Eight months into 2023, board game fans have already spent over $18 million crowdfunding new games. And not just any board games, mind you, but board games based on video games.
All told, at least eight campaigns on three different crowdfunding platforms have attracted the interest of more than 96,000 people. It is a segment of board games that is rapidly gaining popularity, with more being announced every month. But there’s more to turning a popular video game into a successful board game than just sticking some intellectual property on a box and making sure it contains some excellent miniatures. Polygon spoke to a handful of designers to learn more about the process.
Perhaps the most difficult part of adapting a tabletop video game is figuring out the scope and scale of the project as a whole. Designers should first ask themselves what aspects of the source material they hope will bring the board game to life. Will they stick to the familiar places players are already used to? Or are they trying to take them to a whole new place? Either way, they need to get the owner of the video game rights to approve the concept – and they need to get the existing community of fans excited.
Board game designers, however, are often tasked with translating unique video game mechanics into a platform for which they are ill-suited – aspects of a game so tied to its identity that it becomes hell or high water, they must be included in the tabletop version. Trying to address these kinds of persistent systems or thematic requirements can lead to revisions, changes, or even total reworks to create something fun. This was a predicament that Larian, a studio known for its computer role-playing games, such as the recent one Baldur’s Gate 3encountered while working on Divinity Original Sin the board game.
According to Kieron Kelly, the producer who oversaw the board game project at Larian Studios, one carryover that the company knew had to become the Divinity board game was the interaction between the elements, the world and its players. For example, hitting water with fire creates clouds of steam that obscure visibility and make ranged attacks impossible, while hitting an oil barrel with fire or electricity causes an explosion. These states (wet, oil, fire, etc.) all applied to characters and enemies as well, meaning similar reactions would occur, which players could make use of in their strategies to overcome obstacles. This added strategy and interaction was paramount in making the leap to the new medium.
Whenever the design team made a change to the way the status effect mechanism worked, it never quite got close to how the video game worked, Kelly explains. After nearly eight iterations of trying to get the system where Larian wanted it to be, the team decided to bring in outside professional consultants to get a fresh look at the situation. The responses were that the status effects got in the way of an otherwise great game. The mechanics as they existed at the time were scrapped and redesigned from the ground up using the feedback provided, resulting in the final system that players will experiment with when playing the game.
Occasionally, developers may tweak and modify an existing system of theirs to fit a customization project, for example The Elder Scrolls: Treachery of the Second Age from Chip Theory Games. Known for its premium dice and poker style board games (including the most popular title, Too many bones), developer Chip Theory Games used its intricate RPG character customization system from that game as a springboard for the player-character system in its upcoming Elder Scrolls game.
Too many bones features a more restrictive take on player choice, where players choose from a pool of characters with pre-selected skills and abilities that level up over time. That approach is clear not how Elder Scrolls fans experience progression. Bethesda’s series touts its freedom in character development, allowing players to explore all aspects of the game’s story and design. Speaking to Josh Wielgus, Chip Theory’s Chief Marketing Officer, and Ryan Howard, the company’s director of development, they explained how Chip Theory could adapt its Gearloc system and make it fit into the world of Elder Scrolls.
“In an effort to get a better picture of class and racial characteristics Second erawe came up with the similar system we have now, where stats and abilities all work on the same grid, and we force you to chain certain stats/skills together depending on your race,” Wielgus said. This approach has a balanced choice created for players where in order to improve in one aspect they must accept that it comes at the cost of another aspect These choices will not only make players think more carefully about their characters, but Chip Theory Games hopes that it will be an invitation for players to try out different builds, making the Second erathe replayability.
While licensees obviously have a say in the process, one of the joys of crowdfunding board games is that fandoms also get their say. Sometimes they say things that developers just don’t expect. Jakub Wiśniewski, CEO of Glass Cannon Unplugged, the studio behind the recent successful campaign for Apex Legends: The Board Game, revealed during our interview that it was thanks to positive fan feedback and requests that the project got its initially unplanned solo game mode.
“When we announced the game, people started asking about a solo mode, and at first we thought it was a joke, but then we saw that they were serious,” said Wiśniewski. “They were serious because they know what we were doing it for Frostpunkand they expected that if Glass Cannon makes this game, (Top) gets a good solo mode and we realized the potential there.
Just because the potential was there didn’t mean the new addition of a solo mode was a done deal, though. Adding a new mode, especially one that wasn’t initially included in the scope or funding target, requires a lot of careful thought and planning. Wiśniewski and the rest of the Glass Cannon team had to figure out if they were in Top to give the fans a high-quality solo mode. From there, if it was decided they could do that, they had to figure out how the solo variation would play. Glass Cannon brought in the team and some outside friends, and after careful deliberation, brainstorming, and testing of various concepts over several days, proceeded to deliver a rewarding and fun solo experience that the team was proud of and proved worth pursuing. are. for the fans.
With all the systems needed in a table experience, it’s a risk to get too complex. If you target the hardcore board game fans, with more complex mechanics and an impressive table presence, you risk scaring off the audience that just enjoys the video games. These players may only have experience with the source material, where many of the systems are handled behind the scenes by the software, or they may have never experienced a table game more complicated than Uno or Scrabble. If you choose to design a simpler game that might be more appealing to the video game audience, you risk alienating your existing audience due to a lack of complexity or depth they expect from you.
A good tabletop customization should have a fundamental understanding of what is at the heart of the property being modified. It’s just not enough to make it mimic or recreate its systems one-to-one. Being able to evoke similar feelings that the video game can evoke, and choosing the right aspects to convey to evoke those feelings is what designers strive for. With this particular genre of customization growing in popularity, developers will continue to look for and try to capture that digital ghost in cardboard and dice.