Stop TRYING to innovate : The Power of Continuous Improvement in Board Game Design
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ส.ค. 2024
- One of the most common bits of advice that I hear is that publishers are looking for INNOVATIVE ideas which allow them to stand out. But do they mean it? And is it a sensible business approach?
www.adamportergames.com - เกม
"Be distinctive instead of innovative" is great advice. it was one of the first things I was told when I got into screenwriting. Instead of trying to create something wholly new or different, just tell your story in your own, unique voice. This can certainly pertain to game design, too.
Ideas and execution are two factors, but there's also marketing, art quality, theme, and production quality, probably in that order, which have a massive impact on a game's success.
Wild to think that there are new (fairly simple) ideas being discovered and popularized in just the recent past. What a time to be alive. The 80s through early 2000s really have such a range of ways to play digital and physical games.
Also a little sad that there are so many forgotten and unsuccessful games. Hopefully people had fun with them!
Right on! “Doing new stuff well” is the absolut key thing to this.
Absolutely.
You won’t believe how valuable this video is to me. As you know I’ve been trying to design my own little board game this summer and although I have the general idea, I got stuck with the mechanism “it’s been done… do something new” problem. Now I am relieved that I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. I will focus more on making a BORED game… LOL. Thank you, Sir!
Glad it helped you!
well said! I already take that approach with my brewing career. But I didn't realize I was wasting my effort, trying to reinvent the wheel with game design.
It’s not a total waste of time - innovation is necessary to move the industry forward - but it’s rare, and hard to aim towards. I think it often “just happens” by luck more than judgement.
Much better to master your craft by gradually building on what’s gone before.
@@AdaminWales thank you
Phil Walker Harding is a good example of a designer who is rarely innovative. However he is the master of tweaking existing mechanisms, simplifying gameplay, and making a well-oiled 45 minute game with tempting themes and designs.
This is very true. One of the best designers out there. I think of him as a designer who will strip a mechanism to its core - and remove anything superfluous. His real talent is in “finding the fun” amongst all the noise.
I'm going to have to check out Thrown because it seems somewhat similar to the game I'm working on in terms of the dice play at least. It's a war game centered around creating formations of unit classes, which roll die depending on their position in the unit. A knight rolls extra dice in the front row of the unit, but rolls no dice in the back row for example. Your units can be flanked, however, which could result in your back left row Archer being on the front row if it was attacked from that side. Magic units roll elemental dice that can change the battlefield itself by starting fires, rain, fissures, etc. or in a change in fortune from the tarot decks. It's largely based on the Ogre Battle game series.
That sounds really good. I like the idea. Doesn’t sound a lot like Thrown though! :)
"Be more boring!!!" What great advice!!! I have years of experience in improv theater and theatersports as well and I have completely forgotten these magical words by Keith Johnstone... Thank you for reminding me. At the moment I am designing a board game. It too features game mechanisms that currently are already out there. So I take it as a compliment from this video, that I am heading in the right direction...
I love that you have Evolution so prominently displayed in the background. It’s such a great game! And the digital app is amazing!
Evolution is my favourite game - it tends to get mentioned in a lot of my videos :)
@@AdaminWales I highly recommend the digital app if you've never tried it. The AI opponents are challenging, and then there is a MASSIVE leap in the level of challenge you'll experience if you try and play against online competitors (who seem to be relatively few but VERY skilled).
It's too bad the game is so brutal at times, I think that's what prevents it from being more popular than it is (it is extremely demoralizing to have your species predated to extinction or to deploy a new species and see it immediately starve to death).
I feel like this video is mostly about how to run a board game business successfully. Dont take risks, make what consumers want.
Innovation is risky, but essential. Without it we would be playing Chess. And all game companies would just print chess boards.
Someone has to go first. While it might not be commercially successful as the more polished 2nd generation with primed consumers, it still has to happen.
I think you have a good point about how innovation has brought us to this point. I would say the vast majority of these alterations have been micro-innovations, which effectively means iteration. Because thousands of board games are released each year, it results in a diverse range of products.
To be honest, there is no agreed-upon definition of innovation - particularly among product designers, which makes it hard to debate a particular point, because you often find you're speaking from a similar mindset, just with different words!
I totally agree about the value of making new and unique products to advance the craft. That's a really valid reason to design games. This particular video series is all about product design, which usually has commercial success as its primary goal. But it's also about creating things that people want to play. Huge leaps from the norm are uncomfortable for many people.
Thanks for the input!
To your point - This is my first time seeing any of your videos. There are a LOT of familiar tropes in this board game video, namely white dude sitting in front of board games talking about board games.
But there a lot of things here that you’ve done really well - sound and lighting for one. But more importantly (to me) - good length, changing visuals, background music, EDITED and RESEARCHED (to games pre-dating 2000) and one small thing I hadn’t seen before - a game designer openly talking about why a particular game of theirs possibly didn’t “click” with players.
Leading to an excellent iteration of a familiar thing and an insta-subscribe from me.
Now on to your other videos.
Glad to hear I've successfully iterated, even if my video isn't particularly innovative ;) Not much I can do about being a white dude. And I don't have any other spots to film unfortunately - the living room is the realm of the dogs... and they will certainly reduce the sound quality! I'll try and venture in there for a change of scenery from time to time. I must admit I do prefer board game videos where the presenter has a stylish backdrop, with just a hint of gaming paraphernalia lying around. (Actualol is doing really well this this recently).
But thanks for the kind comments - I'm glad you enjoyed the video, and hope you find the others to be just as interesting.
Great video, Adam! Your admonitions and insights here are well put.
Thanks Dustin :)
Admonition - authoritative counsel or warning. I’ve learned a new word today! Thank you!
I'm probably biased because I fall into this category, but IMO there's a market for trick-taking-based games that the traditional trick-taking fanbase will hate. I don't particularly like trick-taking games as a genre but I'll happily play something like Tournament at Avalon because the trick-taking is being used to enhance a type of game I'm interested in. (Although I think TaA is probably a little overlong for what it is).
I get the impression trick-taking is a lot like Chess. You won't do well trying to sell a modified version of Chess to chess-players because what they love about Chess is that they've mastered the depth of the game and can play at that level. But you can do well taking chess-like elements and putting them into other games like Into the Breach.
I think that sums up the trick taking conundrum really well!
Cosmic Encounter was truly innovative - first game with asymmetric powers, cooperative and negotiation, and expansions.
I hear Cosmic Encounter used as an example of innovative design all the time. I haven’t played it, but I’d like to.
OMG, Adam Porter! I remember you from Act One. I hope you're doing as well for yourself as this video makes you look!
Thanks Ben. Doing OK! 😊 Small world. Nice to see Act One folk enjoying playing board games!
@@AdaminWales in response to your actual video! Cards Against Humanity took the solid mechanic from Apples to Apples, and now it's the most famous example of that mechanic. I had an idea for a game that uses tiles with red and blue marks and you wear red and blue goggles so you can only see half the markings... Great concept, but no idea what the game is about lol. Classic over design right there. But I'm working on an RPG that's like D&D but with a more accessable user interface and that's is going well.
Thrown is a wicked pun tho
Thanks! For a while I was calling it “A game of throws” but I thought that was too cheesy - so I went for Thrown - and the publisher liked it. The game was in production when “Dice Throne” was released and I was always a little disappointed that they got there first! :D
Making a home made Mandalorian board game. Two to four players. It has forty chips, twenty cards, a dice on double sided game board. It's based on one of the episodes. It has four main linear games to the episode. A collect, escape, banish, and repair game. At least two other games can also be played, checkers, and a memory game.
What a helpful video, thank you for your insight!
The timing of this couldn't be more prescient. I just made it as a semi-finalist in the board game workshops International board game design contest. The theme for the second phase is innovation. How exactly is my game innovative? Oh bugger....
Congratulations on making it to the semi-finals. There are lots of definitions of innovation, and many would include small
iterative steps, or even ways in which you have executed your ideas better than others who have gone before (even if the idea itself is not entirely new). So I don’t think you should be hamstrung by the need to produce something totally original/unique. Just work out what it is that your game does differently/better than other similar games. That’s probably the level of innovation they’re talking about in the competition. Good luck!
Incredible advices even for video game design
IDK if role/action following existed before Puerto Rico, but if not, then it's another example of successful innovation
I don’t know the history of this one either, but as clever as the mechanism is, I’m not sure it’s had the same impact as deckbuilding for example. There are still relatively few games using the follow mechanism. Still, a nice innovation.
@@AdaminWales It might not be as copied and/or IP-branded as deckbuilding(perhaps due to the "action sharing" aspect not being as easy to adapt as card effect-based gameplay, or out of fear of difficult onboarding, especially with casually-oriented IP games), but the fact that its codifier Puerto Rico was BGG #1 for a while, along with how major players like Twilight Imperium 4 and Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition adapted it, seem to show how influential & successful it is. But yeah, relatively few compared to roll n write, deckbuilding, worker placement, and closed drafting
By the way, I-cut-you-choose seems to be on a rise. Even Geoff jokingly considers retiring its "most underused mechanic" epithet
Andean abyss coin series seems new and unique.
I’m hearing about lots of new games in the comments! Thanks!
Very well done. Thank you for the video. Be more boring, I have to remember that. ;)
Regarding cooperative games, one of the first the this genre where the Star Wars game: Escape From The Death Star published by West End Games (1990). It was the first I saw and played at a convention in the 90's. I'm sure there are other pre-dating that.
Thanks! I haven’t played Escape from the Death Star, although I’ve certainly seen it on sale.
@@AdaminWales It's worth it. Like so many coop games it's very hard to complete. One of the last pages of the rulebook has scaling for how hard it's going to be. You can set it yourself just like Pandemic over a decade later. ^^
And it has a note on the cover "coop or solitaire play". The fourth game "Battle for Endor" was my first solitaire game. ;)
Interesting take, I've never been a fan of the notion that a game can be dismissed as 'just copying x', as I've yet to see a game that didn't do at least a few things in their own way.
I think a good example of this is the legacy games made by Rob Daviau. Pandemic legacy was hailed as the greatest of all time and it was essentially just pandemic with a few additions, great additions, but not massive ones. Whereas Seafall, which was an entirely new design with its own mechanics, never really took off, tested mechanics clearly work when iterated on.
I hope board games continue to stand on the shoulders of giants to get better.
Good example with Seafall!
Agreed, in addition, different people have difference preferences, so some small changes can make a world of difference to some players. For example to me pandemic is a borring theme, its like "Doing the dishes: The Board Game", and now (propaganda, censorship, abuse of authority, crimes against humanity, orwellian surveillance) I hate the theme even more, but I like Reign of Cthulhu which to me provides a totally different experience the movement and interaction is smoother, the theme is well implemented, the Shoggots are a menace to deal with, etc, imo it is underrated and should not even have Pandemic in the name thats too much (the same way a Ferrari should not be named "Ford model T: LaFerrari" , thats over the top imo). An aknowledgment in the rulebook would have sufficed imho.
@@icewendigo2320 good point about theme, I own a few games over others mostly cause I like the theme better than a similar game with similar mechanics. An example for me is Brew Crafters, which has many similarities to Agricola, but I like it more because I'm a big lover of craft beer, I'd be very surprised if that feeling isnt pretty universal amongst board gamers.
I'm not a fan of the Cult of 'Nothing New' either
In the year 9BC, Kings and Things utilised hexes as single terrain types.
Although games like Wizards and Magic Realm had utilised hex based tiles previously, Kings and Things is the first I am aware of to boil it down to "One hex tile"="One terrain type"
If anyone can think of an earlier example I'd be interested.
Really good example of a micro-innovation, and something we take for granted now! Though I’d question whether Kings and Things was genuinely designed in 9BC 😂
@@AdaminWales Thanks. Yep, pretty sure it was 9BC (Before Catan)
@@sirpercivale 😂
Perhaps it's been done before, but the action selection in Civilization: A New Dawn was different to any other game I had. The game has a 'focus bar' with slots 1-5 with cards underneath. Using a card in a higher slot generally works better for you, but the card is then sent back down to slot 1. I really enjoy planning ahead in games and this has me scratching my head a lot of the time trying to figure out what the next course of action is. Going off your previous short video about taking too long on turns, I would probably be your worst nightmare haha. PS keep up the great videos Adam and I love how honest you are about 'Thrown's limited success and it was nice to hear you talk about why exactly that may not have been as popular as say Picocco
Thanks Mark - I haven’t played Civilization (as with so many of the games suggested in these comments!!) I’m glad you’re enjoying the videos.
You mentioned my discussion of Thrown and Pikoko. I’m glad you appreciate the transparency in these conversations. I see no benefit in “selling” my games in these videos. To be honest, the viewer count is too low to have much of an impact on sales anyway(!) so I prefer to discuss what I’ve learned from each project, while also trying to be mindful of the publishing teams who worked on the games, and making sure that I am respectful of their input. The truth is that I LOVE every one of my published games. I would happily play them any time. But they have had varying levels of success commercially, and that’s worth reflecting on.
Have you tried Ark Nova? It's got a similar system
@@revimfadli4666 not yet but I've seen it has a similar system. Might go and watch some reviews now actually as my missus keeps asking what I want for my bday next month lol
Incredibly helpful video!
Thanks :) Glad it was helpful!
I agree with some points and disagree with others. To sell a product to many customers and be successful financially, innovation is perhaps more reliable than invention, but inventors who can see a need and imagine a new product are the ones who truly set the stage for years to come for other innovators. Take smartphones, touch screens and swiping became commonplace because Apple invented them and their focus on UI is perhaps something others didn't think about hard enough to invent a solution for.
I also have to disagree with storytelling. Yes, many enjoy the same stories being told to them with different themes on them, as do I, but as someoen who has consumed a lot of movies/books/tv, I appreciate something new. Game of Thrones for instance isn't one to follow the fairytale trope, but George RR Martin was not afraid to pull the rug out from under his audience. Though I will say thrillers and twist endings have also become cliche in some ways.
In terms of board games, I think oddly Wingspan's success isn't necessarily that it streamlines or executes tried and true mechanisms for its success, but perhaps Elizabeth hit on a theme at the right time where the hobby had neededa better range of themes besides fantasy, war and scifi. Wingspan is still difficult for non-hobby gamers, but the theme is much more approachable.
If anything, I wonder if your innovative or inventive designs are ahead of their time. Perhaps trick taking fans are just not ready for such a big twist as you said. The Crew certainly has shown that trick taking can be fully cooperative or perhaps it is grabbing a new market of non-trick-takers to play with that mechanism more. Definitely folks who are used to their classic game (whatever it is) will be more resistant to change. Would most chess fanatics really want to play variants or would they just prefer to stick to the base rules with maybe fancier components instead?
I think marketing a product is sometimes very different than designing a unique game.
This vid and your comment reminded me of Jonas Tyroller's "But Design" video, which is basically nailing the balance in "familiar yet with a twist"
Excellent video again Adam!
Thanks Gino!
I agree 100%
Thanks Marcus!
Hey Adam!
We're currently in the process of finishing production on Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor, which is a cooperative 4X game! Talk about unique!
As for success - we've had about 3,5k backers in our first KS, hoping to 3-5x it next time around. :)
Congratulations 😀
Great video
Thanks Scott :)
Great video! However, I do believe Bus(1999) from Splotter Spellen predates Keytown (2000) in terms of worker placement games. Still, a fantastic video! Subscribed.
Thanks! I misspoke in the video. I meant to say Keydom (1998) not Keytown. Still, I know many attribute the mechanism to Bus. I haven’t played any of them so I don’t have a view!
Thanks! I misspoke in the video. I meant to say Keydom (1998) not Keytown. Still, I know many attribute the mechanism to Bus. I haven’t played any of them so I don’t have a view!
Brilliant
BUS (1999) released by Splotter spellen had worker placement mechanic first!!! :)
Good point! I’ve read many, many threads arguing a definition for worker placement over the years - and also arguing which was the first. BUS is often credited as the first. But it’s predated by Breese’s Keydom (not Keytown - I misspoke in the video). As usual, it all hangs on your chosen definition of worker placement. What is certain is that the mechanism didn’t start with Caylus or Agricola!
Good vid!
Thanks!
Wondering how this might apply to the Pre-Catanian history of boardgaming, and in particular, wargaming.
I’m not expert on wargaming!!! But I don’t believe that the “first” example of most mechanisms in modern strategy games has often been a marker of success, even pre-Catan. Many designers have made micro-innovations, and iterated on predecessors’ works to create huge successes. For example, I understand that Wolfgang Kramer was the first designer to put a score track around the edge of the board! What a great innovation!! But I don’t think that innovation led to great success. It just quietly found it’s way into thousands of other games that followed.
@@AdaminWales What was the game? The poor fellow's not even listed on BGG. 😯
@@MisterG2323 I believe it was Auf Achse but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone could point to an earlier example. And Wolfgang Kramer has produced enough massive hits (El Grande, Tikal, 6 Nimmt and many, many more) I’m sure he’s not too worried about credit! He was also an early user of action points in the Mask trilogy, and individual player boards in Princes of Florence.
@@AdaminWales Oops, there he is; my search was inadequate. My bad. 🙄
@@AdaminWales Wargaming were the first to use cards: for instance "Up Front" (1982 - Advanced Squad Leader the card game it's called). And I believe that "Auf Achse" was the first to put a score track around the edge of the board.
… yeah… I’m going to say it…. Waaaaaaait fot it….
Monopoly! 🤭😋
Undoubtedly, Monopoly introduced a lot of familiar ideas way before any other games.
Which has also (as the other examples in the video) a widely unknown predecessor - The Landlord's Game
I like the video but your advice feels like it might be fueled too much by your experience and bias. Thats why for me personally I would take it with a pinch of salt. Yes innovation for the sake of innovation is not the answer but being predicatble is also not always the answer. Some of the best moments from tv shows have been when the unpredictable happens and for some they want to see the typical happly ever after. There is definatly more than a few that want the unexpected. I have worker placement games and there have been great new games with the mechanic. I will never buy them though as for me i only need one or two worker placement games. There might be better itterations but it would have to be a big leap to get me to replace the games i have. Not saying i have the anwers and that you dont have valid arguments i just dont know that they are all 100% true/valid. I wish there was some more consideration to your thoughts as i was hoping to have a paradigm shift.
Thanks for the counterpoint. I may well be coloured by my own negative experiences. Though I hope that my opinion is more informed by years of research of the toy and game industry and studying examples of commercially successful games.
Like you, I personally frequently purchase games based on their innovative features - but I’m also very aware that I am not typical. Neither are the many very committed gamers who attend my local game groups etc. There are a sizeable number of gamers looking for new mechanisms, as you mention, but they are eclipsed by the more casual players who don’t have the wealth of experience of those deeply immersed in the hobby. The majority of board game consumers purchase relatively few games, play them relatively infrequently, and don’t really care what’s gone before. With thousands of games releasing year on year, it’s really hard to create something new. And there is often a reason why an innovative new idea hasn’t been done before - it just doesn’t connect or engage.
Iterative design, on the other hand, has a proven track record. Practically all of the massive hits of the last decade have built on earlier titles, with small twists (in the grand scheme of things) perhaps a new theme, and ever more impressive presentation.
It’s been a while now since I made this video, and I’ve reflected on it quite a bit (it garnered more attention than most of my videos). I do think I could have defined innovation and iteration more clearly. They are muddy concepts - and used differently by different people. People have a different threshold for what they describe as innovative. I admit, mine was a pretty high bar in this video (including Dominion, MTG, D&D, but excluding Mystic Vale). I recognise that many popular games DO feature substantial new concepts that many gamers would consider innovative. From a broader product design perspective though, they still look and feel like a traditional board game - and that impressive new mechanism which us gamers got excited about, looks like a very insubstantial change to the casual player. Sometimes, it’s just a semantic argument.
Regardless, the title of the video is “stop TRYING to innovate”. The core message is: if you spend all your time trying to innovate, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Aim for excellence in what you do. Take the pressure off yourself. And you’ll probably create something brilliant, even if it’s heavily inspired by earlier games. And innovative ideas are more likely to pop into your mind when you’re not TRYING so hard.
Hey Adam, love your channel, and this is a really good video. But I think that something needs to be added. You're providing accurate, pragmatic advice precisely on how to make what sells, what gets big, and that's certainly useful to designers and publishers. But your focus is so aimed at pleasing audiences, giving people what they already know they want, that I think it might not take into account the spark that impels a designer to make something idiosyncratic, a vision which prioritizes art over hit potential. A design which will decidedly not be something for everyone, but which will be everything to someone.
FWIW I recommend Rick Rubin's book The Creative Act as a companion consideration -- a taste is here th-cam.com/video/IVe9-_ebyXk/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for all you do!
Is it a troll or what, but I made several mechanisms in 2 weeks.
This channel is a little depressing. The more videos I watch, the more im getting the message pushed of "You will probably never do anything great, so find something mediocre to be happy with, thats how i managed to publish 7 games."
Maybe i don't care if my game gets published, and the only goal I have is to create something fun and innovative
Good luck with carving your own path :)
You might find the following video more positive and in line with your approach:
Unleash your inner designer
th-cam.com/video/y2vpRG0EbrI/w-d-xo.html
I don't think MTG was innovative. They based the idea off of DnD as a card game and there were other CCGs at that predate MTG. MTG just did it the most successfully. Almost all "innovative" ideas are based off of other ideas.
The tactical combat system with huge strategic impact on the map in Friedrich seems very innovative to me.
I’m not familiar with that game, but now I’m intrigued :)