Hello
I went threw my list of game idea descriptions and found that it had an over representation of fantasy or semi-fantasy (no trolls/giants and dwarfs but still in a fictive world (no historical or real connections but it could be)) games. There was only one really abstract (game without a theme) in the list and the reason is that I normally starts with an idea of a theme and build from that.
I did wonder if this was representative for game designers. To find out I started with BoardGameGeek, but that is the publisher's worlds and not the designers.
As designer that worked for a company did say to me: I always have to say to my self, who is going to buy this game (and out of 20 ideas he could maybe use one).
But I find one small source and that was the 70 games in GDW. I did some quick statistics and come up with (observe some games did end up in several categories).
Fantasy, Simi-fantasy and SF games: > 35%
Historical games : 10%
Sport and racing games : 10%
Buisness games : 10%
Abstract (games without a theme) : 10%
There was also a lot of games that could not be put in any category (as Good cat Bad cat by SiskNY, Get the Gopher! by DarkDream and Ultra Violet by ensor).
We had 10% war games but only one from WWII (one of the most common war-game themes that are published). Otherwise it looks like that what we do and what the market wants is nearly the same.
Hope you got something out from this unnecessary information.
// Johan
I don't think these statistics are unnecessary.
It is necessary to see that the fantasy/SF genre is overused to the point when it is a virtue NOT to use them.
The main problem with this two genre, is that they are loaded with tons of premade concepts, and a designer can get away with less creativity using these preconceptions.
This is exspecially true to the visual part of the design.
personally, I would avoid at least the classical part of these (Heroscape) and go for either more historical or more abstract.
You could get a good fantasy feeling without all the usual animated skeletons and fireballs with a little creativity.
check the game WONGAR over at BGG. This is totally abstract, but a good example of how a new approach can triumph over the good old ones.
IMHO