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BGonline.org Forums
"backgammon" on Google search declining
Posted By: Smcrtorchs In Response To: "backgammon" on Google search declining (Timothy Chow)
Date: Thursday, 13 December 2012, at 2:45 p.m.
What you say about soccer outside and inside U.S. can be explained. It is also the reason that Monopoly is ruling the board games market, although it is not the best designed game. Monopoly is a good game around a favorite theme that was promoted brilliantly. It appealed to people and this was what they knew to teach their children. Same with soccer or American football, but not in every continent. In games if you reach number 1 status, retain it for some years and you have good marketing, you will remain number 1.
But it does not make sense to compare a 2 people strategy board game with games that belong to a different genre. Backgammon is doing pretty well for its genre. Chess is more popular, go is more popular and then another game does not come to my mind, though maybe there are a few. If people want to promote backgammon then they should see it in the context it exists now. Unfortunately, backgammon fails to outperform chess in how complex it is and looks to the casual player. It also fails to outperform poker (which actually is an x people card game) on the money making side. It finally is not currently more popular than the aforementioned games. Moreover, to become an expert, you have to do so much work around numbers and this type of work appeals only to a minority. At the moment it looks like the target audience that backgammon could be promoted to is quite small. Personally I can see two different possibilities for promoting bg.
1) Deal with online cheating somehow. This would increase the target audience and would just make any promotion much more effective. It is probably the first step. If people could see it as a money making hobby, they could dedicate the necessary hours to become better players.
2) Promote it in fun carefree environments i.e. at beaches under the sun. In such kind of places, backgammon seems to have an edge over many other games. You will spark the seed there and people might continue. Cafes would be another example of such places. If you want dedicated players to come out of this process, this kind of promotional is not very effective though. It could be, but only if it was a very wide promotion. Only if through the promotion people played the game many times and saw progress they could become dedicated players and love the gameplay.
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