If you are interested in the board game market, there certainly seem to be some similarities with the game market.  A few big hits in recent years have probably given the board game industry additional strength (see Caracassonne, Ticket to Ride, and Settlers of Catan) but I’ve found that the strategic (non party-game) segment of the market is still very personal and cottage-industry-like.  In general, the German market has been a breeding ground for lots of off-beat, strategic games.  Knowing this, I sent my first board game pitch to Kosmos, a German publisher of games like Settlers of Catan (the M.U.L.E. of board games), Lost Cities, and Ubongo.

A few months ago, I put together a board game based on Venture Africa (post 1, 2, 3).  I’m pretty proud of it — it’s a Chess-like game with a modifyable board.  Two players breed and battle with 6 species of African animal.

Anyways, I sent a pitch (along with the game rules) off to Kosmos.  Today I received a rejection letter.

This was not entirely surprising to me — I’ve never tried to get a board game published before.  What did surprise me was how informative and constructive the feedback was.  Here is his email, reprinted below:

Dear Andy,

I must confess that we hardly had the chance to check game ideas between Essen and Christmas. So I am still catching up with the ideas from last year. Among them was also Venture Africa.

First of all, thank you for sending the idea to us. As you surely know, we do have quite some “abstract” games, some of them with an optical theme like Ubongo or Keltis, which are doing pretty well. So as a kind of abstract game, Venture Africa is not misplaced at Kosmos.

But considering the mechanisms, I think the game would face some difficulties:

First of all, the game bases as you as well noted, on the chess type games.

Of course, as an ancient game, it has a lot of history and therefore a lot of appeal to people. But that is also the problem. The mechanism is well known. To come up with something that adds to the game is not really easy.

There are often efforts, but hardly ever with financial success. Of course there is Hive, which is doing quite well. Purely strategic as well, but with less rules and specialties to keep in mind and therefore “ligher”, easier accessible. And Hive addresses only the Hardcore gamers as well, selling low numbers…

But so much for the general statement. Considering the mechanisms, it is a typical strategy game with some extras. Althougnthis suits the theme (which is of course replacable), the game is still purely strategic. And since no luck is included, which would undoubtedly appeal to the hardcore strategists, it would also frighten off the casual players. The better player will always win, which is something, we mostly wish to avoid. Since there are special abilities for the animals, this has to be taken into account for cinsidering the next step as well, together with the movement of the rainfall and breeding, which prepares the next move of the opponent, etc. There is a lot to consider. Again, for strategists ideal, but since this is just a small target group, we doubt that the game would succeed in the market.

Therefore, I have to say that we do not see the game in our programme line.

It is definitely not a bad game, but because of the aforementioned points nothing for Kosmos. That does not necessarily mean that other publishers will judge likewise. It is just too strategic for us.

Anyway, thank you for the confidence shown to us and we would be glad to see new game ideas from you in the future!

Best regards,

Michael Baskal

The talk that Dan Paladin and I gave at E-for-all detailed this design process.

1. Pick a market/platform
2. Create a protagonist
3. Create an antagonist
4. Design the genre/ruleset around the protagonist and antagonist

As you can see, the genre and ruleset comes last in the design process, and it’s built around the character and theme of the game.

In my games, of course, the protagonist (not necessarily the player) is represented by the animals in the ecosystem.  In Dan’s games, the protagonist is represented by the main character and his abilities.  With my animals, the basic idea is that they are autonomous, but the player can affect their behavior directly or by altering their environment.

The antagonist in Dan’s games is usually a bad guy.  In my games, the antagonist is the environment itself.  The challenge in my games revolves around the difficulties presented by the level: how far the food sources are from water, how much shelter there is, etc.

The ruleset tends to just flow from there.  A compelling character and antagonist or environment provides enough constraint to imagine the more difficult to conceptualize theoretical ruleset.  It also makes the ruleset flow from real-world elements that are tied to your character, keeping the ruleset grounded in the theme of the game.

That said, I don’t personally believe in designing a complete story first, just the bare bones of the protagnist/antagonist relationship.  The most common mistake* I see aspiring game designers make is that they write a complex story replete with minor characters and events before they design the utility of the game: the abilities of the main characters and their relationship to one another is all you need… back story can and should come later.

*However, I’m also of the opinion that great breakthroughs in game design can only come from ingoring the so-called experts, and in fact, one of my (and everyone’s) design heroes Tim Schaefer designs more complete stories up front.

So, how did I apply all this to making a board game?  Despite the game being a two-player competitive game, the protagonist is not simply YOU and the antagonist is not simply YOUR OPPONENT.  The protagonist is actually the herbivores and the antagonist is the carnivores.

Even though you are trying to eat all of your opponent’s herbivores with your carnivores, the game is player-agnostic, meaning that your lions can eat your zebras, and you have to be careful about how you position your crocodiles because you could weaken the defenses of your own herbivores by being too close.

I started with 6 species: Lion, crocodile, zebra, elephant, giraffe, and wildebeest.  I designed each with one special ability.  Then I just playtested and playtested and playtested until I came up with the right balance.  In the process of balancing, wildebeest got switched out for monkey, and giraffe was switched for rhino.

In the end, I hope to publish the game with plastic molded animals (like plastic army men) on the modifyable board.  Again, if anyone knows anyone in the board game industry that might be interested in publishing this game, please let me know!

The board game consists of two players controlling six species of animal (lion, crocodile, elephant, rhino, zebra, monkey).  Players are trying to keep their animals alive while using their lions and crocodiles to eat the other player’s prey.

Players start their turn with 3 movement points, which they can distribute amongst their animals.  Terrain squares have an impact on movement, and each animal has a special ability.  It’s like chess, except that instead of making the pieces unique by how they move, the pieces are unique in how they attack and defend themselves.

Animals also chase a raincloud around the board, which is how they breed.  Breeding can keep a species alive for a little while, but eventually, the other player will take out the last of a species, and then it can’t return.  Eventually, one player wins by taking out all of the animals of the other player.  Games last about 60 minutes.

You might also notice that the game board can be modified, making every game quite different.  This is one of my favorite features of the game as it’s a blast to create the topography and then analyze how that affects gameplay.  The manual includes a number of preset boards, so people can compare individual games without having the include a diagram of the board placement.

The main thing you’ll notice about the board game is that it is multiplayer and competitive.  I mention this because the video game is single player, and to some extent, non-competitive.  There is no antagonist in the video game (though you could say that the environment is the antagonist, always threatening the lives of the protagonists, the animals).

This philosophy reamins intact (to some extent) in the board game, in that the pieces are actually player-agnostic.  Lions can eat zebras of either player; special abilities of animals do not depend on the color of the animal.  In this sense, you get the feeling that both players are controlling parts of a single ecosystem, rather than two opposing armies.

I haven’t played it yet, but my boardgamegeek friend Eryn mentioned that the game reminded him of Manoeuvre.  I’ll have to give that one a try.

In any case, like I said, I’m searching for a publisher, and I’ll keep you updated on the progress!

As for the process I went through to design this game, that’s for another post!

Inspired by a board game he is developing, I decided to try my hand at building one as well.  One Saturday later, and Venture Africa the Board Game was born!

I’ve been tweaking the ruleset and playtesting the thing, and doggonit, this thing is really fun!  It’s simple, strategic, it’s different every time, and it’s got a great theme.

Of course my early and seemingly instant success at designing the game gave me an ego, and I instantly dove into designing a game based around Venture Arctic.  While the meta game surrounding that one was great, the actual turn-by-turn gameplay was not so great.  Sound familiar?

At any rate, I’m currently in the process of finding a publisher for the Venture Africa game.  If anyone knows anyone in the board game industry that might be interested, send them my direction!

I’ll get into the ruleset (as well as my Venture Arctic experiment) in a later post…

For two years, Pocketwatch Games has donated a large percentage of the revenue from their PC/Mac games Venture Africa and Venture Arctic to The WILD Foundation.

Venture Africa, an ecosystem-building game set in the Serengeti, was originally released in 2005, garnering major award nominations in the 2006 Independent Games Festival and 2006 Slamdance Gamemaker festival. The follow-up to that game, Venture Arctic, was released in 2007 and received GameTunnel’s Sim Game of the Year award, as well as being named the 28th best “indie” game of all time. In both games, players build and manage ecosystems of animals, trying to balance the needs of each of the diverse species. In addition to their entertainment value, both games have been used in the classroom to help kids learn about food chains and animal behaviors. Pocketwatch Games sells the games in digital format from their website as well as in retail box format in stores across North America.

Beyond its cash donations to WILD, Pocketwatch Games’ has consistently contributed to the environmental movement. Founder Andy Schatz recently served as the Executive Producer of Green.com, an upcoming eco-themed kid’s website, while the retail box of Venture Arctic will be made entirely from recycled packaging. According to Schatz, this will be the first ever major video game released in such an eco-friendly box.

The donation of revenue to The WILD Foundation is significant since it is coming from an independent video game studio. Typically, “indie” studios operate on such a small budget that they cannot afford to make charitable contributions. Vance Martin, President of The WILD Foundation, commented, “The WILD Foundation is very enthused about our partnership with Pocketwatch Games and Andy Schatz, because they are at the front end of the curve in their approach to environment and business. Our programs will benefit from this continued Pocketwatch sponsorship, and we applaud the corporation’s exemplary commitment to wilderness, wildlife and education.”

About Pocketwatch Games
Founded in 2005 by game industry journeyman Andy Schatz, Pocketwatch Games, LLC creates “enriching entertainment” for kids, gamers, and families. For more information, visit www.pocketwatchgames.com.

About The WILD Foundation
The WILD Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Boulder, Colorado. WILD works internationally to protect and sustain wilderness and wildlife while meeting the needs of human communities. For more information, visit www.wild.org.

Press Contacts:
Pocketwatch Games
Andy Schatz
press@pocketwatchgames.com

The WILD Foundation
Emily Loose
emily@wild.org
303.442.8811

Pocketwatch Games will also motivate others to support The WILD Foundation by providing a link to the WILD website in their upcoming game, Venture Arctic.

Pocketwatch Games has described the “Venture” series of PC/Mac video games as the ultimate “Interactive Nature Documentaries”. The games allow players to create and control animals in a variety of biomes around the world. Venture Arctic also requires players to deal with challenges facing modern ecosystems such as global warming and deforestation.

“When we released Venture Africa, we made a promise to our customers that we would help to protect the animals that inspired us,” said Andy Schatz, CEO and Founder of Pocketwatch Games. “I know our donation to The WILD Foundation is working directly to protect the precious animal habitats in Africa.”

The cash donation is significant since it is coming from an independent video game studio. Typically, “indie” studios operate on such a small budget that they cannot afford to make charitable contributions. Pocketwatch Games founder Andy Schatz was the sole programmer and designer of Venture Africa (PC), which had a total development budget of 8,000 dollars.

Artie performed two 3 minute segments during the quarter finals.  During the second segment, he performed several limericks which were written (but not actually used) in Venture Africa.

If you’re in the Boston area, and you want some GREAT entertainment tomorrow (Saturday, Dec 2), head to the Middle East (472 Mass Ave).  An All-Star showcase starts at 8PM, the Poetry Slam starts at 9PM.

Artie is an incredibly funny and talented poet.  Check out some of his poems on his website here:
Poem 1 (Note, there’s two pages)
Others

If you’re in Boston, go cheer him on, and say hi after the show!