Experts see video games in decline, board games on rise (News Feature)

By Jean-Baptiste Piggin Feb 4, 2010, 12:40 GMT

Nuremberg, Germany - Toy industry experts say a recent world decline in sales of computer video games is permanent, but old-fashioned board games are making a comeback, according to a summary Thursday of a meeting at the Nuremberg Toy Fair.

The future of traditional playthings, such as dolls for girls and construction toys for boys, is assured, said Richard Gottlieb, a US consultant who chaired the Building Our Future conference, which took place behind closed doors.

'Board games are cross-generational. They bring the family together,' said Gottlieb, adding that newer games had been made more challenging for adults than for younger players, giving children a better chance of winning.

'You can have scalable roles, where the parents have to answer harder questions or don't get to move so many squares,' he said.

'Children get a tremendous sense of self-satisfaction from being able to beat their parents in a game.'

The annual fair in Germany, showing toys from 2,625 exhibitors from 64 nations, opened its doors to trade buyers on Thursday.

Games were spreading from top board-game nations like France and Germany to the United States, where a craze is developing round the 1995 German-authored game, The Settlers of Catan, the pre-fair conference Wednesday was told.

Board games are also being promoted as an answer to conflict in society.

The American Library Association has proclaimed a national gaming day every year in public libraries, noting that libraries are one of the last places where people of different races, ages and religions meet on equal terms.

A marked decline in games sold for consoles and personal computers was attributed by experts in Nuremberg to the rise of 'applications,' or software that allows gaming in web browsers or on mobile phones.

Gottlieb said one such real-time application, FarmVille, now had millions of people playing it on the social-networking website, Facebook.

'The rise of free gaming means that people don't spend so much money on hardware systems, so we will see a continued decline in video game sales,' he said in an interview. Cheaper telecommunications are also going to have an impact on toys.

'We are going to see toys that are connected to one another by cellular phone rather than by the internet,' he said.

That could even change the kind of toys offered to very young children. Experts point to what is known as the 'pass back phenomenon,' where pre-schoolers are lent smart phones to stop them whining and rapidly teach themselves to play all the sophisticated games inside.

The trend to put more and more elaborate electronics in toys does not mean the end of teddy bears and the like.

Traditional toy play with dolls and construction bricks will endure, the meetings participants agreed.

'That's because they provide a tactile, sensory experience that children need,' Gottlieb explained.

Gottlieb, who also writes a toy blog, said the media were not allowed into the industry-only event because participants wanted to talk freely.

Gottlieb said the Nuremberg Toy Fair was the world's number one toy event, especially in terms of bringing people in the industry together.

Participants joked that bringing the major inventors and entrepreneurs to one site created a 'global brain' of the industry during the fair's six-day run.