Why I Don't Buy Anything on Release Day

I will get some pushback for this one, I already know it, but I basically never buy a board game on release day and I don’t think I’m missing much by skipping it.

The whole hobby runs on a release day economy now. Kickstarter countdown timers, publishers doing the day one bundle with the exclusive promo card, forum threads counting down to midnight when preorders open. I get why people jump on the bandwagon early, there’s a real thrill to being first, owning the thing before the wider verdict is in, getting to form your own opinion instead of one shaped by six months of other people’s reviews. I just think that thrill is expensive, and not only in dollars.

Here’s my actual practice. I wait. Not out of some principled stand, mostly because I’m cheap and because I’ve learned that a huge chunk of new releases show up at forty percent off within eight or nine months, sometimes sooner if the publisher overprinted. I buy a lot of my shelf secondhand too, local game stores that take trade ins, the occasional estate sale listing that somebody’s kid clearly didn’t want to deal with. Dominion, the game that started this whole thing for me, I eventually bought a big box expansion of used off somebody who’d apparently played it exactly twice before deciding it wasn’t for them, which tells you something about how often a first impression doesn’t hold.

The dollars per hour math I run on everything makes this an easy call for me, waiting costs nothing but time and I’ve got plenty of that, but there’s a second argument that matters more to me honestly, which is that a game gets better information attached to it the longer you wait. Day one, you’re relying on a publisher’s pitch and a handful of preview copies from people who got the game two weeks before everyone else and had every incentive to be generous. Month nine, you’ve got actual players who’ve hit the fifteenth play and found the thing that breaks down, the combo that’s too strong, the rulebook page that’s wrong. I’d rather buy the version of a game’s reputation that’s had time to season than the one still running on hype.

The one place I’ll admit this bites me is conversation. Everybody’s talking about the new hotness in March and I’m three releases behind, playing something from last spring that nobody wants to discuss anymore because the discourse has moved on. My wife thinks it’s funny, she’ll mention some game blowing up online and I’ll say oh I’ll get to that one eventually, and eventually usually means next winter’s clearance bin.

I know the counterargument. Support the designers, support the small publishers who need the day one sales to fund the next thing, don’t let good games go out of print because everyone waited them out. That one actually lands with me some, and for a handful of publishers I like enough I’ll break my own rule. But as a general practice, no, I’m not the guy standing in line. I’ll see you in the clearance aisle in about a year, probably paying half of what you did.