What is the meaning of [designer-board-games]?

Question

We have a tag called designer-board-games, and I'm not sure what it means. There is no tag wiki and it is currently tagged on a question about game design, and question about physical vs computer implementations of board games, and a question about Agricola.

Best explanation I could find for a designer board game is an About.com article, but it is still pretty vague. I get the impression that there is no universal definition.

So does designer-board-games have a clear meaning? And if not, should we delete it?

Answer 1

I think we should get rid of the tag.

It refers to the distinction between mass-market board games (Monopoly, Clue, etc) and less widely published/sold board games. Think of things that might conceivably have the designer's name on the box. (See corsiKa's answer for a more detailed description.)

As far as the tag goes, I don't think it serves much purpose, and we could easily get rid of it. Most of the games we get questions about are designer board games by this definition, and there's not much point in a tag that would apply to most questions on the site.

We have game-design to cover most higher-level questions, and it's seen plenty of use.

There were three questions actually tagged designer-board-games when I wrote this answer. One was just about Agricola, so I removed it. The other two are:

• Do physical implementations of single player board games have any advantages over their electronic counterparts? - the key here is really that it's asking about computer versions of games, so I removed designer-board-games, leaving it with just computers. (That seems like it should be computer-versions or something but oh well, this is what the tag wiki says it's for.)

• How does the cost of designer board games compare to other forms of entertainment? - I'm not sure how to tag this. It's really about costs. But it doesn't seem like it's more about board games than anything else on the site. We could tag it prices or something, but given that it's closed now and that'd be the only question with that tag, doesn't seem worth worrying about.

Answer 2

A designer board game is one that costs signficantly more than your mass produced board games.

You can usually buy a box of Monopoly in the box for around $20. It might have a special edition that pumps that up a few extra bucks for the licensing fee, but it's normally around there. Most common board games (what people think of when you say board games) are in this price range.

Designer board games usually cost at least $50, and sometimes as much as $100. And just like designer jewelry, the consumers of these games are usually both wealthier and more knowledgeable about the games. In some cases, the extra cost is because the game itself is more complicated, but this is not usually the case. Consider a game like Risk which has hundreds of pieces and is still usually available for pretty cheap. The real cost is because the print runs are much lower, and the design costs are much higher.

Answer 3

The way I see this tag possibly being used is when a game has multiple editions where the difference is the quality of the game materials. A couple of exmples of this is. Hanabi which has a normal card based version and several deluxe versions where tiles replace the cards. Takenoko where there is a normal version and a deluxe version that is made of better material and is larger in size.

Overall I am not sure if this is a needed tag but when I think of it as the same games but made out of better materials then the normal game and with possible extras that you can't otherwise get. Or in other words a collectors edition.