Boardgames can provide an ideal launchpad for a new corporate strategy, a behaviour you want to nurture or educate your people about in the organisation. Whether it is sales, leadership, strategy or culture related topics, there will be a board game that can be designed to encourage what you would like to achieve.
What do you need to start?
We recommend starting out by deciding whether players play together in a collaborative way or against each other in a competitive play. We also want you to be clear on what the objective or core purpose is of the game. If you want to get people to talk, a board game can be ideal, because to play you need them to sit around one table in the same physical space, which by the very nature will encourage conversation. I have yet to experience a silent board game or card game.
Getting them involved in the creation
When you are creating a board game, you will need an army of willing playtesters. We would recommend that you pick a good mix of people with different abilities, some gamers, some non-gamers, men and women, all age groups etc. After each playtest collect feedback. Playtesting has different reasons as you go further in the development process, initially you look to confirm if the gameplay delivers objectives, then if the gameplay works and increasingly you test for tweaking of gameplay.
If you want to deep-dive further into this, come and listen to my talk at Gamification Europe in November, dedicated to playtesting, you can book your place on the link.
By involving your target audience in the creation of your game, you also increase excitement and a transfer a little bit of ownership. Ownership will give people a bit of pride in having contributed to something that will be rolled out further in the organisation. Playtesters tend to also spread the word and if that is what you want to achieve, allow them to share just that, if not it may take a bit of effort to keep the rumour mill quiet.
What else is useful
It may come as an obvious statement, but playing the kinds of games that you intend to create will be helpful. It helps you to identify what could potentially work and inspire your audience. Find out who the gamer geeks are in your company, they may be able to lend you some of their favourites. If that is not an option a lot of cafes and pubs have board games that can be played at any given time by customers. Convening in those may be great for research purposes and can build team spirit.
Once you have embarked on the game design process, leave the balancing of gameplay to the designers. It is what they specialise in after all. Get them to share concepts and then guide them in the degree of difficulty each part should be. If you are our for an easy game, then communicate that at the start and vice versa if you want it to be difficult to win. Knowing those elements upfront helps designers tremendously.
When a concept is communicated to you, that is the starting point for the engagement. It usually doesn’t end up being the very final product. Through design workshops and client feedback, the concept is improved several times, before you have a game that can be played.
Ask us to help you
We have a fixed price package for board and card game design, which we would be happy to discuss with you. The number of pieces, your quantity requirements will determine the print pricing. Just complete your game details here and we can start the conversation.
