The German Association of the Toy Industry looks back on the year 2023 and publishes the current sales figures for the toy market. Accordingly, the industry is returning to the “growth path”. Trading card games in particular proved to be a sales driver last year.
The Kosmos publishing house had already indicated it: Given the sales for 2023, the mood is mostly good. With a few figures, the publisher made it clear what enormous sales lie behind popular mass-produced products: around 2016 million copies of the Exit series have been sold worldwide since it was published in 24. And Kosmos has already registered 150.000 boxes sold for the special kids range.
As the German Association of the Toy Industry now reports, the industry “returned to growth last year despite a tense consumer climate and high savings rates”. In the end, there was an increase of nine percent in sales of family, board and children's games, connoisseur and expert games as well as puzzles and trading cards.
Disney Lorcana and Co as engines
Hermann Hutter (Huch Verlag), chairman of the game publishers industry association, describes the year 2023 as a “successful year”. One had hoped for a slight increase, but it actually came as a surprise. The overall economic situation in Germany has been tense since the Corona pandemic, but things are not looking much better globally. The board game segment was also hit by increased costs: , which put small publishers in particular in distress.
What ultimately becomes apparent is that, according to the DVSI, trading card games in particular have proven to be a real sales driver. A surprise? Hardly for industry experts. Hasbro registered Magic – The Gathering as a billion-dollar trademark; Ravensburger could at Disney Lorcan didn't print as quickly as people bought the cards. Anyone who only took a superficial look at the industry quickly noticed: fans like to play trading card games. It's not just hype that is likely to have a major influence here, but rather the business model aimed at long-term customer loyalty. Anyone who has ever smelled the printing ink of new trading cards and found it pleasant will probably remain loyal to the genre - and thus ensure regular sales. And if trading card games already served as a sales engine in 2023, what will it look like this year: With Altered, Asmodee is releasing a trading card game that could revolutionize the market through its sales model; Star Wars Unlimited seems more like a classic cash cow. Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic – The Gathering and Disney Lorcana will still be available. And if you love the niche, you'll probably choose Flesh and Blood.
Ulrich Brobeil, Managing Director of the DVSI and the Game Publishers Association, explains the positive effects as follows: Topics such as “Pokemon”, “Magic: The Gathering” and “Disney Locarna” in particular have stimulated the games market.
But even without this segment, the market is in a difficult environment by three percent. Here it is mainly regular card games, adult games, brain teasers and family and strategy games that provided further growth impulses. “Of course, the polycrises did not completely ignore the toy industry after the boom years with its lockdowns,” says Blobeil. “With its inconsistent, poorly crafted policies and unnecessary bureaucracy, the traffic light government has contributed to consumer uncertainty and a clouding of the consumer climate. It is all the more pleasing that the industry has been able to build on the successes of recent years with innovative products for every taste and every target group, but also with classics.”
“Value of play”
Puzzles and games have proven to be winners as a sales segment, despite a slight decline in gross domestic product (-0,3 percent) and a slump in private consumption of 0,8 percent. Even at DVSI, they don't want to measure the toy market in numbers alone: Instead, they look at the “value of play”, the value of playing in general. But ultimately, economic and business assessments can also be found there, which immediately determine a trend at this year's toy fair: The focus is once again on the “playing adults”, the so-called kidults.
“The need to slow down in a fast-paced world in which many have almost become slaves to their smartphones,” says Hermann Hutter, “is a key reason why analogue games are more relevant than ever.” And the adults who play don’t just enjoy playing , they also bring purchasing power with them.
What floats above all the figures is the idea of cultural heritage. Individual titles in particular are increasingly succeeding in underlining this idea in an outstanding way. This was recently praised by the Game Authors' Guild, an association representing creative people in the industry, in the case of Mathias Cramer's board game "Weimar", which came onto the market in this country via Spielworxx and Skellig Games. Its content: The fight for democracy. The topic is as old as it is current. It is a board game that brings a dark chapter of German history to life and shows how crises arise and can be exploited.
“Analog gaming culture can and achieves far more than is generally given credit for,” says the game authors’ guild. “In view of the threat to our democracy, it is time to recognize and use this potential. At the same time, we hope that more game designers and game publishers will also turn their attention to current social issues in the future.” Mathias Cramer did that with “Weimar” and he also took a position: You don’t play with Nazis. In the board game's rules manual, the author puts it this way: “I don't want to play the NSDAP. And I don't want anyone else to play her."
While the focus is often on different facets of gaming depending on the product group, the aspect of entertainment and relaxation dominates when it comes to games and puzzles, as a current DVSI survey on the cultural relevance of gaming today shows. “A first step towards anchoring games, which are of enormous importance for individual psychosocial development, as cultural assets in the public consciousness,” says Hermann Hutter, “would be, for example. B. the inclusion of board games in the collection of the German National Library.” For this reason, the DVSI is also committed to ensuring that the toy industry is recognized as part of the cultural and creative industries.
“In my view, playing is a basic cultural technique and board games play a special role here,” says Ulrich Brobeil, “because they offer everything that makes playing so appealing: competition or cooperation, immersion in roles or the acquisition of knowledge. Inclusion as a sub-market in the cultural and creative industries would provide an important impetus to strengthen the social relevance of the industry.”
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