Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Just here for Highways & Byways updates? Click here.
The board game review process is one of the most important parts of game development. This is true whether you launch on Kickstarter or whether you launch by more traditional means. For the sake of this discussion, we’ll assume that you’re getting your board game reviewed prior to a Kickstarter campaign. That’s what I’ve experienced and much of the discussion will still be relevant even if that assumption does not apply to you.
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Why Get Reviews?
Why are board game reviews important? There are three major reasons: consumer protection, authority, and reach. Consumer protection is pretty obvious: with so many games coming out, there is no way for somebody to try them all, play the demos, or print out the print-and-play games. Somebody has to be the arbiter or what’s considered good and bad, simply because consumers do not have time to do this themselves. What that resulted in for board gaming is a group of people who review board games on their blogs and channels as a hobby.
Second comes authority. This is pretty simple: board games that have reviews are more attractive than board games that do not have reviews, whether or not they’re good or bad reviews. Having a recognizable name on your project gives people the sense that you are serious.
Lastly, board game reviewers have audiences separate than the one you’ve been building on your own. Some of them even have audiences vastly bigger than one you can build up in the matter of a few months or a year or two. Regardless of whether your game is reviewed by people as big as Rahdo or a handful of YouTube channels with 1,000 – 10,000 subscribers, you will have your game seen by more people than you would without them. Don’t underestimate the small channels either – a close-knit community can be better than a disengaged large and decentralized community.
The Strategy of Reaching Out
With all this said, how can you strategically approach the review process so that you get the best bang for your buck? It’s no secret that board game prototypes are expensive, so you want to get the greatest authority and reach possible. Step one: focus on people who will like your game AND whose spheres of influence do not overlap. You want to find big and engaged blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels, that’s true. You also want to only send games to people who are interested in the type of game you have to send. But I’d argue it’s more important that you get people who specialize in different niches and attract different people. The benefits are twofold: you will gain wider reach and bad reviews won’t poison your whole audience.
Having reviewers whose audiences do not overlap can help free you from your fears. It is terrifying to send your work out to reviewers who will determine whether it’s good or bad. Most of them will probably enjoy your game, but it’s still pretty scary. All I can say is make peace with your fears and don’t let them push you into doing something stupid like only reaching out to people who will sing your praises (for a price).
That brings me to one last thing you need to be aware of before you reach out to reviewers. It’s a doozy, too. There are a lot of people who will try to charge you for reviews. I’m not talking about previews with high production value videos and marketing packages (which themselves are in an ethical gray area), I’m talking about money for positive coverage. Don’t get wrapped up in that. That wouldn’t fly in most other industries and its only because board gaming is such a young industry with so many independent reviewers and creators that it’s not a bigger problem than it is.
As for paid previews with nice videos and marketing packages, I’m a little more conflicted. They typically disclose the fact that money changed hands pretty prominently. Still, make sure that whatever coverage they provide is worth more than you could have gotten with the same money spent on Facebook or Board Game Geek ads.
Last but not least, if you’re avoiding bias, you’ll probably get one or two negative reviews. That’s fine. In fact, a negative review or two can grant you more legitimacy than a game which gets nothing but perfect reviews from every direction.
Getting the Conversation Started
Take a few hours to research board game reviewers. Read their blogs, watch their videos, listen to their shows, and figure out the size of their audience and reach. Don’t just look at social media followers or subscribers, look at their status within Facebook groups and other areas too. Get a spreadsheet ready and have a list of 15-20 people to reach out to. Expect a few no’s and always prioritize your preferred reviewers first when reaching out. You don’t want your eleventh best choice to take a game out of the second best choice’s hands if your second choice responds late.
It’s best to get to know the reviewer well before you need a review. Social media makes this easy. If you already know them, you can send a simple message on Facebook or Twitter. Here’s one I used to reach out to reviewers I already knew:
Hey [First Name], Happy New Year! I just ordered some Highways & Byways review copies. Would you like for me to save you one for a review?
Short and sweet. Then once they responded, I could send more details via email. Those details include my name, my game, my timeline, a description of the game, a link to rules, a photo, and a list of anything that’s different between the review copies and the final copies. I could then use the following email for both people I knew and people I didn’t know. Note: I changed up the first paragraph based on whether they knew me or not.
Hi [Name],
My name is Brandon Rollins and I have created a board game called Highways & Byways. I plan to launch a Kickstarter at the end of March, and I am emailing you to see if you are interested in reviewing the game. Here’s a little more information about the game:
It is a casual family board game for 2-4 players. I’ve heard it favorably compared to Ticket to Ride.
It takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour to play – less once you’re used to it.
It’s fairly lightweight, but there is definitely room to strategize if you want to.
It has a nostalgic 1970s travel theme – think bright postcards in sharply contrasting colors.
The objective is to travel a route of your own selection faster than your opponents. First one home wins.
The three basic strategies to win are:
Plan your routes more efficiently at the beginning of the game.
Manage your hand to make more bad events less likely and good events more likely.
Move as fast as possible while still taking time to manage your hand.
Here is a photo of the game being played around the table with my family over the holidays, so you know what it looks like when being used:
I’ve got a lot of links below my name if you would like more information. I’ve been working on this game since March 2017. It’s been privately and publicly play-tested, including blind play-testing both at a Protospiel convention and online. There is also a Tabletop Simulator demo, located here: http://bywaysgame.com/demo/
If you accept, you don’t have to mail it back when you’re done. Keep or return, it’s your choice! In fact, there are only two catches I think you should be aware of:
The manufacturer I used for the review copies is a print-on-demand supplier and not an offset printer like I would use if the campaign funded. That means the pieces, namely cars (pawns) and houses, might differ from their final form.
I may have the privilege of adding stretch goals if the campaign goes really well, so the components might even end up better than what you see. (Let’s hope!)
Thank you for considering my game. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to read this email and I hope to work with you in the future!
Brandon Rollins
(Phone)
(Email)
(Web/Social Media)
That’s about all there is to it. Make sure you don’t contact more people than you have review copies to spare. Give them a little time to respond. You’d be amazed what you can accomplish just by asking politely.
Most Important Highways & Byways Updates
All the review copies of Highways & Byways are shipped.
Honestly, the pace of my outreach is moving so fast that the previous three bullet points probably won’t even be all-encompassing in the short gap between me writing them and this post going up at 9 am Friday.
Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the eleventh of a 19-part suite on board game design and development.
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Accessibility is a big issue in board gaming. It’s also a very complex issue that is hard to talk about succinctly because it covers game design, product testing, individual behavior, and group behavior under a lot of different circumstances. To help understand this subject, I’ve brought in Dr. Michael Heron of Meeple Like Us.
But first, let’s go ahead and define accessibility, using Michael’s own words (paraphrased):
Accessible games are ones where people can still play your game even if they have extraordinary usability needs. An inaccessibility is any feature of a game that presents a barrier to enjoyment. Mostly it’s about how information is presented and how the game is manipulated, but I also include aspects of cultural inaccessibility and representation.
This guide comes in three parts:
Cognitive Accessibility
Communicative Accessibility
Emotional Accessibility
Below is a transcript of our conversation over Discord DMs. It has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.
Cognitive Accessibility
Brandon: Let’s talk about cognitive and communicative accessibility. What are some ways in which games often fail to be cognitively accessible?
Brandon: For clarity: referring to both fluid intelligence and memory here.
Michael: This is one of the hardest categories for a modern designer game to do well within – the more strategically and tactically interesting a game is, the harder it is for it to be delivered as a cognitively accessible experience. Even saying that, though, there are particular things that are especially troublesome – heavy amounts of synergy, mutable game flow, numeracy and complex literacy needs, heavy use of probability, inconsistent terminologies and complex conditionals in rules (if this then than except… sort of thing).
Michael: Memory suffers when playing well is dependent on knowing hidden game state – cards in a deck builder or such. There are also games that rely on elements of general knowledge or trivia, or have actions that have counteractions that can be counteracted. That means it’s hard enough remembering what you’re doing now before you even think about rolling back the overall stack of actions to where you started.
Michael: There are some nice ways to help resolve these problems though – one of my favourites is when games have a “simple” version of a game and you can layer in additional complexity with built-in rules and systems. It’s best if it’s refereed to as something other than “simple” though because there’s a kind of stigma that attaches to terms like that. I like it when games offer a visual cue as to probability (like Catan’s number tiles), and when arithmetic operations come with physical tokens that you can manipulate instead of doing straight up arithmetic. Memory is best supported by just making sure that every part of the game state has some kind of physical token to represent it.
Michael: Some games involve layering in complexity within stacks, or have game systems that obscure the visibility of other game elements. I’m currently playing the Game of Thrones card game which does that a lot – you “attach” cards to other cards and in the process you end up hiding game state while at the same time you’re making it more complex. Avoiding that is a good technique, even if it’s somewhat situationally dependent on the game’s overall design.
Michael: One of the more useful observations here is that while complex games are likely to be cognitively inaccessible, it’s not necessarily the case that simple games are cognitively accessible. It’s more about the game state and how that game state is manipulated. Once Upon a Time for example is a very simple game that is very cognitively expensive because it’s about building stories, holding them in mind and locating points of narrative leverage where you can intercede.
Brandon: Generally, you want the cognitive accessibility to match the intention of the game itself. If it’s a thinker of a game, it doesn’t have to be super accessible…
Brandon: But – and this is a big caveat here: it needs to be as straightforward as you can possibly make it. Avoid annoying memory issues by providing reference cards and simple methods of tracking. Have rules that minimize the need for rote memorization. (A lot of this is just good game design.)
Brandon: My absolute favorite way to deal with cognitive accessibility is also possibly the hardest: making a game that can be enjoyed on many levels. Very superficial and straightforward strategies, though not necessarily optimal, should still be able to win or – at the very least – really fun to play.
Brandon: This is a personal design philosophy of mine.
Michael: Randomness can be a great leveler in this category too.
Brandon: I always like having a little luck in a game since it:
Keeps games from becoming solved games.
Makes simple strategies viable while still letting people play 12 dimensional chess if they want to.
Makes emotional aspects easier as well. Less despair / foregone conclusion issues and so on.
Communicative Accessibility
Brandon: What are some ways in which games fail to achieve communicative accessibility?
Michael: Mostly this is an area where games do quite well – there are few games where there’s a real need for communication beyond the level of table talk. There are, though, a family of social games that stress communication, usually within tight constraints or complex scenarios, where there are going to be problems.
Michael: For one thing, articulation difficulties can make it difficult to make an argument using odd, game specific terminology or jargon. If you’re doing that to a time limit, it’s even harder. If you’re doing it when other people are trying to talk over you, it’s harder still. And if you’re doing all of that when other people around the table are trying to make you look like a liar (games like Resistance as an example), you’ve got a recipe for profound inaccessibility.
Michael: Similarly with hearing difficulties – if your ability to play the game depends on picking up on conversational nuance or the like it’s going to be a problem. Some games make use of audio signals to indicate things should happen too – Escape: Curse of the Temple, for example, has a gong that rings to indicate that players should scurry on back to the central cavern. Many of these games offer alternatives, like hourglasses, but while those work they change the game around them – you need to keep checking the time yourself instead of being notified when it’s time to do something.
Escape: Curse of the Temple includes an hourglass for when audio cues are not appropriate – a thoughtful gesture. (Photo from Meeple Like Us).
Brandon: It seems like most games can avoid big issues simply by using straightforward writing and staying away from audio cues.
Brandon: As for games where lying, bluffing, or audible communication of strategy is involved, that is more of a genre/category issue and less of an individual game issue.
Emotional Accessibility
Brandon: Now here’s where we get into the “persistently controversial” stuff.Emotional, socioeconomic, and intersectional issues.
Brandon: Brace yourself.
Brandon: What considerations are there when making emotionally accessible games?
Michael: Board games are all about the social context, and to a certain extent, every game is going to be risky in this category – bad winners and bad losers transcend anything a designer can do. But there are some things that tend to exacerbate issues in this category – player elimination, ‘take that’ mechanics, the extent to which the players at a table can gang up on another player, winning-to-losing point differences, or being able to directly remove progress another player has been made. There are also a category of games (chess, Hive, and so on) that have a kind of “sheen” of intellectualism about them – it’s not true that the smartest person will win a game of chess but that’s often how society will interpret it. On a broader level, there are also issues of emotional accessibility that are associated with certain developmental conditions – a need to lie, a need to bluff, a need to read people at a table are examples of that kind of thing.
Brandon: Would you say this is the hardest area to consider in regards to overall accessibility?
Michael: It’s a toss-up between this and cognitive accessibility – the real problem here is that you have to design against a social context over which you have almost zero control, and it’s not even necessarily one where behavioural conditions even need to manifest for it to be a problem. We all know a bad winner or an obnoxious loser. And yet we all also know gracious winners and losers that can make even pointedly aggressive games lose any sting that goes with them. All you can really do is try to minimise the common catalysts for emotional upset – assuming that’s a goal you can meet within your game design.
Brandon: For both emotional and cognitive accessibility, I recommend taking a really close look at your target audience again. “Mean” games can get away with early player elimination and take that. “Nice” games can’t. Know what your game is and know who it appeals to.
Brandon: Make choices on purpose.
Brandon: Oddly enough, this mindset of optimizing emotional and cognitive accessibility can be really good for diagnosing serious marketing issues early because they’re so subjective.
In next week’s article, we’ll continue our conversation, focusing especially on the social aspects of board game accessibility.
Often times, small tweaks and a general sense of awareness go a long way toward creating professional and polished board games. By exploring some of the ways we can make games more accessible, especially mentally and emotionally, we can create games that more people can play. More fun for everyone!
Here are some key takeaways:
Only have strategic synergy in your game when it makes sense for what you’re trying to do.
Keep the flow of your game consistent unless changing the gameplay flow is part of the game.
Keep wording as simple as possible.
Use probability wisely, making it instinctive for players through visual cues if possible.
Don’t rely on knowledge of trivia.
Don’t require memory unless it’s part of your game.
Use terminology consistently.
Don’t include complex conditional statements in your rules unless you have to.
Don’t rely on general knowledge.
Use tokens for arithmetic if possible.
Minimize the need for communication (outside of table talk).
Don’t rely on audio signals.
Be aware that games with lying, bluffing, and audible communication may exclude subsets of people.
Be careful with player elimination and take that.
Keep losers and winners relatively close in points if you can.
Don’t allow players to directly remove progress other players have made.
Be aware of what kind of game you’re making.
Got any questions or comments? Leave them below, I’d love to read and respond to them 🙂
Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Just here for Highways & Byways updates? Click here.
Entrepreneurship is hard. One of the hardest parts of entrepreneurship is knowing when to change your mindset. We all go into our day-to-day endeavors saddled with a set of assumptions on how life works. Our assumptions are always a little bit wrong, but the act of assuming we know how to act is sometimes a useful way to deal with the bigger enemy of indecision. That said, from time to time, we all must undergo the painful process of changing our belief systems to move forward in life.
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1) You must build an audience before you launch a product.
We’re not talking about a laundry list of things I did wrong today, though. We’re talking about earth-shattering paradigm shifts that rewired the way I think. This failed Kickstarter launch did just that. I immediately understood – both intellectually and emotionally – how critical it was to build an audience before launching a product. “Build it and they will come” is false in the board game industry.
There are a few ways you can build an audience, but they more or less boil down to “talk to a bunch of people” or “get your game in front of people who’ve already done that.” For your own sake, I recommend you do both. People you talk to individually will be the most loyal to your cause, and people who find you through others who have a larger platform – who will come in far greater numbers – will be more likely to stick around if you’ve already got a lively community of your own.
There is a reason why A Crash Course in Board Game Marketing & Promotion is one of my most popular articles on here. A lot of people have come to realize just how important it is to build your own audience.
2) It takes more than one game to make a viable business.
I’m going to tip my hand a bit here. I’m still a pretty new game developer. I’m committed to sharing all my knowledge for our greater good, but I should not be regarded as a veteran like Jamey Stegmaier or James Mathe. Why? A little something I realized in March 2017: it takes more than one game to succeed in this industry. I’m working on my second: Highways & Byways.
It took me a long time to realize this. I wanted to just make War Co. and call it a day. I didn’t intend to get into the board game industry, but I ended up really liking it anyway. Still, it took me until March 2017 – ten months ago, mind you – to finally take Pangea Games seriously and start working on a second game.
Why does it take multiple games to make a viable business? There are several factors at work. You need money to have a viable business and board game development businesses have a tough time with this. Bringing in steady money requires an audience and a backlog of different games. Both the audience and the backlog take a long time to build, and there is no shortcutting that. Even if you decide you’re not crazy enough to self-publish like me, your publisher won’t pay you a lot. It will take several games to start racking up royalties that will bring you decent amounts of cash.
I’m not saying “don’t make board games if you want to make money.” I think there are far too many negative people who act like you can’t make a dime in this industry. I don’t buy that. This is a $1.4 billion industry with fairly low barriers to entry. You just have to have a big enough audience to take advantage of large print runs OR a backlog of games that sell.
3) I began to think about “the After.”
This hit me around March 2017 as well. When I launched War Co. to the general public on Valentine’s Day 2017, it didn’t sell well. A lot of the stock sat in my garage for a while before it finally started selling a little bit. The reason why is simple: I didn’t think enough about sales. I was myopic in my past, thinking the Kickstarter alone would get my business, well, kickstarted. It’s not that simple. You have to build up a sales system, you have to think about “the After.” Kickstarter, or “launch day” if you launch your game through other means, is not the end-all-be-all. You need a way to sell your inventory on an ongoing basis. Otherwise, it will just sit in your garage or a warehouse. Needless to say, I’ll be handling Highways & Byways differently.
You have to think ahead.
4) I started using social media for leads and connections, not followers.
One of the nasty and seductive parts of Twitter, Instagram, and other social media networks is that it’s easy to focus on followers. Followers do not really matter. If your followers are not targeted, then your channel won’t do your business much good. The War Co. Instagram account is giant, but the Brandon the Game Dev and Highways & Byways accounts both bring me more actual business.
Instead of focusing on followers, focus on leads. I started doing this in June 2017. Try to find people who will be interested in what you do, and follow them. Don’t abuse the system, just follow a few people every day. Then you can reach out to them individually and you’ll have real common ground. This is called lead generation, and this is the main mindset I use with social media now. This helps me get email addresses and grow the Discord server that I run. This is infinitely better than tens of thousands of followers who simply don’t care about what I’m doing.
Even better than leads, though, you can start making connections to important people. I’m talking bloggers, podcasters, and reviewers – people who can really help you get your board game seen by a larger audience. You can find other game developers, make friends, and find mentors. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media networks make this a lot easier.
5) I learned the importance of playing matchmaker.
Last but not least, in June 2017, I started building up the game dev Discord server that many people know me for. It’s got over 1,000 people in it and I recommend that you join it if you are starting to make board games. I realized just how incredibly powerful it is to be able to connect people with other people they’d like to meet. I’ve learned that it is a wonderful thing – and good for business – to be able to connect developers and play-testers, bloggers and designers, artists and paying customers.
What sets businesses apart is often intangible qualities. The reason campaigns go into the millions on Kickstarter is because the people behind them have built up – either individually or through a larger organization – goodwill. That goodwill translates into trust and eventually sales. One of the best ways to build up goodwill is to help people with their goals. Matchmaking is the most time-effective way to do this.
Have you had any massive mental shifts in your own game development endeavors? Share them below in the comments 🙂
Most Important Highways & Byways Updates
I’ve ordered 10 review copies.
I’ve started sending out a few copies to reviewers.
I’ve got a lot of guest posts in the works.
I’m starting to show up on podcasts – keep an eye out for me!
There is generally a lot of exciting stuff going on with Highways & Byways – got to spread the word.
