Should Designers Make Videos for Unpublish Board Games Part 1

Link to Download Podcast

Dr. Wictz and TC Petty III get together in a two part seminar series to discuss the role of video for board game designers in attracting publishers and players for unpublished board games.  In part one of the series, Dr. Wictz and TC Petty III postulate the goals of the different types of board game prototype videos before talking with Kevin Brusky of APE Games and Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games about what videos actually matter to publishers.

Link to Part Two

Examples of Prototype Videos Referenced in Podcast:

Complete Playthrough - Vivajava: The Dice Game

Abridge Playthrough - Table Top

Promo Video - MVP Boardgames UNPUB6

Live Video (Periscope)  - Ed Marriott Gencon 2015

Rule Explanation - Hoboken

Rule Explanation - Daniel Solis 

Snippet - Hoboken Unwelcomed Visitors

Snippet - Hoboken "Game Over Man"

Internal Conversation - Michael R. Keller FCOJ

Moral Compass: The Last Turn

Something that has always perplexed me about game design is how to assess a board game where the outcome of the game consistently comes down to the last turn.  Does this signify the game is well designed or poorly designed?

Game is Well Designed

Who wants to play a game turn after turn once the outcome has been decided?  It leaves a bad taste in the losing players mouth because he has to spend the rest of his time playing the game with his defeat being rubbed into his face.  For the winner, it can become tedious executing the last series of moves that everyone knows will award you the game.

The solution - make sure the game ends when this moment occurs.  This is easier said than done, but this is the primary reason why it's generally considered a well designed game when the outcome of who will win the game also marks the end of the game.

Game is Poorly Designed

On the other hand if the outcome of the game always hangs in the balance until the last turn, why am I wasting all this time playing the game up to this point.  I could save myself and everyone else a ton of time by jumping to the last turn and completing the few actions it takes to see who wins the game.

I assume the purpose of playing the game is to maneuver myself to have the best chance to win. Meanwhile my opponents are attempting to do the same thing, and if we are trading barbs along the way, having a climatic conclusion is welcome.

But, if everything I do has minimal effect on changing the situation that resolves who is the victor of the game, then it might as well not be part of the game.  Everyone would be better served by a redesign that quickly recreates the end game and start the game from there.  Hopefully, the new truncated version of the game has some set of meaningful decision, otherwise the game is just rolling a dice to see who wins and not a competition of skill with our opponents.  In which case, we can play an equivalent game where we take bets on penny flips since this is heck of alot  cheaper than the current price of board games.

The Danger of Stronger Copyright Laws in Board Games

There has been some rumblings lately about possibly strengthening copyrights laws in board games to protect game mechanics.  Historically (from my non-lawyer layman perspective) copyright laws in board games have been relatively weak.  I recall Dan Yarrington explaining it like this at an UNPUB panel in Delaware. Devices can be patented, brands trademarked, and rules copyrighted - not mechanics.

What did Dan mean when he said rules can be copyrighted - not mechanics?  Dan meant someone cannot copy the rulebook of a game verbatim, but if they can get someone to perform the same set of action (aka mechanic) using a different set of words, it does not violate copyright.

The challenge to this older approach in copyright law is a series of court rulings that appear to provide some sort of copyright protection to game mechanics as well. I argue that strengthening board game copyright law is bad for board game innovation, designers, publishers, and players.  

Discourages Innovation

Innovation itself is the thing most at risk from strong copyright laws.  Innovation takes place when board game designers modify pre-existing ideas.  Take Ticket to Ride, a remarkable commercial success with a mechanic that tweaked and rethemed rummy.  

Most innovation is the process of tweaking older mechanics.  Having an innovative idea to compete over a set of actions does not mean it has been honed into an intuitive or fun package for board game players.  Many different board game designers work hard coming up with tweaks or iterations based on the same mechanic looking to hit the sweet spot for players.

Stronger copyright laws severely limits what mechanics are available for board game designers to tweak.  That by itself reduce the variability of board games.  Even worse, if mechanics were to become protected, a designer with any idea, good or bad, has to constantly worry if their idea infringes on someone else's copyright.

Why such a worry? Because with stronger copyright laws it becomes harder and more time consuming to identify when a designers has or has not violated someone else’s mechanic.  Under the older copyright approach described by Dan, I can read someone’s rules and make sure I am not copying what they are doing.  Under a system that protects mechanics I have to spend hours and hours of time researching or money on a board game copyright expert to make sure my game is unique.

The problem is the financial reward for making a board game design does not justify paying these costs.  Only a handful of board game designers earn enough money to cover the expense of attending conventions to promote their game designs, yet alone make a living.  Adding additional cost to the game design hobby only pushes more innovative people away from game design and off to doing something else.

Drives out Small Innovative Publishers

Another byproduct is that the cost of making sure a game does not infringe on copyrights drives out innovative small board game publishers.  Board game publishing is a low margin business.  A slight increase in cost across the industry has large implications for the financial viability of many small companies.

The threat of being sued is a big expense.  Keeping a lawyer on retainer, having to drop an additional X amount of dollars for an expert to review the copyright, having to worry about lost man hours dealing with copyright issues in a one/two man company dramatically increases the amount of capital it takes to publish a game.  

To Hasbro, stronger copyright protection is a minimal expense.  For a variety of reasons they already have a fleet of lawyers on retainer.  But for a small one/two man operation -Tasty Minstrel Games, Stonemaier Games, Dice Hate Me Games, Stronghold Games - it's very unlikely they have a legal team on hand for production runs of a few thousand a game.  Even worse, when there is a legal issue it will take up a huge amount of the owner's time to address it because they do not have the budget to push the problem onto a staffer of the company.

Innovation Fallacy

There are some people out there who would respond by saying, but this is all worth it because we will have more “innovative” games.  That, in an effort to avoid licensing fees, board game designers and publishers have to focus on making things that are truly “innovative.”

But this thinking misses the entire point of innovation.  The point of innovation is not to come up with an idea and only use it once.  The point of innovation is to come up with a great idea that is so useful for so many things that we use it over and over again.

Imagine you are the person who invents the wheel.  As a society we are excited someone invented the wheel, not because we necessarily want someone to invent something better than the wheel, but because the wheel is such a great idea we want to use it over and over again for a variety of applications.

We might, as a society, try to do something to award people to come up with the idea for the wheel to encourage the creation of it.  Be it cash prizes, prestige, or even a time period of exclusive use of the idea.  However, at some point we want the idea to be free for all of society to use so we can benefit from the idea and so others can modify it to become an even greater idea.  

Current Copyright protection in the United States lasts either 70 years after the death of the creator, 120 years after first creation, or 95 years after publication.  That means the game Trains, which tweaks the deck building mechanics created by Donald X. Vaccarion for his game Dominion, would have to wait 70 years till after Vaccarion’s death to publish if it failed to  secure his permission to use the deck building mechanic.  Odds are good Hisashi Hayashi would be dead by then and Trains would be one of the many innovative board game casualties from burdensome copyright protection of board game mechanics.

Tips on Making a Rule Explanation Video with Two People in Different Locations

Someone asked me to make a video on how to play Hoboken to share with their friend.  Excitedly I said of course, but then I was faced with a problem, how do I make said video?  The challenge is that Dr. Wictz is not in fact one person, but two (just like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde without the evil), and I wanted both of my personalities to appear in the video.

Quickly, I got together with myself and I hatched out a plan on how to put together a rules video with two two people in different locations.

Separate Video from Voice

The key innovation I came up with was that I can record voice and images separately, with the images being only game components.  This allowed me to have both of my personalities in the video (Aaron & Austin) without ever having to get both of us in the same place.

Write a Script

To keep both personalities on task I wrote a script.  With two personalities, we can easily talk over each other, forget a key point to the game, and ramble (ok, that is just my personality, not because there were two people involved in making the video).

With a written script, I could just focus on saying what needed to be said and not worry about if I was missing something.  All I had to do was look at the script and ask myself if that part was finished or not.

Recorded Different People at Different Times

Writing the script took loner than I expected, so I was not able to record both of my voices at the same time.  Luckily, with a script I did not need to record both of my voices at the same time.  Each voice could make a recording and the recordings could be put together at a later date.

Each Person Reads the Entire Script

Just because I thought pre-recording one personality should say one thing and the other personality should say something else does not mean that was the correct decision.  By having both voices read the entire script I could elect to make any combination I pleased based on who sounded better doing what.  It also speed up the production process because if one voice did something wrong than I could check to see if the other voice did it correctly.

Google Hangout

A Challenge I had was how to record the voices and get it all to the same spot.  That was the magical moment when I realized the internet provided me a solution through the magic of youtube google hangouts.  I could have each each voice record a google hangout that I downloaded to get the audio for the final video.

Separate Video & Voice Bonus

As I watched the final product all put together I discovered one more bonus of recording voice and images separately, I realized that when I update the game components I only need to re-record the images, not the voices.

A Dr. Wictz List: 6 ways a Board Game Designer would Rewrite Tax Rules

Being tax season and all I have not had as much time to sit back and write.  So in honor of tax season I am listing a few ways tax rules would be different if they were created by a board game designer.

1.  All rules for taxes would have to fit on 4-5 pages or less.

2.  The rulebook would not be filled with exception after exception.

3.  How to do your taxes would be communicated with infographics. 

4.  Expected time to complete learning the rules would only take half an hour.

5.  Rules would have undergone blind playtesting before publication.

6. Rules would be designed to be accessible for casual players.

Lessons from UNPUB 5 Presidential Race Cup

The Idea

For those of you wondering why there was a giant cheer Saturday night at UNPUB 5 when some random dude in the corner hosted a paper trophy made from construction paper, toilet paper rolls, a paper plate, and a steak-um box, let me tell you the tale of the UNPUB Presidential Race Cup.

The UNPUB Presidential Race Cup was an experiment to reward playtesters who participated in race games that possibly play better with more people.  A few days before UNPUB 5 I realized there were at least two other racing themed games other than Post Position attending the event.  So I reached out to Douglas Schultz (UFO Racing League) and Daniel Solis (A La Kart) to be part of the series.

The idea was that players would receive an extra benefit from playing all three games because it would let them play a 4th game, to take home the UNPUB Presidential Race Cup--signed by every UNPUB president in the history of UNPUB.  To further reward playtesters, we also created a prize/trophy for each race.  The race trophies themselves may not have been made of the best materials (UFO Racing League - Two Styrofoam plates) or presented in the most desirable form (Post Position - shredded money), but they helped create each race into an event itself by rewarding play testers with something they could only get from playing the game.

The Cup Results

Three players, Johan Kruckemepr, Rob Mitchell, and Marcus Ross signed up for the UNPUB Presidential Race Cup. Each game handles from 6 to 12 players, since there were only 3 players vying to complete the entire circuit, we allowed additional players to compete in each race to win the race trophies and to affect the overall standing of the playtesters fighting for the UNPUB Presidential Race Cup.   

In a bit of competitive balance, each participant in the series won one of the three races. So it was not a surprise that the winner of the cup, Johan, won by a single point.

Playtesters Reactions

I asked the Presidential Race Cup participants if the series improved their experience at UNPUB 5?  The answer was an overwhelming yes.  First, they affirmed that they enjoyed all the game they ended up playtesting.  Second, to my surprise, they said how they appreciate the series giving structure to their day.  With so many great games to play at UNPUB 5, it was hard to decide which games they should or should not play. By participating in the UNPUB Presidential Race Cup series, they were able to not worry about what they were going to do and look forward to the races they knew they were going to complete.

This reaction surprised me because the hardest challenge to recruiting participants was that it required them to commit to playtesting three games at three specific times.  On reflection, I wonder by having the event we enabled those who enjoyed having structure to have that option amongst the chaos of UNPUB 5.

Reflections on Execution

After the event I asked myself, would I hold a game circuit with a championship again?  On the plus side, it created buzz for each game--both at the event and afterwards--and allowed there to be a highlight moment for at least one playtest of each designer’s game.  On the downside, its a bit of work.  Making the trophy was not too bad, but taking the time to recruit participants ate up a chunk of my morning of the circuit.
Looking at it, I think it comes down to what type of game and publicity I desire to consider doing something like this again at UNPUB 6. Creating an event, like a Presidential Race Cup, serves as a way to create post event publicity. There are so many games being playtested and only so many people who write about the event that they cannot cover every game. The only way to ensure your game receives some sort of post convention coverage is to create an event yourself. 
The other reason to consider doing it again was because it was fun.  Creating the trophy, building up anticipation for the event beforehand, keeping track of the participants, and having key moments we share with playtesters & designers creates shared memories that all of us will preserve about the awesomeness of UNPUB 5.

A Dr. Wictz List: A Few Quotes from UNPUB5

There were "more in attendance to UNPUB 5 than the previous three combined"

- UNPUB 5 volunteer

"When a play tester comes back for a third time to play your game again, how can you refuse?"

-Charlie Hoopes talking about demoing his game Lady of the Diamonds  

"I play Power Grid, I like Power Grid, but this game is better than Power Grid."

-Hoboken Playtester 

"I had to run back from lunch with half of it stuffed in my mouth because there was a mob of playtester demanding to play my game."

-Nathaniel Levan

"Last Year I could sit down at any table and play any game, this year all of the tables are full...always."

"Its a good problem to have"

-Bruce & Mike from the Party Game Cast featuring the PartyGameCast

"The game ends when the players have decided who is the winner"

"Oh"

"They have been playing for 2.5 hours"

-Alf Shadowsong talking about Kiva Fecteau and his game Diplomancer

To get picked up by a large publisher you need to design something that their in-house designers could not make."

-Advice given to Paul Owen from a playtester