How The Games Are Ranked

Every week The Game Whisperer reports on the top 20 selling board games on Amazon. The list is of Eurogames, designer games, and general strategy board games. It is not a list of popular traditional family board games like Clue, Monopoly, or Scrabble.

Feedback has occasionally suggested that if The Game Whisperer Top 20 included such traditional family games, the list would be much different, with Monopoly dominating.

Amazon categorizes board games under the Toys and Games section. Currently Amazon has 641,000 toys and games listed for sale. 80,000 of these are listed as Games and of the games 11,000 are listed as Board Games.

Amazon then gives a ranking to each toy or game, allowing a visitor to know where that particular item ranks amongst the 641,000 items.

The Game Whisperer tracks this ranking within Amazon, and then ranks each game to its peers.

Here are the numbers for the past week of board games based on the ranking number given to each game by Amazon. The Amazon ranking is out of 641,000 total Toys and Games

1. Settlers of Catan - Amazon ranking - #25
2. Ticket to Ride -  Amazon ranking - #84
3. Dominion -  Amazon ranking - #98
4. Settlers of Catan 5-6 player expansion -  Amazon ranking - #140
5. Carcassonne -  Amazon ranking - #143
6. Pandemic -  Amazon ranking - #204
7. Ticket to Ride Europe -  Amazon ranking - #332
8. Dominion Alchemy expansion -  Amazon ranking - #352
9. Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights expansion -  Amazon ranking - #380
10. Settlers of Catan Bundle -  Amazon ranking - #504
11. Dominion Intrigue -  Amazon ranking - #628
12. Munchkin -  Amazon ranking - #698
13. Puerto Rico - Last week -  Amazon ranking - #702
14. Settlers of Catan Seafarers expansion -  Amazon ranking - #829
15. Dominion Seaside -  Amazon ranking - #829
    
16. Power Grid -  Amazon ranking - #854
17. Settlers of Catan Cities and Knights 5-6 player expansion -  Amazon ranking - #923
18. Settlers of Catan Travel Edition -  Amazon ranking - #945
19. Smallworld -  Amazon ranking - #1,032
20. Ticket to Ride 1910 expansion -  Amazon ranking - #1,113

To make the top 20 on The Game Whisperer the game usually has to be in the top 1,000 top selling toys or games on Amazon.

For comparison, here are the numbers for some traditional games like Monopoly, Life, Scrabble, Clue, and others

1. Uno - Amazon ranking - #118
2. Scrabble - Amazon ranking - #134
3. Candyland - Amazon ranking - #237
4. Monopoly - Amazon ranking - #283
5. Sorry - Amazon ranking - #361
6. Chutes and Ladders - Amazon ranking - #503
7. Life - Amazon ranking - #526
8. Risk - Amazon ranking - #1,218
9. Stratego - Amazon ranking - #4,828
10. Clue - Amazon ranking - #9,380

We see that Monopoly, with a ranking of 283, is outsold by Settlers of Catan (25), Ticket to Ride (84), Dominion (98), Settlers of Catan 5-6 player expansion (140), Carcassonne (143), and Pandemic (204).

Some theories about the rankings would suggest that Monopoly is available worldwide in every toy store and book store, decreasing the likelihood that someone would buy Monopoly on Amazon.

On the other hand, Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride are traditionally sold in Hobby shops and other specialty stores, limiting the ability to buy the game locally for many people, thus increasing the likelihood that someone would buy the game online at Amazon.

The rankings do indicate a growing interest in the new Euro style board games. The Game Whisperer believes that over a relatively short amount of time, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and other games will become increasingly easy to find in local toy stores, book stores and large box stores like Target and Walmart.

Comments

[The Game Whisperer]

@Lodestonegamer

The games chosen are either strategy board games or designer board games. Traditional family games like Monopoly and Scrabble are not included even though they rank high in sales on Amazon.

[Lodestonegamer]

How do you draw the line between games you include and games you don't? Is there some point at which a game will graduate off the list? Doesn't the fact that Catan, TTR, and Carcassonne rank higher than Monopoly anyway undermine the distinction? I see that Scrabble is off the list. Would you include Bananagrams or Word on the Street?