When I choose a game to bring to Frogames, I put my heart into it. I look at the publisher, I read the data on BoardGameGeek, I evaluate if there's real research behind it — in the Italian market, in the foreign market. Every title we publish is a deliberate choice. Then I look at the market — and I see the same titles, games that deserve real attention and loyal customers, burned for fifteen or twenty euros including VAT on a fifty-euro list price. Liquidated. Forgotten. Not because the game is bad.

Because someone, long before that box reached me, made an irrecoverable mistake.

The problem isn't the game. It's who was supposed to buy it.

Every title is born — or should be born — with a precise audience in mind. Not a vague idea. A real profile. How many people actually exist for that game? Where do they buy? How much do they spend? Simple questions, but the difference between those who ask them and those who don't is the difference between a sensible print run and a full warehouse.

What happens too often in the board game world is different. The designer has a fantastic game. The publisher is convinced. The Kickstarter campaign gathers three thousand enthusiastic backers and seems like proof that the market exists, that it's big, that it wants that game.

It's not like that. Those three thousand were the market. The whole market.

The board game market is brutally crowded. Thousands of titles are released every year. The community's attention span is very short. A game that doesn't generate conversation in the first sixty days after publication ceases to exist in the collective agenda — even if it's objectively superior to half the titles already on the table.

The math that doesn't add up

Producing in small print runs costs more per unit. It's a physical law of printing: fixed setup costs are amortized over more copies, so the pressure to increase numbers is real and understandable. Instead of 500 copies, 1,000 are made. Instead of 1,000, 2,000 are made. Because the game is good, because people believe in it, because "it will be enough to distribute it in international markets."

And that's where everything breaks down.

A game designed for five hundred people cannot survive in a thousand copies. Not because it's bad. Because its audience runs out before the boxes do. — Andrea

From the moment those copies leave the factory, the clock ticks and doesn't stop. Costs have already been incurred. Warehousing costs. Distribution costs. And that window where the game is "new" — sellable at full price — closes sooner than you think.

If critical mass isn't achieved in the first few months, it can't be recovered. Not with more marketing, not with late reviews, not with the hope that someone will discover it. The dynamic is already compromised. And the next step is unavoidable.

The obligation to sell. And what breaks.

When the warehouse is full and sales don't take off, there are no strategies. There is survival. Discounts start — first ten percent, then thirty, then you end up selling below cost just to free up space and recoup something. It's not a choice. It's a surrender.

The economic damage is evident. But the most serious damage is another.

It's perceptive. And it's permanent.

• The player learns to wait They saw that game go from fifty euros to eighteen in four months. Next time they won't buy at launch. They'll wait. Not out of lack of interest — out of pure rationality. The market has taught them that the full price is a starting point, not a real value.
• The product is perceived as poor quality A game that is always on sale is not seen as a good opportunity. It's seen as a signal. Something that doesn't work, even if you can't say what. The low price that should have saved sales ultimately sinks them.
• The publisher burns credibility on the next title A publisher's reputation is built title by title. A badly managed launch leaves a mark. The next game already starts with a prejudice — and will have to work twice as hard to earn the trust that the previous one eroded.

The cycle no one wants to see

The more publishers enter this spiral, the more the market gets used to slashed prices. And the more the market gets used to slashed prices, the harder it becomes for anyone — even for those who did things well, with honest numbers and real research — to sell at full price without having to justify themselves.

The customer isn't lazy. They're not dishonest. They've simply learned to behave rationally within a system that gave them all the wrong signals. I see it every day in the messages I receive: "but will it be on offer?" — the first question, even before asking how to play. The price no longer tells anything about the real value of what's inside that box.

This is the root. Not distribution, not marketing, not bad luck. A structural error committed even before the game physically existed. An error that could be avoided with existing tools, with questions that can be asked, with numbers that can be calculated.

But too often they are not done. Because the passion is real, the game is beautiful, and people convince themselves that's enough.

It's not enough. Not in this market.