A Boardgaming Hobbit

Multiplayer solitaire. Two words that more often than not are used these days to condemn a game, as if automatically making it somehow worse than any a design that will have players at each other’s throats in a matter of minutes – or at least make players fight tooth and nail for scarce resources or territories.

Would you like to read more? We're moving to the New NSKN Blog. You will find the rest of this article here. Oh, and do tell us what you think of our new blog!

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Conventions and trade shows – and why we attend them

A convention or a trade show is a very special event, both for those gamers who are more deeply engaged in the hobby, as well as for us – publishers and designers of board games. Some of us love them, some of us hate them, but most of us attend for reasons I’m going to share below. And it’s a great time to share, since it’s all still fresh in my mind after the recent UK Games Expo.

Let me again start with a quick preamble: NSKN Games is very much like other publishers, but neither I, nor any other member of our crew has yet mastered the art of mind reading (though Andrei, the Big Boss himself, is most likely to make that breakthrough, and when he does a voice in your head will happily announce it to you), so whatever I say here will not be true for all publishers. Although, from our own experiences, educated guesses and some beer-propelled conversations with other people in the business, it probably is true for most.

So, let’s start with the basics: going to a convention is both expensive and exhausting. I won’t be talking about actual prices of space in different convention halls, but just know that the owners of these facilities know their worth. They also know very well that not all booths are equal, and not only size, but also multiple other factors influence the final price of being able to set up shop during the convention or show you saw us at – with all sorts of corner booths usually being the most expensive, and the first to go.

When it comes to exhaustion, just remember that whatever you see around you at a booth, was brought in by a number of human beings. And if you’re in a booth belonging to a smaller publisher (like NSKN Games), also know that those same human beings are most probably surrounding you now – all bubbly, enthusiastic and happy to see you, often despite being quite tired. Incidentally, this is why if you are absolutely certain you are not interested in a product they are to tell you more about, just tell them. You’ll save yourself some time – and they’ll be able to preserve their voice.

The NSKN Team at our UK Games Expo Booth

Having revealed the awful truth about conventions and trade shows, it’s time to finally get to answering the titular question. Why? Why do we attend? Is it for the possibility of making a quick buck on games that sell well, or sell out? No. Definitely not.

The truth is that selling a lot, or even all the games you bring to a convention, does not “make” you money – not in the sense of coming back with more cash than you had coming in. Most times, when you saw a booth selling games left and right, or have come too late to pick up a game (this may have happened to you for example last year in Essen if you wanted to pick up Praetor or Versailles on Sunday – or Progress on a Saturday afternoon), the publisher was not in for a big financial gain, but was happy that the event will break even.

Yes, between the prices of exhibitor space, the travel and transport costs and the hotel bills, a convention or a trade show for a publisher is a financial success if it makes them, all in all, spend a relatively small sum or no money at all. But no matter how much we pay, we do bring something back from each such event. We bring you.

Exodus Proxima Centauri - base game and the Edge of Extinction Expansion at UK Games Expo 2015.

Trade shows and conventions are important because of people we get to meet. We are happy to get to know new people in the industry, joke around a little bit, congratulate our competitors on a job well done (yes, that really happens!), and share experiences in the evening, in a hotel filled with exhibitors and attendees, or in a nearby pub overrun by the convention crowd. Apart from that, hands are shaken, eyes are looked in – and deals are made. Sometimes deals that make smaller publishers stay in the game – or help them develop, expand and grow.

Finally, conventions are important because of all of you. All of the people that come by to say hello – and all those who come in to ask: “Who are you again?”. Believe it or not, but we not only get a kick out of meeting new people, or getting to shake the hands of those of you, who we usually know by their Facebook profiles, Twitter or BoardGameGeek handles, but we are also interested in what you have to say. 

Clicking a thumb up on Facebook or bashing a game or mechanism online is so easy, that sometimes it almost goes unnoticed (although we always try to listen). Having an actual, face to face conversation with a person wanting to praise or critique something we’ve done is always memorable. And having ten people say “we did/did not like this and this” to our faces may actually influence what and how we’ll do in the future.

For all of you who asked about the NSKN Cats during UK Games Expo :-)

I’ve written all of the above mainly because we’ve just come back from UK Games Expo, and I had a chance to show off an advanced prototype of Mistfall to both new people, and our extraordinary backers. And this made me aware of one more thing. Each time (after playing a few turns) someone would tell me: “Yeah, I’m happy I backed this, it’s an awesome game”, I felt that a total of four hours in the air, two take offs and two landings between two consecutive flights suffered by a guy who hates flying, was something that guy would happily endure again. And each time we would say: “Yes, both Exodus: Edge of Extinction and Mistfall will be delivered without delays”, and see perplexed faces of gamers not used to their Kickstarter stuff ever arriving on time, we got a feeling that it is something we are simply unable to put a price tag on.

So, in short, the people are why we attend. The lure of talking to all sorts of individuals from all corners of geekdom, the chance to meet the persons we are fans of – and the people who are our fans, and the chance to share in stuff that is not only good for our business, but also pretty cool as a memory for us, simply as human beings

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Plastic vs. Wood - Pros and cons of standardizing in board games (III)

Some time ago we started a discussion about standardizing board game components.

Pros and cons of standardizing in board games

Pros and cons of standardizing in board games (II) - Cards

Originally I wanted to debate the pros and cons of plastic vs. wood, as many games offer the design space to choose between these two types of material, but then I realized that was a much to narrow topic. So, let's take a look at plastic and wood and their advantages and disadvantages and where and how do they fit best.

Custom Tokens

One of my first board games was Agricola, a classic and former BGG top ranked game. I was lucky enough to find a copy in Romania back in the day, when board games were as hard to find as gems. A few years later I saw a more recent edition of the same game. With the same rules, the new edition of Agricola triggered a completely different feeling because the token were personalized. The sheep were no longer white-ish cubes but tiny sheep, the grains were no longer yellow discs but little yellow grain-like custom wooden tokens and the cows looked like... cows! And yet the game played just as well with the old tokens.

Do you think that custom wooden pieces add value to a board game? This is the first tough question I want to ask today.

Custom tokens in Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia
source: BoardGameGeek

In my personal opinion they do, but like every good thing, it comes with an ugly hidden part. Custom tokens are more expensive than regular plain old cubes, discs and meeples. The added value is there, but it comes with a cost which is reflected in the final price of the game. Without going through the whole pricing philosophy, I can give you a simple example: Versailles, with an $55 MSRP - a game printed in 6000 copies - would have had an MSRP of $67.5 with custom wooden tokens. 

So it all comes down to this: would you rather pay a bit more for custom wooden token or settle for the lowest possible price and play with cubes and discs?

Before you answer this question, please take a look at Euphoria to see some of the best custom token in a board game. For me that game would not be the same with plain wooden tokens.

Plastic tokens

There's a whole new universe of tokens made of plastic. I personally discovered this rather late, a few years ago and at NSKN we have not taken advantage of this discovery yet.

Plastic tokens
source: plastictoken.co.uk

Regular plastic tokens are significantly cheaper than wooden tokens of the same size. But the key word here is regular. I We could easily replace the wooden resource cubes in Praetor with plastic cubes of roughly the same color. The same for Versailles. But the million dollar (actually just $5K) question is: how would you feel seeing plastic resources in a game about ancient Rome or medieval France for just a few bucks less?

Anyone who has played board games by Martin Wallace will know his "trademark" plastic coins which look a little like the ones in the image above but worse. I personally do not mind them, they seems to add a certain charm and to his games, but I know many who find them "too cheap". On the other hand, the plastic gems in Ascension look and feel great and I don't know anyone complaining about them.

It is probably a matter of taste - whether one likes plastic tokens or not - but they definitely did not become mainstream yet. My bet is on the gaining ground because they are cheaper than wooden tokens, they are even more solid and they can come in almost any color.

There is only one downside: plastic tokens require molds which are expensive, so without making tens of thousands of copies of a game, custom plastic tokens are not really an option.

So, how do you feel about them? Is plastic a real competitor for wood? Would you rather stick to the "classic" cubes and discs or do you see added value in custom tokens, plastic or wooden alike?

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Cardboard Conarium

For some time there had been a certain amusing acronym kicked around BoardGameGeek. Just Another Soulless Euro, or simply JASE, provided a way of expressing the irritation with a certain method of creating Eurogames, or a new and handy way to stick it to the “Eurosnoots”. Regardless of the term’s origin, its first purpose, and how JASE had been used by different gamers, it did pose an interesting question: what provides a board game with a soul? 

Image Source: BoardGameGeek

A soul is a pretty nebulous concept. There are many definitions and ideas when it comes to human souls, but in terms of inanimate objects, a soul only represents a certain set of almost undefinable features that make it stand out - and that makes us feel more attached to the said object. We often hear that a house, a car, even something as small as an old tape recorder might have a soul, and when we say it, we usually want to show that it is in some way special. Usually, special to us. 

Trying to pick apart the idea of a board game having a soul will thus be heavily biased by personal experiences. For that exact reason, I will always say that Puerto Rico is a game with a soul, as it was my first Eurogame - and my first step into a new world of gaming, a world hidden within the world I seemed to had already explored. Similarly, Through the Ages will (to me) remain a game richer and more beautiful than any other in the world, as it was my first step into tabletop civilization games - and a first spark of the type of love that never burns out. 

But both Puerto Rico and Through the Ages have one more very important thing going on for them: they were both innovative (apart from being solid games), which not only put them high on my personal list, but also made them games highly regarded by hobbyists around the world. The idea of an action picked by one player and then performed by others created almost a whole genre of games, and depicting the process of building a civilization through disassociated mechanisms (which, when coming together, create a surprisingly thematic experience) had proven beyond doubt how creative and diverse the board gaming hobby can really be.

Image Source: BoardGameGeek

With the above in mind, it seems that supplying a soul when creating a board game is a simple process - or, at least, simple if you are making a solid game with an innovative idea. And yet, it is not, and it cannot be, a precise science, as there are some games that seem to hit both of these marks, and yet people generally don’t seem to identify them as games with a soul. Dominion can probably serve as a great example here, being both innovative (so innovative in fact, that it did create a whole new genre of games), and more solid than many of its followers. 

Image Source: BoardGameGeek

Dominion had it all, and yet time has proven it to be a game many refer to as dry, which almost automatically makes a game soulless. So perhaps there is also a matter of theme to consider, an atmosphere created by the game’s elements, making it stand out, sometimes even placating the more critical gamers ready to condemn a game for its mechanical deficiencies. I believe there are many deckbuilders not quite as solid as Dominion, or at least not as versatile, which are still perceived as a bit more memorable, a bit more engaging (on a more abstract level), a bit more… soul-full? 

As I said in the beginning, a soul of a game is often a matter of personal preference, as much as it is a combination of more tangible factors. Our own Progress: Evolution of Technology and Versailles always seemed to me - and to many people from my gaming group - games with souls. And at the same time they were praised as mechanically sound but ultimately deemed soulless by many of those who I’ve played them with. 

Thus, it seems that there is no recipe, not even a final definition of a board game soul we could all use. But at least there are some definitions serviceable for personal use. So, what is yours?

 
Just to put a little plug (and date this note somewhat), we are running a contest now, with ten copies of Versailles - each supplied with this cute little depiction of King Louis. If you want to get your hands on one of them, just go here for details.

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Pros and cons of standardizing in board games

Standardizing - yay or nay?

To even begin the discussion about standardizing game components, we need to ask ourselves if this is an actual improvement.

Having dedicated lately more than the fair share of my time to publishing rather than designing, I realized that there is a downside of standardizing - it kills some of the creativity of designers (myself included) on the altar of delivering a marketable, user-friendly, industry standard product. The designer in me is trying to fight the other side of my board gaming personality (the publisher) screaming for more freedom and less standard components. 

I - the designer - wish to have a giant board in one of my upcoming titles depicting a detailed map of the world, something which would make the War of the Ring giant board seem average, but I - the publisher - will most likely deny this request on ground of being unreasonable, too expensive and almost impossible to manufacture.

And that's not all... I - the gamer - had the pleasure of opening 46 game boxes bought in Essen and some of them gave me great joy of discovering clever assembly mechanisms and cute little tweaks which made some games special right of the box, while some others had some of the most twisted annoying components that went straight to the "I am not emotionally equipped to deal with this" shelf.

So, perhaps there's a middle ground and an agreement can be sought by the dreamy designer, the pragmatic publisher and the exigent gamer. 

Almost two years ago when NSKN Games was even younger than today, we decided to approach board game publishing with a specific set of mind - making each game component as functional as possible and packing everything in the least possible amount of space.

Same size boxes

In a post on the NSKN Games website called "Less is more" we described this "discovery" and its core principles. We adheres to these principles fully and Exodus: Proxima Centauri (revised edition), Praetor, Progress: Evolution of Technology and Versailles - board games published by NSKN Games since then - are all built accordingly. Our two upcoming titles for the first half of 2015 - Exodus: Edge of Extinction and Mistfall - are following the trend and will have the same ergonomic design. But is this all we can do? The short answer is no, there's definitely room for improvement and this is what I want to explore together with you today.

Game components one by one - standard or not?

1. Game box - it's the first thing you and I see and 90% of the times the box is the decisive factor in our interest and later buying the game or not.

Image source: BoardGameGeek

My first few games were of various sizes and shapes, from the standard square Ticket to Ride box, to the monstrous Twilight Imperium "coffin" and the tiny Catan Card Game. Through the years I have become pickier and the box of Dungeon Fighter caused me head aches because it's just marginally larger than the standard square and yet it does not fit on my very standard IKEA shelves... so I had to let it go.

Image source: thebattlestandard.com

My plea if for standard boxes which save shelf space. Fantasy Flight Games - one of the trend setters in the hobby industry - has given up the iconic "coffin" boxes and switched to square boxes of various heights. I do not know the actual reason behind this move but I can speculate that they are standardizing and making their products gamer-friendly. Think only of Imperial Assault or Descent 2.0.

What is your opinion, do you prefer standard boxes or are you a fan of unlimited creativity and prefer cubical or cylindrical boxes?

2. Rules

Squares, rectangles, A5, A4, letter... the rules is modern games are all over the place. We at NSKN tried our own standard, 285x285mm booklets which are roughly the size of the box. It was or choice for the past 2 years because it allows large graphic examples, the page can be divided into 2 or 3 columns according to needs and it is cost effective.

Cost effective is one of the keys for small publishers like us to succeed. Once we evolved past the point of mere survival (as a company) we had the luxury of rethinking our publishing paradigm and look again for better solutions.

I have been advocating for "our size of the rules" for quite a while until I have recently made an experiment of my own: I took the rules of a random game, put them in both the large square format and A4 (which is almost the same as letter size) and read through them timing myself. Reading the same amount of rules text in A4 format took me about 25% less time. Therefore, the rules of our next game are coming in A4 format, even if that adds a few cents to our production costs.

Which is your preferred rules format? Do you even have one? Is this a key aspect for you when it comes to buying or even playing a game?

3. Boards

This is the point where the discussion gets complicated.

Having analyzed 50 games with non-modular boards published after 2012, I found the following distribution: more than 50% are a 4-fold square or rectangle, 30% are 6-fold rectangles and the rest are... all over the place. When it comes to modular boards, the most common shapes are rectangles, hexagons and starred hexagons, but the distribution here is too difficult to assess because of the wide range of options. Furthermore, less and less of modern board games have an actual board, with German style games sticking more to the original conservative model with an actual board.

I mentioned before that the designer in me wants a giant game board. I have spoken to a few manufacturers and the largest single piece board they can make is 100 x 70 cm and this is not really what I had in mind. Anything beyond that would require all kinds of non-standard "stuff" (I was afraid to ask) and the price would increase five to ten fold for a board just 1.5 times as large.

Comparing boards with the same total area, a 4-fold cut is 30% cheaper in average than a 6-fold cut thus the industry preference for the former. Even when it comes to ergonomics and table space, a square 4-fold cut seems preferable. And yet in Versailles we went with a larger 6-fold board very close to the manufacturer's upper limit because it suited better the game's needs. My inner fight between the designer and the publisher was a clear victory for the designer, while the publisher saw the margins decreasing under his eyes.

Using any standard game board will also save significant costs with the cutting knives when manufacturing with an established large board game factory. For small publishers saving this kind of money may very well make a big difference.

Modular boards offer a greater flexibility and sometime much greater replay value. They do not necessarily increase the manufacturing costs, but they usually do. Yet more and more designers and publishers walk this road, because creativity is no longer limited by a rectangle.

So... what is you view on game boards? With or without? Modular or classic? Does this aspect even matter when it comes to your liking and buying games? 

Conclusions?

Writing for quite a while now, I have only covered about half of the topics I had in mind. So. I'd love to see your opinions and I'll resume my train of thought next week.

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Kickstarting an expansion does miracles and what's more happening in NSKN

Last week is one to be remembered for NSKN Games. On Thursday we went live with our second Kickstarter project to seek support for Exodus: Edge of Extinction and 3 days later the project reached its funding goal of $28000 and even more, the first stretch goal is now unlocked and we are dangerously getting close to the second one. That is awesome!

If you have not had a chance to see what Edge of Extinction is all about, you can see below a video preview of the expansion.

But that's not all. Versailles got its share of attention with a review from Joel Eddy of Drive Through Reviews and Progress: Evolution of Technology was analyzed by NVS Gameplays:

Last but not least, Versailles and Progress will be released in North America by our partners Passport Game Studios. And if you are in the Pacific Northwest/Seattle area, enjoy the Launching Party in Renton on January 23rd! Do not forget to RSVP and to have fun. :)

You can also read an interesting story about how these games came to life in an interview with the NSKN on the Passport website. A short excerpt is below:

How did the ideas for Progress and Versailles come about?

Agnieszka: The idea for Progress: Evolution of Technology came while designing the first edition of Exodus: Proxima Centauri, specifically its technology tree. 

We - both the designers of Exodus and Progress - are big fans of civilization games and the part we love the most is the technological development. Thus came to us this seemingly crazy idea to make a game which is just about building a tech tree, stripping it of all the other parts.

Andrei: Surprisingly, Versailles found its roots also in the Exodus universe. Originally themed as Exodus 2, a sequel to Exodus: Proxima Centauri, the game has become Versailles after extensive feedback from Daniele Tascini (the co-designer of Tzolk'in) and a few other great minds in the industry. What we call today Versailles was built around the idea of a worker movement game - a special type of worker placement in which all the workers are already set up on the game board and player get to move them in a rondel-like system following given paths.

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First post-Essen thoughts and some more pictures

Essen 2014 was awesome! So many people we had seen in the past came by our booth again, lots of handshakes and hugs made Essen feel like a gathering of old friends, brought together by teh same passion - board games.

For the first time in the history of NSKN Games, we sold out in Essen having more than one product at our booth and the quantity was not negligible. Delivering more than 200 Kickstarter rewards while serving a lot of customers was another big challenge, but we seem to have passed the test.

It's hard to draw all the conclusions after just a few days, but the whole NSKN team has returned with a very good feeling. Next week we'll have to look more in depth into what this event represented for us and we'll come back and share the conclusions.

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Essen 2014 - day 2 & day 3

This year's Spiel Essen turns out to be a truly amazing experience. We continue our story in images with photos from day 2 (Friday) and day 3 (Saturday).

Day 2 - what was supposed to be the slowest day...

Happy owners of brand new Progress: Evolution of Technology

Explaining Progress

...and playing Versailles

Happy girls

Day 3 - the "sold out" day

Hard thinking and... watching

Progress countdown on Saturday morning

Game delivered!

That's what we call original

Around 11;00 AM

One of the last copies of Progress delivered at Spiel

4 copies left

and just a few minutes later...

With Progress sold out, we still invite you to visit our booth. We have a few copies of Praetor and a few of Versailles for Sunday.

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Essen 2014 - setup and day 1

Being in Essen for Spiel is always an amazing experience, but this year's first day has exceeded our expectations by far. Since another big day is ahead of us in several hours, we'll let the pictures do the talking...

Day -2: leaving home

Leaving friends at home...

Day -1: setting up the booth

No less than 10 pallets of games made it to our booth in Essen

The setup day was looooong

... and it included climbing a giant ladder

Day 0: the day before the official opening

Delivering Kickstarter copies of Progress

The game have slowly found their places on shelves... and everywhere else

Game previews at the BoardGameGeek booth

Day 1: Spiel '14 Essen has finally starter... full speed ahead

Playing tables

The stock of Progress is running low from the morning hours... should we have brought more games?

Versailles

Progress: Evolution of Technology

And Versailles again

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Versailles - A paradigm shift in game design

It's time to talk about Versailles - the latest release from NSKN Games at Spiel '14 Essen - a game which came with a significant change in the way we make games.

Many of you do not know this, but initially Versailles was called... Exodus 2: Terranova and it was created as a sequel for Exodus: Proxima Centauri.

Maybe we should first go further back into history... When we created Exodus: Proxima Centauri, we started building a quite complex universe which would cover a trilogy of games following the evolution and struggles of humanity in a dystopian future, starting with the exodus from Earth to Proxima Centauri and then following the struggle for survival against a powerful, eclectic race called the Centaurians.

While Exodus: Proxima Centauri - the first games of the series - is an empire building game, the second game was planned from the very beginning as a heavy euro, a game built around the worker placement mechanism, with several twists and a a lot of strategy to gain the scarce victory points.

Early prototype of Versailles

The first round of play testing was encouraging, it went on a little too well. You're probably thinking now "What is this guy talking about?... Is he crazy?" and in a way you're right, there should be no such thing as too good first impression when it comes to testing a board game. Let me explain...

Every game I made or contributed to had to have something special, unique, be it the theme or some mechanic. Agnieszka and I were... are very fond of the Exodus universe and I must admit that the games planned in this trilogy are targeting the heavy gamers, experienced players who like a tough challenge. 

As it turned out, the prototype we've shown was... too short. Many people, too many people liked the game as it was, found it not so difficult and while this was a great feeling for us as designers, it was not falling into our grand plan for a sci-fi epic.

Here comes "into play" Daniele Tascini - the designer of Tzolk'in - who we had the pleasure to meet in Cluj at the local convention TIG Con. We played together and - long story short - he liked the game and did not fully agree with the theme. He also suggested a few twists, some of which are now part of the final game.

Fast forward a few weeks... Agnieszka and I were talking during a long road trip and considering to actually change the theme into something which would appeal to a broader category of people, experienced games and newbies alike. But this is not like us, at NSKN Games we used to do things differently!

This is the shift in paradigm which I had mentioned earlier in the tiles of this article (and as a point of interest, I have been warned I should not be talking about this in public, warning which I carefully decided to ignore). As a designer you can afford to make the game you like, while as a publisher you have to make those game which sell, especially if your survival depends on it. 

As designers, both Agnieszka and I wanted to make the most interesting games possible, inventing themes (I had already strayed away from this principle with Praetor) and we always stayed away from the typical medieval theme - games named after a famous European city or a beautiful island which very few people can actually place on the map (a bit off topic,I offered some of my friends 10 euros if they could place Bora Bora on the world map in less than 10 seconds and I am just as reach as I was before the challenge).

Final box and game components

As publishers, we must listen to the gaming community, including the less loud voices. There is a reason for which so many games have "common" themes, they attract the casual gamers who are much less likely attracted by a science fiction or a fantasy universe, but they can picture themselves building a city or a castle... say... Versailles.

With the risk of stating the obvious, one cannot place any game in a familiar Euro-style universe, but if a game has the right mechanisms and interactions and this kind of theme is suitable, then why not?

I have personally accepted that for most of the board games, they game play is at least as important as the theme (the big exception here is represented by... thematic games) and even if there should be no compromise when creating either of the two, there is nothing wrong in walking the wide and well traveled path.

This shift in paradigm was the result of talking to many people, some with a lot more experience in board gaming than the whole NSKN team put together and some just casual gamers who happened to stumble upon one of our games. As many people, as many different opinions, but the majority shared a common point when it came to Versailles - a "normal" theme would make the game more attractive.

After all this ranting about the universe of Versailles and its evolution, maybe a few words about the game itself would bring the long awaited ray of clarity.

In Versailles, each player control several workers (between 4 and 7 , depending on the number of players). Every (very short) turn, the active player must move 1 or 2 workers to an adjacent location, thus activating it and taking the respective action. The locations form a network, being connected by one-way streets, thus generating a large but limited number of possibilities. Each location provides either resources or ways to spend them, with the ultimate goal to build the palace of Versailles and score victory points. 

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