I just want to make a small survey here. We talked recently that board game design was more complicated to publish. People have less money, board games are more expansive, physical resources are thinning out. I somewhat visioned this situation would occur when I got into the hobby.
From a certain point of view, board games are strategy game the majority of the time. There are some exception like party game, dexterity games, etc. But I think most people in this forum are doing strategy games.
Now lets dream a little bit, and let say there would be a digital platform (a set of tools and software) that would allow you to build your own strategy video game. And let say this platform is accessible enough for you to understand and use it
Would you make the switch and start making strategy video game instead of board games?
Still, some of your ideas could remain playable as a classic board game even if they have a digital implementation. That could solve most issues listed above since production cost are very low and it does not require physical resources.
That was my objective, but if other people are willing to share the same objective, I could try to figure out a way I can make a platform accessible to everybody. That would be the hardest part, and it could take quite some time. Training could help when non-intuitive interface is required. At least, from what I understand (from a previous thread), people want to learn as little programming as possible.
If such platform exists, then we could all transcend to the digital world. As for marketing the game, there are few good strategy games on the video game market. So even with below average visual, we could offer at least a good and solid strategy game. Also with automated playtesting, it's another tool that can be used to validate that our design is solid.
I want to know your thought about it.
Your point of view is interesting, it could interesting to download a game that is ready for vassal and printable as PnP at the same time.
I never thought about this, not sure I have a clean solution either. I was thinking about for example, having a digital and printable format, but I would have manually built both.
So far, one way that could be done this is having some sort of export system using the same game. Think of it like using a word document as core format, and exporting to TXT or PDF depending on your needs.
So my idea would be for example to have all the card information in a database. The digital version simply read the database, and display the card information the way it wants. But another program could read that same database and create printable cards in SVG. Another program could generate images for vassal, etc.
Only the digital version needs to apply the rules of the game, other formats is basically pictures to print or display on the screen. So it`s just data, no need to encode rules. A layout definition might be necessary to determine where you put the information on the card.