Brandon the Game Dev

As the coronavirus lockdown continues, a lot of people are having a hard time getting their board game fix. The ability to play board games online, however, has never been easier. That’s because it’s easy to make board games in Tabletop Simulator, an inexpensive board game simulation tool available on the Steam store.

I’ve talked about how you can create a Tabletop Simulator demo for your own game before. This week, though, I have something special in mind. Because so many people are interested in Tabletop Simulator right now, I want to introduce you to Kenny. Kenny runs the Pangea Games social media as well as a company called Overboard Games, which makes board games in Tabletop Simulator for various different publishers.

It’s a super cool niche for him to be in and I love his business model. That’s why I want to give him a chance to tell his story.

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Who Am I & What is Tabletop Simulator?

Hey! My name is Kenny, and I create games on Tabletop Simulator for publishers and designers. I also create all the social media posts for Pangea Games, including the weird cheese question.

Tabletop Simulator is a physics-based board game engine which you can buy on Steam. With over 30,000 games, it’s the biggest platform to play all your favorite games. Overboard Games has made 30 games in Tabletop Simulator so far and that list will keep getting bigger.

If you’re looking to learn the game you can read our article, How to Learn Tabletop Simulator. You can learn how to install and then play the game like a pro.

How Did I Start?

I started playing board games originally on Tabletop Simulator in 2017. This later spawned an online community called Overboard Games. The Discord server grew over the years and it’s currently sitting at 700 members. I would love for you to join and play with other like-minded board gamers during this lockdown.

After a year of playing games, I decided to make board games in Tabletop Simulator from publicly available print-and-play games. My first creation was a demo of Blight Chronicles: Agent Decker for their Kickstarter which was simple but functional. I continued importing games for 7 months into Tabletop Simulator before commissioned to create Chai by Steeped Games.

How Chai Changed the Way I View Tabletop Simulator

Chai showed me what a Tabletop Simulator workshop creation needed, atmosphere, quality and a well-designed workshop page. Chai was the first game on the workshop to have a custom environment akin to the Tabletop Simulator DLC’s (downloadable content). This made the Tabletop Simulator creation stand out and it showed. It kept gaining followers and subscribers, which was fantastic!

From this point on, we knew that a custom environment was essential. Tabletop Simulator alone isn’t exactly the prettiest platform. With each game we created, our quality improved and we were able to provide better functionality.

Tabletop Simulator allows you to script functions within the game. This allowed us to take on more complex games and automate set-up. Something as simple as scripted setup can do wonders for your game. Shuffling decks, dealing tiles, and assigning first player at a push of a button is very useful.

This birthed our motto: “We don’t want to put your game on a table and call a day. We want your game to be a showcase to be used for a lifetime.” From that point on, we’ve worked top names including Portal Games, Stronghold Games, and Garphill Games. All the publishers and independent designers with whom I’ve worked have been wonderful about supporting the platform and my business. I’ve thanked them before and I’ll thank again them now.

Kickstarters & Tabletop: A Match Made in Heaven

We’ve worked very closely with games before they launch on Kickstarter. Without a shadow of a doubt, we can say that Tabletop Simulator demos have been beneficial. Board games are expensive, especially massive miniature-heavy games. Therefore, Tabletop Simulator allows board gamers to play before they pledge.

I believe Kickstarter has created a very impulsive way of buying board games. Tabletop Simulator, therefore, counters that trend. It will help you understand what you want to buy and what is just hype. I think we’ve all fallen victim to purchasing expensive games that we haven’t enjoyed.

The Unheard-of Benefits of Tabletop Simulator

Tabletop Simulator doesn’t just let people play before pledging, it’s also a great place to design and playtest games. Tabletop Simulator can be used to prototype your game with hundreds of people remotely with the freedom to change and customize on a whim. This freedom allows you to experiment with 100-foot minis or just 1 deck of cards. It’s entirely up to you.

Experimenting like this with physical components would be a very costly process. On a digital platform, the cost is basically zero. You pay $20 one time for Tabletop Simulator, and that’s it.

Of course, that’s all theory. Let’s talk about an actual person and their experience!

I’d like to share a story by Dustin Hendrickson. He originally developed and tested Don’t Let it Die on Tabletop Simulator so I reached out to him and this is what he said…

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The Story of Dustin Hendrickson in His Own Words…

I’m a software engineer by trade, but have been designing and creating games since I was in middle school. After working on standalone video games as a one-man studio I decided to switch from video games to a childhood love of mine, board games!

Luckily, I also had extensive knowledge of Photoshop, so I set out to make my first board game using Photoshop and a software program called Tabletop Simulator. I had used Tabletop Simulator before to create some one-off custom mods and expansions for games such as Massive Darkness and Welcome Back to The Dungeon, but that was the extent of my actual board game design experience.

It didn’t take too long to get my workflow down for creating components in Photoshop and importing them into Tabletop Simulator. Some of the benefits that I immediately noticed was the speed at which I could make changes and get them to the table for testing.

I had luckily gotten the game approved for the Tabletop Simulator Spotlight section where they show off custom made content on the main game menu page. This kicked off the momentum and got tons of people to try the game and leave feedback. Blind playtesting of your games is very valuable when it comes to helping refine your rules and making sure your game is easily approachable.

How Tabletop Simulator Helped Dustin Hendrickson, in His Own Words…

Having a demo on Tabletop Simulator saves a ton of time and money. You would normally need to get physical copies made and shipped. Then any changes made would require a new print run of game components. It’s a money and time sink, but necessary!

Using Tabletop Simulator was also a great way to market without being sucked into the Facebook ads scene. I was able to offer the game for free to anyone who had Tabletop Simulator, which led to more people trying the game, liking it, and then telling their friends about it!

After getting a ton of messages from people asking about a physical copy, I decided to take the steps needed to make one. After tons of research, phone calls, and emails with tons of publishers and manufacturers, I decided the best route to get the game physical was to self-publish it on The Game Crafter and push the Tabletop Simulator version to create a fan-base worldwide, which would be needed if I were to crowdfund the game.

So all in all, Tabletop Simulator was monumental to the success of the Kickstarter campaign. It’s a valuable marketing, testing, feedback, and community-creating tool that all designers should take a look at. It may improve propel their efficiency and workflow when working on new game ideas!

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Back to Kenny again…

Tabletop Simulator & A History of DMCA Takedowns

When I started playing games on Tabletop Simulator, there weren’t many publisher-approved creations. However, there were DLC’s – that started in 2015. Publishers at the time were strictly using Tabletopia since it has an official filtering system.

Tabletop Simulator, however, was living its life on the high seas of unofficial content. It didn’t last long, though. A few big publishers started sending DMCA copyright violation notices. At the time, the biggest DMCA was issued over Munchkin. Since then, Bang and Pandemic have gone thorugh the same thing.

One DMCA stands out above all others: the “Legend” DMCA. It’s said that Legend was DMCAed and forced to take down the Legendary Encounters series. However, this caused everything with the word “legend” in the name to be taken down, whether intentional or not. Oops.

For this reason, Tabletop Simulator doesn’t have the best reputation. However, over the years, publishers and designers have been using the platform in conjunction with mod makers like myself to promote their games.

This is great progress for Tabletop Simulator and for the industry as a whole. This way, we can respect Tabletop Simulator for what it’s doing for the industry. I anticipate the publishers and designers will continue to have mod makers create Tabletop Simulator versions of their games. Ultimately, we may see an official workshop list for big name games, which Berserk Games – creators of Tabletop Simulator – is looking into.

Final Thoughts on Making Board Games in Tabletop Simulator

Tabletop Simulator has a long history with a lot of bumps along the way. The freedom it offers us to create and play games with all our friends far outweighs the negative aspects.

I think as the years go by, Tabletop Simulator will garner more attention and support from publishers and designers. Tabletop Simulator can only improve and develop with your help, so please support it by downloading the game on Steam and uploading your board games as workshop items. And if you need help? We’ll be there!

It’s quarantine o’clock and I’m responding to comments that I got on a post I wrote a few weeks ago: What confuses you about board game development? This time, I’m going to talk about pitching to board game publishers. Yes, those mysterious entities with make-or-break power over your creative dreams. Let’s talk about what they want and why they’re so weird.

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First, I’ll level with you. There are a ton of perfectly good articles online about how to approach board game publishers. Here are a few examples:

• How to Pitch Your Board Game to a Publisher
• How to Pitch (and Not Pitch) Your Game to Stonemaier Games
• Board game designers are bad at pitching games to publishers. I can help.

This is really just scratching the surface, too. There are plenty more articles that aren’t at the top of Google. I encourage you to read them.

In this article, I’m not going to write about how to specifically word a pitch. I’m not going to tell you the name of the right publisher to contact.

What I will instead do is talk about the mindset you need before you pitch a board game to a publisher. You could even apply this advice to any kind of product by any kind of company.

I choose to focus on this angle because I feel this is what is really missing when people talk about pitching to board game publishers. You need to give them a reason to run with your ideas.

You can sweat over every single word of your pitch, what you wear, and the attachments on your email. Or, alternatively, you can focus on building an empathetic understanding of what companies need to succeed and how you can help them.

1. Board game publishers have to meet consumer demand.

The only reliable way to build a business is to routinely meet market demand. You have to make products that fit markets that already exist. Board game publishers, who were already working with super tight margins before the coronavirus pandemic, have to follow this rule with even more vigor than most.

That means if people want worker placement games, most publishers will try to make worker placement games. If people like sci-fi or fantasy, most publishers will try to make sci-fi games, fantasy games, or both. Publishers are not gods but rather they are captains of ships upon the waves of consumer demand, which is a much mightier force.

The law of product-market fit is ironclad. Companies that ignore it go out of business. Just ask Kodak and Blockbuster. That means if your game does not satisfy a need in the market, then it doesn’t matter how well it’s designed – it won’t make money.

Publishers have a moral duty to differentiate marketable ideas from unmarketable ideas. This is how they stay in business and keep their employees paid. People’s lives literally depend upon the ability to discriminate between board games that meet consumer demand and board games that don’t.

Thus, a publisher’s condemnation of your idea, if it comes to that, is not a condemnation of you as a person. It is merely the result of a hardnosed but necessary business move governed by the inexorable laws of what people want, which often differs from what is obvious.

2. Understand consumer behavior to understand board game publishers.

If pitching to board game publishers requires understanding that they have to meet consumer behavior, then there is a logical next question. “What does consumer behavior look like in board games?” I write about this in length in People are Weird, Markets are Weirder…Especially with Board Games.

I definitely encourage you to read the whole post I’ve linked because it’s a more nuanced take than I have space for here. Nevertheless, the basic idea is that there are tons of choices, people tend to make “safe choices.” They pick themes they already like with mechanics they already like at price points at which they’ve previously purchased.

For this reason, publishers tend to bias their decision-making based on revenue shown by similar games from the past. Material costs are also a huge factor, which is part of why some components (such as meeples) are more common than others (such as minis).

Now sometimes it is okay to take a risk on a new idea. Publishers will every once in a while do something wildly innovative. Yet when they do so, because it’s so risky, they hedge their bets by making “safer games” to offset potential risks from higher-risk games.

I’m not giving publishers grief, and I hope you don’t either. Again, they’re responding to how board gamers behave so they can keep their businesses running and employees paid. This must be understood when you’re pitching to them. Try to think how publishers think!

3. When pitching to board game publishers, consider their needs and how you can meet them.

The previous two points have addressed broad needs held by every board game publisher. However, publishers are all different. They have unique audiences, products, portfolios, and interests.

Before you pitch to any publisher, look at what they’ve released and what they are planning to release. You want your board game to fit in with their overall product portfolio! After all, a hardcore wargaming company like GMT Games isn’t going to make the next Twister. Nor should they be expected to!

After you do that, research each publisher’s style too. Every publisher has different branding, a different social media presence, and a unique “voice.” Study them and figure out what makes each publishing company tick. Find some of the people involved and get to know them personally without being salesy. By doing this, you can both network and figure out what the companies are actually looking for.

Final Thoughts

Pitching to board game publishers may seem mysterious, but it’s not. They are reacting to what board gamers want, which is exactly what they ought to do. Try to understand how their companies work and how you can help.

With a more nuanced viewpoint, everything else will be easier. Once you understand publisher’s needs, submitting your pitch will come much more naturally. Instead of being a desperate designer trying to shortcut a two-year backlog, you could be a trusted partner who thinks in terms of mutual benefit.

I want to take a break from talking about board game development today. Instead, I’m going to talk about how you can manage your energy and stay very productive over a long period of time. After all, this is one of the most important qualities you can have when in the middle of a long haul board game project!

Through most of 2019, I worked a minimum of 70 hours per week. I often broke 80 hours per week, too. Thankfully, the coronavirus quarantine has given me a much-needed opportunity to return to a healthy work schedule. I certainly cannot vouch for a 70-hour workweek lifestyle, because I think productivity peaks around 55, and possibly lower.

Without getting into too much gritty detail, I had no choice. Life forced my hand and I had to get productive. I was working a day job, running a business, and taking care of a seriously injured loved one. Working this much is not aspirational or glamorous and it should not be exalted as a moral value. It is something to be survived.

In this time, I picked up a bunch of tricks on being productive. These tips helped me not only survive the do-or-die desperation of 2019 but also build the Pangea Marketing Agency and launch Tasty Humans.

I hope that sharing them with you helps you achieve your dreams as well! Failing that, I hope this knowledge at least helps you survive a tough time.

Step 1: Know the basic types of productive energy.

Not all productive energy is the same. You can be mentally or emotionally fried, but physically well enough to run eight miles. Alternatively, you can be mentally on top of your game, but too tired or sore to move across the room. You can have tremendous patience for listening to your friends’ woes while not being able to do your homework.

Now you may say to yourself, “what does it matter what I’m in the mood for? What has to be done has to be done. Get over it and just do it!”

Sometimes that’s right. If you have no control over your schedule, maybe that’s even the right attitude. But if you do have control over your schedule to some degree, I think a better way to look at it is to divide your productive energy into four basic categories:

1. Creative energy

Perhaps the most hallowed of all, creative energy is what gives you the ability to write with ease or draw or paint. You have creative energy when you feel inspired and you can easily get into the fabled flow state.

2. Analytical energy

Analytical energy gives you the ability to edit your work, be it through play-testing a game, proofreading a post, or finding ways to improve your business. When you feel this energy, it might be hard to create because of the naysaying voice in your head. Yet that same naysaying feeling is great for when you need to take a realistic look at your work and find ways to objectively evaluate it and find ways to do better.

3. Social energy

Sometimes, you feel like spending time with others. At other times, you don’t. It’s said that introverts tend to feel social energy less and extraverts more. Perhaps this is the case, although the labels of introvert and extravert are, by their nature, imprecise and subjective.

It’s not good to be holed up in your office all day (unless you’re hiding from coronavirus). Sometimes you feel like collaborating with others, having conversations, and sharing ideas. Even if you can’t go out, you can use your social energy through video calls, phone calls, and chat rooms.

4. Administrative energy

Finally, sometimes you feel like doing the dishes, organizing your desk, answering emails, and responding to voicemails. Every person in modern society has chores to do, and sometimes doing chores is the only way you can satisfy your urge to do…something. If you feel this energy coming on, roll with it!

Step 2: Adapt your work to manage your energy.

After identifying the different kinds of energy, the logical next step is to apply that knowledge for some purpose. In a perfect world, you would be able to completely rearrange your day whenever you feel “in the mood” to create, analyze, socialize, or do chores.

In the real world, we don’t quite have that privilege. Some work has to be done at a certain time no matter what. Certain quotas have to be met, taxes filed, and people spoken to. I get that.

Yet as much as you possibly can, if you want to get the absolute most productivity out of yourself, work with your energy. If you feel creative, block off time and start creating. If all you want to do is go out, find a way to socialize and plan to complete your other work at a different time. (Just be careful not to succumb totally to procrastination.)

Step 3: Find patterns and rearrange your schedule

Here is where the real magic happens. With a good understanding of the types of energy, you can begin to adapt your schedule to your natural energy cycles. You’ll notice patterns emerge over time.

I’m most creative in the morning with a resurgence after lunch. I complete analytical work in the late morning slump and administrative work in the afternoon slump. I either socialize or exercise in between to keep myself from getting too in my head.

Your patterns will be different, and this is only natural. Taking the time to observe your own behavior so that you can arrange your schedule around it is going to be one of the best things you’ll ever do. Every day, you’ll feel much more like you going with the grain instead of against it. This makes 40-hour workweeks enjoyable and 70-hour workweeks tolerable.

Final Thoughts

A little self-awareness goes a long way. You’re capable of doing more than you probably give yourself credit for. One of the best ways to meet your potential is to simply make the best use of the natural energy you feel on a day-to-day basis. It’ll make your life easier and happier 🙂

If you have any productivity tips for other readers of this blog, leave them in the comments below!