Why aren’t video game board games working? – review addiction

March 22, 2021 DOOM, FREE Games, Game Developers NEWS, Gameplay Videos, News, Resident Evil

Board games and computer games have a right to life – just separately.

In the heading “In plain text” the authors express exclusively their own opinion, which may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial board (or may coincide). They are free to do it as they please and in any format convenient for them. Everything is possible here.

Every time I read the news that another video game board hit an unprecedented box office, something inside me dies. Feelings are about the same as from watching a stupid film adaptation of your favorite franchise, but even more painful, because a board game costs like twenty movie tickets. And after the purchase, it is not forgotten like a bad dream, but remains on your shelf, collecting dust and reminding you that at some point in your life you turned the wrong way.

I’m slightly dramatizing, but the essence remains the same: in the vast majority of cases, desktop adaptations of video games are absolutely not worth the money. Seasoned board gamers know this very well, but fans of the original video games, which publishers profit from, do not always understand what they are signing up for. And if you are one of them, then hopefully this text will save you from potential disappointment. I’ve outlined three main reasons why it is a risky idea to rush to invest in video game-themed board games, especially if you’re just starting out with a hobby.

Board game toolkit is severely limited

The beauty of video games is that they interact with the player (and the player with them) in many different ways at the same time: in science, this is called “multimedia.” Graphics on the screen, sound in headphones, voice chat through a microphone, text, input of commands from the keyboard and / or mouse, vibration of a gamepad, steering wheel or joystick – during the game, we often perceive and transmit information through several channels at once. Moreover, these channels have so many possible combinations that in the hands of the developers they add up to completely dissimilar systems that give the audience a completely different experience. For example, a conditional online shooter, where the player looks at the world around him through the eyes of a character, requires a good reaction, accuracy and dexterity. And in 4X strategy, you can leisurely study the map from a bird’s eye view, move units, dig into research trees … Even a person who first sat down at a computer would hardly confuse them.

Sometimes board games combine techniques from different mediums. In the crime scene detective, a special smartphone application scans maps and allows you to explore locations in augmented reality mode

Board games, by virtue of their analogous nature, are deprived of this luxury. They are forced to communicate with the user in a completely different language: with the help of cards, figures, cubes and chips – that is, material components that can be touched. Of course, sometimes developers incorporate digital elements into the formula, such as special companion applications, but tactility is still the key difference between board games and computer games. It is for this reason that some aspects of video games are either difficult to adapt to a desktop format, or not at all. After all, game designers have to think not only about mechanics, but also about how to generally implement them in the form of cardboard, wood and plastic – and this imposes tangible restrictions.

For instance, Resident evil 2 makes the player feel vulnerable with a fixed camera and limited viewing angles, but in board games there is not even a concept of a “camera”, and without it, horror is so-so. Or take Starcraft – its adaptation changed the genre to turn-based strategy. Why? Because in a tabletop RTS of this magnitude, where players need to act in real time, the race for maximum APM (actions per minute) would turn into an unplayable mess. Imagine: everyone has one field, everyone is constantly reaching out to it with their hands, moving mountains of figures back and forth and physically interfering with each other. Because of such nuances, it makes more sense for game designers to customize time-tested tabletop mechanics for a particular franchise than to insert video games where they definitely won’t take root.

XCOM: The Board Game and Adrenaline are good because they borrow only the most important features of computer sources and do not try to adapt everything in a desktop format. The first convincingly conveys the feeling of the base management (albeit without battles), and the second – the tension and speed of arena-shooters in the spirit of Quake

But, let’s say, the developers did the impossible: they painstakingly adapted every single mechanic of the original source, thought over the necessary components, prescribed the rules – and everything seemed to be done as it should. Then another problem arises: human perception is extremely sensitive to stress. Spending time playing video games, we, as a rule, do not notice (or do not think) how much is going on “behind the scenes”: scripts, AI behavior, mathematical calculations, procedural generation of locations or loot – in short, for everything related to the functioning of mechanics , the machine replies. But in board games, this thankless work lies entirely on the shoulders of the players themselves. Sometimes it even brings a certain amount of pleasure, but once the authors go overboard with the volume of rules and “moving parts”, the gameplay turns from entertainment to work.

In the original Dark souls it’s not a pity to die many times in a row on the same boss: after a loading screen of five seconds long, you can revive by the fire and try again. In the desktop version, after each death, you need to manually return the enemies to their places and “reload” the location, and the more you die (and this is, for a second, an important part of the original source), the more time you spend on a tedious routine. Another example is a relatively recent adaptation. Crusader kings… It is already considered one of the simplest sandboxes. Paradox Interactive, but the authors of the board game had to shrink it to the size of a matchbox – otherwise the players would have drowned in information that is usually hidden in several dozen tables. And people still complain that even in a heavily truncated form, it turned out to be too confusing.

Heavy board games like Fire in the Lake about the Vietnam War or Pax Pamir about Afghanistan during the Great Game also have their own audience, just a much more niche one. And licensed products, whatever one may say, are focused on the mass market.

In other words, designers often have to sacrifice the fullness of the board gaming experience for our own comfort. In addition, purely economic nuances play an important role here: cardboard, plastic and (especially) wood cost money, so publishers need to reckon with the realities of the market. The volume of the contents of the box directly affects the number of components and the cost of production, and the price tag is already added up from them. As good as the game is, what’s the point if the audience can’t afford it? All that remains is to find compromises. Ruler Arkham Horror Files from the publisher Fantasy flight games has almost a dozen projects, and each uses different components depending on the scale of the gameplay. In chamber “Mansions of Madness” many high quality plastic figurines, in Arkham Horror, where the action is transferred to the whole city, their role is played by cardboard chips on stands. And in its card version there are no stands either – plastic would raise the price of a tiny game above the desired level.

Gloomhaven. Gloomy Harbor, which has held the Boardgamegeek number one board game title for several years now, the heroes have plastic figures, and the hordes of monsters have cardboard chips. Otherwise the game would be absurdly expensive

Board games are designed for multiplayer by default

From time to time, projects aimed specifically at one player appear on the market, but this is rather an exception to the rule: the single-user segment in the desktop industry is rather poorly developed. In most cases, you need to assemble a company of at least two people, and more often – three or four. This is the same feature of a medium as tactility: by inviting someone to play a board game, we conclude a social contract with them and share the emotional experience. This makes board games a great way to meet new people or get to know old acquaintances.

Here are just some emotions that are revealed much more vividly if you experience them alone – this will be confirmed by anyone who has at least once in his life played a great story-driven video game. God of war, The last of us, Disco Elysium – it is not important. When we are alone and nothing distracts from the process, the immersion effect intensifies: we are better imbued with the atmosphere, notice small details, pay attention to the plot, characters, individual mechanics. In short, we get a lot more bang for the buck. And in the case of board games, it is enough just to look up from the field and see that living people are sitting nearby – and that’s it, the illusion instantly dissipates. Moreover, in the process, you will probably have to communicate with them, fight, discuss plans, serve beer from the fridge … In general, there is no question of any immersion. Yes, if you wish, some board games can be played alone: ​​sometimes the developers prescribe special rules for this or include some simple AI tied to cards in the game. But then you will get a completely different experience, and it is not a fact that it will be better. Here you have to choose the lesser of two evils.

Tabletop Bloodborne quite successfully conveys the feeling of combat, but she simply cannot recreate the mood of Yharnam – and many people fell in love with the game precisely for the entourage

The presence of other people also affects less obvious nuances, such as dynamics. We can enjoy video games at our own pace, and we take it for granted. Did you want to sit for half an hour after work? Easily. There is a mood to spend in Breath of the wild all weekend? Easy. Need to step back to make tea, raise a son, and plant a tree? Pause and get busy, no one is in a hurry. In board games, you can forget about all this, because not only you are wasting time on them, but also two or three other people who are not particularly happy to wait while you ponder the next move for fifteen minutes. And you, in turn, are not particularly happy to wait while someone else is walking – so-called “downtime” occurs. Moreover, downtime is usually directly proportional to the number of players: it may sound silly, but the more people at the table, the less they play. This is an absolutely natural pattern, and sometimes it can seriously harm the pace of gameplay, especially when it comes to adaptations of action games. Play multi-stage combos on the tabletop Devil may cry (yes, it exists) not so cool when you can think about the composition of the combo for literally five minutes. Gears of war and Doom – shooters completely different in speed – in the desktop format they lose all their individuality.

And, of course, one cannot but mention the narrative. With the storytelling in board games, everything is, in principle, not very great – often even in those that promote the plot as one of the main features. First, studios rarely have the budget to hire professional screenwriters, and this has a huge impact on the quality of literary texts. Secondly, in order for these texts to fit into the box with the game, even in a separate book, even on cards, they need to be kept short – and telling a coherent story with a hard word limit is not easy. Now add to these production complexities the fact that the script has to work for the whole company, not just one person. You need to make it as short, simple and accessible as possible so that it doesn’t take too much time: after all, not all players are interested in the narrative – some just put up with it in order to get to the gameplay as soon as possible.

On the other hand, board games are still capable of telling vivid stories – they just appear organically, during the game. Full batch in Twilight imperium it will easily take ten hours, but you will remember it for a long time

Publishers are not shy about robbing their own audience

Perhaps the key argument against investing in video game-themed board games is Kickstarter, where such projects are mostly inhabited. And the point here is not at all in the risk of being deceived (this just happens infrequently), but in a completely impudent, manipulative attitude towards the consumer. Publishers are not stupid: they realize that a licensed product is an extremely easy way to cut money for an impressionable audience. You just need to lure her with something grandiose, to show off, so that she does not pay attention to mediocre game design and dubious developer portfolio. Typically, this is achieved with a ton of beautiful but pointlessly expensive figurines. Or exclusive add-ons that won’t hit retail: after all, nothing burns a hole in your wallet like loss of profit.
Take a look at the recent Bloodborne desktop fundraising campaign from CMON: Authors asked for $ 200,000, but received $ 4 million in less than twenty minutes. Together with the base box, they kindly offer to take six add-ons, each of which costs as a separate board – and takes about the same amount of space. Do you doubt whether it is worth spending a rather impressive amount on content for a game that has not yet been released? Fair enough, but there will be no second chance: in the future, exclusives will have to be bought out of hands at exorbitant prices, so either now or never. The authors of board games on Kickstarter do not even try to hide how brazenly they squeeze profit from customers, because the scheme works: mice cry and prick, but continue to gnaw a metaphorical cactus. And although Bloodborne, judging by the first reviews, turned out to be a surprisingly good game, encouraging such a predatory business practice is a dubious undertaking. It is no different from the aggressive microtransactions, the cut of video games into a million DLC and other innocent pranks for which we love the AAA industry so much.

Steamforged Games has gained a notoriety as the provider of some of the most controversial yet high-profile licensed games. Dark Souls, Resident Evil, Horizon Zero Dawn, and soon Monster Hunter will join them …

Of course, I do not blame those who invest $ 250-350 in such events: adults can manage their finances as they please. In addition, the miniatures in such projects usually turn out to be really cool: if you paint them and put them on a shelf, then no one will even guess that this is not an official merch, but only a component of a tabletop. The problem is that the success of the expensive kickstarters sends a pernicious message to publishers over and over again. The fees confirm that the main thing is to take care of a beautiful wrapper, because games for famous franchises are sold not by first-class game design, but by a brand and tons of plastic, which could be easily dispensed with. License holders do not care about such things: they see decent numbers and meekly give up their IPs to be torn apart.

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