This might be more currently applicables to Video Games than board games, but we could eventually reach the same situation in board games.
I wrote another thread on VGG about the fact that there are too many video games and platforms to handle them. As adults we get less time to play and games becomes longer with open world games. Which means we can play even less games, thus finding the right game to play is more important, but trying to find the best game to play consume all the time I have to play games. Indie game development and kickstarter also multiplied the amount of games available.
In board games, it is less a issue because there is a bit less games, there is only 1 platform (the table), and when playing in game groups, you play the games that people brought to the session, so you have an artificial restriction of choice.
Now besides the player being overwhelmed and not having proper tool to find his information, what I want to explore is the designer aspect of this information overflow.
If there are so many games out there, why should we continue designing games? By making games, we are simply flodding even more the market making it more difficult for the user. Since the user cannot play everything, by releasing a game, it reduce the number of copies that other games will be sold. So by NOT designing games, are we granting players a favor?
Now you might say that some rich guys could actually buy multiple games, but there is still one resources that is limited to everybody which is TIME. When I buy games, I do not only check if I have the money to buy it, but also if I have the time to play it. Unless you live in another dimension or are a wizard, we all have a restriction of time.
Of course, you'll say that there are various genres and that not all games are competing with each other. But the information overflow makes it harder for a game to reach it's proper target audiance. It has been proven that when people search, they look at the first 3 results only. The odds that our game ends up in the 3 first results is really thin.
Another aspect to reduce the game overflow is quality control, either done explicitly by the platform (like nintendo does it) or either democratically, like kickstarter and Steam Greenlight does it. The explicit method could be discriminating, while the democratic method encourage new ideas and creativity and demand a certain approval. But even then, if a huge load of games get kickstarted, people will still have a choice to make and we end up with the information overflow again.
It's not a matter of being able to make money out if it, it's a matter of making games being played. If I put years of work on a game, I would like some people in the world to actually enjoy playing my game. It's the same thing for anything else: Painting, music, movies, etc. If I craft something to be seen and used by others, I want others to actually see and use it.
There are things you could do for yourself, like a painting on your wall. If nobody see it, it's not bad because you designed it for your wall. But board games, are designed to be shared with other. If you do not have a chance to share it with others, then it's pointless to design it in the first place. Because the primary objective of games, which is giving fun to others, is not fullfilled.
Lately, I explored the possibility of making single player board games. Even if like a wall painting, I could be the target of the works. Once you have playtested the game intensively, you get much less fun for playing the game. Again, you want to share your experience with others even for a single player game. So sharing is innevitable.
I originally wanted to design games, because when I played games, I thought that I could do better. But with the information overflow, it dows not really matter if the game is good or bad since people might not play it again after all. There are so many games out there that playing each of them only once (cult of the new) is enough to satisfy their needs.
So do you have good reasons to design games and this society of information overflow that already has too many games?
I often heard that people said that you should design games for yourself, or enjoy creating games. When I made the star craft solitaire variant, I think I actually enjoyed more myself in the process because I was playing the game while designing, but only needed to find a way to give myself challenge to play alone. I did not need to design the whole game
Still, if I were to develop a solitaire game from scratch, even if the final experience will be the same in sol otesting since it's a solitaire game, having to do a lot of mechanic shopping and playtesting will make sure that in the end, you'll be burned and have little interest to play the game. Because you will have played too much, so the only pleasure left is sharing which you cannot do.
When I started designing the Wizardry Legacy video game remake 10 years ago, I occasionally got and e-mail each 1-3 month saying that the project looks cool. With some encouragement and suggestions. It was not much, but it was enough to tell me that people appreciated what I did.
2 years ago, when I reopened the project to finish it once and for all, I think I got like 1 or 2 message. So maybe that people who like those kind of games were getting scarcer. But I think the real reason is why bother about an indie game in development when there are so many other working and complete games out there.
Still, not all games dies, I can really not see settlers of catan disappear in the next 10 years, some games will get less popular and disappear, but a lot stay. I still play video games that were some times released 20 years ago (currently playing ogre battle 64). So yes there is need for replacement and evolution while a part of the culture remains, but I think the amount of games currently released exceed what needs to be replaced.
So that in the end, those games will die, never get noticed and not have a chance to have the desired effect of making the "Science" evolve. A metaphor could be that planting trees to replace those we cuts/died is a good thing. If you plant trees too close to each other, they will lack of space for breath and all die. So your forest is not replace in the end.