In my previous post (link) I discussed the possible reasons why the airline theme is not very popular in board games. Here, I’m describing how my design philosophy, objectives and childhood board game experiences influenced my board game design choices.
Design Philosophy
First of all, I have a certain vision when it comes to creating board games. I like them fairly complex, but it’s best if the complexity comes from the problem, not from the rules. You may be aware of the Traveling Salesman Problem. To put it simply, it is a problem of connecting a number of points on a map so that the total length of the path between the points is as short as possible. You could explain that to a 5 year old, and the kid would get it. Solving the problem for 10 or more points – that’s a different matter. Simple rules, but the problem itself is difficult. Easy to learn, hard to master.
The way I see it, simple rules have many advantages, the key one being the fact that easy-to-learn games should, in principle, appeal to a bigger audience (i.e. to include families). Arguably, they can be more enjoyable (most people don’t like spending a long time reading and learning the rules and frequently diving into the rule book for clarification).
Not sure if anyone will find it interesting, but this philosophy actually comes from the fact that I did a PhD solving a Traveling Salesman-like problem. I developed a model for scheduling maintenance of wind turbines. I found that I could easily explain the problem to my family and friends, yet the simulations took hours to compute (because there were billions of possible solutions). In a way, my research/work inspired me to create a board game, so I encourage you to consider if the problems you solve in your day job can be transformed into a board game.
The Objectives
As an engineer, I though of no reason not to apply the principles of engineering design to the process of creating a board game. In my opinion, the most important step in engineering design process is specifying the design requirements. Get these wrong and the whole project is doomed. Based on my vision, market research, personal preferences, and past board gaming experiences, I came up with the following list of objectives which I hoped my game would meet:
1) Euro style game, because I love them, but with relatively simple rules, to fit in with my design philosophy.
2) One to five/six player count, to appeal to the widest possible audience and ensure an average household/small family can all play together (plus I didn’t want to miss out on the solo board game market).
3) No perfect information, as it may lead to analysis paralysis and I think an element of luck can be used to induce feelings of anticipation, hope (that the right card comes up), excitement (if it does), but also a bit of fear (think rolling the dice in Monopoly with a couple of opponent’s hotels in front of you).
4) But not too reliant on luck either, as I think the most skilled player does deserve to win most of the time.
5) High player interaction – because I love it when people get vocal during the game, even if it means introducing a “take that” element.
6) Leave no human behind: I hated it when I lost at Monopoly and had to wait (sometimes for hours!) for the others to finish the game. Ideally, even the player losing in mid-game should feel like they can come back or at least influence the outcome of the game.
7) I also wanted the game to have an educational element, again to appeal to a wider audience.
8) Good replayability, so the game doesn’t get boring after a few plays.
Throughout the design process, I was aiming to meet at least 6 out of the 8 objectives. It is important to keep your target market in mind when refining those requirements. I cast a wide net with my target market definition, as I believe my game could appeal to both families with older kids and casual/intermediate board gamers. When thinking about the points above, I tried to keep both groups in mind. However, this can be a risky strategy, as trying to make a game that works for both groups may result in a game that neither fully enjoys.
The Mechanics
I think it’s fair to say network building seems a pretty natural choice of mechanic for the airline theme. That being said, I absolutely love engine builders. So I looked for ways to combine the two. At the time, I didn’t know of any network building games where the network is also the engine. Thematically, it make sense – your flights (network) make you money each round, and as you expand your network, you make more money (engine characteristic). Think Ticket to Ride, except in each round, you get a reward for transporting passengers between cities connected by your network (to me, that idea is very easy to get excited about).
I decided that players should be able to own airports exclusively. Thematically, that doesn’t work quite as well: in real life most airports are serviced by multiple airlines. Part of the reason why I made that decision was partly because I remembered the feeling of wanting to own a particular destination in Eurobusiness (an adaptation of Monopoly, except with European locations). I was always delighted when I got to buy all of Spain or Sweden, and that game didn’t even have any images to get me excited about these places, just black on white text (it’s amazing how kids’ imagination works).
Of course, as it is an airline game, players would also be able to buy planes. Thematically, it also makes sense to have passengers wanting to go to a particular destination. So how would players obtain all these plane/passenger/airport cards? Eventually, I settled on auctions (I wanted high-interaction game and auctions, to me, are a fun way of doing that).
Early on in the design process, I realized that a catch up mechanic would be needed (inevitable for most engine builders). Staying true to the theme, I settled on taxes, which felt a bit boring so I also added the option to sabotage other players (with players doing not-so-well getting to do sabotage most of the time). That introduced a take-that element, which I balanced so that it hurts enough to make you fear it, but is not actually so bad that you want to flip the board and rage quit (so the sweet spot). These catch up mechanics offer a glimpse of hope to the trailing players as they offer a chance to get back in the game even after a terrible start.
The Feedback Loop
As far as I’m aware, no game is created perfect on the first try, so board game design is an iterative process. After each playtest, I looked at my objectives and considered whether recent changes brought me closer to achieving them. That meant saying goodbye to some ideas I was very fond of, but I think there is no sense keeping things in the game just because the idea is cool.
As an example, I used to have employees in the game. For example players could hire a duty free store manager, who generated a small income for each of player’s airports. I introduced event and sabotage cards which led to players losing/gaining employees. Thematically, it worked really well, but balancing was a nightmare. Initially, I made employees too powerful, so the player with the best/most employees always won (which kind of works thematically, but I wanted the focus of the game to remain on network building). When I reduced the employee bonuses, I found players didn’t care to hire them, or they forgot to use them. The fat had to be trimmed.
In the end employees ended up becoming unique player cards with special abilities. This added to game replayability (one of my objectives) and made it much easier to remember their special ability because everyone only has one and it doesn’t change during the game.
If at any point your gameplay starts to feel repetitive/boring, try to think of ways to mix things up. I managed to do that by introducing once-per-round event (sometimes good, sometimes bad). This worked well thematically and added a somewhat fun unpredictability (for example changes to everyone’s engine/network).
Conclusions
My approach to choosing game mechanics was very much driven by the theme. First, I decided on the entities/cards that would be present in the game. I then developed the logic for the game engine (how the cards are combined to make money). This was followed by decisions on how players would obtain the cards, how to prevent a runaway leader (catch up mechanics), how to make the game more re-playable (character cards).
I really respect people who have designed a great game by choosing the mechanics first and fitting a theme around them. I feel like if I tried it, I would be constantly coming back to the mechanics and changing them so they work for the theme – in which case I may as well start designing with the theme in mind, attempting to force the mechanics I like along the way (if possible).
I think it’s really important to keep your vision and your objectives in mind at all times, especially when playtesting. I recommend printing them out on a piece of paper, and reading them in the middle of the your playtest – that may just get you thinking about possible improvements that you would not think of otherwise.
Finally, throughout this blog post, quite a few times I referred to the feelings I got when playing board games when I was a kid. I think it’s important to look back at the childhood games you played and attempt to recreate the most intense feelings from the past in your board game. That way, you are giving back to the community the feelings the community once enabled you to have.
In my next blog post, I will talk about making the most out of your playtests if you’ve got a lazy brain (like I do). In the meantime, you can like out or Facebook page or please sign up to our newsletter to be notified when new blog entries are posted.