Thoughts on a dice-y game with a Business theme

I would like to applaud your interest in developing a business-focused game. Those are fairly rare in this space. I would, however, like to raise a fundamental concern. The game seems to lack a natural flow and cohesion between the theme and the mechanics. I get the impression that you: A) Wanted to build a business / economic game and B) Thought that a dice mechanic seemed nifty and C) Figured that adding in the 'multi-generational / nepotism' angle to the business side of the equation would give it an edge. The problem is that it seems to be a rather forced combination.

I would suggest that you step back and ask yourself whether you have a mechanic in search of a game or a game in search of the right mechanic. In other words, do you believe that rolling dice in the manner you have described is an accurate representation of how the numbers play out in a business scenario? While I would agree that the odds of a brand new business succeeding are quite low (95% of all businesses fail within the first year), the odds get considerably better with each passing year. Additionally, do you really believe that the salary for an individual or the productivity of a business is accurately reflected by a die roll? I realize that you are trying to smooth all of this out through the use of a reference card that equates a die roll to the actual value, but that doesn't change the fact that you are essentially reducing "running a business" to "rolling some dice". Hmmm....not a very satisfying feeling!

I think you have two games here. You have an interesting business game that needs some natural and compelling mechanics. You also have a mechanic that is workable, but needs a theme that is more indicative of the 'press your luck' variety.

I hope that makes sense and provides some helpful insight. All the best on whatever you direction you decide to go!

Kyle Gabhart
Driftwood Games
www.driftwoodgames.com

Right Northburns, lets do this.

First of all - well done you for posting long posts, I appreciate the time and effort that long posts have go into them and think that it's a good thing to do (as long as you dont waffle or repeat yourself thousands of time which you did not!)

Ok so reember the Best Advice guide ALWAYs when even just thinking about a game:
"http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/693766"

In here it says that the scoring design IS the game design. As you say, the scoring makes the game: but more than this, the scoring IS the game. If the players can "win" without using huge chunks of your game, they will do just that. Its human nature.

About what is fun in games, I would highly reccomend "The Theory of Fun" by Raph Koster (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1932111972) gives a lovely easy to read idea of what exactly "Fun" is in respect to video and borad games.

Here is some nice exerpt from a games design course (lots of similarities to the book above)

Sensation. Games can engage the senses directly. Consider the audio and video “eye candy” of video games; the tactile feel of the wooden roads and houses in Settlers of Catan; or the physical movement involved in playing sports, Dance Dance Revolution, or any game on the Nintendo Wii.
Fantasy. Games can provide a make-believe world (some might cynically call it “escapism”) that is more interesting than the real world.
Narrative. As we mentioned earlier in passing, games can involve stories, either of the embedded kind that designers put there, or the emergent kind that are created through player action.
Challenge. Some games, particularly retro-arcade games, professional sports, and some highly competitive board games like Chess and Go, derive their fun largely from the thrill of competition. Even single-player games like Minesweeper or activities like mountain climbing are fun mainly from overcoming a difficult challenge.
Fellowship. Many games have a highly social component to them. I think it is this alone that allows many American board games like Monopoly to continue to sell many copies per year, in spite of the uninteresting decisions and dull mechanics. It is not the game, but the social interaction with family, that people remember fondly from their childhood.
Discovery. This is rare in board games, but can be found in exploration-type games like Tikal and Entdecker. It is more commonly found in adventure and role-playing video games, particularly games in the Zelda and Metroid series.
Expression. By this, I think the MDA authors mean the ability to express yourself through gameplay. Examples include games like Charades or Poker where the way that you act is at least as important as what other actions you take within a game; Dungeons & Dragons where the character you create is largely an expression of your own personal idea; or open-world and sim video games like The Sims or Grand Theft Auto or Oblivion or Fable, which are largely concerned with giving the player the tools needed to create their own custom experience.
Submission. A name that often has my students chuckling with their dirty minds, but the intent is games as an ongoing hobby rather than an isolated event. Consider the metagame and the tournament scene in Magic: the Gathering, the demands of a guild to show up at regular meetings in World of Warcraft, or even the ritualized play of games at a weekly boardgame or tabletop-roleplaying group.

So yeah, theres a whole lot in both the Best Advice and the simple idea of what is fun above.

Now on to the game.

When you were explaining it iniitlaly I had the idea that each player was going to "start at the bottom" of any single or multiple companies - all selling whatever (we can abstract this too hell, no need to get bogged down here) and then make their ways to the top. After X turns, the highest ranked person wins, or perhaps first to "CEO". There could be rules of tendering resignation and applying to other companies with other company trees - you would probably take your resources along with you when you transferred and the rewards for payment/cost/resource would be sligtly different in each company depending on what they sold to the end user (as you say: tourism, goods, high tech, fast moving consumer goods, services etc)

What I would straight away to add somethign to your game is make sure that the companies sell COOL things. I personally would much rather play a game where the company I work in sells Sky Diving Lessons, the worlds sweetest icecream and Secret Laser Beams than a real world company that sold Personal Liability Insurance, Gas and Electricity Monitoring and Outsources Paper work as per most office companies in the real world. People get a lot of enjoyment from not being in the real world (See: Fantasy as per above) so I would personally use some existing clever stuff from the real world, but abstract it and make it "cool" in your boardgame.

So yeah, food for thought for the minute, have any more ideas buddy? :)