January 9, 2010

Happy NEW Year! Well, it's been almost TWO months since posting! But now it's a new year, and I've got a new resolve to publish!

The holidays were kind of a blur, taking care of printing and sales for both Next BEST Games and PLAAY.com, as well as doing my "real" job and all the family activities associated with the holidays! I had some success with "Christmas Music Party Cards ," and have targeted it as having good potential for "mass production" for Christmas 2010. More on that later...

One of my Christmas gifts to my 14 year-old son was a copy of an old-school fantasy board game from the early 1980s, called "Dungeon." We had played this game a couple years ago back in Texas with a fellow board game fan, and had really enjoyed it. Couple days after Christmas--with one of Sam's video game pals over for a visit--we decided to break it out and play. We had a BLAST! After we played it, we immediately played it AGAIN. When I was at the GAMA last year, at a design seminar hosted by Andrew Looney of Looney Labs games, Andrew said that the highest praise a game designer can get for his game--the ultimate litmus test for game design--are the words, "let's play again!" By that standard, "Dungeon" certainly was a hit! In fact, the following morning, the doorbell rang and there was the same neighbor kid, with ANOTHER kid in tow, asking if they could play "Dungeon" again!

To me, this is both surprising and encouraging! It's one thing for kids from the video game generation to have moderate fun playing an old-school board game. But it's totally another thing when they CHOOSE a board game OVER a video game. I'm not sure I've ever experienced that outside my own family. Well, I take that back. There have been a couple of occasions where a group of kids has been over here playing "Risk." But they never expressed the kind of enthusiasm for "Risk" that I saw expressed for "Dungeon." So, it's significant.

It made me think: is there a recipe for success, some essential list of properties or qualities that can be incorporated into a board game that might make it more attractive to the video game generation? What was it about Dungeon that got these kids so energized? Something about it stimulated their imaginations and appealed to their sense of "fun." So, I ASKED!...

My son and his friends told me that there were several things about Dungeon that made it more fun than typical board games. First, and seemingly MOST important was the "element of surprise." In Dungeon--oversimplified explanation here--the object of the game is to roam around an imaginary mansion and collect treasure from various rooms. Each room is inhabited by a monster, and in order to get the treasure, you have to defeat the monster in a battle. There are six levels of difficulty. The lower the level, the easier the monster is to defeat, but the treasures are smaller, too. Each set of monsters and treasures are represented with a small deck of cards, shuffled and turned face down. This results in a limitless combination of treasures and monsters, for any given room. Going into a room, you never know what you're going to face, or what treasure you might get. It's FUN, and exciting! And it's this unpredictability that gives the game much of its strong appeal.

They also liked the fact that the game allows each player a measure of "independence" not found in many board games. In Dungeon, YOU decide where you want to go in the haunted mansion--you make your own choices and take on your own level of risk. "Not like a lot of games where everybody has to do the same thing," is the way my son put it.

Also appealing to the guys was the variety of the various characters each player has the choice of assuming. Heroes, Elves, Wizards--different kinds of characters, each with differing abilities. Elves, for example, are not so good at battling, but better at finding "secret doors." The game requires the "stronger" characters to collect more treasure in order to win--VERY cool! So, there's an advantage to being an "elf," and a winning strategy can be to collect treasure from the "easy" levels. But, it's also fun being a "wizard," with extra powers and abilities. MOST importantly, YOU get to CHOOSE who you want to be. The guys think this is very cool.

Finally, they really liked the extra "collectible" items that can be uncovered in the mansion as "treasure." Medallions, magic swords, crystal balls--each can be used to fight or detect monsters. Having these as part of the game adds to the unpredictability, and makes every game different.

I'm especially encouraged about their enthusiasm for Dungeon because I have a game on the drawing board that incorporates many of these qualities! It's a game me and my son have been experimenting with over the past ten years, in various forms. Sort of a "treasure hunt," but outdoors, and with more of an emphasis on tools and accessories. I've decided that I'm going to try to make it my next release for Next BEST Games.

To be continued!...Your comments welcome via e-mail, "hello@nextBESTgames.com!

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November 13, 2009

You know where a GREAT place to shop for board games is? Your local THRIFT store! We have a Goodwill Store in our neighborhood, and EVERY time I go there, I always find a board game that I'd love to take home with me. Most times, I talk myself OUT of it, though. I tell myself, "you're a game designer, for crying out loud, you've got your OWN games you need to be play-testing!" Or, "do you REALLY NEED that game? It's just going to sit on the shelf, taking up space."

It was the same story on yesterday's visit to the toy and game section of the Goodwill Store--I looked, I loved--I walked. Except THIS time, as we were leaving the store, I turned around and went BACK!

The game in that made me turn around was an old 1980s board game from Milton Bradley, called "Thunder Road." It's sitting in front of me as I write this. It's well-worn, and looks as if it got wet at some point--the box is curled and smells like mildew, and there are some water stains inside. "THUNDER ROAD, The Ram and Wreck Survival Game!" I had never heard of this game, but immediately it brought back memories of Mel Gibson in the Mad Max movies. The game, as I learned later by visiting the Board Game Geek website, was designed to take advantage of that movie's popularity, without expressly referencing it and thereby incurring licensing fees. Since the box was sealed with packing tape, I had no idea whether all the game pieces were there--a risk you ALWAYS have to take when you buy a game in a thrift store. However, a couple of brisk shakes of the box gave me the indication that there was some substance inside, and with a price tag of $1.99, I figured "what the heck."

When I got home, I eagerly cut through the tape and happily discovered that although the components had gotten wet, they were all there! Especially happy to see the instruction sheet intact. The only problems were 1)one of the "attack choppers" was missing its stand, and 2)most the dice were missing. Missing dice are NEVER a problem at OUR house, and as far as the attack chopper goes, well--with two or three players, it's not even an issue. And if we ever play the game with four players, we'll figure out something.

After reading the rules, and doing some research online, I'm VERY happy with this acquisition. "Thunder Road" is the kind of board game that I really admire. It comes from the halcyon days of board games, I think, the 1960s through 80s, where games were sold for entertainment value rather than simply being another product to which you could license a famous name or theme. (Read: "Hannah Montana: The Board Game.") It's the kind of board game I strive to come up with for MY game companies PLAAY.com and nextBESTgames.com. It has an interesting, engaging premise--a sort of hybrid road race/demolition derby on an endless desert road, with armored vehicles shooting at each other, just like in "Mad Max!" Each player gets a "squad" of three of these souped-up half-tanks/half-cars, along with an attack chopper that "flies" overhead. The game has simple, straightforward rules, easy-to-understand game mechanics, a healthy amount of strategy, mixed with some luck--brilliant!

Of course, you can't look at a board game like this and NOT realize that it's place has been pre-empted by video games. Believe it or not, Milton Bradley actually ran a pretty extensive TV campaign to market this game to pre-teen kids! 25 years later, you'd have to practically FORCE a pre-teen kid to play a game like this. It's too bad--a board game like Thunder Road helps kids think and strategize, something that's pretty much absent in the "hair-trigger" world of video games, where instantaneous hand-eye coordination is what it's all about. An emphasis on REACTING, with a minimum of actual THINKING. I have to think that this generation is really missing out.

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November 9, 2009

I went to TARGET over the weekend, spent a little time in the board games section. They have a new "specialty board games" sub-section now, with several titles from some of the smaller board game companies, like University Games. Congrats to UG, by the way--that's huge, to get a game in TARGET? There's another smaller game company--I forget the name, based out of Arizona--whose game also is now on the shelves of TARGET, I can only imagine what that feels like. Someday, maybe one of MY titles will "hit the big time!" As that thought entered my head, I began for the thousandth time to think about what it would take for that to happen.

One thing that would have to happen would be for me to dispense with my hesitance to have board games mass-produced in Asia. I did some investigating of the packaging of these new games, and was not surprised to see that virtually all of them were manufactured in China. When I attended the GAMA convention in Las Vegas back in April, I sat in on a couple of seminars led by the guy who heads up Bucephalus Games, Dan Tibbles. Listening to Dan talk, it began to sink in that there if you want to get a board game in stores, you pretty much HAVE to have it printed in China. In fact, I had an opportunity to speak with Dan one-on-one after the seminar, and he flat-out confirmed my suspicions.

To me, it's very discouraging that you have to have your unique, fun board game manufactured overseas in order to be able to price it competitively. I'd like to think I feel bad about it for patriotic reasons, and I think there IS some of that. However, I don't feel like I can preach the patriotic angle for the simple reason that I don't buy American myself. Truth is, NOBODY who shops at WAL-MART or TARGET can make the argument that we should "buy American." Because the vast majority of stuff sold in those stores, and virtually EVERY "big box" mega-store, is made overseas. And it's made overseas because it can be produced WAY more cheaply there than it can be made here in the United States.

I don't think I'm the only one with conflicting feelings about this. On the one hand, we all like a good value. I'm not willing to spend $50 for a shirt made in the United States if I can get the same shirt, or similar, for $20 made in China. On the other hand, the people who MAKE that $20 shirt most likely get paid what we would consider to be "slave wages," maybe only a few dollars a day. And they might have to work twelve hours to EARN that puny pay. That's troubling. When I buy that $20 shirt--or, that $20 fun family board game--how can I avoid the "inconvenient truth" that I'm endorsing oppressive labor practices of the nation that manufactured it?

Both of my game entitites, PLAAY.com and nextBESTgames.com, offer games that are made here in America--by ME! HOWEVER, while it's tempting to "wave the flag" and wax patriotic about this--maybe put an American flag on my board game boxes--I have to be honest. The REAL reason I don't have games printed in China have nothing to do with patriotism or ethics. Simply put, to have a game printed overseas is a big HASSLE. Also, even though you can cut costs by half or MORE by printing in China, it's still not inexpensive. It's more cost-efficient for me to produce and sell very small quantities of games than it it to lay out the dollars required to mass-produce, ship and then store large quantities of games.

Someday, I DO hope to be able to see one of my own unique board game creations on the shelves of TARGET or WAL-MART. In the meantime, I'll continue to struggle with the ethics of making that a reality...

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Kids Playing Board Games!

November 5, 2009

I came home from work tonight, PLEASANTLY surprised to see my 14 year-old son and his friends playing--gasp!--a BOARD game! They had gotten out the POKEMON version of MONOPOLY and were happily playing while the Wii system sat idle! Hoo-ray! I even heard one of the guys blurt out, "this is a BLAST, playing (this game) with the POKEMON cards!"

Now that I think about it, this kind of goes against what I wrote in a post last week, about how out our house, whenever we play Monopoly, we prefer the traditional version. I will say, though, that this is the first action this game has seen at our house in at least a year and a half.

As I mentioned before, we picked up this version of Monopoly at a thrift store for a couple bucks, and had played it a few times using the traditional rules. I didn't realize that POKE-MONOPOLY had a couple of pretty cool rules wrinkles. One of them is whenever you roll doubles, you can opt to forego the extra turn and instead choose to use a special "Poke-Power," based on what double you rolled. Double ones allows you to "teleport" your piece to any space on the board--a GREAT option if, for example, you need a particular piece of un-sold property to complete a set. Double twos allows you to collect a $200 bonus from the bank. Double sixes lets you "battle" to acquire a piece of property owned by another player, FREE! Both of you roll the dice, whoever rolls higher gets/keeps the property. Pretty cool!

Are there any other, similar "wrinkles" in OTHER versions of MONOPOLY? If so, I'd like to know about them! E-mail me, hello@nextbestgames.com!

The "Dumbing Down" of Board Games?

November 2, 2009

I just sold a couple of old sports board games from the 1980s on eBay, and was packing them up for shipment this morning. As I was looking over the game components to make sure they were all there, I couldn't help but marvel at how things have changed since I was a teen-ager, games-wise. Hence the topic of today's board game blog post.

Both of these games were old Avalon Hill "Statis-Pro" sports titles. Statis-Pro Football, with a card set based on the 1980 NFL season, and Statis-Pro Basketball, with 1989-90 season cards. The football game in particular was very complex, with an instruction/rules booklet that read like a trigonometry text. Now, I was NOT a teen-ager when I bought these games--I was 24 when I purchased the football game, and 33 when I bought the basketball game--but my impulse to purchase and play these games stemmed from my teen-age years playing the various APBA sports board game titles. And these games, in their day, in the years BEFORE video games, were clearly aimed at teen-age sports fans. Which brings me to my point: it doesn't seem possible that a teen-ager today could POSSIBLY find games like these to be fun. What has changed? And is this change for the better?

The first question--"what has changed?"--is probably easier to answer on a board game blog. Times have changed. Technology has changed. It's just a different world teen-agers live in today, just as it ALWAYS has been a different world for teen-agers, at least for the past four or five hundred years. The second question may seem like a "loaded" question. And, I confess, my first inclination is to suggest that kids today have become less cerebral, less agile-minded, less willing/able to focus, and steeped in a "entertain me, NOW" mind-set that simply won't tolerate and kind of a learning curve.

However, as I've thought of it more, I've had to conceded that this generation has no problem with complicated computer-driven skills, and are growing up with a "multi-tasking" mindset that's foreign for a lot of us "baby boomers" and even beyond.

There's a really cool YouTube video that a guy at work forwarded to me, a project sponsored by Volkswagen called "The Fun Theory." Their theory is that you make something FUN, people will do it, even if they're not necessarily inclined to do it in the first place. So, they're conducting a series of experiments to test the theory. This particular installment is set in a busy shopping mall, where they noticed that far more people took the escalator than the stairs. They decided to test the theory by attempting to make climbing the stairs more FUN than taking the escalator. They succeeded!

I think this has implications for the board game industry. If I truly feel that board games offer advantages over video games not readily apparent but nonetheless real--and I DO feel that way!--then, what can I do as a board game designer to make my board games more FUN than a video game? Even MORE important: how can I CREATE board games that ARE more fun than video games? Because it makes no sense to try to create a false sense of "fun" and then not live up to the promise. That leaves me even worse off than before...

Take a look at MY sports board games, for the 2000s!

E-mail your comments! hello@nextBESTgames.com!

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"WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE" DVD Game vs. Board Game

October 28, 2009

At a recent school outing, my sixth-grade daughter won a copy of the DVD Home Edition of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." I had seen this game in the "discount" bin at Blockbuster Video a few weeks ago for $9.99, I guess it must be a poor seller. Anyway, I was curious to try it out, especially since I like the game and at one time owned a copy of the board game version of "Millionaire"--which I didn't think played all that well.

The DVD version is pretty cool. You know, some games are just better suited for video play, and I think this is one of them. Having Meredith Viera on the screen asking the questions, guiding the game play--it feels a lot like the TV show.

Of course, the game is not un-flawed. It's kind of clunky in the way it handles the mechanics of the game, since the host is not really live. Meredith has to repeatedly ask, "Did anyone use a lifeline?" "Did anyone walk away?" "Did anyone get the answer wrong?" Someday in the future, when they perfect voice recognition technology, you can imagine a DVD game where you can actually interact with your virtual host, much like you do with the automated phone system at your bank. You'll give virtual Meredith your SPOKEN answer, and she'll TELL you whether you're right or wrong. THAT will be pretty cool--someday...

Also, the "phone a friend" guests are kind of lame. Still, having the dramatic "Millionaire" theme music playing as you're coming up with your "final answer" is a big plus in making the game a fun experience.

Oh, and I walked away with a virtual $250,000. We joked afterward about how I should contact ABC and say something like, "Yes, hello, I was playing your DVD version of "Millionaire, and I walked away with $250,000--but, I can't figure out how I'm supposed to collect my money." (You wonder if there are people who actually HAVE made that phone call, for real!)

The board game version of "Millionaire" beats out the DVD edition on at least ONE factor, though--speed of play. Having to go through all the "yesses" and "no's" on your TV remote does get kind of tedious. Plus, in the DVD edition, you have to wait the full 30 seconds before the final answer is revealed. As you know, the $100 questions up through about $500 are pretty easy, so it's a bit frustrating having to wait, wait, wait when everyone KNOWS the correct answer. In the board game version, you can just get right to the next question.

Still--I have to vote for the DVD version over the board game version. Sorry, board game fans...

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MONOPOLY MUSINGS...

October 25, 2009

I read about the guy from Norway who won the MONOPOLY World Championships in Las Vegas last week. He took home about $20,000 in prize money--WOW! Twenty grand for playing Monopoly, that's pretty sweet.

A couple things about Monopoly...

1) There's only ONE winning strategy--surely every Monopoly board game expert knows this, I'm surprised MORE people don't. MONOPOLY has this "air" of being a strategy game, where some people are "good" at it, others aren't. WAY over rated, I think. In MONOPOLY, the ONLY winning strategy is this: at the start of the game, you have to BUY at every opportunity, even if it means mortgaging properties you've just purchased to buy OTHER properties. THEN, you have to aggressively deal to get the first colored set, developing it immediately. This is because in MONOPOLY, the first person to develop a set, generally wins. I have traded away Boardwalk and Pacific Avenue just to get Oriental Avenue to complete the light blue set. Of course, you wouldn't do that LATE in the game, but early in the game, when no one else has a set? It'll win the game every time.

The light blue set, incidentally, ranks up there with the orange set in terms of desirability and profitability. "Casual" MONOPOLY players usually don't take into account that these two sets get landed on more often because of the "GO" and "JAIL" spaces. They don't cost that much to develop, and deliver an awesome ROI.

2) WHY are there so many versions of MONOPOLY? It's ridiculous. I understand it's a popular game with a great tradition and colorful history, and I can see where some themes are appropriate. The NFL and MLB versions of MONOPOLY make sense, I suppose. But, "High School Musical MONOPOLY?" Give me a break. We are a board game playing family, me and my wife and three kids (well, my wife doesn't really like to play, but me and the kids do!), and we always prefer to play the regular "basic" version of MONOPOLY, even though we've gotten a couple different versions of the game--we got a "Mickey Mouse" version for Christmas from Grandma one year, and picked up a POKEMON version at a thrift store one time. My point: people who like to play MONOPOLY aren't going to really enjoy a "specialty" version the way the gift-giver probably THINKS they will. People who like specialty things, probably won't play a specialty version of MONOPOLY. I think most of these specialty versions just wind up on a shelf somewhere, or in a thrift store.

Sorry if this comes off sounding like "sour grapes," although maybe it is. There are probably more copies of "Coca Cola MONOPOLY" sitting on thrift store shelves than the entire sales of all Next BEST Games titles COMBINED. Maybe I'm just jealous. I will say, though, that I think a lot of copies of MONOPOLY are sold and never played.

3) MONOPOLY has attained "icon" status, and that has to account for a pretty significant chunk of its sales. People think "board game" is synonymous with MONOPOLY, so when they're in a situation where they want/need to buy a board game, they buy MONOPOLY. This is very good for Parker Brothers, but very bad for the rest of us game designers. Not that I don't practice the same consumer behavior: whenever I go to Chili's I *always* order the same thing, the turkey sandwich and salad combo. I figure why risk ordering something I might not like, when I can order something that's familiar and proven. I'm sure most people are the same way about board games.

Your thoughts? Always welcome, e-mail me at "hello@nextBESTgames.com."

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ARE BOARD GAMES DEAD?

October 23, 2009

I'm a youth leader at our church, leading a group of 14 year-old guys. We had a board game night last year, where we played RISK. A few weeks ago we were talking about what things we wanted to do this year as a group, re-capping some of last year's events. One of the guys chimed in about the board game night, saying "I really had FUN on board game night--and I didn't think I would! I was thinking, 'board games, BORING!' But it really was fun!"

I think a couple of important truths were contained in that exchange. Number one, board games ARE fun, even for today's generation. At the very least, they were fun this one time, for this one kid. Number two, the current teen-age generation don't THINK board games are fun. I wonder why that is? I like to think that nextBESTgames.com offers unique, fun, family board games that are "timeless" in their appeal--how am I going to convince people of that, when they are predisposed to believe otherwise?

I was strolling though TARGET earlier today, and was noticing the proliferation of video games. No question that people still play games. Also no question that electronic/digital/video games are the games of choice. Some of these titles run in the $60 range, and even more. So people ARE still willing--VERY willing--to drop down money on games, even in this tough economy. ESPECIALLY in this tough economy. And as many articles as I have read about the "comeback" of family board game night, whenever I walk through TARGET or WAL-MART, or set foot inside a GAME STOP or other video game store, I have to think that those claims ring somewhat hollow.

I often find myself wondering about the future of board and card games. Is it realistic to expect to "hook" people on games that are played the "old-fashioned way," with cardstock, dice and plastic tokens? Is the best hope for us board game designers simply to try to focus on "hanging on" to the old-line board game fans, while they're still out there, and just "blow off" the new generation?

The PET STORE GAME is designed for kids ages 6-12 and their parents--I designed that game by playing it endlessly with MY own kids when they were that age, and we had a blast. I truly believe--and have the experiences to back up the belief--that the PET STORE GAME is a well-designed, fun family board game that will create some good times. But, is that going to mean anything to the average parent? And, SHOULD it? I mean, who's to say that a family can't have just as much fun together playing a video game?

Perhaps you're surprised to read a post like this on a board game blog--especially as my FIRST post! But I think these are important questions. Is there a new game/entertainment experience out there that might, perhaps, capture the imagination and interest of the current 12-34 year old group--"The Millenials" as they are sometimes referred to--something that might be game-like, but not video or digitally driven? If there is, I want to be the one that figures out what it IS!

I do think there's hope. My 14 year-old son is a "game person"-- not surprising seeing as how he's MY son!! He greatly prefers video games, and has an extensive collection that ranges from Mario Brothers to Sonic Heroes to various battle games. However, he also has a huge collection of POKEMON cards, and STAR WARS pocket models--certainly much like traditional board games and card games--and he's spent a lot of hours building decks and fleets for competition. The problem is, so FEW of his friends share that kind of depth/breadth of game interest so as to include video games AND non-video games. When friends come over, 99% of the time it's to play VIDEO games. My objective is--sometime over the next 12 months--to come up with a board/card game that appeals to these guys, that they would actually WANT to come over and play, OVER video games. "Mission Impossible?" Possibly. If so, it doesn't bode well for the future of board games.

Your comments welcome via e-mail, "hello@nextBESTgames.com!"