If you are a board game publisher, game designer, blogger, or business owner of any type, then you need to understand the motives and desires that lead to purchases. Sometimes people need a nudge to do what is best for them, and we want to be able to direct and control that nudge. Looking at this from the game publisher point of view, I am concerned with why people want to play games. Every time one of my games is played, all of the players become potential customers. The likelihood of a current or future purchase increases with enjoyment and exposure of the game.
Understanding the reasons why people play the games will help when going through the process of publishing a board game. If your game does not excite people in one these ways, then it will be unlikely to sell very well to the public or to a game publisher.
- Board games create a framework within which we can interact with our friends in a friendly competition.
- Board games require us to think, experiment, and otherwise exercise our minds.
- Board games provide us a way to escape from our current lives. They provide a desired experience that we cannot obtain in real life. Good examples of games that accomplish this are Terra Prime, Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, Railroad Tycoon, War of the Ring, and all role playing games.
- Board games provide an easy way to have fun with family and friends in a personal way. It is not as personal as direct conversation or sports, but it is significantly more personal than watching a movie, television, or playing video games.
These motivations are not meant to be an exhaustive list. I want to concentrate on the escape from life motivation for board gaming, because it is the most difficult to accomplish. The process begins at the game design stage, and boils down to this question.
Which came first? The game world (theme) or the game system?
What Makes A Board Game Immersive?
Many of us have played numerous games which blatantly had a theme pasted onto a game system. An extremely successful card game guilty of this is, Lost Cities. Most people who play Lost Cities are not immersing themselves into a world where they are archaeologists digging and excavating a historically or culturally important site. When my wife and I play Lost Cities, it is to get some mental exercise and do something together that does not involve movies or television.
On the rare occasion that I get enough friends to sit down for 6-10 hours of Twilight Imperium, we do it because we want to escape into a world where we lead an inter-galactic civilization in an attempt to rule the universe. Just talking about it is getting me ready for a semi-annual game of Twilight Imperium. Seth, you better get your excuses for not wanting to play ready! I get immersed into the world of Twilight Imperium for the following reasons:
- Different races with detailed background information and custom artwork. The custom artwork for each race even includes iconic representations of influence markers and action tokens.
- The variety and coolness factor of the custom ships. For Star Wars fans, some of the ships look like X-Wings, Correllian Corvettes, Imperial Star Destroyers and THE DEATH STAR. Fantasy Flight Games should have made one of the ships look like the Enterprise to cover all of their bases.
- Unique appearances of planets.
- A technology tree which allows you to customize the capabilities of your civilization.
- The game takes into account methods other than military dominance to gain advantages and win. This is in keeping with real battles between civilizations. Military might is usually the most important, but so is politics, trade, diplomacy, technology, and backstabbing.
How To Make Your Board Game Immersive
Fantasy Flight Games is one of the best board game publishers when it comes to creating or licensing immersive worlds for their board games. Getting a game up to their quality of immersion and production takes hard work, but there are some simple improvements that can be made to any game to increase the potential immersion.
- Create at least a limited story and world surrounding the game. When doing this, leave the world as open ended as possible to leave room for the imagination of the players and fans. As a game publisher you can solicit fan fiction providing free games to the authors of the best work.
- Choose an artist/graphic designer whose style can match well with the mood of your game world. Clearly you do not want to hire an animator from Blue Sky Studios to provide artwork for a horror themed game. Blue Sky Studio has produced the animated films, Robots, Ice Age, Ice Age 2, Horton Hears A Who?, and Ice Age 3. A friend of mine from college works at Blue Sky, and is the artist for the Tasty Minstrel Games logo and an upcoming card game called Cow Tipping.
- Choose an artist/graphic designer who is exceptionally good. We all like to think that our games are wonderfully enjoyable with clip art and generic text. To get the immersion benefits you need awesome art with a matching mood.
- Get as many unique and custom pieces as allowed by the game system and your production budget. Custom punched wooden pieces provide increased depth without breaking the bank.
I take my own advice on this subject, and you will be able to judge how successful Tasty Minstrel Games has been in creating immersive board games for our launch. I know that after playing Terra Prime, you will agree it is immersive. I am also confident that you will find Homesteaders to be more immersive than your typical economic cube pushing board game.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
“clearly you don't want to hire an Artist from blue sky studios to design a horror game”
Really? Clearly you don't know of Clayton Stillwell:
http://www.criminalmastermind.blogspot.com
Clearly I do not want to speak of generalities. Clayton's work looks fantastic for a horror game.
The point I am trying to make is that you want to match up the style of an artist with the desired mood of a game. Many artists are very versatile and are excellent artists for different styles, but are still likely to be superior in one style or another.
Clearly I do not want to speak of generalities. Clayton's work looks fantastic for a horror game.
The point I am trying to make is that you want to match up the style of an artist with the desired mood of a game. Many artists are very versatile and are excellent artists for different styles, but are still likely to be superior in one style or another.
The mechanics and theme of a game can combine to create another obstacle to immersion, something I call the “Who the **** am I?” problem. This happens when the player is making decisions of such enormous scale, or over such enormous periods of time within the game's world, that the setting doesn't really offer a plausible explanation of which entity the player represents.
My favorite example of this is Manifest Destiny, where players begin the game as one of several regional economic powers in 18th-century North America. They then grow and expand along with the exploitation of the continent over the subsequent two hundred years. Obviously the player isn't representing a single captain of industry, since no one lives that long, but one can imagine representing a succession of magnates or something like that. The bigger problem is that the different economic powers are clearly transnational rather than representing nations, but ultimately become so huge that they can't possibly represent a multinational corporation either. So the player can only guess at “Who the **** am I?”, with the best answer seemingly being “the 'chairman' of roughly one-quarter of the economy in North America during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.”
Another kind of example includes Vinci and 7 Ages, both games in which one chooses which civilizations to start and, eventually, when those civilizations will decline or disappear. It's difficult to imagine any real-world analog to that.
It's not an insurmountable obstacle to immersion, and I've enjoyed all of these, but some games offer power and options so unrealistic that it's harder to buy into the setting.
Who am I? Is an important question to answer for a board game. Once the who am I question is answered, there are often choices to be made in game design and development that will either support the goal or detract from it.
Strong themes to go along with strong game designs seem to always perform well sales wise.
Who am I? Is an important question to answer for a board game. Once the who am I question is answered, there are often choices to be made in game design and development that will either support the goal or detract from it.rnrnStrong themes to go along with strong game designs seem to always perform well sales wise.