February 2015

  • John Parker

    Conclusions

    I am very pleased that this research confirmed some general speculations about the hobby game industry while it tempered others. Here are a few final conclusions, as always with the caveat that this research is based on the data available in the BGG database. There is much that can be discovered in the analysis and I extended to many areas in which I was not specifically interested now, but I wanted to leverage the process while I was practiced at it.. So the following conclusions are not all that can be drawn from the data, but just a few that interested me. Read the specific articles to better understand each category and the data challenges associated with it. You can review all of the figures that were included in the articles in the Hobby Game Trends 2000-2014: Figures gallery. It is worth repeating here that some of the data sets are so small that they are prone to large swings when calculating changes.

  • John Parker

    Categories Focus: Mechanics

    We have already looked at the Roll/Spin and Move mechanic extensively in the Traditional Games round and Deduction and Bluffing in the Social Deduction games round, but what other mechanics are rising or declining in interest from publishers?

  • John Parker

    Categories Focus: Themes

    We have already looked at a few genres; those related to economic games and social deduction games. Let’s take a look at a few others that are thematic based and may be interesting. One that I know many gamers would love to see is “Zombie games,” but there are many other themes that gamers feel have been either over-used or under appreciated. We’ll take a look at a broad list of themes in this round.

  • John Parker

    Self-Publishing: The Kickstarter Effect

    This article looks briefly at self-publishing and the effect that Kickstarter has had on it. This is not a focus on Kickstarter itself, but there is more about it in Round 9: Dynasties.

    At a Glance

    Kickstarter has provided a platform for lone game designers to publish their work. Let’s take a look at the history of self-publishing and Print & Play games and see if we can detect any impact from Kickstarter.

    Unfortunately, BGG uses the Family classification to identify Kickstarter games and as mentioned earlier, the Family classification is not available for searching in the advanced search. It is available in the regular search, but that does not allow me the flexibility to limit the search by my other criteria. Another complication results from the fact that many Kickstarter published games are new editions of existing games, so the BGG record of the game shows a publication year for the original.

  • John Parker

    Dynasties

    When looking at the recent history of board games (say, the last 50 years), it is convenient to put the releases in terms of dynasties. Certainly, one of the oldest and well-established of these is Monopoly. As has been demonstrated in previous articles, Monopoly has dominated game releases for many years. To that list of dynasties, we can add others like Axis and Allies and Risk. Let’s consider how game dynasties are formed and then take a look at some of them in terms of new releases.

  • John Parker

    Categories Focus: Social Deduction Games

    When I started this research, I was really only interested in “Social Deduction” games, but here it is, round 6 and I am only now getting to the work I set out to do. So much of this hobby turns out that way. Fans and critics alike might say, in different tone, “It seems like every new game is a social deduction game!” As a fan of social deduction games and working on a few designs myself, I am very interested in the current trend in releases of games that fit this category. Is it overrun? Is there room for just a few more great games? (Mine of course will be great).

  • John Parker

    Game Genres is a chapter in the Game Design notebook that focuses on various game genres. This designation loosely aligns with the Game Category designation on BoardgameGeek.com.


     

  • John Parker

    Categories Focus: Traditional Games

    Hobby game enthusiasts like to think that “better,” more “modern” games are replacing some of the old traditional games. As we saw with Economic games, the traditional game Monopoly has been a significant portion of the releases over the years. Is there evidence that Monopoly and other traditional games are losing their foothold in the games market? Let’s see.

  • John Parker

    Why Genghis Con?

    I joined in the fun at Genghis Con for most of its 4 days last weekend. I live about an hour from where the con is held and it is not far from my office, so I stay at home instead of the hotel where it is held. I’m sure I am missing out on some of the con experience by doing so, but even with the long drive I probably stay fresher. This was my second time to attend, so I knew what to expect. Last year’s observations would have been more focused on finding out what the con was like, but that is lost to memory now. For 2015, here’s a brief summary of how I spent my long weekend.

  • John Parker

    Design Workbench

    This is the second and final part describing the individual mechanics and their attributes – the modifiers. Again, there are three basic sets of mechanics; starting from the bottom up:

    1. Those that affect the die rolls. (Roll Modifiers)
    2. Those that affect the goal or victory condition. (Goal Modifiers)
    3. Those that affect the players. (Round Modifiers)

    Picking up where we left off, in this round we will look at the last set. I set these apart from the other two because these only impact the die rolls in a meta sense. They don’t impact the actual rolls, but may impact the choices you make during rolling, since they impact who you are rolling against and who goes first.