[#022] Why people don't like board games, knowing your market, and more

Welcome to your weekly dose of board game design!

Here in the UK, this is the first month with three bank holidays (read: extra days off from work) for most people in recent memory. Just another day at the office for me, but hopefully everyone’s enjoying the rainy day off =)

Something I learned about game design this week

I’d like to thank Nick Bentley (President of Underdog Games Studio, known for Trekking the National Parks and Herstory) and his Twitter thread. He gathered data from over 400 responses he gathered to why people don’t like board games. I’ll make you read the thread to find out what they are, but they definitely track with my own experiences.

It doesn’t come up in conversation often, but my talking points look like this:

• Games today were made by designers who played the classics that frustrated players. Today’s modern games (Catan onwards) have engineered many of those frustrations out.

• It’s worth remembering that games designed in previous generations had a different purpose. Games were ways to pass the time (literally why we have the word ‘pastime’). Candyland wasn’t designed to be a strategic game - it was designed to be a colorful world and welcome distraction in polio wards during the 1940’s and 50’s.

• Yes, some board games are ‘nerdy’ in that nerds enjoy them… but it should tell you something when you can find some great games at Walmart or Target - about as mass market as the US gets. Stuff that started off ‘nerdy’ is now very much in the mainstream.

• Whatever your favorite book, movie, or TV series, there’s a decent chance a modern game has been made about it. Games based on IP have come a long way over the past decade, and these are great ways to turn someone on to board games.

This week's tip

You’ve probably heard the generic wisdom of ‘Know your market’. Your game isn’t ‘for everyone’, after all… so how do you start to know your market?

You already know games provide a wonderful array of experiences involving multiple senses. Some people prefer a strategic, brain-burning sort of game, while others want something to break out at a party.

Some questions to consider:

• Where will it be played? At home / a board game café, on the road, on an airplane tray table, while waiting in line?

• What expectations do people have for this type of game? Might be a box size, might be a price point, might be the way it’s packaged?

• What other games are similar? It’s an uncomfortable truth, but at the end of the day, your game has to compete with other games. Unless you take a very unusual route, it goes into a box, gets a price tag, and gets put alongside other games.

• What makes your game stand out from that competition? That hook or Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what gets mentioned to reviewers, put on your website, shown in the description, and talked about at conventions. You know your game better than anything else, so it starts with you.

Quick plug: this is exactly the sort of thing I help designers with during consulting calls. One recent testimonial:

What I’ve been working on last week

• My Entro Games website - after a colossal mistake on my part, I spent close to 20 hours fixing images, uploading new ones, and so on. That said, it’s been an opportunity to update / upgrade a number of things to make the site easier to use, and there’s more to come.

• Client work - not much I can say here, but I’m excited to hear the results of their internal playtesting.

• Playtested Taco, Shell Company, How Does Your Garden Grow, Defuse, a game with a co-designer, Smite, and Mint Tin Monster Mashup.

• Made several videos and updated my Games In Development page.

What's coming up this week

• Pitching for UKGE

• Continue updating and upgrading Entro Games

• Meet with co-designers

ICYMI

The Meeple Syrup Show has a great episode about What Publishers Want - a panel discussion with publishers.

The Game Crafter is running a new contest: the Table Presence Challenge. Think the tree in Everdell or the dice tower in Wingspan - custom components that bring a game to life.

Random picture of the week

Found at Aldi (yes, the grocery store) - this isn’t just using the Star Wars IP. It adds a few mechanics found in other incarnations of Scrabble (and yes, I’m impressed with how much a handful of cards can change a core loop).

Thanks for reading!

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Thanks for reading, and see you next week!