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.

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The concept of player elimination is a thing of the past. Unless we’re talking about games that are short, random and light – or about “classics” like Monopoly – straight up elimination is gone from most European and American style games these games. Or is it gone in name only?

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We started talking about Simurgh and its beginnings a few weeks ago and it is now the right time to tell the rest of its story. In 2013, with a cool name, dragons and a designer on the rise, Simurgh seemed ready to "go to Essen" and have its first encounter with the general public. But before we present a game to such a demanding audience, we usually take the game through a stress test - those of you working in the banking system should know exactly what this means.

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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So, you’ve been gaming for some time now, long enough to know that it is a hobby worth exploring. You’ve bought your first few games, you’re slowly becoming the board gaming go to gal or guy of your group, and you are thinking about creating a slightly bigger and more wholesome collection of games. Well, you’ve come to the right place.

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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The Steam Theme

Last week I talked about games that share a system, a set of rules designed for a specific game that later on came to – officially or not – spawn other games, and in some extreme cases, create a new genre. But it’s obviously not the only way to create a group of games some people are fans of, as equally – if not stronger – ties can also come to exist between games that share a common theme. Very much like the ties that exist between different train games.

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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Systemic Success

Modern board games thrive on repeating, remixing and remaking. Taking a few well known elements, adding a few new twists, assembling them in a new way is – in most cases – all the innovation needed for a game to be successful. Thus, it should come as no surprise that some game publishers not only openly reuse old systems, but make it a selling point.

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A Short Story of Civilization

It’s no secret we like civilization games at NSKN. You could say that it’s a company thing, but I’ve liked them ever since I played Through the Ages, and it was some time before NSKN Games was actually established. This love, a love probably also shared by every other board gamer alive, is bringing me today to talk about civilization games that were able to do two things: present a new take on civ games and amuse us enough to remain in our collections.

Before I talk about newer games, let me first pay my due to the two most important and formative civilization board games – at least in my opinion. The first one is (obviously) Civilization (later upgraded to Advanced Civilization) designed by Francis Tresham. It’s a game a too young to remember in its original incarnation, but its second edition still sits on my shelf – and I do play it on a semi-regular basis.

The second civilization game that seems a cornerstone of not only civ games, but board games in general is Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization. It was one of my first heavier Euro games (yes, I do believe TTA is a Euro game as well as a civ game), and one of the most fascinating experiences in my personal history of gaming. It’s also the civilization game I personally love to go back most often.

Image Source: BoardGameGeek

Through the Ages is a game I wanted to mention also for another reason. Although the game is not new by any stretch of imagination, it was quite innovative for its time, and in a way has never been successfully imitated by another game. Some innovative elements from TTA surfaced in other games, but only two years ago a game with a truly similar approach to civilization games emerged. Nations (if you’re a fan of civ games you probably already knew which game I was referring to) with its strong design and depth managed to find its way onto many gaming tables – but failed (in my opinion at least) as a civ game, remaining “only” a rock solid Euro.

Over the years we’ve had some novel approach to civilization games – as well as some games that would simply take the rather obvious, but still quite entertaining route when it came to game design choices. While extremely fun, FFG’s Sid Meier’s Civilization follows a rather safe path, not really trying to re-define the genre, but solidify it and create a kind of a template many other civ games would be compared to. It also certainly fared much better than the previous Sid Meier’s Civilization which, over the years, has almost universally attracted scorn from its players.

Image Source: BoardGameGeek

It seems that the way to innovate civ games lies in making them shorter. While no less than impressive, Francis Tresham’s design takes six to eight hours to play properly, and with both of its expansions, the FFG Civilization may take a good few (five or six) hours to complete. Building a game that would have this civilization feel without actually taking a whole afternoon (and/or evening) is something many have dipped their toes in. 

This is how we got the spectacular 7 Wonders, which reduced a whole civ game to a few decks of cards, a bunch of player boards and a pile of tokens. This is also where Golden Ages probably came from, this time not doing away with the map component, but still managing to squeeze the civ feel into a much smaller frame – and a smaller footprint.

Image Source: BoardGameGeek

And speaking of 7 Wonders, we’ve also tried out hand at a civilization game that consists mainly of cards and player boards – for that reason many people would instantaneously compare our Progress: Evolution of Technology to Antoine Bauza’s phenomenal design (which only made us blush a little), and will try again in the not so distant future, this time with a completely different design (a light sprinkle of deckbuilding, anyone?).

Innovating in civilization games is no easy task, as it’s very easy to misplace those precious few elements that make a civ game what it is: the sense of building something grand, and the feeling of great progression, of one thing evolving from another. That is why I personally never found Nations appealing as a civ game, that is why Innovation never really spoke to me. And that is why when come around to making another civ game, we’ll not forget its basic building blocks while trying to innovate.

Just to wrap it all up: are there any smaller civilization games you love? Perhaps you know of some undiscovered little gems we should definitely check out? And before you say anything: yes, we’ve Olympos, Historia, Uruk and Uruk II. We like them.

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A Viking Thing (Part 1)

Vikings are getting more popular again. With the phenomenally good TV series the Northmen once again entered the pop culture stage, this time sporting only beards, but no horny helmets. Vikings are also once again becoming more and more popular as a theme for a game. Does that mean that Vikings are the new Zombies?

No, they’re not – and a short trip to the BoardGameGeek will prove that during the last two years we’ve had many (and I mean many) more Zombie-themed games, than we had board games with Vikings. Still, with games like Raiders of the North Sea doing quite well, games like Villainous Vikings quietly entering the stage, games like Nord awaiting a more general release and games like Viking Fury getting a reprint, we might be on to something here.

Image Source: BoardGameGeek

But let’s start with the simplest question: what makes Vikings interesting for board game designers and publishers? After all, the violent raiders, crafty merchants and bold explorers don’t quite fit the bill when it comes to traditional Euro games (with the “violent raiders” being the part that does all the damage), and history has more than a few explorers and merchants that without the violent streak. So, why Vikings?

The first answer is that it’s because they are popular again. They are popular, so board games having some Viking characters on the cover will most probably be more popular than those without. And it mostly doesn’t really matter if there is any raiding and seafaring in the game, as proven by the excellent Vikings by Michael Kiesling.

Image Source: BoardGameGeek

Vikings (also known by its original title Wikinger) is a rock solid, innovative and exceptionally intriguing design that mixes a tile laying game with auctions and an absolutely unique game of chicken all players will have to participate in every turn. It looks gorgeous, it plays really well, and it almost purposefully does Vikings as wrong as possible. Starting from horned meeples, through absolutely non-violent gameplay (in which our Vikings were more like victims than victimizers) to putting horned warriors on the cover of the game, everything was wrong with the game’s theme.

Nowadays, when Euro games are being designed with the idea of theme and mechanisms coming together more tightly, Vikings are making a comeback – and this time the designers and publishers don’t have to shoehorn the theme into a bunch of mechanical ideas that barely fit the idea of the Northmen. Elements of Euro games have entered American games, more aggressive mechanisms seeped back into European games, and that made a topic like Vikings something that can be fully developed in more or less a Eurogame.

In this new climate Vikings are actually incredibly attractive, as they have almost unparalleled potential: a designer can focus on seafaring and explorations, blend trading and raiding (Merchants and Marauders style – making Vikings the new pirates in the process), go for the power struggle with the titular Viking Thing, or simply show that a compilation of older mechanisms with new ideas can also make for a great game with a really cool theme.

Image Source: www.wallpapers.net

Next time I'll talk a little more about the more current Viking games and what they bring to the table. In the mean time, do you have any specific likes of dislikes when it comes to Viking games? Or maybe there should definitely by an aspect of the cruel Northmen that should be done well in a board game, but has not yet been up to date?

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Allow Me

There’s a saying all creative people have heard, and a lot of them have also uttered during their lives: “Show, don’t tell”. Simply put, it means that if you want a scene in a novel or a movie to be heart wrenching, you cannot simply tell your readers or viewers what they should be feeling or doing at this given moment. Similarly, you cannot simply make somebody laugh by telling them to laugh – or by telling them to do a thing that is definitely going to be hilarious.

Image Source: Boardgamegeek

It’s no secret I’m not a fan of party games – whenever people ask me about my gaming habits, I tell them that I am mostly a gaming omnivore, although I will rarely be convinced to play a real time game, or a party game (often actually being also a real time game, so that gives us one strike more). In fact, I will often admit to specifically not liking party games as a genre and actively avoiding playing them, choosing to rather not play than play a party game.

If you’re starting to feel slightly confused by how detached the two above paragraphs are, let me now tie them together. I don’t like party games, because a lot of them try to force me into making silly stuff just for other people to laugh at me – or make other people do silly stuff so that I could laugh at them. And they try to do it in such a ham-fisted way, that the only thing I do feel is embarrassment.

I’m not going to point my finger at any specific transgressors. Suffice to say that if a game simply orders me to cluck like a chicken instead of talking, or play with my forehead on the table, I’ll probably pass. I can make other people laugh at my expense, but I refuse to be the butt of primitive jokes made by someone else. I will not be happy about that, and I will certainly not pay for this type of entertainment.

Image Source: Boardgamegeek

What I will pay for is a subtle but engaging system that will allow me to make an idiot out of myself – and allow other people to laugh at my expense. And here, I will name names: Anomia, Apples to Apples, Spot It, 5 Second Rule – games that do not start from insulting their players by forcing them to do stupid things. No, by creating a seemingly neutral gaming environment they allow us to do silly things as we try to play according to rules that do not tell us to do a specific funny thing to amuse others.

So, if your thinking about designing a fun party game, first look at the ones that (over the years) had the most staying power – and that you enjoy (not dread!) coming back to, and then remember one thing: allow me. Specifically, allow me to entertain other players with my blunders. Don’t make me look like an idiot with a forehead on the table. Instead, allow me to find a way to make an idiot out of myself using your entertaining ruleset. I’ll like your party game that much more, I promise.

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Fruit of thy labours

If you’ve been following our blog, you already know that NSKN Games went to see how the production of Mistfall is going. We posted both a Kickstarter update, and a blog post for those who had missed it. The visit in Kraków gave me the opportunity to take a copy of my first published game in its final form, lacking but the shrink wrap, and hold it in my hand. And it was a glorious feeling.

It’s still going to be some time before the actual copies of Mistfall are assembled, and we are ready to start sending them, so the copy I got is “semi-official”. It was put together from the components already available at the factory, but it did not go through the full production cycle like all the games the backers will receive – and like the boxes that will end up on store shelves. But it was still a first copy of Mistfall. The first copy of my game.

You might think that after showing the game to a lot of people in a multitude of different forms – from the most basic, black and white, homemade prototypes, to the most advanced ones, printed using the final graphic design and artworks – would allow me to get used to the idea of what the final game would look so much, that it wouldn’t be anything moving. And yet, it was. 

Seeing Mistfall as a finished game, browsing through the rulebook, punching out the tiles and tokens felt at first completely unreal. What I would always see as a pile of cards made using sleeves and some commons from this, that or yet another CCG, and some tokens either made at home, or stolen from another game, was now an actual game. And for a time I could not believe that this box filled with gaming goodness is the essentially the same thing as a black and white prototype I still have.

As you can see, this blog post is yet another personal one, so you’ll not find any professional advice or peek behind the curtain of the publishing process. But I’ll try to make reading this worth your while by telling you two banal but incredibly important things. The first one is that plans and ideas, sometimes no matter how wild, should never be something that is forever in the future, something you think just before going to sleep and smile. You can make them real, if you work hard.

And the second thing is, that in this strange and complicated world, you can still achieve stuff if you simply work hard. And I have the fruit of my labours to prove it.

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The Mists will fall sooner...

Last Friday the NSKN Games team made a little trip to Kraków. Although it's a beautiful city, our mission there was not to marvel at all its wonders, but to see what is up with the production of Mistfall - our newest successful Kikcstarter. And the news are good.

More than 90% of Kickstarters today arrive late to the backers, and we know that this is something backers have learned to accept, although they never should - and again, in case of Mistfall, our backers will not have to.  All the components have been produced, and assembly was to start a day before publishing this post. And this means that our backers will get the game early. Yes, you've read this right.

So, first, let us show you a bit of an inside story.

At the factory itself we saw live in action the machines making decks of cards, we heard some technical details and met good people at work. No one is ever naming them, but the whole industry relies on their skills, patience and hard work. So, a big thanks to them, even though they preferred not to be photographed.

But arguably the most important picture is this one:

These giant boxes contain all the decks of cards which will become Mistfall in a few days. You're looking here at several metric tons of cards.

And these master cartons contain 6 Mistfall boxes each. For the moment the game boxes are still empty, but this situation will be remedied next week.

Last but not least, it was very nice to see the amazing quality of the punchboards which will be part of Mistfall. Nice, thick cardboard full of tiles and tokens easy to punch out.

So, you've read this far... now it's time for the really good news. Our current estimation is that our European backers will get their games in July, our backers from US, Canada and Australia in August and everyone else by the end of September. The "average" Mistfall game box will arrive more than 1 month early.

The truth is that we are both proud and happy that we will be able to make Mistfall happen before time, not only for the simple reason of proving that we can, but also - and more importantly - because we will be able to deliver a game a lot of our fans are impatiently waiting for sooner, thus making the gruelling wait shorter.

So, if you're a backer - know that your wait will be a shorter one. And if you're not - here's another good reason to become one in the future.

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4 pieces of advice for first time Kickstarter creators

We've recently proven that a complex project involving lots of cardboard, dice, wood and plastic space ships can be delivered on time (actually early, but that is beside the point). It's all about hard work and proper planning. So, if you decide to crowd-fund, it's up to you to do the same or better.

I am going to keep this short and simple, as what I am about to say has been said before and will probably be the same sentence that any experienced Kickstarter creator will give any "first-timer": deliver!

Advice no. 1: Plan to deliver! Ideally this should done be on time, but late is still better than never. US authorities are taking a closer look at creators who do not deliver and you may face legal action. I need to clarify this... if you're what people define as a "normal person", you will think it is very odd to read these few lines, but NSKN Games has received numerous messages from creators-to-be with questions such as "Do I have to deliver? What happens if I don't?". Now, there is an "official" answer, the FTC takes legal action against creators who mislead and mismanage.

Source: fx24seven.com

Advice no. 2: Kickstarter is hard work, not easy money. Start with this idea in mind and the countless challenges you face will seem a lot easier. Well, maybe not a lot, but somewhat easier :)

Source: www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk

Advice no. 3: The key to success is good planning. This applies to pretty much everything you do in life, but for Kickstarter creators this is especially true. Sound common sense is your first tool, but there are plenty of resources in the digital world which can help you crack open the secrets of strategic planning and project management. You can also hire a professional to guide you through the whole process and this may very well pay off if you are unwilling or don't have the time to learn everything there is to learn, but this is just back-up.

Source: blog.valpakfranchising.com

Advice no. 4: Do your homework. It is very unlikely that you will reinvent the wheel, so take a look at some of the successful projects and see what they have done right. Check their campaign pages, but do not ignore the updates and comments section, they often reveal more than the main project page itself. There are thousands of successful projects so you will most likely be overwhelmed by the variety of approaches. Every single Kickstarter creator will tell you that their way is the right way. Your quest is to discover yours. "Steal" the best ideas from past successful projects and adapt/improve them to your vision. It sounds easy enough, but it's a lot of hard work. 

If these pieces of information sound generic, we will return with some more advice specific for board games.

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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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A vegetarian and a butcher

Years ago, as a teenager, I participated in a class that would allow people only learning English to talk with actual native speakers. Each time we would discuss a specific issue based on a short text. I remember one of them specifically, as it discussed especially awkward mistakes made in all sorts of student exchange programmes. One of those mistakes was sending a vegetarian to a butcher’s family.

There is nothing wrong with being a vegetarian, and nothing wrong with being a butcher (although, I know some people might disagree with any of these statements). A problem may appear, however, if we try put these two together under one roof for at least six months. And as much as it looks like no more than a basis for a failed nineties sitcom, it does have something to do with board games. 

I’ve already talked about listening to your testers when you’re developing your game – and listening to them not only when they talk about what they think works or doesn’t work in your prototype, but also when they try to tell you that they feel uncomfortable with an idea your game might include, promote or be based on. However, there is one more thing you might want to actually do. 

A vegetarian is not out of place in most civilized western societies – and neither is a butcher. Still, by trying to make one work with the other might (just might) result in a disaster. Now, I specifically don’t want to point fingers at any particular games, but it often happens that a thing that is hardly worth a gasp in one culture, but perceived as deeply offensive in another, ends up in a family board game. To me that is a blunder you can easily avoid. 

There are many reasons somebody might feel offended, starting from the history of a given country or region, and ending with personal experiences that differ significantly, based on where you’ve been raised and where you live. And it would probably be impossible to be certain that your game will certainly not make anyone in the world uncomfortable. But some due diligence is necessary. 

To put it in simple terms: if you’re making a game about a specific region, specific people, specific historical events, just do your homework and be certain that you are not trampling the toes of someone whose ancestors or family members might have been involved. Don’t base it on just your assumptions, just spend a day making sure that you did not get anything horribly backwards, and you should be okay. 

But by all that is good an pure, spend that day.

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Is the End really nigh?

Every now and again I hear somebody saying that the end times of modern boardgaming are near. There are too many games, there are too few original ideas, people will turn away from Kickstarter any day now, and the board gaming market will crash just like the video game market in 1983. Live the dream while you still can, they are saying, because soon, very soon, the boardgaming hobby will be nothing more than a post nuclear wasteland of half burned cardboard and (somehow) rusty plastic.

Atari 2600 made many childhoods memorable. It was vastly popular before 1983. Image source: Wikipedia.

 
I think it’s safe to say that we are living in a golden age of tabletop gaming. Never before have there been so many games in so many genres available on the market. Never before has the quality of most individual products been so high, both in terms of pure components, as well as the sheer fun factor. Never before has contacting the publisher been so fast and easy, or reaching out to the designer to ask questions or support with your money directly (via crowdfunding) so effortless.

All of the above makes more and more people involved in gaming – as “just” gamers, as reviewers, podcasters, designers and publishers. Finding a game that will tickle your fancy is a matter of time. With that many party games, strategy games, war games, card games, adventure games and abstract games, you’ll easily find the one you probably most want to play. You’ll hear what other people have to say about it, you’ll order it online or drive down to a FLGS and have it on your own table in a matter of days (or even hours). 

So, why do we still think that it will all come to an end? Why do people gaze upon this abundance and start looking for signs of the coming end? Probably exactly because of how big and robust the boardgaming market has become. Some of us instinctively assume (basically taught by the history of mankind) that something as big has to finally fall flat on its backside. And many people are already drawing parallels between the booming boardgaming industry of today and the video game industry of the eighties – just before its fall. 

Now, I’m a little too young to remember the video game crash, and I certainly lack the tools to pick apart and properly analyze the events of 1983, but I think a little bit of research and some common sense are enough to see that the situation of board games today, and video games in the eighties are only superficially similar. Sure, it seems like there are so many board games today that the market is getting saturated, even completely flooded, but the growing numbers of games sold each year contradict this idea. 

Don’t get me wrong: there are too many games published every year for a single person to play the whole yearly haul. New publishers are appearing on the market almost every day, and the number of tabletop games struggling to get our attention on Kickstarter is growing every month, but so is the number of people willing to play board games. And although crowdfunding is partly responsible for cranking out more and more games (many of which are not up to par), it makes up for this by allowing the gamer to support the creator directly – and make it worthwhile for games that would otherwise never see the light of day to find their way to gaming tables.

Dominion - the innovation nobody was expecting prior to 2008. Image Source: Boardgamegeek.

It is also commonly said that games today are less and less creative, that it is hard to create something really new and that we’ve probably reached the limit of what board games can do. We reuse and re-implement mechanisms, recombine known elements to make “new” games, we rehash the themes – but it’s all we can do, and there is nothing never-before seen that can be added to the hobby. And a lot of it is true – as much true as it had been in 2007, when people were already seeing this unbreakable stagnation, the rigor of “nothing new” setting in, before Dominion conquered many a gamer heart, and spawned a new game sub-genre that has been going strong for the past eight years. 

So, it’s probably wise to remember, that most of us cannot see an innovation from a distance, and thus predicting that it will not come based on not being able to think of something innovative is… well, it’s simply wrong. The board gaming market today is both beautiful and tough, being highly competitive and surprisingly open at the same time.

Covers of just some of the deckbuilding games published within 3 years in the new genre Dominion had created.

Yes, many games are made, but the methods of communication and critique available today allow gamers to make informed choices, and to promote quality in game publishing. And that in turn makes the publishers up their game in terms of quality – because a single person with a smartphone is now able to inform two thousand people of the shabby work you may have tried to hide behind a glitzy cover – all within a few hours. 

So, for now at least, there is not much to fear. Board games are here to stay. Good publishers are not going anywhere. And we will have a lot of great games to play for years to come.

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Prototypical Influence

There are mostly two things I remember vividly from presenting the first prototype of a certain game that has since fallen into oblivion. The first was how initial reservations of people who sat down to play it would change into all out enthusiasm by the end of the third or fourth turn. The second was the question that was seemingly asked by every other person who sat down to play: “Are you really allowed to use Magic layouts for your own game?”

Three stages of prototyping for Mistfall.

During the last two weeks I talked about making a prototype of your game, starting off with advising on what not to do when preparing a prototype for a potential publisher, and then sharing my own tips (part one and part two) on giving your game idea an actual shape in the real world. Before finishing off the practical advice series, I’d like to take a small detour to discuss one more aspect of prototyping, and that is how the form of your prototype influences the way your testers will react to it - and what you are probable to get for a basic or a "good looking" prototype.

I’ve already talked about why it is not the best idea to put in too much work into the art and graphic design part of your prototype. But aside from using up time that could be better spent on perfecting the actual game, there is also the matter of how your testers will perceive your prototype – and how willing they will be to share their ideas on it with you. 

Simply put, if your prototype looks like an almost finished game, chances are that some of your testers might doubt themselves more than your design. This may lead to them refraining from voicing their complaints or ideas, just because visually the game looks like a ready to go product. Obviously, this will influence only some people, but still, if you want more sincere responses, you should probably go with a more basic looking prototype.

Here's some basic prototyping components, just for good measure.

On the other hand, building a serviceable but simple, very much “work in progress” prototype makes people more eager to actually share all their thoughts, as they receive a visual cue that what you gave them to play with can still be modified. When you're still running basic playability tests, it's generally better to have more to work with (and weigh out) than to falsely believe that your game is perfect. And some people might be easily convinced that something they would perceive as a flaw, is actually a feature, since the game looks "so completed".  

Now, if you’re still somewhat perplexed by the Magic story in the first paragraph, let me also elaborate on that. To make my life easier, I used a free editor with Magic: The Gathering layouts to create all the cards for the game. And although I would start each and every presentation with saying: “None of the components you see here, none of the artworks, no graphic design elements or symbols are final”, people would still ask me if this is really the layout I'm going with for the final game.

With that in mind, it’s probably good to remember that no matter what you say, the actual shape of your prototype will do more talking than your mouth. And for that reason, when you want actual criticism, show people a prototype that is as basic as humanly possible – and when you want some love for the game (maybe because the testing period is done), go with the almost-finished looking one. My experience tells me that it works almost every time.

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