Examination Board

Nice idea, but isn't this almost exactly what Hippodice does?

The problem I see with your idea is that you, the examining board, would have to establish the validity of your opinions for the companies to take you as a reliable source on whether a game is "good" or not. That can probably only happen with time. And if the board consists of people like us, who are game designers, it will seem somewhat self-serving and probably won't have much clout. But finding people who just have such a burning desire to, of their own free will, play a bunch of prototypes to be able to pinpoint the one or two that are "good" would seem to me to be a seriously uphill battle. (but maybe many such magnanamous people exist!)

I think Hippodice has it about right. They set out to bridge the gap between designers and publishers, and have created a competition format to do that. Their judges are all industry pros, so their opinions are to be taken seriously, and moreover, there is already one step taken out of the process. You don't have to have a go-between to get to the industry pros -- if you place well in the competition, you're already in touch with the industry pros!

I grant that this may be somewhat less satisfying because it's only once-a-year and it's a "competition" format, yet I think that's a valid way of doing the evaluation you're speaking of. Instead of your game being rated on several axes as Matthew recommends, it's being rated relative to the other games coming out; if it does poorly, you can effectively consider it less "publishable" than the other games that were submitted that year.

I agree that it would be very nice if something like what you suggest existed. Or alternatively, if there was an analogous "Hippodice" for non-German-style games. But I think the difficulties in implementing such a proposal are substantial enough that it's probably not going to be easy to pull off.

On the other hand, if you do want to start such a service, I have several games I'd be happy to have you look over....

One final question: is it really true that you need an agent to get an "in" with the game companies? The only sources I've ever heard that from are from agents themselves, which makes me very suspicious. I think, though, that it depends what companies and what types of games you're talking about. Personally, I design German-style games, and I know that there are many companies who will let you submit your game to them, or at least tell them about it, without an agent. I think the bigger obstacle to publishing there is more that your name has to be "Alan Moon" or "Reiner Knizia" or some such; companies are much more likely to print a game by a known designer than a no-name. In their defense, though, those guys don't make a lot of clunkers, so it's probably not a bad approach! The American-style party-games and kids-games companies might work differently, though, and someone trying to get into that might need to know someone moreso than to have a great game. I'm really curious to hear from people who've actually used agents and published games about that process. I certainly doubt that most of the agents one sees on the web could even be helpful at getting a German-style game published by a European company, but of course, I could be way off.

-Jeff

But are you and your brother really going to look at more than 200 games a year? Hippodice is a filter; it says, of the 200 games we looked at, here are the 10 most publishable. True, it's only good for German games.

But what successful designers are going to do this? Let's be realistic, designers want to design games, not to filter out good games from bad ones to save the companies some work. I agree they would add clout, I dispute that you could find any who'd be willing to do what you're asking.

It would be a cool thing to have access to, I just can't see actually pulling it off. It takes someone with way more vision than I have!

-Jeff

I think there's still definitely a difference in the market. Here in the US, if I go to Target or Toys R Us, I will see almost no "German" games. If I go to a hobby game shop, I will see almost no "American" games. (And, yes, I know I'm oversimplifying tremendously by breaking it down into 2 classes). I agree that a good game will (one would hope) do well, but I think there's a big difference in what a company considers "good". Consider the genre of kids' games -- both German and American companies release them. But there's a tremendous qualititative difference between German-style kids' games, which focus on simple gameplay but legimitate substantive strategy (albeit at a basic level), compared to American-style kids' games, which almost universally focus either on a plastic gizmo, or on a license to a commerical property. So if you tried to pitch a great game like "Katzenjammer Blues" to Hasbro (assuming you even could), they'd either ask you to make a board game version of the game with electronic sounds eminating from plastic cat musicians, or they'd want to retheme it "Making the Band" with each card representing a character from the Making the Band shows (or some other commercial property). I am very inexperienced, but my general impression is that the answer to the question "what kind of games should we make?" is always a combo of (a) what will sell and (b) what is good, but American companies emphasize (a) almost exclusively, and German companies, while obviously cognizant of (a), take (b) into account to a great extent.

-Jeff

Jeff,

I agree with you on most points. Like I said, the trick is to find a publisher that matches the game you have designed. It's no use to try to send a prototype of a complex wargame to HABA (publisher of mostly children's games with wooden components) or to send a prototype of an abstract game to Eagle Games (publisher of thematic wargames with lots of plastic bits and other chrome).

But the market is not as black and white as it was a few years ago. Eagle Game's "Age of Mythology" and Fantasy Flight's "Game of Thrones" and "WarCraft" are boardgames that certainly have their roots in American wargames, but also draw a lot of their mechanics from German type of games.

And what to say about "Mare Nostrum", "Pirate's Cove" and "BANG!"? There's a lot of "American" flavor in these games, despite being originally published in France, Germany and Italy respectively.

I think the distinction between "German" and "American" is not useful, at least not when you are designing a game. Of course, when you are done designing a game and looking for a publisher, this does become relevant. However, like I said, the market is not as black and white as it used to be.

Actually, my ideal game would be as thematic as an American game and would have French art and German mechanics and would be published by a Dutch publisher. :wink:

- Rene Wiersma

We need to get a large american gaming organization such as Terminal City Gamers to do an american version of the hippodice. Both European and American companies alike know that there is a strong market for these types of games. I'm sure Terminal City Gamers, as respected as they are in the gaming community, could pull off something similar to Hippodice. It might not be as strong at first, but obviously that would change with time. The only concern I can see is that both contests might be flooded with the same contributions, which would lead to 'more of the same'. Perhaps if it was planned in the middle of year (as opposed to the end of year format of Hippo) it might be enough to ward off duplicate entries.

-Darke

And what to say about "Mare Nostrum", "Pirate's Cove" and "BANG!"? There's a lot of "American" flavor in these games, despite being originally published in France, Germany and Italy respectively.

I think the distinction between "German" and "American" is not useful, at least not when you are designing a game.

I think we might be using the words differently. When I say "American", I'm talking more about mass-market American games like "Monopoly", "Sorry", etc. American wargames are definitely a whole different animal. I also agree that there are "hybrids" starting to emerge. Star Wars: Epic Duels and Railroad Tycoon, both from Hasbro, have a nice blend of German and American design elements.

I agree that it's not worth worrying about the distinction when making a game -- just make a fun game! But the point that Robin seems to be at, and the subject of this discussion, is what happens when you get to the level of wanting to publish. Then, as you note, it really matters what kinds of games a company would want to produce. I don't think there's a mass-market American game company that would have even taken a 2nd look at Puerto Rico. They don't think in terms of the quality of the game, but rather in terms of how many units they can push. In contrast, I doubt there are many German games that WOULD sell some of the games that come out on the American market, even if they could make a lot of money on them. Obviously, I am exaggerating a bit here, and I only have a few of the German companies in mind (Alea, Hans im Gluck, Goldsieber, etc), but I don't think you'll ever see "Monopoly: Berlin" from Ravensburger.

The point Robin seems to be making is that there's currently no way to get "in" with the big American companies. But to you and I, who probably are more interested in the European companies anyway, there is such an "in" -- the Hippodice competition. I'm all for seeing a North-American version start up (although I'm not sure why Darke feels like he has permission to nominate the Terminal City Gamers to run it!) And I'm very encouraged with all the new game companies that seem to be popping up and producing excellent quality games (Days of Wonder, Plenary, Uberplay). My forecast is that the prospects for those of us who design German games will continue to improve as that market continues to grow worldwide (as it seems to be doing). But for those like Robin who design mainstream American games, things won't get much better because the companies are thinking about selling in such quanitities. For those games, it would seem that a system like the one Robin proposes would be a nice replacement for the agent system. But the real question is whether the companies want something to replace the agent system -- do they perceive any flaws in that system? It seems pretty well broken to me, but the experience of the companies may differ...

I think we're basically in agreement about the general problem, but I disagree about this specific problem. I don't think it's a problem that Hasbro is only focused on money: that's what corporations are. I see it as saying that the only problem with sharks is the way they're always attacking and eating things: it's in their nature and I can't really consider it a "problem". The same is true of the customers: it's in their nature to buy what appeals to them.

The problem I see is two-fold: Americans don't realize that there are actually fun boardgames and card games out there, things that adults will actually have fun playing, and that the American education system doesn't encourage children to believe that problem solving can be pleasurable.

The first can be fixed given enough time: word-of-mouth is very slowly educating Americans. The second is unfortunately nearly impossible (but not impossible) and might never come to pass.

You know, all in my opinion. :)

-- Matthew

I make a distinction between privately-held companies (corporations or not) and publically-held companies. Public companies like Hasbro can not care about whether something is "good" as long as it sells. I helped take my little private company public and the differences before and after were stunning. Before we wrote great software and helped companies, literally making people's lives better. After we kept expenses down while pushing as much revenue through as possible. Quality didn't matter as long as it didn't hurt the bottom line, period, and that's all the board and wall street cared about. Hasbro is in that situation and trust me, quality doesn't mean anything (as long as consumers don't care) and can't.

The only way a large corporation will focus on quality is if that's how they differentiate themselves from their competitors. Look at, say, Nissan. They make (imo) some pretty crappy cars and I don't think they "care" at all as long as people buy them because of their good advertising and cheap price. At the same time, though, they have an Infiniti line that sells the "quality" cars. The latter is purely a marketing strategy, and people buy Infinitis because they're quality cards.

Alea has a special dispensation from their parent company and are just like Infiniti. They don't exist in order to produce quality games: they exist because people buy Alea games due to perceived quality. If people didn't buy them then Alea would cease to exist. I honestly don't believe the company cares at all about the actual game quality. (That doesn't mean there aren't people in the company who do, mind you, and this is true of Nissan/Infiniti as well.)

And don't get me wrong: I'm hugely pro-teacher. It's the governing bodies that surround the teachers that I disapprove of.

Not only is popularity an unfair criterion for quality, it doesn't even apply in this case because people don't prefer Monopoly to Settlers -- most have never played Settlers. The real question you should be asking is, what do people who've played both prefer?

It was a discussion earlier this year with Mario, I think the thread was "German games" or something. It's funny, I defended Monopoly then, I'm defending Settlers now, neither of which do I like very much!

A family game like Monopoly is surely just a framework for a social encounter. Would Settlers do that job better than Monopoly? In my view, probably not. Settlers takes place in an alien environment and the components and the rules are long and contrived to accommodate a ‘do whatever it takes’ design philosophy. Monopoly does not suffer from those faults. For Monopoly players collecting resource cards will never compete with collecting property and money – and, anyway, I always looked forward to being eliminated! :)

I don't know what you mean by a "do whatever it takes design philosophy". I suppose the theme of Settlers may not appeal to everyone (although it's not really sci fi or anything), but there are other "economy" games that are also better than Monopoly. And while Monopoly doesn't suffer from the faults you allege of Settlers, it has plenty of its own: repetitive turn structure, long playing time, player elimination, game outcome controlled by dice rolling, etc, etc, etc.

A ‘new’ game is anything that is not a variant of any game that has gone before. Nobody actually needs a new game so publication is, in my opinion, only justified by commercial considerations – or vanity.

Not sure what you mean. If we don't need new games, why are you designing games? Or do you mean we don't need a new copy of a previously released game? True in some cases, but there are lots of reasons to re-release games in others.

As you have probably gathered, I’m on a steep learning curve. Whenever a ‘German’ game is mentioned in any forum you can be sure I’ve never heard of it – so I look it up in ‘geek’.

Invariably the reviewers eulogise about the game – giving it a great score. Then they go on to say that it would be even better if there wasn’t so much downtime – or the endgame didn’t drag – or players weren’t knocked out in the first round – or there wasn’t so much dice rolling – or that it only plays well with seven players – or the leader can be too easily mugged – or there is too much luck – or once ahead a leader always wins – or there is a ‘kingmaking’ problem – or the game is best suited to non-gamers but is too difficult for them to learn – and so on!

Surely these are basic design flaws. Are designers of ‘German’ games too easily satisfied?

- Robin

Wow, I don't even know where to start with this one. First, the truest test of whether a game is "good" or not is to play the game. Have you done that? If not, I think it's very unfair for you to start from the assumption that the games you like/design (Monopoly, etc) are "better", and then use the criticisms of games you haven't played to buttress that point. Have you read the corresponding reviews and ratings of Monopoly on BoardGameGeek? Monopoly has a rating of 4.81 out of 10. "Gooey Louie" has a rating of 3.83 (but to be fair, based on only 6 ratings). To neglect that in your analysis is to innapropriately suggest that BoardGameGeek respondents feel there are flaws with some games and that this can be used as ammo to denigrate those games.

I fully grant that some German games do have problems of one kind or another. But I think it would be better to evaluate games one at a time. For example, Settlers. Have you actually played it? I feel Settlers has some big flaws; there is a luck of the dice effect, and there's a rich get richer problem. But Monopoly has these problems in spades compared to Settlers. And it has other problems that Settlers doesn't.

The point, I guess, is not so much to say "these games are better than those games", because obviously, it's all subjective, and to someone who enjoyed Monopoly, hey, play the game if you like it! But for the purposes of this discussion, the salient point is that you can't judge quality simply by sales, and you can't decide that people who haven't played Settlers or other German games would obviously prefer Monopoly because of superficial flaws you see in Settlers or unflattering comments you read on BoardGameGeek about some German games. I think a lot of us are living proof that once you start playing German games, you really don't go back. I guess as evidence for your side, I could point out that I have had mixed levels of success "converting" non-gamer family members. But this is more a cultural problem than a game quality problem. Some family members don't want to play "German" games because they think they sound "too complicated", and thus, they don't generally even want to try them out. And that's the problem I see in your argument. Of course, I could be way off, but I don't get the feeling you've even played Settlers. Am I wrong on this one? How about Carcassonne? Puerto Rico? These are probably the 3 "main" games of recent memory, so it seems reasonable to me that you might have played at some point; or will at some point? You owe it to yourself to do so, they really are fun. And that's ultimately what this is about, right?

I've been reading this thread for the last few days but haven't had the time to reply. I'm thrilled that Jeff and Gil did an excellent job of saying everything I would have wanted to! :)

Back to an earlier post:

I mean precisely that: stockholders, boards of directors (who serve the stockholders), and top-level executives (who serve the boards of directors) care only about the financial performance of the company. In a large public company you simply cannot do anything that won't clearly and immediately improve the bottom line. If you can prove that quality can do that then you can create a quality product. If you can make more money by slacking off on quality and, say, bumping up a bit of marketing, then that's what you have to do.

Frankly the publically-held company model is flawed, in my opinion, but it is what it is.

I don't think it's anyone's fault, per se. I think it's built into the free market system. Mind you there's room for quality, but it almost always comes from private companies where it might well be driven by a desire to build good things, or the "high end" brands of public companies, where it's an intentional part of a marketing strategy to attract the affluent.

Not necessarily. The company that makes the most money is the one that manages to sell the most at the lowest cost. Much more money is made in being "more appealing" than your competitors than being "better," and that appeal comes from three things: marketing, price, and to a small extent functionality. Sad (to me), but true as far as I can tell.

You're right that Alea games aren't luxury items and I agree that the analogy is imperfect. I would still argue that the Alea line is purely a branding exercise, though.

"The company" is what I mentioned above (in a public company): the shareholders, the BoD, and the executive management. Generally speaking none of those people decide which game to publish. Quality games is Alea's marketing gimmick, at least from that level.

They're not really accepting fewer sales in order to produce quality games. Ravensburger knows that there is a market for "quality" games that they cannot reach through their regular line. No matter how many medium quality games they release they'll never sell a game to that high-quality market. To fix that they don't stop releasing tons of medium-quality games and selling a ton of them to the German mass market. They know that if they release a super-high-quality game that is fairly complex to play they'll sell some to the mass market but they'll have a tough time because complexity doesn't sell to everyone. They also know that if they release such a game under the Ravensburger label that higher-end more "snooty" gamers will likely dismiss it even if it would be their cup of tea. So they start a new line to sell to that particular market. It is in that way like an Infiniti or a Lexus, imo.

Absolutely, no question. But I say that's because that's Alea's marketing niche and not because of some actual core "personal" drive for quality.

No question at all. It is absolutely the failing of the community. Unfortunately the community is embodied in just two places in education (that I can see): support for tax money to go to schools and school board elections. The former fails because people almost never vote to spend more money in education... perhaps it feels too indirect or something. The latter fails because, I think, people don't understand how important it is and don't feel informed (is Bob Smith going to try to push the schools in the direction I want them to go?), and so just ignore it. The community is certainly the source of the failure, though, I agree.

At least since the 2nd century. Christie's is auctioning an Ancient Roman d20.

I wonder what rpgs were like 1800 years ago :)

This is a problem with society, but what does it have to do with games? People sit down together in groups to watch football games; these groups could play games if they wanted to. (The fact that they find staring at a football game more entertaining than a good game is another problem with society.)

I completely disagree with this (it's the main reason I replied to your post). For starters, as game designers, our goal should be to make games that are as entertaining as possible for our target audience (usually whatever type of game we enjoy playing the most).

You're saying we should direct our efforts towards making social changes that have nothing to do with games.

Would the world be a better place if Knizia directed his efforts towards getting people to play a game, any game and not designing games? Would you prefer that none of his games existed and for every one there was a TV commercial telling families to play Monopoly, Scrabble, and Trivial Pursuit?

It wouldn't be an improvement if we got more people to play monopoly anyway. It is a boring game that just re-enforces to people that board games aren't worth their time. I had a friend in HS who loved saying "Board games make me bored". Monopoly is the sort of game families dust off once a year (or get one of the themed ones for Christmas), play once, and wonder what they were thinking.

There are a few unauthorized freeware multi-player computer version of Catan available online, but they're very inaccessible to someone who hasn't played Catan first and they aren't very well put together. What might be great for the gaming industry is to produce a well polished 1-player version and have it distributed by the big shareware sites like cnet and tucows. It would give a lot of people an idea of what the game is like and encourage them to buy the board version. Mayfair and Kosmos probably wouldn't like that, but it wouldn't even cut into their sales because it's only for 1-player.

After you've published a small run yourself, you've taken all the risk, if it's a hit, why would you allow a bigger company to take over and take most of the profit from your risk?

Jason