Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

sciencedirect.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 150 posts

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#31

Post by johannesgoslar »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #4
cedex12 wrote: post #2

> Overall, HHS teams are more likely than professional teams to create truly creative game designs. That's a pretty bold statement to make in the highlights in my opinion.

This matches my expectation, it's just that I'd expect the household-invented games to be novel/creative and bad on average.

You haven't been at many game designer conventions, where a lot of 'household-invented' games are deriatives of Risk, Monopoly, Chess, Game of Life and current mechanism of the year. They are still bad though.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#32

Post by prawn »

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?

My wife bought me Trekking the National Parks recently, which is designed by a hobbyist. It seems very complex at first, but you catch on within the first round or so. You often don't know who's won until the points are tallied at the end, which makes it intriguing.

Enjoy playing it against my 8yo but have also had a few nights playing with friends who've enjoyed it also.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/255708/trekking-national...

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#33

Post by matthiaswh »

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 would recommend going to Board Game Arena and finding a few games that seem interesting to you, then give them a try. Here's a filter roughly matching your criteria:

https://boardgamearena.com/gamelist?section=all&playernumber...

From the top options presented I can recommend

Kingdom Builder - incredibly easy to learn strategy game with just enough depth to keep it interesting over multiple plays

Love Letter - one of ourmyregular games to kick off a game night. Quick to pick up, quick to play, and fun.

Coup - similar in many ways to Love Letter, but with bluffing, which makes it much more cut throat, but it plays quickly enough that no one gets angry, they just get back at you the next game.

Colt Express - exciting game with a unique "programming" like mechanic that's very simple to pickup, and allows for some playfully grievous player interactions.

Gaia - underrated game that shares a lot of mechanics with the more popular Carcassone. Very strategic, and the advanced version amps up the competitiveness.

Carcassone - one of the most popular games around. Can also recommend Hunters & Gatherers.

Stone Age & Puerto Rico - great entry level worker placement games.

Granted, it doesn't have every game imaginable (Catan, Munchkin, Risk) but its selection is large enough to find good games for just about any group.

If you want something more advanced, this doesn't exactly fit your criteria, but I highly recommend Terra Mystica. One of my favorite games of all time.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#34

Post by bovermyer »

jonplackett wrote: post #7

This kind of thing has been shown in all sorts of creative endeavour. But it ignores consistency, which is the main mark of professionalism. Yeah, if you disregard all rules and norms sometimes you come up with something AMAZING that no-one following the rules could ever conceive of. But most of the the time it's just crap.

Keep in mind that hobbyists sometimes spend as much, or more, time than professionals at a given craft.

I've known people with incredible skill at specific trades, but they had something completely different as their day job.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#35

Post by Mauricebranagh »

Gravityloss wrote: post #8
jonplackett wrote: post #7

This kind of thing has been shown in all sorts of creative endeavour. But it ignores consistency, which is the main mark of professionalism. Yeah, if you disregard all rules and norms sometimes you come up with something AMAZING that no-one following the rules could ever conceive of. But most of the the time it's just crap.

That's why it's so fun to go to things like band competitions. Everybody plays about four songs. You see so much variety there. I guess it doesn't suit those people who just listen to the radio. Same about random small cafes or bars with live music.

There is the equivalent at gaming conventions. I remember at games expo (Birmigham UK) playing an alpha version of a game in the main convention bar one evening.

While reminds me I really must try and put some of my ideas for doing a 'Allo 'Allo! / Colditz mash up

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#36

Post by johannesgoslar »

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.

I am not sure that holds up at least in the German market, most boardgames are what most other industries would consider failures with maybe 2000 copies sold and hardly breaking even if you would consider all the hours put in. You make some money with semi-hits if they are licensed in our contries as you basically have no further effort for income. The only big money pot is hitting Spiel des Jahres.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#37

Post by usrusr »

mac01021 wrote: post #28
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?

A full timer needs to have sufficient throughput to pay bills. Someone whose bills are taken care of by a dayjob income can give their side project as much time as it needs.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#38

Post by theshrike79 »

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?

Love Letter and its variants (I like the Batman one myself).

You can explain it to a person who's two-three beers in and they'll get the rules well enough to start playing. Rounds last 5-10 minutes depending on how much people start analyzing the cards on the board. You can play as many rounds as you want.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#39

Post by mkl95 »

KineticLensman wrote: post #23
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.

Bethesda is a great example of this. Up until Fallout 4 or so, the company kept producing games with similar versions of Creation Engine.

Despite many fans hating the buggy engine Bethesda was using, and the fact their new games were basically spinoffs of their previous work, some of them are among the best-selling games of all time.

Re: Hobbyists beat professional designers in creating novel board games

#40

Post by johannesgoslar »

The article seems to not talk about the difference between game designers and game developers which seem quite relevant in this context. It is even explictly naming "developers" in companies but using it wrong in context, it isn't a game developer's job to come up with a novel idea, that would be the company game designer. (Though people might fill both roles). To most people the amount of changes a a publishing company makes will be quite surprising, it will change a lot to everything about a game if it arrives by an author's submission and is gonna hit the market. The author might have submitted a novel idea and interesting core, but the raw games are often bad in pacing, balance, scoring, emotional engagement and the most people would just dismiss them. Good developers will be able to turn the interesting bit into a good game and dismiss the rest.
Post reply on HN