Snakes and ladders

Seventy thousand participants are expected at the first festival of popular social games,  Monopoly Warsaw Open 2006, in September. "People are expressing more and more interest in these games," says Paweł Abramczuk, the president of the Popular Board Games Association, Mariasz, and the organizer of the event.

Many people are rediscovering the appeal of games that used to be very popular in Poland, such as Parcheesi. Some like to test their business sense on the Monopoly board, while others are discovering worldwide favorites, such as Scrabble, for the first time. At the same time, a completely new breed of game-players has appeared, who are into more sophisticated fantasy and strategy games. They take part in internet discussion panels, create informal groups, and, being more demanding and open to novelties, form a kind of elite among players.

Trade secrets

The Polish board-game market is currently undergoing a revival, but the growth is slow and barley discernible. "It is still a very young market," says Katarzyna Wojciechowska from Hasbro, the largest producer of board games in the world.

Measuring the market is difficult as salespersons and shop-owners keep their figures to themselves. Most games are sold through hypermarkets, internet stores, toy shops and specialized outlets. Abramczuk claims that the market is blurred due to the fact that a few games are being sold in a small number of hypermarkets chains, yet in relatively large amounts. At the same time, he understands the market players' unwillingness to publicize their data. "This is not information Poland should be proud of," he says.

Hasbro has attempted several estimations of the market. According to the company, Poland's market for toys and traditional games, excluding computer games, is valued at zł.1 billion in consumer prices. According to Hasbro, the value of this market is not growing faster than GDP and was one to two percent in 2002/2003 and four to five percent in 2004/2005. Last year it estimated the board-games market at just zł.75 million in terms of retail prices.

Maturing market

In Poland alone, Hasbro sells more than 200,000 board games a year. In 2004 the company's revenues were zł.30 million, which included a 75-percent growth on 2002. Hasbro's basic distribution channels are hypermarkets and toy shops. Online sales are still "very low," according to the company.

Other larger international players on the Polish market include Ravensburger, with about 20 game titles, and Mattel, the maker of Scrabble. The biggest board-game producers are also associated with other products. "Companies selling solely games have not managed to appear on the market. This might be difficult for them as some of their games sell in tens annually. The Polish market is not mature yet. There is only a point in publishing a game when 3,000 pieces can be sold," says Michał Stajszczak, the owner of Rost, a board-games wholesalers.

Polish companies include Granna, famous for the Polish version of Guerre des Moutons (also known as Wooly Bully) and Superfarmer, which was designed by a Polish mathematician during the Second World War. Trefl is another Polish success story, both at home and abroad. Specializing in puzzles, the company used to be the largest supplier of puzzles to Russia. Probably the most well known these days is Galakta, producer of the popular Settlers of Catan, which won Best Game of 2005 in Poland.

Price factor

The main factor stopping people from buying games, and thus blocking the market, is price.

"Board games are definitely too expensive," says Abramczuk, adding that production costs are relatively low. This is the result of producers making up for losses caused by piracy,  and then there is the stiff competition from the computer-game market. "One can always go to the [10th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw] and buy any game for a quarter of the market price." Stajszczak agrees: "There are few customers for a zł.150 game in Poland. Some of the most popular ones, such as Scrabble or Monopoly, cost about zł.100 and people do buy them, but they are widely advertised."

Marcin Cieœlowski, the owner of Gryf, one of the few shops in Warsaw specializing in board games, says the most-expensive games cost about zł.300. Prices are sometimes higher than they are abroad, especially when a particular game is produced in a distant country. The distributor has to include not only the transport costs but also the cost of translating the game into Polish.

Asked which games are most popular, market observers all agree that they are the ones with the best advertising. "When it comes to sales all records are broken in the hypermarkets. But in the hypermarkets there are perhaps four or five games in given parts of the shop, so it is difficult to say which game is the best-selling," says Abramczuk. "When it comes to the number of games sold, Parcheesi is the leader every year. The most popular are checkers, Grzybobranie, and chess," observes Stajszczak.

When it comes to more sophisticated games, novelties always sell better than older ones. According to Cieœlikowski, Guerre des Moutons or Carcassonne are quite popular now. "I think that World of Warcraft could be a good shot in future," Cieslikowski adds.

Out clubbing

Compared to the world's leading board-game markets, such as Germany or the US, Poland is a fledging market.

"In Warsaw there are five or six clubs where people can play, whereas in Berlin there are more than 100 clubs, the so-called 'house spiel'," says Abramczuk. "In Poland the first such club, Dom Gier, opened in Poznań this year."

Specialists say that there are a few shops in Warsaw selling board games that are worth visiting. Among them are Gryf, Variete Piatnik Centrum, Cytadela and Morion. Despite the still small number of regular game players, shop owners do not complain. "When I was setting up the company with my partner in September 2005, we did not expect profits, but we wanted to run the company without paying into it. We assumed that a turnover of zł.20,000 a month would secure liquidity," recalls Cieœlikowski, adding that he exceeded this amount. Specialist shop owners are convinced about their superiority over supermarkets. "We are cheaper and we have a much larger selection," he says.

According to market analysts, there is no typical player profile, but a current trend sees a growing number of women playing board games. "More than 25 percent of women play board games. This is most probably connected with playing with children," says Abramczuk.