I am not 100% sure how I ended up in a game aisle in Walmart to make today’s observation, but I am pretty sure it had to do with Walmart being the only not specialty store to carry fabrics supplies (I.E. knitting needles and yarn).

While I was standing in front of the large wall of board games I noticed that there were only 3 – 4 different makers of all of the board games. On top of that there was roughly 20 different “Game Names” that floated around on package to package (think Original Monopoly, 3 times of Monopoly card games, Monopoly dice games, etc.)

While doing this I came a crossed the quite possibly the lamest attempt by a physical game maker to make a few quick extra bucks. What did they do? If you look at the first picture, Phase 10 is a card game that you can play with a standard deck of card… the one’s that are less than 2 dollars a piece and it involves matching and adding. The second game is one we are all familiar with is the game of Yahtzee which is normally played with a standard set of five dice and the score sheet being the only thing you need to “buy” or print.

Whats my issue?

Seems to me that board games are taking the wayside and many people don’t play them anymore due to the game makers own faults. Instead of going out and trying to get worthwhile games or creating new ones they are opting to try and reinvent games by simply changing the medium which that games are played like putting pictures of dice on playing cards.

Should they be trying to invent new games? Or did they ruin that with attempts to make games like UpWords or Trivial Pursuit? Do they stand a chance against modern games on video consoles or cell phones? I would be interested to hear your thoughts.