Board Game Business Podcast - Top 10 New Designer Mistakes

Some incredibly successful and amazing games would never have been made if they followed this list.

"Nobody wants to play that game about ant farms" are you kidding??? That's an incredible premise for a game!! There's so much potential there.

"Nobody wants to play a game about ants" - nobody cares a bout birds either, and yet Wingspan apparently sold well for a board game. Personally, I love games with strange premises. Beats the monotony of playing medieval fantasy games.

Making a complex game is not a mistake. It's a choice. These guys want to reach the mass market, but some designers make different choices.

Some of these are not whether or not you're making a good game, but a marketable one. A complex game that takes 2-3 hours isn't bad, it's just not going to make you a ton of money.

I'd rather play a game about an ant colony than one about an executive about to be fired.

some time stamps: 0:46 #10 NO APPLES TO APPLES OR CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY 1:39 #9 NO MASS APPEAL 2:48 #5 TAKES TO LONG TO PLAY (go back for more context) 2:56 #8 LACKS REPLAYABIITY 4:28 #6 ONLY ONE STRATEGY 5:16 #7 TOO MANY COMPONENTS 7:04 #4 TOO COMPLEX 10:43 #3 ITS NOT FUN 12:42 #2 CHOICES ARENT INTERESTING 13:56 #1 ITS NOT UNIQUE please like this it took a long time I hope its helpful and have a great day you are amazing!

You are right that the largest games market by far is the casual games segment.  However, it's also true that the casual game market has the most competition, so it's very difficult to capture significant market share.  As a result, targeting your games at this market will not guarantee success any more than producing "designer games" for the more niche hard core gamer market.

Sad confession time.  Found this video via TGC news feed and watched.  Heard reference to Too Big to Fail.  Yeah, I was the guy who made the deck-builder about raiding failing businesses and cashing out as soon as possible.  At a Protospiel about 2-3 years ago.  That was literally the third test on it and I was searching for feedback on how to reduce this time and I recently picked it back up and have it down to about 45 minutes with 2 players.  So sad that my first mention on a Dice Tower podcast was actually making a huge mistake.  My biggest problem in designs is starting long then culling things down.

I want to play that ant game :P It has potential!

"Cards and dice, the classic mistake." Man, someone better tell Imperial Assault, Dead of Winter and Eldritch Horror they screwed up.

1. mechanics enforce alpha gamery 2. no interesting decisions / boring game play 3. no immersion by mechanics / slapped on theme 4. down time / no interaction / no participation while the others play 5. single player engine optimization faked as multi player 6. point salat analysis paralysis 7. issues with flow of game 8. too many rules that don't add much to the game 9. bad rules as written 10. too streamlined and dumbed down (don’t confuse with elegant like hanabi or love letter) ^ my list. Have fun.

1. It has to have an app 2. It is a legacy game 3. It is a roll and write 4. Kickstarter "Exclusives" 5. Blind Collecting 6. Too many components (Making it hard to store, set up, tear down, travel with) 7. VOTING FOR TURN ORDER/LAWS IN A SPACE GAME! 8. Games that punish you for ANY decision you make 9. Missprinted components (Terraforming Mars)

keywords "from a publisher's point of view".

I think this was an interesting video, and I appreciated the insight into the panelist's views, but in the end I think it just reflects one business strategy, rather than universal truths about the business.

A 2-3 hour game is EXACTLY how much time I want to spend playing with a friend or friends!

Ant colony game sounds like an interesting idea!

10:06 "The big, long 2 hour game".

I disagree about point #2... if you have a great ant-themed game (or whatever) which has a very detailed and accurate theme, I love that! I love that it exists! I mean, obviously it should also be fun but the theme won't prevent that. More importantly, people who also love ants will be overjoyed that out of the sea of boring clones of popular theme shit, there's something for them. Why would you discourage people from producing something original? If they're making it because they want that game but it doesn't exist, why doesn't it exist? Because of attitudes like this, like, "you won't make gobs of money unless it's fantasy-themed or something!" I mean, maybe making gobs of money isn't their game design goal...

Guy in the middle is the typical guy you don’t want to play with.