Why do so many games have such shockingly bad box designs?

You can’t get away with having an ugly looking game anymore (unless you’re trying to look purposely cheap) but a box design that results in a bunch of game pieces in your lap every time you open it? That’s just dandy.

Even when a box has a plastic insert meant to keep all the pieces in check, these often fail the second that it’s turned on its side, which is a rather large failure in my opinion, seeing as most people store their games this way. I certainly do.

I have yet to open the Splendor game box without being assaulted by a rain of plastic discs!

Our copy of Steam Planet is, for some reason, over a meter long. Why?!

They appear to have remedied this in a recent reissue, but who ever thought that would be a good idea in the first place?

It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.

There are good games out there.

I played Century: Spice Road the other day, and the box for that is brilliant – it has a plastic insert that actually, shock horror, holds all the pieces in place.

I was always impressed by how well Dominion, a game with twenty seven million cards all stored in one box, manages to keep everything where it’s supposed to be even after I’ve put it sideways on a shelf.

Is it really that hard to make a box that does its job and keep everything in its place?

Speaking as someone who has never had to design anything in their life, I think I can say with the utmost authority that it isn’t.