i want to create my own game
By diana on Nov 27, 2010 | In capricious bloviations
and i want it to be really, really good
Quick. Go to your game cupboard/closet and glance through your collection of games. How many timeless games do you have in there? OK. How many games do you have that are fun but you hardly ever have enough people to play them? Right. Now how many did you get for no apparent reason, play once, then put away in disgust? Uh-huh.
It occurs to me that there aren't many really good board games out there. By "good," I mean they fit certain criteria:
1. They're simple to learn and difficult to master, meaning you will enjoy playing them for life. These are always strategy/skill games, in my experience. This is apparently the hardest criteria to meet. I can think of a handful of classics that fit this necessity: Chess, Go, Mancala, Boggle, Scrabble, Backgammon, Parcheesi, Monopoly.
2. They can be played by two to six (or more!) people. (Better yet, they have an interesting solitaire version, too.)
Most games don't fit this requirement, and it bugs me. Either the game is amazing with a group (like Pictionary), but simply cannot be played well or at all with fewer than 6 people
OR
It's a wonderful two-person game and you can't share this love with a group (unless you have enough interested and enough game boards to have a tournament). So there go Chess, Go, Mancala, and Backgammon.
We can also rule out most popular card games and dominoes this way. There's still room for Rummy, I guess. Probably others. Most card games work better with about four people, and domino variations are almost religious about this requirement.
3. They involve playing pieces which have delicious tactile feedback.
So, yeah. When you think of a good board game, you probably are also attracted, to some degree, to how fun the pieces are to handle. Consider how the quality and enjoyment of simple Chess game changes when you aren't using cardboard and plastic, but a woodworked board and chisled stone pieces. Right.
Fun tactile games: Backgammon, Chess, Mancala, Go, Scrabble, and possibly Monopoly, just because it's fun to count money and pretend it's yours.
4. It must be reasonably playable in a short period of time.
I love Scrabble and Monopoly, but I rarely ever play them because they take so damn long. Chess is up there, unless I'm playing against the computer, which can kick my ass in record time. Same with Canasta (an advanced Rummy game). It's fun, but how often do I have four hours to toss into the ether and am willing to do it playing a single game? Not often, that's what.
I got to thinking about this just now because I went to Walmart to buy a new game or two. I realized that while there are tons of games out there, very few interest me. Take Uno, for instance. It was fun when I was a kid, but there isn't a whole lot of strategy to it, so I'm not very attracted to it anymore. Yahtzee is the same; I play rarely, because it's more luck than skill.
Then there are just tons of "board games" that are simply adaptations of parlor games, like the dictionary game and probably Pictionary, but definitely Scribblish (as described in the last post). These just piss me off, frankly, like all the nutjobs who send in tired internet jokes to Reader's Digest and get paid $500 or whatnot for them. You're making money off someone else's free idea! What's worse...in all of these games--by definition--no board (that is, no expenditure) is necessary. These people are just ripping you off.
So let's say I want to create a great game I can make money from. First, I need an original idea. My game will also need a specific board configuration and/or playing pieces so you have to buy it to play it. While I'm at it, I want the sort of board and playing pieces you will want to buy a nice set of, since I'm about creating one of those strategy games you love/hate your whole life. I want two people to be able to play it well and interestingly, but the game should also work well for more people, too.
And I want it to be timeless. I say this, because I love Trivial Pursuit, but too many of the questions are overcome by events within a few years. Plus, it takes too long to play most of the time--another drawback.
So my game needs to be reasonably short.
OK. So. Something something strategy something. Thoughts? Help me out here. This is going to be my first million.
d
5 comments
Diana,
When I was in high school my friends and I used to play Risk quite a bit. It scaled well from 2 to 6 players, and who doesn’t enjoy global conquest? But it took for-EVER to set up. It could also drag on quite a bit, but we usually had time to spare. Boy, those were the days.
The real money these days is in collectible card games. Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, all of those charge $3 or more for a pack of eight or ten bubble gum cards - and you don’t even get any gum! Also, since you control how common or rare each card is, you can create ultra-rare cards that sell for ridiculous prices. (Yu-Gi-Oh, my son’s game of choice back then, had “god cards” that sold for $60 each. For cards that cost a few bucks a thousand to print.) I wouldn’t say these games are simple to learn, but the cards themselves have instructions on them to help the player figure out what to do. As far as I know, they’re all two-player games so a tournament structure is usually built into the rules.
I’ve heard that making your second million dollars is easier than the first. You might consider skipping ahead.
Diana, now you’re not being consistent. First, the title tells us that you “want to create (your) own game", and then you turn around and ask US for ideas!!! Make up your mind, Woman!!! LOL
Love the idea. I’ll run it by Uncle Charles and see what he comes up with.
I’ll give you a game! Spent a good part of my childhood inventing them.
This one can be played with ordinary playing cards and is enormously fun for 2 or 4 people, but I intended at some point to make special cards for it and add a bunch of special rules for them.
Although it is a card game, it is territorial in nature and has some of the appeal of games like risk.
The Basic Game:
===============
The “board":
The board is simply a 3 x 3 grid, with piles of cards accumulating at each position. Whoever’s card is on top of a particular pile owns that pile.
Setting up:
At least two decks are recommended. For 2 players each player gets all the cards of one color (red or black). For 4, each player gets all the cards of one suit.
Players then shuffle their cards and place their pile face down in front of them
Turns:
Play moves in a clockwise direction, with each player getting to draw and place one card from their pile on their turn
Initial turns:
In the first 9 turns the base grid itself is constructed. Each successive player must draw a card from the top of their deck and place it face up in an empty space adjacent to another card (or anywhere for the first card), such that all of the laid down piles fit inside a 3x3 grid:
[][][]
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Subsequent turns:
On subsequent turns players first draw a card, then place it face up on either
(1) one of their own piles
(2) an opponents pile that is next to one of their own (not diagonally), to capture that pile. In order to do this their card must be higher than the top card on the pile they are capturing. Aces are high and the sole exception is the 2, which is the only card that can beat an ace, although can be beaten by everything else, including an ace.
Jokers can be placed outside of the 3x3 grid, adjacent to any pile - thus allowing you to build up secure tunnels with only one way of getting in. On some occasions we gave other cards special meanings, including allowing you to play 2 further cards from your deck and allowing you to pick up cards already played.
Winning:
When everyone has exhausted their cards the person with the most piles wins. If someone captures every pile on the board, they win.
Anyway, just wanted to add that the above idea lends itself to specialised cards, and perhaps various printed “Maps” of different shapes (different layouts of piles) on which it can be played.
eg.
[][][]
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Next time Dan and I come over we’ll bring SmallWorld. It fits a lot of those good-game criteria. It’s kind of like, Risk and Munchkin had a baby. It can’t last as long as Risk because you are limited to a certain number of rounds, and it can’t get quite as murderously competitive as Risk because the board and pieces are so humorous. It takes about one game to learn how, but it’s a strategy game so you can play it over and over with different tactics.
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