Replacement: Definition

When one of two games sharing strong similarities (mechanisms, theme, style or author) is deemed so much better that it makes it unlikely the other will be played again, or even remain in a gamer’s collection, it is said to be a replacement.

For a Monopoly replacement without dice, Chinatown or Acquire.Ben French

I guess to sum up, no Caverna for me is nowhere near an Agricola killer. It’s not even close.Erick Sklar

Blokus Duo got fired by Patchwork.Sheree Garratt

Perhaps no game has killed any other game in the history of games. But people keep asking.David desJardins

The idea that a game could replace another is entirely a matter of personal preference. It is the basis for Jones’ Theory and relies on notions such as the cult of the new and redundancy, all common criteria used for game collection culling.

Contrarily to the successor, which is often explicitly published with the intention of streamlining or fixing the original game, the replacement is created by its own popularity, or global market trends. It’s the gamers who ultimately decide if Caverna (Uwe Rosenberg, 2013) will become the replacement of Agricola (Uwe Rosenberg, 2007), if Maria (Richard Sivél, 2009) will replace Friedrich (Richard Sivél, 2004), or if all those games will live together harmoniously in the same collection.

This phenomenon is often referred to as game firing, since the preferred game fires the other from a gamer’s collection.

Game Killing, or killer, is a superlative form of the same concept. It means that a game is bound to replace another more globally and durably, practically killing it on the market. In that sense killer is most often preceded by the title of the game being “killed”; e.g. “A Terra Mystica killer”. Not to be confused with the expression a killer game, which simply means a game that is very good or exciting to play.

Popular games that reach a certain age without having been replaced are likely evergreen titles.