What are INNOVATIONS you would like to see in the board game industry?

I want to see the trend of less complicated games continue. I’m largely only interested in games that accomplish more with by far less these days.

I don’t ever want to read another rulebook.

I don’t think “THE END OF KICKSTARTER” is a valid request, especially on the same day you gave a 5 star review to Root, a KS game. There needs to be something to support these niche games for when publishers don’t realize or who are unwilling to give in to that full vision, and unfortunately the market isn’t there yet. I dislike the pile-of-plastic stretchgoal bonanza as much as the next person who knows what the fuck they’re talking about, but man do I *LOVE* the stuff that only could have happened on KS with things being the way they are right now (ie, Vast, Dungeon Degenerates, Illimat, Techno Bowl, Camp Grizzly, etc).

Michael Barnes wrote: HA! What is up with that? Spanish games are almost always terrible, or at least they are badly published. I see that a company is from Spain and I'm like "I don't know..." based on past experience.

The companies themselves are terrible and poorly managed. They survive because the bussiness is too lucrative not to. It's hard to do poorly when the same company publishes all FFG games, all Ystari games, half of the Euros of the market and also games like The Republic of Rome and Eclipse.

Also, difficult to do poorly when you don't pay translators. All game translations are done for free by fans or someone paid like a fan. And in the case of NoSoloRol, a RPG publisher, they don't seem to pay anyone at all! But since they publish half of the noteworthy games in the bussiness...

Still, few companies publish Spanish games. If I recall correctly you had the misfortune of playing Full Moon (Luna Llena), which was published by Generación X Games. Spoiler: Gen X is a shop, not a "real" publisher. They don't seem to do testing or development beyond playing a few games amongst themselves and their component quality is terrible.

I don't quite know why Spanish games are so terrible, but I can see a few reasons:

a) Lack of professionalization. There are no professional game designers in Spain. In fact, there are very few designers at all as we understand them. We have a bunch of people who have made one game, and that's it.

b) Lack of national industry. And since there's no national industry, there can't be national designs of quality. Foreign publishers aren't going to bother with a Spanish designer, partly because they have no need to and partly because of prejudice.

c) Publishers are unwilling to invest. Spanish companies are very conservative and will refrain from making any serious inversion. They don't provide support for games, even when required to (Netrunner) and often will drop entire lines or expansions because margins are lower (Eg. Only 1 Cosmic Encounter Expansion was published in Spanish). I can't think of any medium-weight, "normal" games of Spanish origin other than MIL. Even Polis: Fight for the Hegemony is a small game in a small box and composed mostly of cards. They are not going to bother with a game like Terraforming Mars because it has too many components.

d) Publishers would rather print foreign games. I mean, why publish a game by a no-name designer when you can print a Phil Eklund game, a new edition of a Knizia game or Root?

e) Lack of gaming culture. I can't put my finger on it, but I believe there's less of an understanding of games in Spain than there is in the Anglosaxon world. For example, there's no real game criticism. There really isn't. You have one or two podcasts, which mostly talk about the last new games and follow the mainstream, and that's it. You don't have a site like F:AT, and you don't have the same level of analysis of games. I've mentioned this before, but one of the reasons why I keep my blog around is because I don't think there's anything like that in Spanish.

Anyways, I feel this lack of gaming culture extends to game design. When I have played a prototype I've had this disctinct feeling of playing very outdated designs, something out of Steve Jackson the early 90s. And it's not just the quality, it's the sense of being stuck with an unprincipled design that "works" but doesn't have any goals or interesting interactions on it. They don't feel part of any school of design, not because they are unique, but because they are a meaningless blob.

Michael Barnes wrote: No more games about European colonization.

Interestingly enough I would love to play a good game about the Conquest of the Americas because there doesn't seem to be any. Sure, you have a bunch of eurogames with a pasted on colonization theme and victory points but none that actually cover the subject. The only games that have tried are extremely old, like Conquistador, Age of Exploration or New World. And they don't seem to have aged well.

Talking about the Conquest of Americas, I would love more games about Spanish history. I've always wanted to make a game based on Spanish XIX century politics, using the illustrations from La Flaca (The thin one), because they are so evocative of the period.





The issue is that, historically speaking, there were only two "players" which pacted to take "turns" in power. That doesn't make for a compelling game, does it?

Not sure, I like the status quo.

Eurogames, with thene-mechanic disparity, allows for exploration of themes. Ameritrash getting simpler, while trying to have matching mechanisms.

ecargo wrote: I'd like to see more app integration. I am very much on the opposite side of "keep digital out of my games". I think interactive rulebooks, GMs, tracking, and many other things in games could be implemented (and have been to varying extents/success). I know it all costs money, but I don't care. Technology is useful, so use it.

My biggest fear is that much of what have made modern boardgames so great are the inherent limitations of the medium. Designers have been forced to pay attention to the actual pacing and step-by-step quality of their games because, if they didn't, the result is unplayable.

Having a computer control the game allows for much sloppier design and bloat. You don't see euro-videogames, because you can cram a hundred units in a Civ game and call it a day.

When I wrote about the merits of that formal limit awhile ago, I noticed that "fiddly" seemed to be the trigger word that indicated that a design had failed to hold up its end of the bargain, where all of the knobs and switches that it provides need to provide A. enough enticement on their own to compel play and B. provide enough experiential payoff in relation to the work required to use them. If "fiddly" comes out, it indicates the game is a bit too fascinated with itself and in need of editing.

Occluding "fiddliness" behind automation is probably just going to lead to other blind spots in the design. If something is automated in a black box and easy to repeat, I'm guessing that this might lead to excessively repetitive loops, a failure that we see more in realm of video games, where the "grindy" word often comes out in the pejorative.

I'm all for tech in games, but only so far as instructional videos, game aides, etc.

Apps are a bane simply because the app store can just pull it without any notice.

With DVDs and vhs, you're only constrained by having access to something by which to play the media on.

With as many apps and music/movies I've bought digitally that have been stripped from my devices because whatever reason the apple/Amazon/Google have deemed, my distrust of passing a game into posterity, relying on apps makes that proposition spurious at best.

Omega virus wouldn't be the classic it is, if it had to rely on a now non-existent app to function.

So, no thanks to apps. Experience has forced me to not bother with that fickle media for hybrid boardgames.

Purchase via Internet and delivery via PDF. This exists now, but I'd like to see it become more common in the industry. I have several games in this model. Love it, and it avoids customs, delivery charges, etc.

Gregarius wrote: I would like to see the commercial side of games expand from just sales to the consumer. For example, I'd love for there to be games available for check out from the library. Or a rental program at a local store. Or even a game exchange system through the interwebs. I know a lot of these things have been implemented at small scale in many places; I'd like to see it become commonplace.

A friend had a rental program at his store. Pay ten percent, bring home a game. Keep it and pay the remainder or return it in a few days. Seemed a solid idea to me.

cranberries wrote: 3) Tinder for gamers: You put in the games you want to play, the location, and filter out people with low social ratings (given for poor behavior, hygiene, etc.) and then you get matched up to play some great games. AND THERE'S NO SEX AFTERWARDS, SO SHUT UP IN ADVANCE BARNEY It could even have an algorithm that would predict how much fun you'll have. There are some euros that would be fun with the right people, for example, but would be a slog with others.

There’s GameFor. Don’t know if it’s any good, but it exists.

www.iamgamefor.com

DarthJoJo wrote:

Gregarius wrote: I would like to see the commercial side of games expand from just sales to the consumer. For example, I'd love for there to be games available for check out from the library. Or a rental program at a local store. Or even a game exchange system through the interwebs. I know a lot of these things have been implemented at small scale in many places; I'd like to see it become commonplace.

A friend had a rental program at his store. Pay ten percent, bring home a game. Keep it and pay the remainder or return it in a few days. Seemed a solid idea to me.

This is similar to one of the FLGS in Missoula, except the rental fee can be applied against a brand-new copy of the game and not whatever the rental has been reduced to at that point.

Colorcrayons wrote: I'm all for tech in games, but only so far as instructional videos, game aides, etc.

Apps are a bane simply because the app store can just pull it without any notice.

Good point. I returned an aging iPad to my department about three years ago. It was an iPad from 2011. Recently I purchased a new iPad, probably just to tie up the $300 I had from consulting that I didn't want to fritter away. After having incrementally spent hundreds of dollars on apps over the years, I was surprised at how many of them had disappeared or had been replaced with new versions when I fired up my new ipad.

If I hadn't gotten rid of my boardgames, I would still have some on the shelf from when I got back into the hobby, around 2005.

[My high school games (early eighties) would probably work fine too, but they mostly sucked.]<---I am not sure what I meant with this sentence. Board games? The ones I bought in the 80's were all terrible, except for the one about the time traveling soldier from Vietnam.

I wish I still had them.

I would like to see the industry, fans, and culture calm the fuck down about getting new shit in play and focus on what it already has. I know it's a constant whine from me, but if 90% of everything is crap then how about we talk about the other 10% instead of just constantly wading through the garbage?

Cards, board game or CCG/LCG:

Get rid of black/white borders forever. Make font size bigger. Less words, more succinct. Never include flavor text. Stop the practice of sealing them in fucking shrink wrap so they come permanently warped. Use better paper while you're at it.

Let me buy a tech-enabled play through with someone on the dev team. A live person who knows the rules. $30 session to coach me through this difficult to learn game. I may be lazy, I may be lonely, or I might have a learning disability. Or - based on the sorry state of my life - all three.

Tinder for gamers seems like it would lead to a really awkward morning.

The return of charts and tables to Ameritrash games