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Player elimination -- "We Didn't Playtest This At All." Since the game is just ... 5 minutes long, the player elimination is not a problem.

New to game design, but why not mention of poker and games like blackjack?

Excellent! I'm currently working on a board game and had some questions. This was very helpful in answering them!

Excellent video!

The two German games are super impressive (having a hard time not buying them now!) but the biggest lesson for me is how a game can have an "unnecessary" prop like the bird box or tree display and be fully justified -- it's easy to fall into the trap of not having such a component because, well, it seems like an unwarranted luxury! But it really helps in those games.

Another great common sense video! There are very few “full time “ game designers as compared to design hobbyists- sometimes when your hobby becomes your career it loses its appeal and becomes a “job” -

Just recently found this channel. Regarding Dice for combat, World of Warcraft the board game has probably the best dice combat ever designed.

Adam, your video is mostly about the luck factor being undesirable, comparing to strategy, etc. However, I think you should consider why so many games where the luck factor exists, are successful and prefered by some gamers. 1 - luck is a LEVELLING factor. Consider a game where strategy is the main factor. You can´t play with kids. If kids get angry with bad luck, they get even angrier when they feel incapable of winning. A parent must thus play BADLY to allow the kid to win and keep playing. A luck factor game LEVELS out the cognitive differences between an adult and a kid. Or even between kids of different ages. When we are kids, 2-3 years difference is a BIG difference in cognitive abilities. Luck based games may reduce that difference or even eliminate them 2 - even between adults, cognitive differences for certain types of games will mean some players will simply give up on that game. A first time Catan player (and Catan HAS some luck involved) may give up the game if he plays against some experienced player that knows all the tricks and best strategies. No beginner will keep playing against someone very good at chess. Luck based games may allow a beginner the change to win as much as an experienced player. Even in the world of tabletop boardgame afficcionados, someone might give up on a game they keep losing. Even if they do well in other games dependent on strategy, constantly doing bad in a game may be a turn off for some players, irritating or even a do harm to self esteem. Some degree of luck involved may give players a better chance. 3 - luck PLAYS a factor in real life. You may have the best coach in the world, the best players, but there are some days you simply can´t score a goal, pure bad luck, while the other team, suffering the entire match, scores by a luck a goal at 89 minutes. It's exactly what makes football so unique compared to other sports, how it can SUDDENLY change and create unlikely upsets, many times based on luck.

Hey! I hate "take that" as a mechanic but Dominion has the best implementation of "take that" as it never targets a single player but always every other player. I wouldn´t even call it take that and i am absolutely fine with it implemented that way.

And yet, the most successful, still popular games, the ones that have withstood the test of time tend, on average, to be older rather than newer. And as for the mainstream public, well... I hate to be the one to inform you but Risk, Monopoly and Snakes and Ladders are still far more successful than games on the bgg top 100 list. Because boardgames are not like video games. They don't become better with technology advancements. They're more like books. The best ones have already been written and most new ones are derivative and their only value is the novelty factor which burns out as soon as the newest game comes out. Yes, people will always get excited for the shiny new game each year, but then will always come back to the classics.

Hi Adam. Thanks, as always, for the video! I live in South Africa, a very long way from Essen, or any boardgaming convention for that matter. I am developing a presentation file (.pptx) for pitching one of my designs with. Do you think publishers would find that an appetising format? On another note, do you think there is any chance that someone in my (geographical) position could get someone else to pitch their game at Essen Spiel on their behalf? It would obviously be really tricky; no one else believes in one's product the way one does oneself...

parents, please dont make your kids grow up with the same horribly designed games as you! playing game of life or monopoly with your kids might be nostalgic for you because there wasnt anything better for your childhood, but nowadays you really dont have to force your poor kinds through anti fun games like this! it also teaches them that board games are nothing but dice rolling competitions and theyll probably never give them a chance when they are older. why would they play something like that with you when they can play well designed games on their phone or console instead? i always hated board game night as a kid not because i didnt like my family, but because the games were uttterly unfun

Another great video, Adam. Inspiring to see your output, given all the other things you have ongoing in your life. Wishing you all the best for Essen and hope to see you again there.

man... I'm not a game designer, but I would like to do something on the side (ikigai driven), as I have so much free time diaily... like 7,8 hours per day (🤯)... but yet I don't know where to start and how to motivate myself 😢

speaking of other hobbies, what lego set do you plan to get next?

One of my favorite games was Academia, the brazilian version of Balderdash.

And yet, I think the best sellers are all mostly games that involve random choice, and are for kids, not for adults.

Thanks for organizing your thoughts and sharing them for the masses.

One of my all time favorite catch-up mechanics is in the game Samurai & Katana - on the surface it looks like a Risk clone, but it's quite different. One way it's different is that you tally score through the game, and the players with the highest and lowest score gets a bonus. The Highest score is Shogun, and I don't recall what he gets. The lowest score though becomes Emperor, and the emperor dictates who goes in what order in each phase of a turn. There's several phases, and it's usually beneficial to go late since you can react to what other players are doing. It also leads to a lot of backstabbing and dealing as players try to convince the Emperor to help them.

Another place you can look for inspiration is digital deck builders, like Slay the Spire, Monster Train, and more varied options like Dicey Dungeons. Slay the Spire just got a physical version but there are lots of neat mechanics in each to look at, such as removal of the "market" instead tying deckbuilding to advancement through the game.

I work as a video game programmer during the day, but also design tabletop games as a hobby. One of my recent games had an extremely annoying design issue that made me halt the whole project, and then, probably a year later, I figured out a tiny rule change that would fix it instantly. In the end, I think it is a blessing to have a full time job, at least if your game design path is still not 100% clear, and you don't have a big catalogue of games on the market to be financially stable.

Inspiring! I'll come back to your video for motivation. I found the spring and summer seasons to be the least productive for me in term of game design because I've got better or more urgent things to do outside 😁

Thanks for the positive words on the roll and move concept. I have it in my game but I was thinking of taking it out because I was considering the idea of roll and move being way to overdone but I feel that it is needed at the same time. So hearing you say roll and move is good if it's used well was a relief.

would you say your career puts a... dent 😜 in your ability to create more board games? or you would probably be creating games at the same pace even if you were able to do it full-time...

Glad to know you’re a dentist, as I’m also a medical personnel Trying to squeez time to design games. And we did alot of same things in common :O

"You're probably fast forwarding this video" - 2x speed for life, but I find I often scroll back for your videos. Thank you for spending some of your time to share these videos, instead of/alongside making games. 😉

Listen, I fully respect you're allowed to have your own opinion when it comes to game design, but you really should have titled this video, "Mondern Game Designs I Want to See". I stopped watching when you brought up the tank game. I have never played, but that game looks fucking awesome.

Honestly Monopoly is a great game, it was made to teach people how capitalism is a fundamentally broken system by itself being broken. It's great for a few playthroughs, but it isn't fun after, and wasn't meant to be.

Hey do you have any favorite horror board games? Games that you play with your family, regret it, then bring it to your friends and watch them suffer in fear?

Would using AI art for prototypes be okay or would that be frowned upon? Assuming you're transparent about it.

That's 3 things!

I just stumbled across this and the funny thing is I'm making a deck building ttrpg right now.

As I finally get to watching this video I want to say - this 'just talking to the camera' format is very charming and doesn't really take away from my enjoyment fo the video 🙂

1:12 This is the philosophy I have been going by when creating my game. From start to finish I have been prioritizing user experience and creating something simple yet unique, prioritizing that over costs and other sacrifices. For example, to play my game you will require 4 dice towers, 4 customized deck holders, 100 custom dice, 1200 cards, AND a 60 inch by 30 inch table to play the game on. If your table is 29 inches or 31 inches you will be unable to play my game. This is because of the real-time mechanics involved. I've spent a few thousand dollars and a few thousand hours creating this game, and I have zero intentions to sell it

I think my game in innovative. It is a competitive real-time 2v2 or 1v1v1v1 battle royal game. I've never seen a competitive real-time game yet, I am making the first

Can we all take a moment to appreciate that Adam ruined a perfectly good t-shirt for this?

thanks for this video 😊 the game looks interesting and it's always nice with 2 player games

Camel up isn't roll-and-move. Roll and move is specifically about the player rolling and then moving their own piece, representing their position. Camel up is more similar to something like the birdfeeder in wingspan, a neutral form of randomness that players make decisions around, rather than being dictated to, and the mechanic is (in theory) even for all players.

Thanks! This is a good overview.

In relation to having to roll a 6 to start Pachisi: Why else do we call it Frustration?

Okay, to be fair, older games like Monopoly or Game of life maybe don't succeed in good game design, but they succeed in their intended message. Monopoly was designed to show how the rich get richer on cost of everyone else in a capitalistic world and game of life was designed to show how successful people usually didn't earn this, they just got lucky

Once upon a time a "minicomputer" was refrigerator size! And a home/desktop computer was considered "micro"!

Incredible informations, I'm binge watching your channel, thx a lot ! :)

I have a deep hatred of racing games

monypoly was made to be unfair, it was made to show how bad capitalism was so if you like the game, you're playing the game wrong

@11:34 If you include info in the forms of icons on the dice, your players still have to look up what those icons mean. Just use numbers, & give up the expensive custom dice. (There were a few people who said things like this in the actual video.)

@9:32 I don't remember the intro being too long.

Back in 2009, I was a dedicated RPG player attending Origins. A random table was looking for one more person for a game and I had two hours to kill. That game was Kingsburg. It was my first experience with modern board games and it blew my mind and set me on my path as a life long board gamer and even how I eventually met my wife. So I owe a lot to that silly little dice placement system.

Hey Thanks for a very entertaining video - my family play with nearly all the expansions - so it’s a (rewarding )2 hr game. We also score using pen & paper giving everyone an extra meeple.

This is a cool video! For my own interest it would have been nice to also get positive examples. I know the video is already long, but for constructive advice to be complete you need an alternative, right? Because the idea of slowing down one player's end game to give other people a chance to catch up is not a bad one, but how do you do it without a luck based hurdle? If you make it skill based then it will slow down the second in place just as much as the person before them, so they won't have a chance to catch up in practice at all. Also that said, skill based games are bad for the enjoyment of players who... well. Don't have skill. Board games are a very communal past time to many people, so do we borrow "Git gud" from the video gamers? Sometimes the illusion of conmtrol has been exactly what we wanted when we were breaking out a board game, because there is somethng light to be invested in. You roll, you do what the dice tell you to do and you get to have fun with both great grandma and the six year old. If you make it predominantly skill based you ruin into the problem I had playing Smash Bros with my friends back when. I was winning every time and they quickly lost interest, which sucked for me because I loved that game.