Update #15: Meet the Artist: Daniel Lieske, Designer Diary: Kickstarter Lesson #1,427

Note: This is a copy of Update #15 from my Kickstarter campaign.

We sort of hit a plateau this week, but we just broke through the $10,000 mark (as of this writing, late Monday night) so we've unlocked PennyGems! If you're interested in adding PennyGems to your order, here's what you do: Click the "Back This Project" button (or "Manage Your Pledge" if you're already a backer). Choose the reward level you want (this can remain the same if you're already a backer, or you can increase or decrease to a different level). Then add $20 for each sheet of PennyGems you'd like to order, and add that to the "pledge amount" shown at the top. For instance, if you just want the HOKE'S ON YOU decal and one sheet of PennyGems, then you'd select the $5 reward level, but type in "$25.00" in the pledge amount at the top.

Our next stretch goal is for the ROOS-free bits at $11,000. But don't forget that if we can get 500 backers at the $25 level or higher, every copy of the game will have a LOT more components! Remember: for the Double Your Fun goal, it's not about having a few high-level backers; it's about getting more people involved.

To that end, now's a good time to tweet about the project, post it on Facebook, and hit that "Like" button just under the video on the front page. Tell you what: we've got 909 Likes right now. If we get up to 1,000 Likes, I'll unlock another mystery stretch goal, one that's just for fun.

Meet the Artist: Daniel Lieske

I first heard of Daniel Lieske when I came across his Wormworld Saga Kickstarter project. Wormworld Saga is an online graphic novel about a kid entering a magical world, and it has some of the most gorgeous digital paintings I've ever seen. Daniel ran a Kickstarter project basically to turn this labor of love into a full-time job. It was the first time I'd seen somebody doing a project of that nature, with details on specifically how he'd arrived at the numbers he had, the timetable for creating the next chapter of the book, and so on. The Kickstarter also funded an iPad app, and the way the comic is structured (one long endless scroll) is ideally suited for the digital medium. It was also one of the first I backed at a premium level, so I could get a big print to hang on my wall, and I simply love looking at Daniel's artwork. Here are a couple samples of his artwork from his portfolio:

Daniel has run two successful Kickstarter campaigns thus far and Wormworld Saga continues to dazzle. Even if you don't spend a dime, you can still read the entire story for free online at WormworldSaga.com, but the app is worth getting for the behind the scenes info and sketches. I'm thrilled to have Daniel on board Emperor's New Clothes—not only is he a fantastic artist with personal experience in Kickstarter, but he also has some thoughtful things to say about board games:

In Germany we have a special relationship to board games. Here they are called 'Brettspiele' (which literally means 'board games') but also 'Gesellschaftsspiele'. The latter term isn't so easy to translate because 'Gesellschaft' means 'society' but also 'community' and 'companionship'. Basically the term 'Geselschaftsspiel' expresses that people come together in real life and share some quality time playing a good game. In my eyes Emperor's New Clothes brings a whole new dimension to this shared experience and emphasizes the 'society' aspect of the 'Gesellschaftsspiel'. I'm very happy to be able to contribute artwork to this project.

Emperor's New Clothes was the first board game ever I've created artwork for and I wanted this gig to be something really special. I'm working as a digital artists for nearly 15 years now and my workflow turned purely digital over a decade ago. However, back in my beginner years I started with real paint on a real canvas using real brushes. I didn't touch these for a very long time now but for this project I decided to dust off my old tools and travel back to the good old days.

It was a humbling and at the same time gratifying experience. I almost forgot how complicated the traditional techniques were. Today I pick any color I want from Photoshop's color palette but with real paint you have to carefully mix each and every color and this really makes you think about what you are painting. I think I can say that my artwork for Emperor's New Clothes is among my most thoughtful artwork. The great digital painter Craig Mullins once wrote 'Think more, paint less!' I guess this project brought me a little bit closer to grasping these words of wisdom.

Here you can see my palette. The key to traditional painting lies in the layout of the different colors to make mixing easier.

For more of Daniel's work, you can visit his website DanielLieske.com.

Kickstarter Lesson #1,427

I've been learning a lot about Kickstarter this month—it's certainly a different experience being on this side of a campaign, even with all the projects I've observed as a backer or through interviewing project creators. As much as I expected it to take a lot of time, I think I still underestimated that it takes a lot of time. Really. So for those of you considering running your own crowdfunding campaigns, let me give you this piece of advice that I don't think I've seen anywhere else yet: probably the best time to run a campaign isn't when your wife (or you) are seven months pregnant. Trust me on that one.

And speaking of timing, it's also a good idea to remember that your life doesn't pause when you run a Kickstarter project, and your Kickstarter campaign doesn't pause when you do things like, oh, go camping for a few days during your kids' spring break. I managed to set up my campaign so that during the last week and a half, I'm mostly unavailable for about a full week.

This weekend (March 22-24) I'll be at PAX East, running demos of Emperor's New Clothes at the Game Salute booth (and trying to sneak off to meet a lot of people to see all of their cool projects too), which means that I won't be posting regular updates during that time. Feel free to follow the official Hoke's Games Twitter feed @hokesgames or my personal Twitter feed @jonathanhliu, though since I don't have a smartphone we'll see how much I'm actually able to post during the show. And if you're attending PAX East, please stop by and look for me and give the game a try!

Following that, I'll be, well, camping for a few days. I have no idea if I'll be able to get any signal of any sort while I'm out there. I'll try to have a few things written up prior to PAX that Game Salute will post for me in my absence, and if we have any more media coverage from PAX or otherwise, we'll try to get those onto the site as well. But I won't be able to respond to comments or emails until I return.

And not long after that comes The End. Stay tuned!

Update #14: Meet the Artists: Dave Roman & Raina Telgemeier, Stretch Goal: ROOS-free Bits, Designer Diary: Matthew vs. Mark

Note: This is a copy of Update #13 from my Kickstarter campaign.

Meet the Artists: Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier

Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier are a husband-and-wife duo who have each worked on some very cool comics.

Dave contributed to Teen Boat! with another of our artists John Green, and has written for a lot of different comics including X-Men and The Last Airbender. But he's not just a writer—he also illustrated his own comic book Astronaut Academy, a fun book about kiiiiids iiiin spaaaaace, and things aren't always as they appear. Book 2 is now being serialized online at astronautacademy.com and is due out in dead-tree form in May. You can find out more about Dave at his website, yaytime.com.

Raina's comics are often about adolescence, feeling awkward and out of place. Smile is an autobiographical account of getting her front teeth knocked out and dealing with braces and all of that—during middle school. Drama is fiction, but is also set in middle school, this time centering on a school musical: and there's definitely a lot of drama both onstage and off. One of Raina's talents is the expressiveness of her characters, something I hope translates to Emperor's New Clothes as well. For more about Raina, her website is goraina.com.



Stretch Goal: ROOS-free Bits

I've been hearing a lot of people talk about using Emperor's New Clothes as a prototyping kit for game makers, a box of bits that you can use for your own games. I can't say that it hadn't occurred to me—after all, I've often cannibalized other games for bits while working on my own games. Granted, you won't be able to do much with the printed materials like the cards and the board without defacing the art we've shown you, but the wooden bits and dice could certainly be put to use in developing your own games.

Now, as a game designer obviously I hope that you'll play the game I created. But, hey, if you bought the game, you can do whatever you want with it, I guess. At the request of those who are just buying this for the bits, I'm caving in and giving you the option of ROOS-colored wooden bits or traditionally-colored bits. (The printed materials and the custom dice will all still have the ROOS on them because it would cost too much to do half ROOS and half conventionally-printed.)

You don't need to change your pledge or anything; when the Kickstarter campaign closes, you'll get a survey that asks for whether you want the ROOS bits or the ROOS-free bits. Personally I like the ROOS bits that are pictured on the home page because they really fit the theme, but it may not make sense for your game.

The resource cubes will come in yellow (gold), white (dignity), and black (dupe). The scoring discs will be green, orange, purple, and blue for the 4-player version. The 6-player version will add red and yellow. The 8-player version will add black and white. The first-person pawn will be white, just like the ROOS version.

We'll unlock the ROOS-free bits at $11,000!

Designer Diary: Matthew vs. Mark

I've been reading a book called Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It's all about competition and how different people respond to it. I've only read the first few chapters but it's already been pretty fascinating: I'm already seeing applications for it both in how I raise my kids and in how I think about board games. Early in the book the authors mention the "Matthew Effect" and the "Mark Effect," and they put into words things I'd observed but hadn't realized had names.

The Matthew Effect is when early leaders get further ahead. In games it's often referred to as the "runaway leader" problem: one player has gotten better resources, whether through luck or strategy, which then leads to better options or more expensive cards or what have you, and then that player is able to steamroll everyone else. It's certainly realistic because this happens in real life. People who do well early on get more support, making them even better, making it even harder to catch up. It happens on Kickstarter itself: getting a lot of backers tends to move you up the list on the Kickstarter page, which gets you more backers—and a project that launches and doesn't shoot up the charts has a hard time catching up. The Matthew Effect is named after a quote from the Gospel of Matthew: "For to everyone who has, more will be given; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away."

The Mark Effect is the opposite: it's what we call the "catch-up mechanic," or "rubber-banding" in racing games. It's from a quote from the Gospel of Mark: "The first will be last, and the last will be first." Many Euro-style games have these built-in, some more subtly than others, but the basic idea is to keep all the players in the game. Everyone still has a chance to win, so that the player in last place doesn't feel like the game is inevitable but still has to sit through an hour of play. When it works well, you end up with an engaging game where the competition always feels tight. When it doesn't, you end up feeling like the leader is just being unfairly punished for winning, and the game can drag on because there's always a way to shoot down the person in the lead.

Although it's not universally true, one of the things that distinguishes older American board games from the newer European (and Euro-style) games is whether you get more of a Matthew Effect or a Mark Effect. (I wrote about this last year in a post titled Lessons Learned From Risk Legacy.) In a game like Risk, for instance, the player with the most territories will also get the most extra armies, which then leads to more territories. At some point defeat becomes inevitable for the other players—it's just how long you feel you need to carry out the exercise. On the other hand, in a game like Settlers of Catan, the Robber strikes people who have too many cards in their hand—and the more settlements and cities you have, the more likely you are to have too many cards. Now, there is still some element of Matthew Effect even there, because you'll better be able to afford losing those cards, but at least it means that those who have fewer resources don't lose anything.

In designing Emperor's New Clothes, I wanted a game in which everyone's in the game until the end. Yep, I'm a Mark, not a Matthew. I don't just mean that in terms of player elimination (which is something else that I don't really like in games), but that you don't know for sure who's the winner until the game actually ends. Now, that doesn't mean that the person who's ahead doesn't have a better chance of winning the game—of course they should, or else you have a game in which everything depends on the last turn. In that case, you might as well just play that last turn and get it over with. When you're playing this game, you should feel that there's always a chance of victory, however slim.

Part of what makes this possible is the variable role selection. You're not stuck playing one particular character the whole time. Somebody who is the Swindler in the first round may be the Emperor in the next, and the Child at the end. Because of this ability to take on different roles (and thus have different motivations), you can select a role that offers you the best chance of scoring big on your next turn—or that allows you to affect somebody else's score, as long as you can guess what their plan is.

So, what do you think: do you prefer the Matthew Effect or the Mark Effect in your games?

Note: On this day, the TROO-bits stretch goal was added to the front page:

 

Update #13: Meet the Artist: Bob Boyle, Introducing the Characters, We've Got You Covered

Note: This is a copy of Update #13 from my Kickstarter campaign.

Hi, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Today's update is mostly business: I'll introduce you to artist Bob Boyle, tell you about the four main characters in the game, and if you're concerned about what the final box will look like, we've got you covered.

Meet the Artist: Bob Boyle

Bob Boyle is, as his website states, a "Maker of Silly Things," so he feels right at home working on Emperor's New Clothes. He's best known for his Nick Jr. cartoon Wow! Wow! Wubbzy, but has also written a children's book Hugo and the Really, Really, Really Long String. I met him through his work on the (sadly short-lived) Geek Life comic strip that ran on GeekDad and GeekMom for a few months in 2011. Much of Bob's artwork is brightly colored and cheerful, but (as evidenced by his Doc Bizzarre, M.D. pin up at below) he's also quite capable of something a little darker.

Bob's a super-friendly guy who does school visits to talk about being an artist, his creative process, and following your dreams. His artwork reminds me of the joy of play. I mean, look at Wubbzy there playing soccer—wearing his birthday suit and having a blast. For more about Bob, visit his website.

Introducing the Main Characters

With everything that's been going on, I completely spaced on the fact that I never introduced the main characters of the game! So, let me remedy that today.

First we have the Emperor, of course, a vain man who is interested in having the best of the best—and ends up parading through town in his birthday suit. Money is no object, of course, but in this case what he really needs by the end of the story is a bit of dignity. What's interesting about the original story is that after he's exposed, the Emperor doesn't run and hide, even though he knows the child is right and everyone can see him in all his natural splendor. He holds himself up and keeps on going.

While that can be hard to represent perfectly in a game (short of having you strip to your knickers and march around the table—but that's a different sort of game altogether) here's how it works: the Emperor automatically collects gold from each person at the table (it's good to be King!), but also automatically gets a "dupe" cube from the supply, because, well, no matter what you roll, you've been duped. It takes dignity to cancel out the dupes, and then the Emperor scores if he has any dignity left.

Next up, the Swindlers. I debated about whether to have one or two. The story has two, of course, so I decided to make that work in the game. The Swindlers are after cash—everything the Emperor gave them to purchase materials just went to line their own pockets. So the Swindlers get points for the amount of gold they have—and they also get to take gold from the Emperor if he has at least one duped cube by the time they score. (If he wises up before they get paid, then they only get what they've already raked in.) The Swindlers also have to watch out for the Knight, of course.

Finally, what would the story be without the Child? Now, the Child doesn't have much use for gold or dignity—those are things that adults worry about. What the Child wants to know is why the Emperor is walking around naked, and why the whole town turned out to watch. So if you're the Child, you'll discard gold and dignity resources, and then score for all of the dupe cubes for all the other players. It's an interesting role to play because it doesn't really matter what you roll—just what the other players roll—but if they manage to get rid of their dupe resources before you score, then you'll just end up losing the cash and dignity which would have been useful for another role. And, don't forget, if the Mother wises up, she sends you home.

In case you didn't watch the video in Update #6, you may have missed the explanation of both the Jester and the Mother, so I'm posting them here as well. Both of those were unlocked as our first two stretch goals.

The Jester is of course a member of the imperial court. He's a fun character because everyone expects him to be the fool anyway. So unlike the other characters who lose dignity when they've been duped, the Jester has no such penalty, making him a great choice if you don't like to press your luck and would rather hedge your bets a little. He actually scores points for having dupe cubes—but dignity cubes cancel those out.

Meanwhile the Mother is in the townsfolk category, and of course she's the one who brings the truth-speaking child to the parade. So her special power is that she can send the child home; after all, once she realizes the Emperor is naked, she covers the child's eyes and leaves the parade.

We've Got You Covered

I've also gotten some feedback on the cover art. Some backers really like the art-only cover (shown in the full-art prototype photo on the main page) and some like the version with the logo over the artwork as seen in the box mock-ups in the Pledge Levels section. Obviously it would be too costly to have two different versions of the cover printed, but I think we've come up with a solution that may satisfy everyone.

The cover will just have the artwork (as shown in the photo), but we'll also include a sticker with each box with the logo. If you like the way the box looks with the logo, you can apply the label—but otherwise you can enjoy the distinctive look of the artwork without any distractions. The artwork is distinctive enough that fans will recognize the game regardless. (And, of course, then you'll have a logo sticker you can use somewhere else if you like!)

We're close to that $10,000 goal for the PennyGems, so keep spreading the word! And we've got a couple other stretch goals in the works, so stay tuned.

Update #12: Trust Fund, New Stretch Goal, Meet the Graphic Designers

Note: This is a copy of Update #12 from my Kickstarter campaign. 

Trust Fund

I have a few words before we get into the meat of today's update, which includes a stretch goal I'm very excited about and a topic that is easily overlooked in board games: graphic design.

As you know, our funding levels have gone up and down a bit—people pledging, then changing their minds, then increasing or decreasing pledges. I have to imagine this will continue to be true throughout the campaign, and it makes for a very bizarre Kicktraq graph:

Where is this one going to end up? I don't think we'll be able to know that for certain until the campaign actually closes. I'm certainly not counting any chickens yet.

But that brings me to my point: some of you are worried that you won't like the project and you'll get something you didn't want, and you're not sure how you'll find out short of spending money and waiting for your package to arrive. I already mentioned in Update #5 that this is not just a big troll. (Though if you think that, hop over to Days of Wonder's Small World 2 campaign and buy their "I Backed a Troll!" T-shirt.) When the campaign is over, we will be charging credit cards, using the money for production and fulfillment, and you will in fact get whichever rewards you pledged for.

I also explained that I would be revealing things on April 1, the last morning of the campaign. However, I was recently informed that Kickstarter's policy is that you can change your pledge level at any time during the campaign, but you cannot remove a pledge if it would drop the campaign below its successful funding goal in the last 24 hours of the campaign. While I certainly hope that I won't lose so many backers on the last day that this would be an issue, I've stated that I'm not interested in tricking anyone into spending money for something they don't actually want. I don't want a single person to say that they meant to pull their pledge on the last day but were unable to because we'd dropped down to $500 and they had less than 24 hours to go when they found out the final contents of the box.

So that means I'll do the reveal on March 31, or maybe even March 30. Obviously it's not as fun as having an announcement on April 1, but that gives you time over the weekend to decide what you think. We'll have to determine which stretch goals are still unlocked based on the final funding numbers.

I hope that puts you at ease. If you're worried that I won't remind you on the weekend or that you'll forget to check the update, then you can also hit that little "remind me" button on the front page of the Kickstarter project, just below the video. If you click that, then Kickstarter will automatically send you a reminder email 48 hours before the project closes, which gives you sufficient time to change your pledge to whatever level you desire! I use it all the time myself for projects I'm not sure about but would like to check again before they close.

Ok, now, on to the exciting stuff!

Stretch Goal: PennyGems Add-on!

PennyGems are one of my favorite game accessories. Dave Howell funded the first batch through Kickstarter last spring, and then ran another successful campaign in the summer for his "Pale Imitation" series that included lighter colors. I first saw them at GameStorm, when Dave was shopping them around and shooting video reactions to them (I show up in the video for the first campaign, among other GameStorm guests). PennyGems are tokens that you can use to replace plastic chips, wood cubes, glass beads, etc. They have a really nice heft to them, they're easy to pick up off a smooth table, and they're slightly grippy so they can stack despite the curved surface.

The secret is that PennyGems are stickers that you put onto pennies—the dome portion is made of a polyurethane coating. It's non-skid and really has a nice feel to it, and the weight of the penny gives it some heft. While I haven't gone the route of using them for every game I play (I have to admit that I still like wooden bits), I do get them out whenever I need counters for keeping score, or to replace cheap plastic bits in certain games, and I think they're terrific.

So I'm really excited to announce this add-on stretch goal: if we reach $10,000 in funding, we will make these custom-designed Emperor's New Clothes PennyGems available as an add-on for any pledge level. Dave got the ROOS formula from Wysiayg Press and ran a test batch for me to see how they would look, and I'm thrilled with the results. Each sheet of PennyGems comes with 80 of the stickers, enough to make 40 tokens, and will be a $20 add-on to your pledge. You'll still get the wooden resource cubes in the set, but this lets you replace them with PennyGems instead. And, of course, you can also use them for any game in which you need counters and tokens.

Dave provides a helpful instruction sheet on the best way to apply the labels, and you'll have to provide your own pennies. If this stretch goal is unlocked, we'll also add one sheet of PennyGems to each box at the Emperor's Parade and Narcissist reward levels.

If you like the PennyGems but would like to have the standard designs rather than the ROOS-printed versions, you can check out the Improbable Objects site for more details. Dave has a lot of different designs and they'll run you $15 per sheet plus shipping.

Meet the Graphic Designers

Graphic design is a bit like editing: you don't notice it unless it's done wrong. When you play a game in which the board makes sense, the cards are easy to read, the iconography is intuitive, then you just think about playing a game. But when you have to stop to look up every single icon, or you can't remember which number is hit points and which one is victory points, or when you simply can't read the text because it's too tiny or in a horrible font—that's when you complain about the graphic design.

But as important as graphic design is to a game, the designers often aren't the ones who get the praise. They'll get a credit in the rulebook but most of the talk about the visuals will likely be focused on the art and illustrations, not the layout and typeface and design. So today I wanted to stop and take a little time to celebrate graphic design in board games, and also introduce the two primary graphic designers for Emperor's New Clothes, Darrell Louder and (surprise!) Heiko Günther. (Cody Jones also contributed some graphic design for the game and the Kickstarter page, but was unavailable for interview.)

Darrell designed Compounded: Better Gaming Through Chemistry, which blasted through its funding goal on Kickstarter earlier this year. He was not only the graphic designer but also the game designer on that one, and I'm really looking forward to playing it. Heiko is the graphic designer behind the Black Box Edition of Glory to Rome, which successfully funded in 2011 and is a fascinating example of redesigning the visuals for an existing game.

I'm delighted to have both Darrell and Heiko on board Emperor's New Clothes. I'd admired Darrell's work on Compounded and got connected to him through Game Salute. Heiko actually reached out to me because he'd seen the project and wanted to offer his insight in the "special needs of playability and striking the right balance between beauty and ease of use." As somebody who backed Glory to Rome based largely on Heiko's visuals, how could I turn that opportunity down? Of course, having two graphic designers on the same project can lead to some conflict, but Darrell and Heiko have been quite professional and we haven't had to break up any fistfights. (It helps that they're in completely different countries, I guess.)

So to draw a little attention to graphic design in board games, I thought I'd let Darrell and Heiko speak for themselves, and I'll refrain from making my own Designer Diary entry for today.

Jonathan: First, tell me about your day job—do you do graphic design for a living, and if so, what types of projects have you worked on?

Darrell: I have been doing Graphic & Web Design for over 12 years, starting with a web hosting company, than Marketing Director with a medical company —after that I went solo and started a freelance company, Get Louder Design. I did that for 2 years, and that is when I first was introduced to the idea of doing graphic design for gaming. Once I did one... I wanted to do more. Thankfully, Game Salute was hiring so I jumped on board. I have done one game with them, thus far, Serpent Stones—but I mainly focus on their web presence as I am their web designer/administrator first and foremost.

The other games I have done, freelance, are:
Compounded, my own game.
DiceAFARI, from Stratus Games.
Off Your Rocker, from Stratus Games.
Paradise Fallen, not yet released.
Pay Dirt, not yet released.
Flummox, not yet released... look for it soon.
VivaJava, just a few of the blend slates.
Lost Dutchman, just the rulebook.

I'm honestly hoping that once I get the new Game Salute website working like the well oiled machine it should be, that I'll return to designing a game or two with Game Salute. It's all the boss' call though.

Heiko: Yep, I do graphic design for a living; mostly, in no particular order, editorial, usability, interface, typeface, web, animation, illustration, exhibition, project, corporate identity and some other kinds of design. I work together with 5 lovely other designers, all of them exceeding my skill and beauty, in the heart of Saarbrücken, a picturesque town in Germany dominated by an Autobahn from the 60ies running right through the middle of it, next to the local recreation areas along the river Saar.

Most recently I have worked with the German TV series production 'Tatort' doing inexplicably technical things, for a company selling touch screens to hospitals, completely reinventing and streamlining their GUI, the identity and exhibition design of the official biannual Saarland county art fair and with Conquistador Games on their games Tomorrow and War Stories. I also offered my services to the Louvre in Paris, to do all of their new CI and communication, but, alas, I live 5 kilometers on the wrong side of the border between Germany and France.

Jonathan: When it comes to board games, what do you feel is the most important aspect of the graphic design?

Darrell: Iconography. The less words on things the better. I realize the irony in this as my game, Compounded, has words on the player tableaus. So I guess it's using words only when absolutely necessary. Nothing is worse than having to consult a rulebook every single time to play a game because the design/symbolism isn't clear.

Heiko: Good graphic design for board games is not too different from good graphic design for anything else.

A good graphic designer shares a lot with a good waiter; he keeps stuff ready for you where and when you need it, cleans away the things you don't want or need to see, handles the flow of information, brings more (and picks the right) alcoholic beverages when the conversation threatens to dwindle and overall amplifies the experience, cleans up and stays out of the way. And it's as simple as that. The perfect husband.

Jonathan: Are there any games (aside from yours) which you feel have excellent graphic design? What about them impresses you?

Darrell: My style is very simplistic. I like the minimalist approach: less is more, you know? So games that have really nice art and simple icons have my heart. Case in point, the design for the Black Box of Glory to Rome is just beautiful–especially when you compare it to the eyesore that was the previous build. I also like the design of Stone Age, and Alien Frontiers... again, simple, clean.

Heiko: No, aside from Darrell's and mine, all boardgames have terrible graphic design. Well, most aren't half bad, some are pretty all right, some even decent and then there's the odd one where the graphic design really stands out.

Take Eclipse for example; Eclipse has almost no art, and the artworks it sports are, while not bad, outright boring and drab (subject to taste, obviously). But the way the (graphic) design on all material and especially the player mats helps you recognize things and keep track of your empire is nigh-perfect.

Bohnanza is another good example; to be true, I really hate the art on that game, but the meter that tells you the value of your current field of beans and its potential value if you add more is executed quite well and simply works.

Kahuna, a two player game relying heavily on a little map of a group of islands, is one of the few games that has a map that actually works no matter which side of the table you are sitting at. It has different symbols on both edges of the board (a fish and a turtle) which are repeated on the cards, in the same relative spots. Each card refers to one island on the map. If you orient the cards on your hand in the same way the map on the table is oriented relative to you, (say you see the turtle on the far end then you would turn the card to have the turtle at the upper edge), the highlighted position of the island on your card always matches up exactly and intuitively with that island's position on the map.

Actually, I could far easier come up with many examples of bad graphic design choices hindering easy flow of gameplay big time. May that be awfully laid out rulebooks, crazy counterintuitive arrangements of obscure symbols to convey core mechanisms of gameplay, excessive dropshadows in silly colours, slight variations of colours meant to mean totally different things, stupid choices of typefaces, gradients that make your brain hurt, ach, the list goes on. What was the question?

Jonathan: Being a graphic designer, is it hard to play a game that you feel has poor design, or do you find that you can compartmentalize that bit of yourself while playing a game? I know that my internal editor cringes whenever I read a card that is misspelled or has punctuation errors, but if the game is fun I try to ignore it.

Darrell: It can be, yeah. I'll play with people that may dislike how the game is played, how mechanics work, etc... then I pipe up with "Yeah, and the colors make no sense. This typography is hideous!" They fall silent and just stare at me. Seriously, it bugs me and does detract from my enjoyment of a game. Case in point, Princes of Florence. A GREAT game, really, but the fonts in that game really reduce my enjoyment of it. I understand the style they were going for, but I think they went a little too gung-ho into it.

Another game is 7 Wonders, I really, REALLY like 7 Wonders. The base game is perfect. Simple, clean design, understandable icons... then came the expansions. This is a game where we need the rulebook out because the icons are so similar, but mean totally different things. I wish they put more thought into the icon designs... to make them more unique and understandable; as they did in the base game.

Heiko: Nah, most of my regular group have OCD either way or have been trained by yours truly in a way to either chime in, ignore my ramblings or stay home from the start.

In either case, if the graphic design is really really really poor, the game, however good its mechanics or the art direction may be, falls mostly flat for me. In the rare case where you find a game with a lot of potential wasted purely through bad graphic design, I just have to redesign it, to make sure it gets played at my table. That's what brought me to doing graphic design for board games initially, redesigning Glory to Rome, just because it really felt like a good game, once you closed your eyes while playing and only admired the witty mechanics.

Jonathan: Part of me feels like a game's specific components, art, or design shouldn't matter because it's really all about the mechanics; the other part of me argues that having great art and design and components is what brings those mechanics to life. How much of a game's appeal do you think lies in the appearance?

Darrell: All of the game's appeal lies in the appearance. All of it. Contrary to popular belief, people DO buy games based on the cover art/design. Gamers are smart; they like their collections to look good. They do like style. Of all the top 100 BGG games, they all look good. I'd be hard pressed to find an ugly game out on the table of a convention... with the exception of the non-black box of Glory to Rome. Yeah, I pick on that game a lot... but have you seen it?!

Heiko: Hah, tricky one. Especially when asking a graphic designer. Short and obvious answer: It depends.

Leaving abstracts and carefully read descriptions of gameplay or reviews aside for a moment, in my world the initial appeal any game has to potential players is mostly appearance. Once the nice pictures have lured you in, and you actually start playing, it's the graphic design's job to keep out of the way and arrange everything where you would look for it, and the art's job to fill in the theme and immerse you. I'm including flavour text and background stories with the art here, since basically it is.

If the making of games is an art in itself, then, very much like movies or audio productions, it is one where seldom a single person can create an artwork all alone; it is one thing to be a good actor, a great director or write a decent script; it is a totally different thing to make a good movie. And to most people, the graphic design is one of the more obscure parts, similar to the cutter in a movie. The best editing you don't even notice.

Wrapping It Up

Thanks again to Darrell and Heiko for making my game look good! Next time you play a game, take a little time to think about the way things are laid out and the iconography, whether things are easy to read and intuitive. If so, thank a graphic designer!

Note: On this day, the PennyGems stretch goal was added to the front page:

 

Update #11: Meet the Artist: Nina Matsumoto, Designer Diary: Just Play Casual

Note: This is a copy of Update #11 from my Kickstarter campaign.

Hello! Today's update is the promised follow-up to Update #4, where I mentioned that I've been gravitating toward storytelling games and casual games. There, I talked about storytelling. Here, I'll talk about casual games.

Meet the Artist: Nina Matsumoto

Nina Matsumoto is an Eisner Award–winning artist for Simpsons comics, and clearly has a deep love of pop culture and video games, as you can see at her website SpaceCoyote.com. Her ability to work in different styles is important in a project like Emperor's New Clothes, which needs to have a uniform appearance despite incorporating the work of several artists.

Nina also designs T-shirts for Meat Bun. Although she's not known for her work in board games, perhaps Emperor's New Clothes will change that! You can follow Nina on Twitter, or check out her website for more of her work.

Designer Diary: Just Play Casual

There's a term that is being bandied about a lot these days: casual game. It's been in use longer in the world of video games, but it has been adopted by the tabletop game industry. Last year a few game publishers and game industry professionals even joined up to create a magazine/movement called the Casual Game Revolution, as a way to help both retailers and customers identify casual games more easily. (The magazine was Kickstarter successfully, and has printed just a couple issues so far.) This is how they define a casual game:

A casual board (or card) game is played in under an hour, set up and taught in under 10 minutes, and requires some light strategic thought. Casual games are not specifically marketed to children, but can be enjoyed by anyone from older children to adults.

Pretty simple, right? That's exactly the idea. This is an attempt to give a more standard (but still flexible) definition to a term that could mean different things to different people.

Another common phrase is "gateway game," the one that opens the door to the world of modern tabletop games. The thing about "gateway" is that it can imply a need to move beyond—you don't stay at a gate. It's not a destination. Many gamers, though, are finding that they are perfectly happy in the world of casual games, and have no desire to delve into so-called hardcore games. Some people play Settlers of Catan and long for something even more involved like Agricola; others are quite happy with the level of engagement that Settlers offers.

I like a bit of everything. I'll play Zombie Dice and Loot and I'll play Power Grid and Eclipse. Here on Kickstarter I've backed big Eurogames like VivaJava and this curious single-card CCG called Shift.

But in recent years, as I mentioned in my Weaving a Tale update, I have found myself shifting back toward the casual end of the spectrum. My game of the year for 2012 was Escape—a raucous real-time dicefest that doesn't allow much time or room for deep strategic thinking. So why do I love it so much? Because it's fun. I can get it out, explain it in a few minutes, and play it to completion in ten more. It can take that much time just to set up a game of Agricola (which I also love) and start teaching it, and that's because I already know what I'm doing. For somebody who's just opened the box, it may take you longer than that just to read the rulebook and sort out all the pieces.

So even though I love hardcore games, I recognize that my gaming group has a diverse mix of people. Depending on who shows up for game night, I'll look for games that I think will satisfy the most people. I'm not going to throw a brand new gamer into Eclipse; but I also probably won't play just Zombie Dice if everyone there is itching for Power Grid.

This is why I wanted Emperor's New Clothes to have a flexible ruleset, one that you can look over at a glance and get started playing. Like some of my favorite casual games, it's one that you can play in under half an hour. But for the hardcore gamers, I also wanted something with a little more depth. That's why we've got the deluxe version—if we hit stretch goals, we'll be able to afford additional components needed to expand the game even further, but those introduce new rules and gameplay options that may not make sense in the compact version.

I've been asked about the target audience for Emperor's New Clothes, and it's interesting that many casual and new gamers I've shown the game to have responded positively and they can see the ROOS right away and have fun playing it. It surprised me that often it's been hardcore gamers who won't give it a chance—perhaps because it feels too much like a party game. I admit: I'm guilty of that myself sometimes, turning up my nose at something that doesn't feel like a "real game" to me. But it's harder to argue with the sight of people having a good time and laughing and interacting with each other.

So, for anyone attending PAX East next weekend (March 22-24), I'll be at the Game Salute booth for much of the weekend, running demos of Emperor's New Clothes. Come on over and introduce yourself, and we'll let you try it out—it'll give you a better feel for how the game works and I think having the real components is a definite improvement over the paper tokens in the print-and-play.