A US-based games store just posted its top 50 best-selling games of 2019, and the top sellers might surprise you.
As 2019 comes to a close, we look back and see what made this year so great. And what better way to do that than see what board games sold the most? Since capitalism puts way too much value on sales and not enough on pretty much anything else.
To find out what moved in 2019, we turn to Reddit user "kerred", who owns a small games store somewhere in the United States. They were kind enough to share their top 50-selling games of 2019 on the r/boardgames subreddit, which we'll then overgeneralize as representative of the board games industry as a whole.
Please note this is not how statistics normally works, but until we find a few more posts like this from other game store owners, this is the best we can do.
We're not going to post the whole list since it's 50 items long and you can just as easily read it over on Reddit. Instead, here are the top 10 in order of games sold.
- Codenames
- Secret Hitler
- Azul
- Grandpa Becks Cover Your Assets
- Fantasy Flight Games Standard American Sleeves
- Cards Against Humanity
- The Mind
- Catan
- Geekbox brand Token storage boxes by DVG
- Coup
A few other standouts: Pandemic, the board game where you play as a virus trying to exterminate the human race, was number 12 on the list. Exploding Kittens, one of the highest Kickstarted board games of all time, was number 22, while the Streaking Kittens expansion was number 18.
Gloomhaven, the massive D&D-inspired fantasy role-playing card game, was number 45 on the list. In fact, you’ll note that the top sellers are dominated by smaller games, while large tabletop games are further down the list.
A few notes from the seller. "Wingspan Revised [number 41 on the list] would probably be #1 if back in November 2018 a time traveler told us the New York Times, social media, and other non-gaming platforms were going to rave about it and cause the non-gaming populous to get it."
Also, "Secret Hitler would be #1 if it was more easily accessible for retailers in the first half of 2019."
Is your favorite board game on the list? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Reddit