Considering Cooperatives

 I've found myself interested in cooperative business models of late. I'm not going to pretend I've garnered anything close to expertise on the subject, but it seems like it would be a very good model for a board game publishing company or design studio. Although, probably not one named after a specific person such as I've set up mine as. The basic premise is that all members get a vote on business decisions. And only one vote, regardless of how much they individually have invested.

Depending on exact structure, members could anyone who uses the cooperative from end customers to game designers and everyone who touches the project in between. Or, even other companies like distributors. And with everyone getting a vote this could lead to some interesting development pipelines. 

For example, say a cooperative had 100 members; 4 that were part of the development team, and the rest were passionate customers. So, mostly customers. There is an opening in the development pipeline and it is time to choose a project. First, submissions and in house designs could be filtered by the development team into likely candidates, who could then put together some kind of pitch package for each potential project. Then pitches could be sent to every one of the members for a yay/nay vote. If an individual project doesn't receive over a fixed percentage of the votes, say at least 50% of all members, it will not be made. If multiple project recieve more than 50% the one that received the most votes is pursued, and the others added to a future project queue, but not pursued yet. The advantage of this is it gives a much better sense of how a project will be received by the public at large than an average publisher could with a small team (or in some cases a single person) deciding if a game is a good bet. And, as membership grows, that indication becomes that much stronger. And customer members see the games they want to see.

And you could have members opt in to help at various stages. Maybe not everyone wants to take part in the project selection process. Some members may want to help out with proofreading while other don't. Or likewise for playtesting, etc. There are many steps from submission to publication and Members could theoretically opt in to participation on any of them.

Of course this is asking a lot of members, and they need to get something back beyond games existing that they are likely to be interested in, since I don't think most people are hurting for options. The obvious answer is deep discounts from direct sales, say distributor rates (60% off). The ability to buy shares (but not votes) and maybe dividends?

Postcard Games

A while back (almost a year now), I experimented with Postcard games. Specifically, I made two games. The first game was a simple conversion of one of my abstract games, Symmetric, to a postcard game without any gameplay changes. And Second I made a very simplified version of Dawn of the Zeds. We ended up handing out copies of that Dawn of the Zeds postcard game at BGG.con last year.

While organizing my computer today, I found the files for the Symmetric postcard game.



I really like Symmetric, but it didn't do all that well for me and the publisher gave me the rights back. I'd like to expose more people to the game so I want to find a way to self-publish. But, abstracts don't sell very well in my experience and given the mechanics, any theme would feel very tacked on. So I can't really justify to myself trying to raise money for a print run.

So, I'm considering selling the postcard instead. Postcards are inexpensive to print even at low quantities so they could, in theory, be a very cost-effective way to publish simpler games.

I would welcome any thoughts on the matter. Would you ever consider buying a postcard game?

Should I try Kickstarter again?

I'm considering trying to do another Kickstarter.

I'm hesitant because of my last attempt, Draftcar, which was a pretty dismal failure. I had 33 backers in total, 21 of which were in at the full game level while the remaining 12 were in for a dollar. This would have netted a total of $452 before KS took their cut.

With printing in China, I was looking for $13,000 to fund Draftcar. That was for 1000 unit print run, accounting for shipping, and getting it demoed in stores as part of the post-Kickstarter marketing plan. I probably shouldn't have included the demoing in stores as part of the base level, but even without that, I was looking at about $10k. And I fell drastically short of that as well.

Approaches to random elements in games

I've been thinking a lot about luck lately. Specifically, I've been thinking a lot about how elements of luck are approached in games. Not so much specific randomizers, but structurally speaking. And I've come up with three basic approaches to luck that I think all games fall into. And of course, most games fall into multiple categories. The three categories as I see them are:

• Deterministic - in which the mechanics have no inherent random element. Any feeling of randomness comes from player interaction or hidden information.
• Uncertain Actions - in which player make a choice and then some sort of randomizer affects the result of that choice.
• Random Events - in which a random element takes effect and then players make choices in response to that event.

Roll and Move Fighting Game

So... I think I've come up with a good idea for a roll and move game (something I never thought I'd say). Roll and move as a fighting game. Here's how it works:

The board has two sections; an outer section with spaces for the players to move an action pawn around, and an inner section where they carry out actions.

Inspiration can come from some strange places...

So, about a week ago I came up with two game ideas on a road trip to RAGEcon. Both mechanically very similar but thematically quite strikingly different. They were both inspired by the song Suicide is Painless (the MASH theme), as performed by Marylin Manson. I'm going to be looking to test both of these soon. If you are interested in either or both please enquire. If you want to just try it out and not give feedback... well the images you need are below.

A drafting game skeleton

I was showing my game Draftcar to some kids at Strategicon (Gamex) this weekend, and one of them asked me what it actually means for a game to be a drafting game, since he played in or was going to play in a Magic tournament which was a drafting tournament and didn't see how drafting there was anything like drafting in my game. I'm not sure if my explanation actually made sense to him or not, but basically, I said something along the lines of "drafting is basically anytime you have to make a selection from a limited subset."

4X Euro Space game, part 2

In a previous blog entry, I discussed ideas for a Space themed 4x "euro" design. Mostly in that blog I covered really broad strokes kind of stuff. Games that inspired me, the basics of the movement mechanisms, resources, ideas about leadership and building stuff. And that great, but today I want to really dig into the idea a bit more. A lot of stuff is still nebulous but some of the elements have solidified nicely and I want to talk about both.

Euro 4x idea

My absolute favorite board game is easily twilight imperium. But, it's so hard to get to the table. Primarily, I think, do to the length and perceived complexity of the game. I'm also quite fond of Eclipse, particularly its economic system, which is quite a bit faster in terms of gameplay. So you would think that at some point I would have tried my hand at the genre. I have not because I've never felt I had something to add and make a better game.

Chosin next steps

I've read a few posts / comments online about potential other settings that could use my Chosin Few engine. The posts I've seen so far have all been regarding individual battles. And they certainly sound interesting so I hope some of the people talking about them pursue them. But I can't help but wonder if there is a good way to expand it to encompass a whole war.

It would require a couple key modifications. Let's try to detail these out one at a time.

1. The Order Deck

In The Chosin Few, the Order Deck is small and specific. Three cards that always show up in exactly the same order. This works well for a single battle because it allowed me to control the story told through the mechanic. I'm not sure it will work as well to have a static structured set of orders for a larger war with numerous battles. Ideally, I think I would want to come up with a way of giving the player their orders as relative to the current war situation.

For example, instead of having an order call for the player to take and hold a specific location, it would call for them to take and hold spaces of a category. Like a resource or enemy facility.

The other thing that Order cards do is tell you where enemies will be coming from in the form of Lines of Departure. I may want to separate that function out to a different deck. An Enemy Operations Deck... Which could also manipulate what kind of arrows they follow perhaps...

2. Activity Deck

The Chosin Few Activity cards always have 3 points that new enemies will come into play at, and two colors that will move and 1 card is drawn per turn. For a larger war, I think I would design the cards to have one or two enemies come into play per card with only one color moving, but I would have the number of cards drawn per turn varying based on the current enemy operation(s) in effect.

3. Loss Conditions

The loss conditions for The Chosin Few are all based on the idea of not escaping. For a full war that the loss condition is more likely to be about losing ground or resources.

4. Strength Tracking

In The Chosin Few, the player only has two units so it made sense to track each one's strength to a fairly granular level. But in a full war, the player may have numerous units to keep track of and each one having its own track would likely be cumbersome for the player. This will likely require a new combat system. It should be just as simple.

What I'm currently thinking is that I will add a conflict resolution phase. During that phase if any enemy units are in the same space as your units a battle happens. Some kind of roll will happen and units will be removed from either side as appropriate. Units that are in the same space as enemy units would be unable to move away until it is cleared of enemies. I think this will lead to a good simulation of front lines. But of course, it needs to be tested. For the roll, I'm currently thinking it should be a success system with loads of dice scenario. So for a starting point, for each unit in a contested space, roll one dice. Each 5 or 6 removes a unit of the opposing side.

In any case... it's a starting point.

5. Resource Management

It would be nice for a larger war if taking (or losing) certain territory had lasting gameplay effects. Maybe certain actions require oil so if you have no oil fields you can't take those actions. Or you can't launch planes if you don't control an airstrip. That kind of thing.

6. Politics or Public Opinion

Depending on the war, this can get complicated. Say it was Viet Nam as the United States. Public opinion would be crucial to winning. Possibly more so than the actual battles. But if it were WW2 as the Germans, the larger concern might be global politics. Trying to delay other countries entering as much as possible or get as much done as you can before they inevitably get involved.

For a WW2 scenario, this could easily play into how many Activity cards you draw each turn as each new opponent would give them an additional card draw to represent their added resources.