Just a scant week after I gave Fantasy Flight Games’ new WORLD OF WARCRAFT: THE ADVENTURE GAME a decent review here at Gameshark.com, reports started coming in from around the United States that Target, a major, mass market retailer, was stocking the game on shelves right there next to the HANNAH MONTANA GIRL TALK GAME and the 576th edition of CANDYLAND.

Aside from HEROSCAPE and the pernicious smattering of collectible card and miniatures games or the occasional (but rare) worthwhile licensed game, it’s the first time a bona fide hobby game has turned up on mass market shelves in many, many years- let alone one from a publisher working outside the usual Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast racket. It may amount to nothing gained overall in terms of crossover market penetration and every copy may wind up on the clearance endcap after Christmas to be snatched up by the corpse-devouring vultures in the hobby who claim to support the industry, but for right now it represents a lot more promise in terms of attracting new gamers into the hobby and showing the outside world what this hobby is all about through a popularly licensed, attractively priced, and excellently produced title.

Seeing WOW:AG on a mainstream store shelf gave me, for the first time since mass market shelves were vacated of titles like HEROQUEST and bookstores stopped carrying Avalon Hill titles, a pang of hope for this hobby’s survival in the face of exponentially increasing entertainment options, the ruination of the hobby at the hands of online Eurogame cultists, and the pandemic business malfeasance and general economic failure of the board gaming industry—particularly in regards to marketing to an audience outside the niche of poorly groomed middle-aged men that compromise a huge percentage of the hobby. With all these forces pulling the hobby down into an inescapable, self-defeatist muck it almost feels like seeing that FFG logo is a beacon of hope.

It is ironic that WOW:AG has beat a lot of other hobby titles to mainstream shelves (barring a couple of abstracts like BLOKUS and that fifteen minute period in 2004 when TICKET TO RIDE was on Toys R Us shelves) when for years the Eurogame crowd has been pushing the party line that games with orcs and elves don’t sell anymore.

Listening to the evangelical propaganda that Eurogame proponents have put out over the years you’d believe that what people really want are games with little to no conflict with esoteric historical or agricultural themes that may or may not have any bearing on the game’s actual mechanics or actions. There was always this idea that Eurogames were going to cross over into the mainstream and that every man, woman, and child in America would be reading the rules to PUERTO RICO to their children by the light of their burning television set.

Publishers lined up to import and translate the newest German releases and those that didn’t have the wherewithal to do that promoted their games as “Euro-style” or threw in a plastic baggie filled with wooden cubes to try to hitch on to this supposedly rising star. All this success that Eurogames were supposed to engender never happened outside of the development of a handful of extremely strong brand names (such as SETTLERS OF CATAN, TICKET TO RIDE, CARCASSONNE) that have sold incredibly well--within the confines of the hobby market and with very limited access to mainstream markets.

I never really believed that Eurogames were going to take over the world. In fact, I think if anything the proliferation of Eurogames over the past decade has in fact set back any potential that hobby gaming has to recover a share of the mainstream board game market by focusing on the wrong demographics, failing to maintain pace with other entertainment forms by deliberately promoting a hostile-to-the-mainstream position, and devaluing the competition, player interaction, narrative, theme, and direct conflict that were the chief virtues of the hobby to begin with.

So when I see WOW:AG on the shelf at Target, I see hope not only because it demonstrates those values but also because I know inevitably some kid who is really into the MMO will get the game, talk his friends into playing it, and new gamers will be born. Or a parent will get it for their WOW-addicted kid and after playing it they’ll see the enclosed FFG catalog and want to try out something else. Or a group of friends looking for something to do on Friday night will go in to get a copy of CRANIUM to play and see this really interesting, cool looking game and get it instead.

This is how the hobby game industry can reclaim some of what it has lost over the years in the marketplace by dawdling around with marginal products and niche demographics and actually- possibly- experience growth. Not by pointless online punditry or forcing the in-laws to sit down and play a twenty minute choo-choo train game, but by offering an accessible, appealing and available product that has built-in brand recognition at a reasonable price.

I believe WOW:AG can sell at Target, and I think it provides an alternative to the mass market consumer who may be interested in a game that offers a little more than the usual fare on Target shelves or who might be curious about adventure games. The WOW license is a huge advantage, as it gives the consumer something to identify with on an immediate level- even if they don’t like it or play it, they’ll recognize it and it carries with it a degree of verification- millions of people play WOW, so it’s not some outsider thing. And that makes a big difference over sticking a game like CAYLUS or GOA on a store shelf that no one outside of the hobby will identify with or recognize, let alone care about unless they just really dig feudalism or 17th century spice trading.