promethea.incorporated

fnord888:

socialjusticemunchkin:

Unintentionally, the game is a living example of that world because it is produced by the Polish government. The Institute of National Remembrance, a state body created in 1998 to preserve memories of Poles’ struggles against Nazism and communism, gets money to produce Queue from the national budget. Overwhelming demand hasn’t induced bureaucrats to fund a production increase.

When I worked at a game story, there were plenty of popular games by private companies that were impossible to get in stock (or get enough in stock to meet demand). 

That’s why abandonware needs to be pushed into the public domain, or at least have mandatory licensing or something. Original maker not supplying the demand? Get out of the way and let someone else do it. The only reason a board game shouldn’t be manufactured is if nobody is willing to pay the printing costs, otherwise it’s just artificial scarcity.

(It would probably also help if scaling up production was more flexible, but at least private companies have a direct incentive to meet the demand. Aesthetically my brain thinks all games’ rules and basic data should be available on the internet for free and the price would be paid for the physical product, but that’s probably not enough to make it an imperative “should” even if it would be awesome and very post-scarcityish.)