Last week I got back from GenCon. Here are some of the highlights.
Part 1: The Long Journey
My original plan was to leave on a flight from Denver at 6:00 AM going to Champaign, IL; this way I could spend a few hours in Champaign, and then take a bus to Indianapolis (it is about a 2 hour bus ride). However this plan didn't work because the flight from Denver was delayed until 12:30. Fortunately I explained to them what I wanted to do, and they saw there weren't any other flights to Champaign, but they rebooked me on another flight going from Denver to Detroit and then from there to Indianapolis. I was actually very surprised at how easy this was; I expected it to be a big problem that I wanted to go to someplace that wasn't on my original itinerary, and I expected to have to explain the story to several different people, pay an extra fee, etc. but that didn't happen. So it was a bummer that I didn't get to go to Champaign, but at least I ended up where I wanted to in the end.
Part 2: This Is A Test
At GenCon there was a "First Exposure Playtest Hall", where game designers bring prototypes of new games to playtest. The games are scheduled in two-hour slots, where you pick up a ticket for the type of game you want to play - each game is described with a brief blurb like "Super Hero Deck Building Game." I did a few of these and some of games I did included the following:
1. Board game based on Greek mythology - each player is a Greek hero and they run around the board completing quests. I liked the theme of this game, but didn't really like the "political" aspect - there are lots of cards that you play on other player's turns to interfere with them, so if everyone gangs up and plays all the cards on one player it is difficult to win.
2. Dungeon crawling game based on video games - this game was a game where you go through a dungeon and fight monsters, and the artwork style is based on those old "8-bit" video games (i.e. like the original Nintendo Entertainment System). I didn't really like this game, because it just didn't offer anything that dozens of other games where you go around and fight monsters don't.
3. Two player adventure game where one player is the hero and one is the villain - this game was very different than other ones. The way it works is that the hero chooses a random "adventure card" from a pile of several dozen, and each of those has 4 stages on it, and it is arranged in a "choose your own adventure" format so that the villain reads the card aloud, and the hero chooses which choice he wants to determine which encounter comes up at each stage. During these encounters the hero and villain both have powers they can use to try to win the encounter, and the winner gets rewards. After going through three different adventure cards there is a "boss fight" where encounters are drawn from a special boss fight deck, and best 3 out of 5 encounters wins. I thought this game was really cool and very different from other games.
Also the group that does this runs another convention called "Metatopia" later in the year, which is much smaller and is basically just playtesting. I haven't been to that one before, but I might go this year.
Part 3: Made in America
I also went to a seminar about board game manufacturing, titles "Why does your game cost so much to make?" Here are some interesting facts that I learned.
- If a game costs $X to make, the designer will usually sell it to distributors for $2X (to cover other expenses, taxes, profit, and the possibility of having unsold product). After you add in the distributor's markup (when selling to the retailer) and the retailer's markup, the game costs $5X to buy from the store.
- There are about 1,200 board game stores (I don't know whether that number is just in the US, or if it includes other countries). For a new game from a new designer, a store buying 3-6 copies of the one game is a lot.
- There are lots of factors that go into the price of a game, and smart designers will learn how the manufacturing process works to they can make changes that might make the game cheaper. For instance, cards are printed in "sheets" which usually have 110 cards. So if your game has 120 cards, that's not good because you're wasting most of the second sheet. So if you can get down to 110 cards, then you will only need one sheet. Also, many rulebooks will be a multiple of 16 pages because the rulebooks are printed on sheets 16 pages in size and then folded up.
- If the game is relatively low on the scale in terms of size of order, the printer will not ship it directly to the distributors. Rather, the printer will ship it to the designer (so the designer will either have to rent warehouse space, or store all those games in his garage) and then the designer will handle getting orders from the distributor and shipping them. I thought that this seemed like an inefficient process, and didn't really understand their explanation of why they did it that way.
- There are two different types of processes that designers can use. One is a "turnkey system" where the designer will hire one company to manage the production process including sourcing all the components and packaging them all together. This is the recommended method for new designers because it is easier. The alternative is for the designer to manage the process himself, including sourcing the different components (e.g. boxes from one company, cards from another company, little wooden pieces from a third company) and arranging for them to be shipped to one place and put together.
- One of the designers at the panel described the process as "just like any economic management board game that you've ever played, except it's more complicated, it's with real money, and there is no rule book, you have to figure it out as you go along".
Part 4: Report To The Bridge
A really cool game they had was called "Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator." This is sort of a cross between a computer game and a LARP - it is a computer game where all the players are on the same team; they are a crew of a spaceship, kind of like on Star Trek. There are up to six players, each of which controls a different station, from a different computer (they are all networked together), and they are are in the same room. The different stations are as follows:
Captain - The captain does not have a specific station, but he is the one that orders the other players what to do, like "Go to warp factor 2," "Increase power to shields," or "Launch nuke at the enemy."
Helm - The helm controls the ship's movement. Since this game is based on Star Trek, it uses Star Trek physics rather than real physics. That means that you can only move in the direction you are pointing, so there is a lot of "dogfighting" where you try to get behind the opponent. You can also go in reverse, although only using the impulse engines and not the warp engines. Just be careful not to run into your own mine or be too close to your own nuke when it goes off.
Weapons - The weapons officer controls thephoton torpedoes torpedo tubes and the phasers primary beams. Just like in Star Trek, he also has the ability to change the "beam frequency" of the primary beams to match the weakest "shield frequency" of the target. Also the weapons officer has a button he can push to raise and lower the shields. The helm officer does too, so it is important to be clear in advance who is responsible for the shields, so that when the captain orders the shields raised, you don't have both the helm and weapons officers pushing the shield button, thus turning the shields on and back off again.
Engineering - The engineering officer controls the amount of power going to each of the ship systems. Increased power makes that system perform better (again, just like in Star Trek) but too much power too fast can overheat and damage the system. The engineering officer can also control the "damage control teams" to repair damage.
Communications - The communications officer can communicate with other friendly and enemy ships in the sector. He can taunt enemies to get them to go after him, order the starbases to produce different types of torpedoes, and order friendly ships to help defend the starbases (The team wins if they destroy all the enemy ships, and loses if all starbases are destroyed or if their ship is destroyed.)
Science - The science officer controls the ship's sensors, and can scan enemies. The first scan gives basic information about what type of enemy it is (like "Kralien Dreadnought" or "Stage 3 Bio-Mech") and the second scan gives more detailed information, such as the shield frequencies, and sometimes additional "Intel", which includes things like "The captain is unmarried". When this item came up, at first I thought that it was just a random blurb that popped up to be funny, and wasn't relevant to gameplay. But actually it turned out it is, because one of the "Taunts" the communications officer can use is insulting the captain's wife, which obviously won't work in that case.
This game is really cool because it feels like Star Trek, except that you're in the show. Also there can be funny moments like this one, where I was the captain:
Captain: Go to warp factor 1.
Helm: Warp engines appear to be off-line.
Captain: Engineering?
Engineering: Engineering reports all systems normal.
Captain (looking back at the Helm screen): You're in reverse.
Part 5: For the Record
Another event at GenCon was "The Big Game", an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for most people playing in one board game at one time. This was a game of Settlers of Catan, and there were 1000 tickets sold (which all sold out) but only 922 people ended up coming. The way the game worked was that there were a whole bunch of specially designed boards put side by side to form a very long chain of islands, with two players per board. The dice rolls were generated by randomly choosing cards from a deck of 36 cards, one for each possible combination of two dice, and reshuffling once 31 cards have been drawn. (This ensures a roughly even distribution of rolls.) The dice rolls were projected up on a big screen, and you have 90 seconds to do each turn. The whole event laster about 3 hours, of which only about 1 hour was the actual game, most of the time was spent going through the line getting people signed up, explaining the rules, setting everything up, and finally, it was like the finale of the whole thing was the actually game. At the end of the game they gave us a code that we could use to order a "Certificate of Participation" from the Guinness World Records web site.
More coming soon...
Part 1: The Long Journey
My original plan was to leave on a flight from Denver at 6:00 AM going to Champaign, IL; this way I could spend a few hours in Champaign, and then take a bus to Indianapolis (it is about a 2 hour bus ride). However this plan didn't work because the flight from Denver was delayed until 12:30. Fortunately I explained to them what I wanted to do, and they saw there weren't any other flights to Champaign, but they rebooked me on another flight going from Denver to Detroit and then from there to Indianapolis. I was actually very surprised at how easy this was; I expected it to be a big problem that I wanted to go to someplace that wasn't on my original itinerary, and I expected to have to explain the story to several different people, pay an extra fee, etc. but that didn't happen. So it was a bummer that I didn't get to go to Champaign, but at least I ended up where I wanted to in the end.
Part 2: This Is A Test
At GenCon there was a "First Exposure Playtest Hall", where game designers bring prototypes of new games to playtest. The games are scheduled in two-hour slots, where you pick up a ticket for the type of game you want to play - each game is described with a brief blurb like "Super Hero Deck Building Game." I did a few of these and some of games I did included the following:
1. Board game based on Greek mythology - each player is a Greek hero and they run around the board completing quests. I liked the theme of this game, but didn't really like the "political" aspect - there are lots of cards that you play on other player's turns to interfere with them, so if everyone gangs up and plays all the cards on one player it is difficult to win.
2. Dungeon crawling game based on video games - this game was a game where you go through a dungeon and fight monsters, and the artwork style is based on those old "8-bit" video games (i.e. like the original Nintendo Entertainment System). I didn't really like this game, because it just didn't offer anything that dozens of other games where you go around and fight monsters don't.
3. Two player adventure game where one player is the hero and one is the villain - this game was very different than other ones. The way it works is that the hero chooses a random "adventure card" from a pile of several dozen, and each of those has 4 stages on it, and it is arranged in a "choose your own adventure" format so that the villain reads the card aloud, and the hero chooses which choice he wants to determine which encounter comes up at each stage. During these encounters the hero and villain both have powers they can use to try to win the encounter, and the winner gets rewards. After going through three different adventure cards there is a "boss fight" where encounters are drawn from a special boss fight deck, and best 3 out of 5 encounters wins. I thought this game was really cool and very different from other games.
Also the group that does this runs another convention called "Metatopia" later in the year, which is much smaller and is basically just playtesting. I haven't been to that one before, but I might go this year.
Part 3: Made in America
I also went to a seminar about board game manufacturing, titles "Why does your game cost so much to make?" Here are some interesting facts that I learned.
- If a game costs $X to make, the designer will usually sell it to distributors for $2X (to cover other expenses, taxes, profit, and the possibility of having unsold product). After you add in the distributor's markup (when selling to the retailer) and the retailer's markup, the game costs $5X to buy from the store.
- There are about 1,200 board game stores (I don't know whether that number is just in the US, or if it includes other countries). For a new game from a new designer, a store buying 3-6 copies of the one game is a lot.
- There are lots of factors that go into the price of a game, and smart designers will learn how the manufacturing process works to they can make changes that might make the game cheaper. For instance, cards are printed in "sheets" which usually have 110 cards. So if your game has 120 cards, that's not good because you're wasting most of the second sheet. So if you can get down to 110 cards, then you will only need one sheet. Also, many rulebooks will be a multiple of 16 pages because the rulebooks are printed on sheets 16 pages in size and then folded up.
- If the game is relatively low on the scale in terms of size of order, the printer will not ship it directly to the distributors. Rather, the printer will ship it to the designer (so the designer will either have to rent warehouse space, or store all those games in his garage) and then the designer will handle getting orders from the distributor and shipping them. I thought that this seemed like an inefficient process, and didn't really understand their explanation of why they did it that way.
- There are two different types of processes that designers can use. One is a "turnkey system" where the designer will hire one company to manage the production process including sourcing all the components and packaging them all together. This is the recommended method for new designers because it is easier. The alternative is for the designer to manage the process himself, including sourcing the different components (e.g. boxes from one company, cards from another company, little wooden pieces from a third company) and arranging for them to be shipped to one place and put together.
- One of the designers at the panel described the process as "just like any economic management board game that you've ever played, except it's more complicated, it's with real money, and there is no rule book, you have to figure it out as you go along".
Part 4: Report To The Bridge
A really cool game they had was called "Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator." This is sort of a cross between a computer game and a LARP - it is a computer game where all the players are on the same team; they are a crew of a spaceship, kind of like on Star Trek. There are up to six players, each of which controls a different station, from a different computer (they are all networked together), and they are are in the same room. The different stations are as follows:
Captain - The captain does not have a specific station, but he is the one that orders the other players what to do, like "Go to warp factor 2," "Increase power to shields," or "Launch nuke at the enemy."
Helm - The helm controls the ship's movement. Since this game is based on Star Trek, it uses Star Trek physics rather than real physics. That means that you can only move in the direction you are pointing, so there is a lot of "dogfighting" where you try to get behind the opponent. You can also go in reverse, although only using the impulse engines and not the warp engines. Just be careful not to run into your own mine or be too close to your own nuke when it goes off.
Weapons - The weapons officer controls the
Engineering - The engineering officer controls the amount of power going to each of the ship systems. Increased power makes that system perform better (again, just like in Star Trek) but too much power too fast can overheat and damage the system. The engineering officer can also control the "damage control teams" to repair damage.
Communications - The communications officer can communicate with other friendly and enemy ships in the sector. He can taunt enemies to get them to go after him, order the starbases to produce different types of torpedoes, and order friendly ships to help defend the starbases (The team wins if they destroy all the enemy ships, and loses if all starbases are destroyed or if their ship is destroyed.)
Science - The science officer controls the ship's sensors, and can scan enemies. The first scan gives basic information about what type of enemy it is (like "Kralien Dreadnought" or "Stage 3 Bio-Mech") and the second scan gives more detailed information, such as the shield frequencies, and sometimes additional "Intel", which includes things like "The captain is unmarried". When this item came up, at first I thought that it was just a random blurb that popped up to be funny, and wasn't relevant to gameplay. But actually it turned out it is, because one of the "Taunts" the communications officer can use is insulting the captain's wife, which obviously won't work in that case.
This game is really cool because it feels like Star Trek, except that you're in the show. Also there can be funny moments like this one, where I was the captain:
Captain: Go to warp factor 1.
Helm: Warp engines appear to be off-line.
Captain: Engineering?
Engineering: Engineering reports all systems normal.
Captain (looking back at the Helm screen): You're in reverse.
Part 5: For the Record
Another event at GenCon was "The Big Game", an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for most people playing in one board game at one time. This was a game of Settlers of Catan, and there were 1000 tickets sold (which all sold out) but only 922 people ended up coming. The way the game worked was that there were a whole bunch of specially designed boards put side by side to form a very long chain of islands, with two players per board. The dice rolls were generated by randomly choosing cards from a deck of 36 cards, one for each possible combination of two dice, and reshuffling once 31 cards have been drawn. (This ensures a roughly even distribution of rolls.) The dice rolls were projected up on a big screen, and you have 90 seconds to do each turn. The whole event laster about 3 hours, of which only about 1 hour was the actual game, most of the time was spent going through the line getting people signed up, explaining the rules, setting everything up, and finally, it was like the finale of the whole thing was the actually game. At the end of the game they gave us a code that we could use to order a "Certificate of Participation" from the Guinness World Records web site.
More coming soon...
