Recently I have been browsing the game ideas and most of the games are great concepts and have great overall potential, but there is one area that seems to be lacking in almost all of the games.
People these days are more visual learners and they need things to be very visual. Card design and board design needs to be interesting to lure in consumers. Although people aren't supposed to judge things by their appearance, people still do. Appearance of a game is just as important as the other components. I'm not trying to be rude, or anything because I honestly love the concepts and the creativity but, the designs of certain things (cards, boards etc.) is lacking, which could definitetly affect the success of the game.
Many places are redesigning things to lure in the non-readers because they are becoming the majority. This is just a tip to keep in mind when designing, don't take any offense plz and if you disagree that's fine, I'm just trying to help not hurt.
Prospective Game Designers
That is a valid point: in a completed game, the design and layout of the components are very important to the player's experience.
However, please remember that the whole point of the GDW is that these games are not completed. I'll speak for myself: in the early stages of design, I will spend much less time on the design and layout of the components than I will on the ruleset. The visual appearance of a game can always be tweaked to fit the rules; but the rules need to be set first.
This isn't to say that I completely disregard how my prototype components look; but I'm more concerned that they are legible and easily understood than how "nice" they look. I need them to convey information, but I don't want to waste my time in, say, making a deck of cards look visually pleasing, and later realize that the game is better designed if I used dice instead of cards.
Therefore, my prototype components are usually text-only, with basic icons or clip-art as visuals. I trust my playtesters to understand that they're not working with a finished product.
To put it another way, if you're constructing a house, you paint it after you design and build it. To paint it before you build it wouldn't work. It's not that the paint isn't important; it's just that the whole operation works better when done in a certain order.
The same applies to designing games. We'll make our components pretty after we make the game playable.
Recently I have been browsing the game ideas and most of the games are great concepts and have great overall potential, but there is one area that seems to be lacking in almost all of the games.
People these days are more visual learners and they need things to be very visual. Card design and board design needs to be interesting to lure in consumers.
Just curious Soccer, what ever gave you the impression that we don't think that being visually appealing is important? I am curious, how were you even able to ascertain what our games look liked from the descriptions posted in the forums? Perhaps you have looked at web versions of the games.
Let me clarify a few things first. A lot of the games posted/discussed by us here are in various stages of completion. Basically what this means is that most of the games we design aren't anything like what we would envision them to be if they were 'done' and professionally produced. When creating prototypes, it is otfen counterproductive to try and make them look professional, when we may turn around and change them after the very next playing.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of us aren't artists, and for that matter, we really don't need to be. Most publishers will take your game and completely redo all the artwork for it. So if you spent a lot of time on doing art, you'd be wasting your time.
For those of us who create games for the fun of it, we do the best we can at creating a visually appealing game with the talents God has given us and the resources we have access to. Most of us aren't artists, but we are learning.
Another thing to consider, is that some games are purely abstract in nature. The game board doesn't represent anything, the pieces don't represent anything, often times they are just geometric shapes in primary colors. In such cases, there is really nothing to present. Sure, we could slap a transparent theme on such a game to make it more 'palatable', but again, that's something for the publisher to do.
I hope this clears up some of the question you had about the lack of good presentation for our games!
Happy new year!
-Darke
Were you by chance looking at the Shared Pieces Design Competition entries? The rules of that contest say that the pieces must be available to the average gamer, so checkers and coins and such have to be used exclusively in order to qualify for the contest.
I know in the case of my game, Argenta, I actually playtested it (beyond the first couple) using a lovely custom-designed board and wooden cubes and disks that were painted a deep blue and had a metallic gold paint on the "tails" surface, as I'm very visual even during the prototype stage. Nonetheless it's still designed to be a good game to play with pieces available from your home.
And ditto what everyone above said about other games.
Ah....now it all makes sense. I didn't know until just now that this was posted in the GDW forum, so now I at least know which games you're talking about. I think the others have made it clear that these are not in any sense "completed" games. Your post reminds me a little bit of a band I was in back in high school. My friend, who was one of the guitar players, and who was considerably "cooler" than the rest of us, said "You know, guys, my friends say that it's not as important how you sound as how you look. Now, I look like I'm in a band, but you guys need to work on your appearance a bit." The reality is, whatever might drive market sales, substance will always rule the day over style for me, and I believe this to be the case for most of the others on this board. We're trying to make great game systems, and that's defined by the game itself, not by the graphics or artwork. Those can enhance the experience, but they can't make a bad game good. When the time comes to bring some of these to market, sure, I'm sure most if not all will undergo a visual overhaul.
Another topic that has come up in this thread is the amount of text on game components. I think that as far as games go, making them "reading-light" isn't so much the consideration as "language-independent". Games have an international audience, and not all games will be printed in all languages, so making the components as language-independent as possible means that the games can easily be transported among players of different languages (assuming the rules can be translated). And really, the less text you can include on game components, then in general, the "cleaner" the rules are (in other words, if a lot of your components need special text to explain rules or game functions of that component, then chances are the game is perhaps too complex.)
I think this is a real problem in the United States, where our education system is willing to let people slide by with poor reading and writing skills so that if people ever go to college many can't read beyond a 6th grade level. I myself will not contribute to this continued illiteracy to just sell more games. Are we willing to live in a society, ala Fahrenheit 451, where people no longer 'read' books, merely look at pictures? Does this apply to games? Maybe, maybe not, but I think the overall trend of the 'dumbing down of America' is a bad one.
I agree that companies' insistence on marketing to the Lowest Common Denominator is a bad thing. But that doesn't have to get in the way of neat and clean designs. Games should look clear and presentable, whether you're designing for Mensa, for children, or for grown-up folks who are easily distracted by shiny things. ;)
As for illiteracy...
About fifty years ago, Marshall McLuhan noted that we were moving from a "literate" to a "post-literate" world. Children were growing up in the television age, and unlike their teachers, did not consider the written word to be the dominant form of communication. This is not to say they were illiterate; just that they were familiar with ideas transmitted through visual images instead of text.
What made McLuhan's observation so astute was that he didn't view it as a bad thing, but as an inevitable step in a world where technology improves by the year. Someone who grows up in the 1970s or 1980s will not be necessarily stupider than someone who grew up in the 1920s or 1930s, even though the latter person may be more "literate."
So while actual illiteracy is a bad thing, we should allow for post-literacy in our designs. There's nothing inherent in a more visual style of design that promotes illiteracy or stupidity.
I agree with the others have said, most of the material posted here is in the prototype stages so they are not going to be overly artistic or visual right now.
Now, on this point, I agree many places are doing this and IMHO I think that is wrong. We shouldn't be dumbing things down for the masses. (I think we should be promoting reading and writing in our games, but that's just my opinion.) If I'm designing a game for chlidren, then sure, I'll probably be more visually orientated, but if the game is designed for young kids (say ages 6 or 7 on up) to adults, then I'll tailor my writing to the group, but I am not going to specifically try and lure in the illiterate.
I think this is a real problem in the United States, where our education system is willing to let people slide by with poor reading and writing skills so that if people ever go to college many can't read beyond a 6th grade level. I myself will not contribute to this continued illiteracy to just sell more games. Are we willing to live in a society, ala Fahrenheit 451, where people no longer 'read' books, merely look at pictures? Does this apply to games? Maybe, maybe not, but I think the overall trend of the 'dumbing down of America' is a bad one.
I'll get off my soapbox now. :D
-Geoff