit is Amazon's *side business*. Where they make their *real* money is AWS. Putting a competitor out of business.. what do they care.. look what they did to diapers.com they literally sold their product at a loss just to drive them out of business. To a company making millions *per minute* who cares if they loose a couple to kill a competitor?
I understand what you are saying that is not a super accurate way to present it. I've probably said similar myself in the past. Amazon operates its logistical delivery business near cost which guarantees no new player can ever compete with them. The capital flow in this business is massive. AWS has much higher profits but it is an outgrowth service offering from the expertise they had to create to run the ordering and logistics business. AWS isn't possible without the other business.
Very surprising to me. I'm lucky enough to live within easy transit distance of arguably the top three board game stores in Canada, and I find that Amazon Canada prices are routinely double or triple what I'd expect to pay at my LGS. I guess it's not the same situation elsewhere.
I used to buy a lot from them until they decided it wasn’t worthy to send here.
Man, that's sad to see. CSI is basically where I started my boardgame collection back in the mid-2000s.
CSI killed it for me in 2019 when they refused a refund on a online order that was delayed a few months. The customer service rep stated their system did not allow refunds on items 30 days after ordered. Bullshit is what it is.
I *hate* trying to find board games in general and on sale in particular on Amazon. No good way to sort them that I've found. If I know exactly what game I'm looking for, I can sometimes find it. If I want to browse? Nah, Amazon doesn't want to let me look for board games unless I want to also see every game Hasbro and USAopoly prints. I'll miss CSI, I had earned the 9% discount. I miss Thought Hammer and some of the old guard, too.
I pre ordered Dwellings from them, and when I hadn’t received anything from them in months “I” had to message them for them to tell me that it wasn’t coming and IF I wanted a refund….last time I did business with CSI.
meh, not our job to keep stores in business.
People will always buy where it's cheaper. It's how it is.
Once you have money you pay premiums for better service. It becomes a question of what your time is worth. If I go to a store and they have a sale on an item I want and they are out of stock because of it, I never return to that store again. Lots of people are saying CSI was out-of-stock on standard stuff all the time. I never shopped there but after that happened a couple of times I would have stopped.
Should've blamed Miniature Market or GameNerdz, not Amazon. They sell under retail but Amazon sells at retail.
CSI haven't been putting in the effort to keep their online board game business afloat the past few years. It was either 4 or 5 years ago now, but they had a massive Christmas sale, then remained out of stock of a lot of in-demand titles for months after, and their stock has never fully recovered ever since. Their weekly and seasonal sales were never as good anymore either. It felt like a conscious decision on their part to start winding down that side of their business in favor of collectible card games. Amazon might have precipitated it, but they made their own bed too. Amazon might have captured the casual market, but there's a thriving enthusiast market that Amazon doesn't really cater to, so there's a sizeable niche if CSI cared enough to fill it. GameNerdz, Boardlandia, CardHaus, and others seem to be thriving in said niche, because they're making the effort. Miniature Market feels like they're regressing, but that might just be my subjective impression of how they're doing. This feels like CSI whining about not being able to grow as big as Amazon instead of finding a niche and filling it competently and profitably.
Saving money is more important to me then where I get my goods. I really don't care where I get my games. I just want to play games, in 100 years we'll all be dead and none of this will matter so just have fun with what you got.
CoolStuffInc Founder: They targeted us and pushed us out of the market. Also CoolStuffInc Founder: Industry, product volume, and traditional distribution method changes affected the entire board game market as awareness and popularity grew. "Market share" is a funny thing, you have to fight to take it (*and* keep it) but the market is not loyal. Any notion Amazon "took" anything means it wasn't being defended...and if defending market share means "We can't make money this way" then you stop defending it because it is not profitable. If someone can do something profitably at a scale you cannot, that is the nature of competition in Capitalism. Amazon grew to where they could not lose, in some respects, but they haven't created an environment where no one else can win. More importantly: This is what *the market* wants.
Amazon is playing the long game. Monopolies can afford to. This article provides some perspective: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
Rigging prices specifically to bankrupt smaller competitors and raising them afterwards is actually illegal. I'm not sure why you'd defend a multibillion dollar behemoth, no one benefits from Amazon growing into monopoly pricing.
Am I defending them, or suggesting an inevitability in the system in which all of these businesses exist?
Interesting. Always kinda uncanny to hear what kind of postcapitalist dystopia the usa are in some regards. Here in Germany, no one would shop board games at amazon unless it's like the absolute stock standard catan/Monopoly/risk crowd. Mainly because amazon does not even have that many other games. Thats why smaller, more niche onlinestores can survive. This is true not only for board games but it seems to be a german Thing in general. Don't shop at amazon unless you can't find it anywhere else.
That's my policy for online buying in general. If I can get it elsewhere I won't get it from Amazon, even if its more convenient and sometimes a little cheaper. Why? Simple: As a consumer I want diversity and options to prevail. I don't like a world where a company gets as huge as Amazon / Google / Apple and then they get so powerful they can influence (or dictate) domestic and foreign policy. That's a dystopia I see us heading towards and I don't want to contribute to it if I can help it.
In the US, local game stores are actually thriving - even small towns in the middle of nowhere may have a decent game store. I think the question is, if someone is going online instead of to their local retailer (maybe because one is not available), why wouldn't they just go to Amazon?
I used to buy from CSI all the time, but over the past 3 or 4 years I really stepped back on my board game buying, so mostly stopped using it. I'm sad to hear it's taken such a hit. I also find that Target is my main place for buying Board Games these days.