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Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

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Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#21

Post by lmm »

vanderZwan wrote: post #15
lmm wrote: post #5

Professional designers can't afford failure, so they make "safe" designs that are likely to work. This isn't a result about "knowledge diversity", it's a result about incentives.

That is a plausible hypothesis. However, without any research backing it up I wouldn't be so dismissive of the conclusions of paper that actually put in the legwork to test its own hypothesis, without even engaging with the content of the paper.

I engaged with the paper. They didn't do a controlled test of anything. They ran some stats on BoardGameGeek.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#22

Post by blindluke »

technics256 wrote: post #20

Does anyone have any board games they recommend for groups of 3-5? Something that isn't too terrible to learn, and lasts max an hour?

Sure, I added the following assumptions:

- stuff I play myself

- something I can explain to the 70yo parents in a few minutes before the game

- easily available (either recent, or a classic)

Here's five recommendations:

- Cacao (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/171499/cacao)

- Carcassone (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne)

- Alhambra (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6249/alhambra)

- Ticket to Ride (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209/ticket-ride)

- Samurai (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3/samurai)

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#23

Post by KineticLensman »

mkl95 wrote: post #10

This is not exclusive to board game design. When I work on a personal project, I can be really creative and produce some good looking applications. However, as a professional developer working for someone else, I have to follow some guidelines that can result in boring, generic-looking stuff. This boring, generic-looking stuff allows me to consistently make a decent living, though.

Yes. Like writing reports for a company versus personal writing. You often have to use corporate templates and follow a house writing style.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#24

Post by mtm112 »

technics256 wrote: post #20

Does anyone have any board games they recommend for groups of 3-5? Something that isn't too terrible to learn, and lasts max an hour?

Below are some common gateway games that I’ve had good success introducing with non-gamers.

Cooperative: Pandemic

Language Based: Codenames, Taboo

Competitive: Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Munchkin

Card: Monopoly Deal, Exploding Kittens

Notably absent is Catan, which has a steep gap between those who have played before and novices, with an especially punishing snowball effect.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#25

Post by Tepix »

I know a game designer who does this semi-professionally. He really spends a long time in the alpha and beta testing phase of game design with lots of playtesting in different groups. He recently launched an amazingly fun social deduction game on Kickstarter called "Feed the Kraken" with tons of gameplay elements previously unseen in social deduction games.

I think that professional designers often have a hard time competing with the amount of time invested by these enthusiasts.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#26

Post by mkl95 »

polote wrote: post #13

I don't remember where I've read that but I remember seeing that creativity starts to decrease when you are getting paid for it. And it decreases even more if you are getting paid less. While when you are doing it for free creativity remains at the same level over time

I wonder what the results are when you are being paid really well, I suspect some people would have levels of creativity similar to doing it for free and others would lose all their motivation.

There are people like John Carmack who could have retired many years ago, yet they are still creating stuff, and other people like Notch (Minecraft) lost their creativity the moment they got "fuck you money".

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#27

Post by m_eiman »

mikepurvis wrote: post #19
kthxb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does creative imply good, though? that's the real question

Yeah, there are so many criteria on which to evaluate a board game— a quick look at the board games section on Kickstarter reveals hundreds of games which pitch well— gorgeous art, great premise, but you can tell just by looking at it that the gameplay fundamentals aren't there. Either the mechanics are boring (a reskin of classics like Parcheesi or Uno) or it's a jumble of stuff cribbed from other games with no cohe…

"look here's the deckbuilding part, and over here is worker placement, and look an area control mechanic on a modular board, yay!"

I once listened to a podcast by some board gamers who had gone way too far in this direction. They'd say the name of a game, and describe it as e.g. "it's worker placement with area control", and that was the end of their description and analysis of the game. Seems to me they're missing a fair bit of nuance and more importantly, it doesn't tell me anything about how likely it is I'd enjoy the game. Oh well, to each their own. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#28

Post by mac01021 »

Tepix wrote: post #25

I know a game designer who does this semi-professionally. He really spends a long time in the alpha and beta testing phase of game design with lots of playtesting in different groups. He recently launched an amazingly fun social deduction game on Kickstarter called " Feed the Kraken " with tons of gameplay elements previously unseen in social deduction games. I think that professional designers often have a hard time…

Shouldn't the fact that you're paid to do it for a living give you _more_ time to spend on it?

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#29

Post by tuzemec »

technics256 wrote: post #20

Does anyone have any board games they recommend for groups of 3-5? Something that isn't too terrible to learn, and lasts max an hour?

I really enjoy Wingspan (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan)

It's not that hard and it's beautiful.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#30

Post by InitialLastName »

tuzemec wrote: post #29
technics256 wrote: post #20

Does anyone have any board games they recommend for groups of 3-5? Something that isn't too terrible to learn, and lasts max an hour?

I really enjoy Wingspan ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan ) It's not that hard and it's beautiful.

Wingspan is a beautiful and fun game, but the instructions are incomprehensible. I don't have concrete examples, but I needed to read the entire book twice to have enough context for info at the beginning to make any sense. In a lot of ways, this is because of the thing that makes the game great (deeply interlocked systems) also makes it hard to find a point to insert the read pointer for the explanation.
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