A suggestion recently came from Kevin, one of my readers and I thought it might make for an interesting study. The general suggestion was that people are probably going to look for cheaper ways to entertain themselves during these difficult financial times. Card, dice and board games all came to my mind. Certainly this could fall under the cocooning trend I talked about previously but is there an even greater interest during harsh financial times?
Board games
Board games, especially classic board games are moving from cardboard to electrons as they move to the PC and game consoles. This is introducing a whole new generation to board games and renewing the interest of those who got bored with board games (groan). Monopoly and Scrabble are two classics that seem to have renewed life.
Here I used Google Insights for Search to look at search trends. By the way, Insights for Search is now my new favorite and replaces Trends in my work flow. In the graph above, hopefully you can see that Monopoly and Scrabble have had the biggest upticks recently compared to other classic games. Bingo also seems to have renewed interest perhaps because it is a cheap alternative if you do go out.
What I love about Insights for Search is that you can choose categories to search in. This avoids some of the confusion in Google Trends when terms have multiple meaning e.g. monopoly the game and monopoly the financial term.
Dice Games
Looking at dice games, there isn’t a clear trend. The search volume appears to be steady right now though perhaps that may change if the economy gets worse.
Card Games
Searching around for popular card games other than poker is not easy. Poker has become so popular, it really dominates the card game category.
Though poker dominates, there is some increased interest in solitaire and hearts.
Cheap entertainment
There will always be a market for cheap entertainment and recent reports have noted an upsurge in home cooking rather than eating out. So while I wouldn’t place it at the top of my list, cheap home entertainment should be a trend to watch. Investing in this trend with generic domain names may not show a profit without development. Even then, development should be entered thoughtfully with a business model that has profit and exit strategy in mind.
Anyone else have ideas or thoughts about a trend towards entertaining in the home? How about dinner parties or birthday parties at home rather than halls or other venues?
