Just over a year ago, French board game publisher Super Meeple announced that they were making a major change to how they were distributing their games. They noticed that board game stores were only ordering one or two copies of their heavier, more complicated games; they “limit their expert game orders due to their high cost and competition of lighter games and TCGs.”
This was an issue, as, according to Super Meeple’s math, they’d need to sell 1,600 copies of a heavier game just to break even, and only make 7 euros of profit if they sold 2,000. This, combined with the risk most game stores would have to run to stock them, meant that their more complicated games were more likely to cost the company money than to earn them anything. However, they did not want to stop producing the more complicated games, so they embarked on a new business model: release fewer titles, while emphasizing pre-orders from game stores and using their own website for direct sales for any leftovers. Stores would not be able to restock, as all extra copies would be going to the online store.
It worked brilliantly.
The Business Sense Behind Releasing Fewer Games
Super Meeple has noted that, if a board game company has a guaranteed source of income—such as Settlers of CATAN, Wingspan, or Monopoly—they can afford to be a little more judicious about what games they release. Otherwise, however, there’s a temptation to publish new games at an extremely rapid rate in order to chase your audience, to constantly give them something new to buy so that they won’t stop spending money.
However, Super Meeple made an alternative observation: “overproduction automatically leads to a decrease in the percentage of successful games.” Even for companies that don’t have one of those fallback hits, releasing too many games in the same period of time can result in less profit, not more.
For companies that produce larger, more complicated, and more expensive games (like Super Meeple themselves), that can be even worse. “The pool of buyers for big games is very limited,” they say, “and even if it were to grow each year (which we hope it will!), it would still be insufficient to keep a company running.”
The Results of a Slower Method
Though they only tested their mixed pre-order and direct sales strategy with one title last year, Galactic Cruise, the results were a smash success. Galactic Cruise sold out of all 3,000 copies:
- 300 were sold through web pre-orders
- 600 were sold to partners outside of France
- 2,100 were sold to stores
Moreover, of the 9 games they released in 2025, they say that only one game, Beyond the Horizon, was a financial failure, with the others being modest successes (except Wondrous Creatures, which significantly outperformed their expectations).
What Can We Learn from Super Meeple’s Success?
There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from Super Meeple, and without more data points we can’t say for certain that we know what all of them are. But there are a few things that Super Meeple’s efforts strongly suggest.
A Slower Release Schedule is Better
If you’ve been following the rumblings regarding investor confidence in Hasbro and Magic: the Gathering, you might already have heard some people say this exact point. A given audience only has so much time and money available; if you start introducing too many products to the market, they won’t be able to keep up. They’ll have to pick and choose between your releases, and, as a result, even a guaranteed audience becomes less sure, and you’ll end up spending more money on your releases than you recoup.
Interestingly, this parallels website design and SEO in an unusual way. Too many game releases into the same audience can cause your games to cannibalize each other, endangering the success of all of them. Similarly, too many pages focused on capturing the same Google searches can result in keyword cannibalization, where the audience (Google) doesn’t know where to focus its attention, splitting it, resulting in a search ranking that is less than the sum of its parts.
Take Advantage of Multiple Audiences
If you’re a board game manufacturer, it’s easy to think of your business model as either a business-to-customer or a business-to-business one, and not both. Maybe you’ll focus primarily on selling your product to distributors and game stores; maybe you’ll focus primarily on selling direct to customers. However, focusing on only one or the other can result in underuse of an extremely valuable asset.
Even from before the launch of Galactic Cruise, Super Meeple was leveraging its website in both directions, allowing pre-orders from both customers and stores. Like successfully marketing a Kickstarter, allowing a buy-in prior to the release built hype and gave more incentive for both audiences to jump on right away. Allowing them to compete against each other also created a sense of scarcity, urging them to get their copies right away.
In short, instead of marketing a large number of games to one audience, Super Meeple marketed a smaller number of games to two.
How Game Brands Can Help You Leverage Your Digital Presence for Similar Success
Super Meeple’s strategy is a modern adaptation to a changing, digital-first market. It required both customer and client awareness of their game, but it turned what could have been a modest success into a sold-out game. However, it leaned heavily on the Super Meeple website and social media presence to accomplish; if you don’t have similar tools sell and market your game, you won’t be able to make the same moves.
It’s not enough to have a website—the site needs to be appealing to look at, easy to use, and functional for orders. It’s not enough to have social media accounts—they have to be interesting, informative, personable, and consistent.
Game Brands specializes in crafting websites and social media presences designed to attract exactly the sort of attention you’d need to pull off a gambit like Super Meeple’s. We fit our efforts to your specific brand voice, colors, and visual scheme. If you’re looking to make your profits more consistent this year, contact us today and we can craft a marketing plan for you!
