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Busy Lives
Prompt Speedier Board Games AP
Centerpiece: Busy Lives, Short Attention Spans Prompt Speedier Board
Games PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)
-- Michelle Hastings admits she's sometimes cheated to get through a
game of Candy Land with her 5-year-old daughter, Campbell. The board
game can take just too long, she said. Disney Monopoly is another big
offender. "A game like that, it could
literally take you days," said Hastings, of Holliston, Mass.
"A lot of times, you don't play games because they take so
long." Board game makers are heeding pleas of
parents like Hastings and introducing games tailored to busy lives and
shorter attention spans that take only about 20 minutes to play. Hasbro Inc., the nation's largest game
company, is releasing a streamlined version of The Game of Life that
uses a Visa card rather than cash and a "LifePod" that
electronically keeps track of points -- which can keep the game moving.
The Pawtucket, R.I.-based company is also introducing three
"Express" versions of classic board games this year: Monopoly
Express, Scrabble Express and Sorry Express. "A lot of people like playing games,
but they want resolution," said Jim Silver, editor-in-chief of Toy
Wishes magazine. "And that's why you see some of these quicker
games coming out." The changes come at a time when the board
games business is more competitive than ever. Hasbro is fighting for
market share with El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel Inc. and Seattle-based
Cranium Inc., which made a splash when it debuted a few years ago with a
game that draws on players' varied talents like drawing and humming. Total board game sales were up 13 percent
to $802.2 million in 2006, after falling 8 percent in 2005 to $706.2
million, according to market research company NPD Group. Of that, Hasbro
controls 51.3 percent of the market, according to NPD. But Sean McGowan,
an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, said that's down from in the
past when Hasbro controlled 75 to 80 percent of the board game market. Fast games are nothing new: think the
classic card game Uno or the timed word-building game Boggle. But
analysts say game makers are more aggressively concentrating on fast
games and even retooling classic games so they don't take so long. The Game of Life: Twists & Turns
Edition lets players determine ahead of time how long, or short, they
want to game to last. Monopoly is getting an optional "speed
die," rolled in addition to the regular two dice. Certain rolls
will move the player to the next available property, moving the game
along. Hasbro's Express games incorporate
concepts and pieces from the classic versions of the games, although
game play is entirely different. In Monopoly Express, for example,
players roll dice labeled with properties and the "Go to Jail"
policeman of the classic game. Players get points for building blocks of
properties -- but lose their turn and their points if they roll three
policemen. While a Monopoly game can drag on as
players duke it out to avoid bankruptcy, Monopoly Express moves quickly,
and players decide on a winning money value ahead of time so they can
play a long or short game. Best of all for busy parents and kids,
the games are brief and they're packaged differently so they can be
taken along in the car. "It's analogous to a kid picking up
his Game Boy for 10 minutes," said Chris Byrne, an independent toy
consultant based in New York. "Yet it involves the whole
family." McGowan said board games are a backbone
of Hasbro, representing about 25 percent to 30 percent of the company's
total sales. But its customers' interests are evolving: "When
they're 10, they're more likely to be texting each other on cell
phones," he said. "It's extremely important for Hasbro to do
whatever they can to hold onto and grow their games business." Cranium is coming out this year with Jam
Pack Jam, a race against an 18-second timer to pack a car trunk full of
stuff, and Triple Triumph, a 3D pyramid-building game. Its Whoonu game,
released in 2005, quizzes players on their competitors' likes and
dislikes. The games take 20 minutes or less to play, so gamers can play
as many or as few rounds as they want. "It puts the control back in the
consumers' hands," Byrne said. There's also a trend toward DVD games,
which can be speedier and more interactive than traditional board games.
The "Scene It" series of trivia games from Mattel incorporate
DVDs that contain clips from movies and TV shows along with a board.
Game play lasts about half an hour. Hasbro has also released DVD versions of
Candy Land, which has players put color blocks around the living room as
a real-world game board; Clue -- which has butler and inspector
characters who walk players through the game with a narrative storyline;
and Twister, which gets players up and moving with a dance party mode
and instructional mode. "Games are becoming, in a lot of
respects, entertainment," Silver said. Even without the ideas of game makers,
game players will often make up shorter versions of existing games or
will use the pieces of other games to come up with new ones. Tracie Broom, a San Francisco writer, and
her friends cannibalize Scrabble to play a quicker word game -- called
alternately Anagram or Grab Scrabble. They put the Scrabble tiles face
down, and flip them over one-by-one, calling out new words as they are
formed, or stealing words from other players. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to play. "That's one of the reasons why we
play it the way we do," Broom said. "It is so much more
exciting than Scrabble." Hasbro, Inc.: http://www.hasbro.com
Mattel, Inc.: http://www.mattel.com
Cranium, Inc.: http://www.cranium.com |