Ridiculous Box Sizes: How Much Shelf Space is Wasted?

A study to determine how oversized board game boxes really are.

Posted on 2/11/2018 by Tim Rice

There is an insidious affliction that has plagued the board game industry for quite some time: ridiculously oversized boxes. It fills my soul with fury when I open up a brand new game and realize that it probably could have fit in a box a quarter of the size. I have a hard enough time fitting games on my shelf as it is, I don’t need to be storing so much empty space...

Recently (in the middle of another one of my fits of rage), I got curious: exactly how much space would I actually need on my shelf if all the boxes were only big enough to store the actual components? How much space is actually going to waste? And since apparently I had nothing better to do, I decided to find out.

That’s right, I actually went through and measured the wasted volume of all the games in my collection, and I think you’ll be surprised at the results. If my shelf is at all representative of the average, game shelves all over the world are a lot more bloated than most people realize.

It’s time to call out the publishers that are guilty of this heinous crime (spoiler alert: it’s most of them).

Method

For each game in my collection, I measured the total volume of each box using a tape measure and some good old elementary school math (apparently those formulas have practical uses after all). Then, to calculate the total wasted volume, I removed everything from the box that isn’t a component used during the game (including inserts), shoved what was left to the corner of the box, and measured the remaining space.

Obviously these measurements weren’t always exact thanks to strangely-shaped components and questionable methodology (I’d have a rough time getting this study published in a scientific journal), but I did my best to estimate fairly.

To be serious for a moment, I’m not saying all inserts are bad, some are fantastic in fact. What I am saying is that they’re also fantastic at hiding wasted space. If you’re thinking that having nice inserts is worth the extra space they take up, this data might change your mind.

Results

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

Analysis

As you can see from the results table, 62.42% of the space on my shelf is taken up by nothing but air. This means that, if the boxes were more appropriately-sized, I could fit more than twice the number of games on my shelf than I can now. And unless you’re one of those people who don’t keep boxes, your shelf is probably similar.

The scatter chart below shows the total box volume compared to the percentage wasted:

As you can see, there is a predictable trend that shows that the bigger the box is, the more likely it is that a higher percentage of it goes to waste.

Conclusion

Should we stand for this? Where else is it acceptable to have boxes that are over 4 times bigger than necessary? Imagine if video game cases were four times bigger for no reason. Or DVD cases. Or literally anything else. That would be ridiculous, right? Well so is this.

That’s why I’m calling for a box size revolution. The only reason publishers do this is because bigger boxes supposedly sell better (they are easier to see on the shelf). We as consumers can change that by supporting games that use space efficiently and condemning the ones that don’t. Publishers, your vile marketing tactics will fool us no longer. Viva la résistance!

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue as well, feel free to leave a comment below, especially if you have strong opinions on this matter as I do.

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