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Explaining the Inexplicable
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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Sometimes, when you're playing a game for the first time you look at or attempt to use some of the components and you go .. "Wait! What?" This list proposes some answers. Disclaimer: I should point out that some of the games on this list are amongst my favourites, and that I am well aware that game designers often don't have any say in the final graphic design of their products.
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Posted Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:24 pm
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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"Hey look at this design bill. Those flags for the individual races cost a fortune! We better use them everywhere we can. Let's see, we can stick them on the command counters, the ships, the control markers and the technology cards."
"There's no way we can stamp designs that detailed on plastic ships! Anyway, that'd mean including eight sets of ships in the game and then you can bet that some damn fool group of players or other will try playing the game with eight, and find out that it sucks vacuum with eight and write in and complain."
"Yeah, good points. All right then, just the counters, markers and cards".
"But if we put them on the technology card, some idiot is going to get them mixed up with the technology symbols."
"You're right again. So just the counters and markers then."
"So let me get this straight. We're going to a ship a game in which a player has a set of ships and tech cards in a matching colour and then has their markers and counters based on a racial flag in a colour which probably doesn't match the ships and the cards?"
"Damn right we are. They can just pick a set of flags that match the colours of the ships."
"Even though we could just have six sets of ships, cards and counters all in matching colours?"
"That's right. Those flags cost a kings bloody ransom! Besides, what the hell else are we going to do with all the excess cardboard around the planet tiles?"
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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"Oh, I love railway games. It's great the way the theme comes through in all the components - those railroad accessories used as city markers and the little plastic trains and such. It's just a shame we can't get a railroad theme right there on the board before anyone even puts a piece on it."
"Sure we can! Let's make the scoring track like a railway track and have players put an engine on it to mark their score."
"Ooooh, that's a great idea! Won't it cause a problem if there's a score draw though?"
"Weeeel, it might. But I don't remember any of the playtesters even specifically mentioning that the scores were often tied. And in our own test games I don't remember there ever being a score draw."
"Neither can I. But we were smashed on moonshine most of the time we were playing."
"It wasn't moonshine, we ran out of that months ago. It was meths. Meths doesn't damage your memory at all so we're on safe ground."
"Oh cool! So we'll implement it then. Let's celebrate!"
"Before we party, don't forget to call the printers in China and tell them that the blue is too pale and the purple is too dark, so if they just mix a bit of one into the other and vice-versa, it'll be fine."
"Will do."
"Great! Pour out the antifreeze!"
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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"So, what's this monolith going to look like then?"
"Well, it'd better be really imposing and impressive. We'll make it a really tall cardboard tube like a tower, with spiky battlements and everything."
"But won't that mean the player on the other side the table won't be able to see what's on the other side of the Monolith, waiting to attack him?"
"Right. But that's the really clever part. See, not only will the Monolith be tall and impressive but by making it so tall we have, at a stroke, vastly increased the amount of tension and excitement in the game."
"Ah ... yes! Cunning!"
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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"Why don't we have the evil pieces y'know, sort of evil colours, like red and black."
"Cool idea! What about the good pieces."
"Uhmmm ... oh well it'll have to be white and gold, obviously, or maybe silver. Yeah, silver, kind of like Mithril."
"But metallic sparkly plastic is expensive. And white plastic figures just look crap."
"Good point ... erm .. right, I know, we'll make them the colour of snot and pus instead! Because everyone knows that snot and pus are the heroic defences of your body fighting off infection so that's really good isn't it? And they're shiny plastic too, so they'll even look like snot and pus! Everyone will get that reference, won't they?"
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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"Okay, so for the political markers we'll use the White Tree for Gondor, a horse for Rohan, the Red Eye for Sauron and the White hand for Saruman. Anyone vaguely familiar with the source material will get those."
"Sure. But what about the other nations?"
"Well. The Elves could be a tree. That's pretty obvious too. And I guess a snake could make sense for the Southrons and Easterlings."
"Yep, I can see that working. Come on, let's keep these ideas flowing while we're on a roll. How about the north and the dwarfs?"
"Right yeah, think ... think. Dwarfs ... Dwarfs like iron don't they ... how about a ball of metal? And for the North ... crap, that's hard as it's not a proper nation at all. But it's pretty cold up there, so let's have a purple-and-blue blur in a sphere to represent that."
" ... "
"Well, what do you think?"
"Frankly, those are shit ideas."
"Thanks for nothing! You come up with something better then, smartarse!"
"Well, I don't think I can to be honest. So we'll have to use them. But I don't reckon the players will like it much."
"Ok, how about this then. Both my designs are in a circle. So let's take all the other ideas and put them in a circle too, and then distort and blur them so badly that no-one will be able to tell what they are either."
"Ok, I could see that working."
"Oh! And I'll tell you what else. If we make all the units on each side the same colour and then have the figure designs virtually identical to each other and make several spaces on the board too small for more than one figure to fit in, all the players will complain about that and ignore the political marker issue!"
"Nice. We'll roll with that."
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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"Wow, I'm well chuffed with the way this game is looking on the table. But wait a minute, those dice are so boring. Can't we do anything with the dice?"
"Well, dice are like that for a reason. It's a functional design for what the dice does. Dice have been like that for hundreds of years. If it 'aint broke, don't fix it and all that."
"Come on, we're not going to get anywhere with that defeatist attitude! Let me think ... right, let's put Roman numerals on the Roman dice and ... Carthaginian numbers on the Carthaginian dice!"
"But most people can't read ancient Carthaginian!"
"Possibly not. But most of the people who're going to buy this are Grognards. They're so steeped in the history of the games they play that most of them can speak a dozen or more ancient languages."
"What about everyone else?"
"Well, I doubt there will be many. But it can't be that hard, surely. Remember that I got our playtesters for this game to learn ancient Latin and Carthaginian as a way of getting closer to their source material. I don't remember them complaining!"
"Well, actually ..."
"Shut up. We're putting Carthaginian numbers on the die."
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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[Phone rings]
"Hello?"
"Hi, yes, is that the North American table manufacturers and retailers association?"
"Why yes it is, can I help you?"
"We have a business proposition for you. Listen: if we were to release a game with a board so absurdly huge that it wouldn't fit on any ordinary table, would you be willing to give us a cut from all the new, vast tables that would get sold as a result?"
"Sounds like a great idea. Shall we say two percent?"
"We have a deal. I'll get the paperwork in the post."
[Click]
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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"Right, so on the board we're going to have markers to indicate where players should play their cards, and we'll colour the markers with the same colours used on the cards."
"Come on, do we really need a board for this? People can just make up their own stacks, or for the truly desperate we could just put in some more cards to use as markers."
"Ah, but if we put a board in then we can call it a proper board game and charge a price which is astronomical compared with the actual value of the components!"
"Of course, I forgot that! OK, so the colours - red for red cards, green for green cards ..."
"Yellow for yellow and blue for blue, right!"
"But what about white? That won't look very good on this high colour board at all, will it?"
"I suppose not. I know! We'll draw lots of lines on it so it looks black instead."
"No way! Everyone will spot that as a fake."
"Okay then, let's make the green one in the same style so it doesn't look so out of place. And we'll put them next to each other on the board as well - that way they'll be virtually indistinguishable."
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9.
Board Game: Ra
[Average Rating:7.74 Overall Rank:27]
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Matt Thrower
United Kingdom
Bath
Somerset
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"Excellent news! We've won the license to republish this classic game! Is there anything we can do to improve on the design of previous versions?"
"Well, we could put a player aid on the board."
"Oh yes, that'd help loads! Any other ideas?"
"We could save a little on the costs by getting rid of that useless Ra figurine that everyone complained about in the last edition."
"Oh no, we couldn't possibly do that."
"Why not? Most people thought it was pointless. Anyone who thought otherwise can just use a coin or something to mark where the bidding started, or we could have a custom tile."
"Ah but this game is for the next generation. The current game-buying generation are young and they have no attention spans and can't count. It's in all the papers, so it must be true."
"Well, I'm not so convinced."
"Besides, people who buy games are geeks, and everyone knows that geeks can't count. You find hardly any geeks doing university level maths, computing and science courses!"
"I'm not entirely sure that's true either."
"Well, I know I'm right. And anyway, even if I weren't (which I am) we've got to have the piece in there to get up to the alloted wood quotient."
"The what?"
"The alloted wood quotient. All Eurogames must, by German law, contain a certain amount of wooden components. Why else do you think Tigris & Euphrates has those daft wooden palaces? We're struggling with Ra - the sun tokens we can make out of wood, but wooden tiles or board would just be silly. So we have to keep the Ra token to get up to our alloted wood quotient."
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Sheamus Parkes
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
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So look, this game needs poker chips.
Poker chips? Aren't those expensive and heavy.
Yea, but there's no way we can do this game with anything else.
So how are we going to keep the cost down?
Well first of all, you know all those pesky player boards? Scrap them. We'll just give out flimsy sheets of paper.
But that still won't be enough money!
Well, you know those nice player aids, why do they all have to be printed on their own piece of cardboard. Couldn't we just print the same player aid on both sides of the same tile to save space?
You mean we could print the same number of player aids with half the cardboard? Brilliant!
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Sheamus Parkes
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
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So we have a real surplus of product from our adult novelty line. What should we do with it?
Put them in our next board game...
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Sheamus Parkes
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
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... but what about our magnum model?
You're right, that model weighs too much to use a bunch of them in a single game. Find some game in the pipe line that just needs one distinctive piece.
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Ⓦ Ⓢhubert
United States
Portland
Oregon
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"Uh-oh. Our artist just went on a journey of self-discovery for the next few years, and he never drew the monsters!"
"Never drew the monsters!!! But this is a horror game, how can we print it without pictures of the monsters on their tiles?"
"Well, we've got to. We'll just print the name of the monster on the tile, and players can use their imagination. Doesn't all the best horror rely on people's imagination?"
"Dang, well if it's that or pay another artist, I guess we'll have to do it. But we can't just have the name, what else could go on the tile? Do we have any extra artwork at all?"
"H'mmm...it looks like we won't need this stoplight picture. Maybe we could chop out the lights and use them as the tile art for monsters? Would that be scary enough?"
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Dan Taylor
United States
Unionville
Virginia
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"So, I think I've worked up this neat game for our license. Draws a lot on Puerto Rico, that new game all the cool kids are playing, should be fun."
"Can't wait to play it. We're just getting the demo figures back from China, too, so we can demo it and them together."
"Demo figures?"
"This is a battle game put out by Eagle games. Did you think we'd just have little round brown guys for workers?"
"Well... actually... that's more or less what I was thinking."
"What? This is a license for a battle game. It goes without saying that there should be buckets of dice, a nice big battle mat and serious carnage, every round!"
"Well... it's a game of resource management. I mean, I guess I could put in a battle system..."
"Well, throw something together for the demo. Maybe some rock paper scissors thing."
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Posted Tue Jun 17, 2008 8:53 am
