The latest installment in our series on board game publishing contracts is out now! We've been running these reports for more than 10 years, and this new report focuses on how the process of signing a game has changed over the years:
Our annual Cardboard Edison Best Practices booklet, filled with board game design tips and resources for every step of the process, is back!
In this edition, you’ll find:
How to make the most of a playtest group
What should be in a pitch video—and what shouldn’t
Mistakes to avoid with your prototype’s art
Onboarding players more smoothly
How to prepare for indie game markets
…and lots more!
What impact will high U.S. import taxes on China have on the tabletop industry? What are publishers doing in response? And what will it all mean for board game designers?
To find out, we at Cardboard Edison reached out to U.S. publishers, and we’ve compiled their responses into a new industry report:
The Cost of Cardboard: How Tariffs Will Impact Board Game Publishers and Designers
Taken together, their comments signal a dramatic shift in how board game publishers will operate under high tariffs—and a correspondingly altered landscape for game designers.
Check out the full report here:
Our annual Cardboard Edison Best Practices booklet, filled with board game design tips and resources for every step of the process, is back!
evaluating playtesters’ feedback
improving your rulebook
making your prototype more usable with graphic design
setting design goals for yourself
and lots more!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EPqJLYnwt0LXDEmZaZ8ebbA6M2MS_quN/view
Our annual Best Practices booklet, filled with board game design tips and resources, is back for 2024! Lots of articles and interviews covering all steps of the board game design process!
https://cardboardedison.com/award
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eM_Y1BBUi3ts7jaei99zojTya1N-qVzV/view
Cardboard Edison’s annual Best Practices book filled with original articles and interviews about board game design that you won’t find anywhere else is out now:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oHHAAgAcRS9gH4YUMQ5kL310lv0NrOwQ/view
See also: https://cardboardedison.com/award
Our annual Cardboard Edison Best Practices booklet is jam-packed with articles and interviews covering every step of the board game design process!
In this year’s book, you'll find:
tips from past winners of the Cardboard Edison Award
a sample template script for your game’s 5-minute pitch
designing a game with a multilingual release in mind
the difference between how designers, developers, and publishers see games
a board game design checklist
and LOTS more!
Board game publishing contracts: everything you need to know before signing a game—featuring us!
You can find our licensing-terms infographics here: https://cardboardedison.com/reports
Cardboard Edison's Favorite Tips & Resources - February 2019
/This month, our roundup of favorite board game design links and quotes includes counterintuitive tips, deep thoughts that are worth thinking about, advice for working in the industry, and more.
theory:
process:
“my biggest piece of advice for aspiring board game designers is to play more modern games. play so many games. as many as you can. different kinds. pay attention to designers and their styles. learn what you can about how people who know what they’re doing do their thing.”—Daniel Newman
“If you never try your game idea because you doubt it’ll be any good, then it will never improve, and it will never be any good. Don’t expect your game to be perfect the first time you play it.”—Seth Jaffee
industry:
publishing:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Justin Gibbs, Robin Kay
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), Calvin Johns, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games, Nick Thacker
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Matt Wolfe
Cardboard Edison’s Favorite Tips & Resources - January 2019
/This month, our list of favorite board game design links and quotes includes lots of advice for playtesting, pitching, and entering contests, in-depth discussions about various kinds of games, industry trend data, and more.
featured:
contests:
theory:
Designing games with non-traditional themes (audio): Part 1, Part 2
Two discussions about designing party games: Ludology, CoOp Cast (audio)
A discussion about good design for tabletop escape-room games (audio)
playtesting:
process:
rules:
“Consistency in language is one of those small things that makes games so much easier to play. Refer to the same actions, components, and game sections by the same terms every time in rules, card text, reference materials, etc." - John Brieger
licensing:
publishing:
industry:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Robin Kay, Andrew Young
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), Calvin Johns, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games, Nick Thacker
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Matt Wolfe
Cardboard Edison’s new podcast, Immersed, takes listeners deep inside the world of a different game each episode
Cardboard Edison’s Favorite Tips & Resources of 2018
/Our huge annual roundup of great board game design links and quotes is here!
featured:
Meaningful Decisions: J. Alex Kevern on Design Choices in World’s Fair 1893
Meaningful Decisions: Benoit Turpin on Design Choices in Welcome To...
Meaningful Decisions: Bruno Cathala on Design Choices in Kingdomino
theory:
A board game critic’s view of what makes a game memorable (video)
A discussion of “soft” and “hard” incentives in game design (audio)
A discussion about the assumptions we make about games—and how to design games that challenge them (audio): Part 1, Part 2
“What is the goal of your game? It’s impossible to make decisions in the void, but if you know your audience, your game’s weight, the focus of the decisions, and the tone of your game (your goals), you can use that to hem in your decision.” - Grant Rodiek
process:
Ideas aren't worthless: the important role they play in making a game
A thread offering ways to foster ideas and innovation in your designs
Tips for researching games that might be similar to your design (audio)
“Who are you designing your game for? You? Go wild with weird mechanics. Friends? Listen & tune the game to suit them. A publisher? Learn to pitch a product to a business - you’re B2B. The world? It’s a product in the market that you will need to sell.” - Emma Larkins
“The more I create, the more I develop the skill of persistence. I see people ‘give up’ so easily, convinced that a problem is unsolvable, resigning themselves to a flaw in their work that they see as unavoidable. With very rare exceptions, there’s ALWAYS a solution. Find it.” - Peter C. Hayward
rules:
Rulebooks that nail it—a BoardGameGeek designers forum discussion
“Don’t blame the reader for misreading the rule book. Ask how you can improve the rule book.” - Dr. Wictz
prototyping:
playtesting:
Ways to get people to playtest your prototype: from designer groups to print-and-plays to conventions and more (audio)
licensing:
The essential elements of pitching your design to a publisher (audio)
Questions you should ask yourself before submitting a game to a contest or publisher
Charlie Hoopes on the design process, finding a publisher, recovering from disappointment, replayability, playtesting early and often, and more
“If I ask ‘What makes your game different from other games of the same theme and weight?’ and you can’t answer me? don’t make the game.” - Avonelle Wing
publishing:
Board game fulfillment logistics, and companies that do the work
A Kickstarter "launch sequence": the steps to take immediately after launching a project
How to make a budget for a Kickstarter board game project (video)
contests:
industry:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
The Process: Beta Colony by Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback
/In The Process, board game designers walk us through the process of creating their game from start to finish, and how following their path can help others along theirs.
In this installment, Matt Riddle describes how he and Ben Pinchback created Beta Colony, including merging designs, using a new mechanic, upgrading prototypes, failing fast, and more.
Process
Our process is pretty consistent across every design. Make it and break it as quickly as possible.
Beta Colony started over four years ago as a game about monks building temples in ancient Bagan. Turns out monks are not a theme that people immediately grab on to. It had a clever but very dry tile placement mechanic that still exists in a modified form in Beta Colony. Thanks to some great feedback from Unpub 4, we began working it to make it less dry and not as focused on the tile laying, but instead having that become the primary scoring/euro thing but with a whole new resource acquisition mechanic and focus.
We were working on a game called Space Vikings 2.0, which featured our “roldel.” (More below! And a random side note: Space Vikings 1.0 is now Wasteland Express Delivery Service!) We saw an opportunity to merge the good stuff from two active projects into one and did it.
We pitched it at Origins to Rio Grande Games and they went, “What about space?” That was funny since half its DNA was a space game, so we did. After a year of development, the game was better and comes out late 2018.
The Takeaway: Fail fast. I know that is a business-y buzzword, but it holds true for our design process. Get an idea into alpha test as quickly as possible. If it’s good, work at it. If it is not, move on to the next one.
Theory
Mechanically, it our first published use of what Ben and I call our “roldel” mechanic. The basis is simple: Use dice to move pawns around a rondel to select actions/cards/stuff. It is simple but fun and can be twisted in several ways. For Beta Colony, the start player rolls four dice and all players match that roll. Each turn, players use two dice to take an action—one die to move around the rondel, another to activate where you land. That was the basis for Beta Colony: Move around the rondel, gather resources, and use those resources to build tiles (colony buildings) on the planet. It is a relatively simple base goal. Granted, there are tile bonuses, special buildings, VP tracks, and more going on, but the base goal is simple.
That wasn’t always the case. Beta Colony suffered from design barnacles. Good ideas that worked and were even thematic, but only added length, not depth. We worked with the Rio Grande Games developer Ken Hill, to “Knizia” (i.e., streamline) Beta Colony into a 75-minute thematic euro with an engaging dice puzzle to solve each turn, and good, tight decisions.
The Takeaway: Knizia your designs. Find what the fun is, and more importantly, what is actually needed. Get rid of the rest.
Prototyping
If you follow Ben or me on Twitter, you know that our working protos are famously bland. We spend a good chunk of design working with black-and-white, pencil-covered, ugly protos. When we are finally ready to show it to anyone else, that proto turns into an alpha—which means art stolen from the google and DeviantArt, game icons from game-icons.net, laid out poorly by me in a graphic-design program that is worse but cheaper than InDesign or sometimes PowerPoint even.
Ben and I both have bit bins, so we dig into those for pieces. Tiles are full-page labels stuck to medium-weight Grafix chipboard and cut out with my awesome paper cutter. Pro Tip: Buy a good paper cutter. Unless you are an X-Acto Knife cyborg and can freehand everything, a good paper cutter is key.
Beta Colony has a very large board. Boards are hard. They can be made with chipboard using packing tape to act as the seam. Another option is to have it printed poster-size at Staples. I have done that once; it was expensive but looked great.
The Takeaway: Full-page labels make everything easier.
Playtesting
Make it and break it, be quick to fail, pick your buzzword. Make a proto as soon as there is a game to play and see if it works. If it does, play it 500 times. If after that it still works, then try and get someone that isn’t you to play it. That is difficult, so use conventions and designer meetups.
The Takeaway: Design with a partner. Blind testing is important, but the umpteen reps that happen before a game is ready for blind testing is invaluable.
About
Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback have over 15 published games to date, including Fleet, Piepmatz, and Wasteland Express Delivery Service, to name a few.
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
Cardboard Edison’s Favorite Tips & Resources - November 2018
/In this month's roundup of great board game design links and quotes, we have useful guides for writing rulebooks, a new source of art for prototypes, thought-provoking articles on game design theory, and more.
theory:
A detailed look at objectives and victory conditions: how players can win a game
Ways of making a dice-rolling system that feels thematically appropriate
“Every rule, every component, every aspect of your game must solve a problem or provide an experience that is essential to your game. Everything else compromises quality.” - Jay Treat
rules:
prototyping:
licensing:
publishing:
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Icarus Must Burn, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
Cardboard Edison’s Favorite Tips & Resources - October 2018
/In this month's roundup of excellent board game design links and quotes, we have several different ways of thinking about games, lists of useful resources for making prototypes, reminders about the design process, and more.
theory:
A board game critic’s view of what makes a game memorable (video)
A discussion about the assumptions we make about games—and how to design games that challenge them (audio): Part 1, Part 2
prototyping:
publishing:
playtesting:
“Don’t give up if the feedback is negative; correct and move on. Be prepared to question everything you have done and to change even when changing is the most painful thing to do. It will eventually pay off.” - Nestor Tyr
process:
“The more I create, the more I develop the skill of persistence. I see people ‘give up’ so easily, convinced that a problem is unsolvable, resigning themselves to a flaw in their work that they see as unavoidable. With very rare exceptions, there’s ALWAYS a solution. Find it.” - Peter C. Hayward
“You’re going to have bad playtests, bad feedback, lack of solutions to problems, and especially lack of time. Take feedback for what it is and try something different. Most importantly: Don’t stop trying.” - Lock Watson
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
Cardboard Edison’s Favorite Tips & Resources - September 2018
/In this month's roundup of great board game design links, we have in-depth looks at some game mechanics, advice for writing clearer rulebooks, advice for operating in the industry, and more.
featured:
Meaningful Decisions: J. Alex Kevern on Design Choices in World’s Fair 1893
Meaningful Decisions: Benoit Turpin on Design Choices in Welcome To...
theory:
rules:
industry:
process:
Common mistakes in board game design—a BoardGameGeek designers forum discussion
“If you want to do something, it’s not important how you start. Just that you start. And then continue. And be willing to change and improve your project.” - Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari
Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.
ADVISERS: Rob Greanias, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek
SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole (Escape Velocity Games), John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz "Bez" Shahriari, Shoot Again Games
JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Neil Roberts, Jay Treat
ASSOCIATES: Dark Forest Project, Stephen B. Davies, Adrienne Ezell, Marcus Howell, Thiago Jabuonski, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Mike Sette, S GO Explore, Matt Wolfe
APPRENTICES: Cardboard Fortress Games, Kiva Fecteau, Guz Forster, Scott Gottreu, Aaron Lim, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Matthew Nguyen, Marcus Ross, Rosco Schock, VickieGames, Lock Watson, White Wizard Games
