It’s not often that you feel rejection letters are truly honest and constructive.

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

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