I recently read this listicle on the Better House and Garden Magazine website: a magazine that has a pretty big readership*.
I'll spare you the read:
The Game of Life, Clue, Candyland, Monopoly, Scrabble, Battleship, Risk, Stratego, Axis and Allies, Chess, Backgammon, Checkers, Chinese Checkers, Blokus, Agricola, Connect Four, Twister, Operation, Don't Break the Ice, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Boggle, Mouse Trap, Jenga, Mastermind, Qwirkle, Uno, Cranium, Dominos, Chutes and Ladders, Carcassonne, Traffic Jam, Trouble, Ticket to Ride, Sorry!, Yahtzee, Pictionary, Apples to Apples, Scattergories, Catchphrase, Taboo, Speak Out, Password, Mad Gab, Trivial Pursuit, Catan, Dominion, Cribbage, Cards against Humanity, and Azul
My first emotion when I finished reading this list was frustration.
Frustration that so many "hum-drum" games are still getting attention after all of this time. Traffic Jam, Mouse Trap and Hungry Hungry Hippos barely qualify as games - they're more like puzzles or toys. And does any one really need to be reminded about the existence of Chess, Checkers or Backgammon? This list read like the shelf at my local Goodwill.
To the list creator's credit, they did add some "newish" games like CAH, Qwirkle, Azul, and Dominion, but even most of those are over 12 years old! Hardly the new hotness.
It's not to say that (most) of these games don't deserve to be on the "best of all time" list (although I would hotly argue against CAH) but is this really the best games of all time? Surely there are games more interesting and exciting that deserve to bump a few of these off this list?
...OR is this list a challenge to us game designers who are trying to make a mark? I think we game designers can learn from this list because, like it our not, it shows us our competition.
Let's look at some common factors about all of these games:
1. Almost half of the games are over 50 years old.
Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, Chinese Checkers, Sorry!, Monopoly, Twister, Dominos, Risk, Stratego, Candyland, Clue, The Game of Life, Mastermind, Password, Battleship, Operation, Don't Break the Ice, Mouse Trap, Chutes and Ladders, Trouble, Yahtzee, And Cribbage - with several (Uno, Mad Gab, and Hungry Hungry Hippos) creeping up on 50.
The "problem" with these games is that they are institutions. Games that have become part of the social consciousness although the consciousness of this list is very Euro/Western-centric list - where is Mahjong, Go, or Parcheesi?
These are games whose imagery is burned in our collective brains. If you were to go outside right now (OK, use social media instead) and if you asked people to "name a board game" 75% (if not more) of the people asked would answer one of games on the above list**.
These are games that are considered "evergreen" games. Games that have sold for decades. I guarantee if you were to go to Hasbro and ask which would you rather publish, Clue or my new game? You know who is going to win out. In a way, those successful games keep our new games off the shelves.
This is a "problem" for us game designers. Unlike video games, board games never really age or go out of fashion. Their graphics don't look dated (mostly) and their hardware doesn't fail over time.
"Every game is our competition" someone once said***. This makes it really tough (and frankly, stupid) to say "I am going to design the next (fill-in-the-blank-game-from-the-above list)" because those games are so cemented in humanity's collective brains that they aren't going to get unseated any time soon. And we shouldn't even try.
At the 2019 Tabletop Network Conference, Martin Wallace advised game designers to "not grow your tree in the shadow of a bigger tree" - which I think is a great metaphor... but it also makes our job that much harder.
Being original is HARD. (and some would say, it's impossible to be original any more - you can only be "novel" or "unique".)
Look at the "youngest" games on the list - Dominion, Qwirkle (both 2008), Cards Against Humanity (2009), and Azul (2017). It's not unfair to say these games are "just" revised or rethemed versions of Magic the Gathering, Dominoes, Apples to Apples and Majhong. Is this a strategy to success? Simplify an already simple game or even just "make it prettier"?
2. Most (98%) of these games are for "all-ages".
Which really means that they are relatively easy to learn how to play (Agricola and Dominion being the list's exceptions).
The hobbyist board game community often looks down on "easy to learn" and "simple" as a negative - as a game that isn't extremely complicated isn't worth our time. There's even a derogatory name for these type of simple games - "filler games" - as in these games just "fill the time" between bigger, more worthwhile games. We, as game makers, need to get over ourselves if we want to make games that stand the test of time like those games above and embrace (if not celebrate) simplicity.
3. None of these games are "genre" games.
None of these games are about the following genres: Fantasy, Science-Fiction, Superheroes, Westerns, Dungeons, Dragons, Cthulhu or Zombies.
Five of these games are about warfare (and that's because the list-maker had a category called "strategy games"), two are about farming, one is about murder, one is about finance, and one is about traffic***.
Most of these games are abstract - meaning there is no story, no characters, no setting for these games. They are "first person" games where the player is "just" the player.
This observation says to me: "if you want your game to be successful, it needs to be relatable." It either needs to be about something that happens in real-life (like farming or traffic or murder) or that it exist in that abstract place where games seem to live - the realm of mechanisms over theme.
Now, this one is a bitter pill for me to swallow. Despite being the creator of Pantone the Game, I'm a "theme first" kind of guy. Does this mean if I want to compete with the "big-boys" I need to think more abstractly?
4. These games are tactile.
While tactility is an important part of game design, these games are "not just card" games. Life, Monopoly and Traffic Jam have little cars. Candyland has gingerbread pawns. Scrabble, Dominoes, Qwirkle and Azul use chunky tiles. Chinese Checkers use marbles. Sorry uses cones. Pegs and Pawns. Meeples and Tokens. Some of them use "unusual" interface tools such as tweezers, hammers, modelling clay and even your own body parts. In fact, only 12 of the games on the list use cards at all.
These games are also "toyetic" - or have a toy-like quality to them. Mouse Trap is not much of a game, but it is one heck of a toy. There are two types of game makers out there. The "inventors" who make games for the mass-market companies: Hasbro, Mattel, Griffen, Wonderforge and the "game designers" who make games for everyone else. Whose games do you see more of on the shelf at your local big-box store?
5. Most of these games are for many players.
I think it's fair to say that most of these games are considered "kids" games or "party" games, but they are also for 4 or more players.
There are some exceptions (Chess, Backgammon, Connect Four, Mastermind, Stratego) but as all games are social, the games on this list exploit the social aspect that board gaming caters to so well.
See how many players it takes before your game "breaks" - either takes too long for players between turns or there isn't enough physical space around the board or enough cards to go around. The more players the better! (Pro-tip, you can break players into teams to maximize player count - that's how Pantone the Game plays 2-20 players!)
These games also encourage interaction amongst players, there no "multiplayer solitaire" or "parallel play" happening in these games. Keeping a player engaged in the game at all times should be a standard goal for any game designer... but I admit, sometimes I forget to think about it. (This is why I write this stuff down, dear reader)
So what is a game designer to do?
If we want to be competitive, take a long look at the competition... and then try to find your own spot to "plant your tree" - away from the air and water-sucking games on this list.
Design a game about a relatable activity for a group of people, that has a tactile element and is easy to learn. Then maybe next year we'll see your game***** on this list!
Footnotes:
* According to the interwebs, Better Homes and Gardens has a readership of somewhere between 7.6 and 30 million readers (!!!) - It's the third largest paid magazine circulation in the United States. That's a list worth getting on!
** As I was writing this blog post, I ran my own poll on social media. Granted, many of my friends are "gamers" who play and know about all types of board games, but even still, 75% of them listed a game from that list above as the game they think of when I say "Name a board game". Booyah! Right on the nose with my original estimation!
*** It might have been Rob Daviau who said this. I forget.
**** A game about traffic? Does this finally mean vindication for Randall Hoyt?
***** For the record, I would have replaced a few of the games on that list with Quiddler, Pandemic and Codenames.
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