Nostalgia Sells
Jul 1st, 2008 by capitaladmin
We make it a point in our house to shut off the TV and put the iPod in its recharger caddy once a week to sit down and gather around an old fashioned board game. Last week it was Battleship played on an old Radio Shack electronic-rip on the board game .
It has a built-in electronic tracking system to help keep track of ships and of course reduce ahem , cheating (i.e. moving ships around, why you haven’t read about the alternate rules? wink, wink, nudge, nudge)…
However, we decided it was better to teach the ABCs , numbers and grid-coordinates to our kids by just using the game and pulled the batteries on this unit so we could have a bit of fun with our imaginations and make up our own blips, bleeps and kaboom sounds.
So it’s interesting to read up on a small business start-up called Play Date Atlanta that used the traditional board game to gather people together for a real social networking game environment. Initially I scoffed at the idea that you could turn board games into a club scene but looking at the data it’s possible to put a new spin on it and breathe new life into traditional gaming.
It’s a Saturday night in Atlanta. Some 800 well-dressed, middle-aged adults are sipping cocktails, listening to jazz . . . and playing Candy Land or Twister. Welcome to “the new face of nightlife,” courtesy of three 30-something guys who realized they were too old to go out clubbing every weekend, but not old enough for reruns of The Golden Girls. “We didn’t go into this saying, ‘Let’s create a new business that will change the way people think about Saturday night,'” recalls Imari Harvard, CEO of Timeless Entertainment Concepts. “My wife and I just wanted to put together an event where folks could come out for some nostalgic games, cocktails and conversation.”
The trio behind Play Date may have stumbled upon their successful business, but The Intelligence Group, a New York City-based market research firm, has since come up with hard data showing that progressive 14- to 34-year-olds known as “trendsetters” prefer board games to video games by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent. Small wonder that in February a company named Winning Moves re-introduced ’50s favorites Parcheesi and Careers–complete with their original packaging.
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See if you can find a Play Date near you…
