“Unlike the music industry, where for the most part it has been transitioning to digital, for board games the two experiences are complimentary,” said Days of Wonder’s CEO Eric Hautemont. Their game of building train routes, Ticket to Ride, has sold 1.8 million copies since its release in 2006. One such European company who has capitalized on the board game renaissance is Days of Wonder. With Hasbro and EA working together, these board game classics are now all over consoles, smartphones, and social networks. “When we were looking to make a major investment into the world of casual social gaming in 2007, as opposed to doing it in one-offs, we decided that there was no stronger library of family loved brands that had the kind of range and diversity that Hasbro did,” said Lange, who manages the relationship between Hasbro and Electronic Arts.
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Other classic games, like Sorry and Connect Four, have flourished as part of EA’s Family Game Night releases–a series so successful, Family Game Night 4 was recently released and a television game show of the same name was created. Despite strong competitors in the digital realm– Words With Friends or any of the other thousands of word game apps–Monopoly, Scrabble, and the Game of Life have all taken off: all 3 games were in the top 20 for paid iPhone apps in 2011, and Monopoly and Scrabble made the top 20 paid iPad apps as well. Risk is just one board game that has seen a surge in popularity under this Hasbro/EA partnership. Brooks said, “I think we nailed it with keeping true to the brand mechanics, keeping true to the feel of the fictional brand that we had built on the Xbox version, and also adding this sense of persistence that is so important to Facebook games.” In mid-January, Risk: Factions debuted on Facebook, its armies of zombies and cats getting new functionality like special weapons, and bases where players create more troops and stronger weapons. In 2010, EA brought this quicker version to Xbox and PlayStation with an approachable cartoony art style as Risk: Factions. So that was a sea change for us, and we said, ‘Great! We’re gonna do that,'” says Spencer Brooks, the producer of the digital versions of Risk for Electronic Arts. “Instead of you taking over the whole world, you’ve got to complete 3 objectives from a pool of objectives, and the first one to do that wins. Since then, Hasbro has reinvented the game of Risk. And so Hasbro sold off their digital business in 2001. But it, and many other of their board game adaptations, did not find success. Hasbro, the publishers of Risk tried ten years ago to bring Risk to video games. For many, fond memories of long nights spent conquering continents and breaking alliances remain. One of the most recognizable games from the past is Risk. When they are on the go they take their passion for board games with them on their mobile devices.” “People love to sit around with their families and play board games. “This is a renaissance of board gaming that you are seeing,” says Chip Lange, the general manager of Hasbro Studios for Electronic Arts, the division within EA that adapts Hasbro’s board games. And now with this plethora of board games appearing on digital platforms, board games are making a comeback. Eventually, such games gained a niche following in the U.S–games like Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, and Ticket to Ride. But in Europe, board games just evolved into complex worlds of strategy and resources.
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With the rise of cable TV and video games in the ’80s, that tradition waned in the U.S.