Rolling the Dice: Diving into the Market of Modern Tabletop Games

Mixing Complex with Complicated in order to create...fun?

BCM300 [Game Experience Design] Blog

Complicated board games are culturally relevant for various reasons. They offer intellectual challenges and social interaction, connecting players to classic traditions while providing an escape from daily life. These tabletop games foster creativity and expand on our imaginations, sometimes even forming tight-knit communities where players continually learn and master complex strategies, such as Magic the Gathering. Overall, they can serve as a source of enjoyment, cultural connection, and personal and cognitive growth for people worldwide. 

“Board games have been used in corporate settings for about a dozen years, but are not yet in broad use. In general, the true value and impact of board games designed for learning are unrecognised by most people.” (N. Treher, Elizabeth, 2011)

I think my generation’s relationship with tabletop games is a multi-faceted one, people my age were young children in a time before ‘iPad Kids’, there were no smartphones or even many screens at all in my childhood, I remember playing many board games with my friends and family, however by the age of eleven or twelve, I did have my phone and since then, my relationship with board games has obviously worn thin. Because of this I found it interesting diving back into board games in the last few weeks. We have the generational experience of tabletop games and the notion of play, but for many of us, it has been a while since the last time we participated. Have our attention spans changed since then thanks to social media algorithms? Was there still room to explore and enjoy the classic narrative of a board game and give it our complete focus? 

In one game, I believe we were able to immerse ourselves into the experience and find enjoyment, this was “Exploding Kittens”. This is a popular card game designed by Elan Lee, Matthew Inman, and Shane Small. It was initially funded through a Kickstarter campaign in 2015 and has gained widespread popularity since then. The game is a blend of strategy, luck, and social interaction.

I found myself firstly drawn to the quirky and chaotic world of "Exploding Kittens." The very idea of a kitten exploding is rather strange and dark, if taken literally, but the actual narrative that is communicated through the gameplay is completely opposite. Living in the current digital age, where screens dominate our leisure time, the allure of this card game lies in its ability to foster genuine human connection. Once you begin the game, each round becomes a theatrical performance, filled with laughter, suspense, and betrayal. As players strategize to avoid the dreaded exploding kitten and eliminate their opponents, the game transcends its simple mechanics, becoming a reflection of our social dynamics. The idea of being the last player standing is innate in any human’s genes, the game drums up our natural competitiveness and adrenaline. Through several sessions of "Exploding Kittens," I've observed how the game serves as a social equaliser. Its rules are accessible - rules are written on each card and are short and simple - while also absurd. The dark humour provides a common language, allowing strangers to quickly bond over the shared experience. In a world increasingly fragmented by technology, "Exploding Kittens" reminded me of the joy of face-to-face interaction and the power of laughter to forge connections and ease into a brief period of fun.

Watch Below: The Notion of Complicated vs Complex! 

Original Video by Me:

Is the game a mass market one? The Back to the Future franchise has a major fandom and following around the world, however, my understanding of the game is that it is much less mass marketed and more of a niche. Perhaps the goal was to market this game to all Back to the Future fans and hope that it would end up a board game classic, ending up on shelves in all retail stores. The reality for better or for worse however, is a game that now lives in very niche speciality  gaming stores, perhaps due to an overambitious game designer who got a little too excited. 

The “Back to the Future” game walks a fine line between strategy and luck, as it went on I began to have more awareness for the strategic side, this tabletop game could easily be labelled as a puzzle, and once somebody pointed this out to us I think our approach changed, we became less competitive and confused and more open minded to the possible solutions. 

The theme of the game is intertwined with key moments and settings from the film franchise, which begged the question “Does somebody who has seen the films have an advantage over somebody who has not?” A superfan of the films would absolutely enjoy the game more than somebody with little to no interest in the films, like myself who has only seen the first film a long time ago, this was my takeaway and making peace with this fact made it easier to accept that I just wasn’t enjoying this game. 

The strategy of the game occurs in the timing of the cards being played and the game design is not tailored to the general public, the concentration and pace of the game I do not believe is absorbable for a mass audience. A level of entertainment was provided, I particularly was aware of the countdown element and enjoyed the suspense it provided, a sense of urgency was instilled. When the rules and gameplay come together, the game can be something to enjoy, there were moments when we were all on the same page and were engaged in the next move. But unfortunately these moments were quite rare throughout the entire two hour experience. 

Image Credit: Universal Pictures

The rules were challenging, I am someone who is often able to understand complicated ideas, but upon reading the instruction manual I immediately passed it onto the person next to me and asked if they’d prefer to read them because I just was not getting it. I realised throughout this game that in order for myself to enjoy a tabletop game, I think it needs to be rather simple. And if our group took anything major away, it was that we all agreed the games we would be designing in the future would not be so complicated.

The mechanics of the Back to the Future game were complicated, and to mix something complicated with something complex (the human mind & attention span), can be a recipe for disaster. For example the sheer amount of different tokens, game pieces and advantages available to players was tricky to wrap my head around. 

Our Group Unboxing the Board Game

So, moving forward, I look forward to the upcoming opportunity of creating my own ideation of a tabletop game! It's been super rewarding and interesting engaging in 'play' again the past few weeks and there is so much to learn about the tabletop game market and its ties to social and cultural themes.

References: 

A. Culén and A. Gasparini, "Tweens with the iPad classroom — Cool but not really helpful?," 2012 International Conference on E-Learning and E-Technologies in Education (ICEEE)

Treher, E.N., 2011. Learning with Board Games  The Learning Key Inc. 

Gaina, R., Balla, M., Dockhorn, A. and Montoliu Colás, R., 2020, October. TAG: A tabletop games framework. CEUR Workshop Proceedings.

OpenAI. (2024). Explaining Complicated Vs Complex in Boardgames in ChatGPT. ChatGPT.