Board games vs digital games

Education Guide Digital Edition. Board Games vs. Video Games: And the Winner Is… Board games and video games may both be fun to play, but board games offer additional benefits to children including family bonding, health, social development and learning. September 15, Melanie Hempe , Eason Futch ,. A Charlottean's Guide to Winter Outings.

Healthy Family Meals for the New Year. Select list s Monthly FYI: This highly curated newsletter has everything local parents need to know to start each month. Leave your own for her below:. The principles of design are the same, but there is one crucial difference for digital versions of board games: the lack of physical pieces. As Quintin Smith argues in this Kotaku article from : emphasis added.

The game as physical object is a pleasing thing. Working with your friends to set up a game brings a happy psychological bookending, like opening a brand new book. The appeal of table games' physical presence isn't to do with the luxury of the objects themselves. Play is how we form emotional connections. The purpose of the game-as-object is to make it easiest to foster those connections, allowing everybody to invest in what's on the table, right down to building it up and breaking it down, and in doing so, it gives you the path of least resistance to connect to each other.

Put another way, that tiny plastic man isn't a toy. He's an emotional power adaptor. Think about the feel of a cool glass token in your hand, the way it sparkles in the light, the feeling of running your fingers through a pile of them in front of you.

Those small physical interactions mean a lot, and have a huge impact on how the game feels to play. In the absence of real physicality, you'll have to pay extra attention to game feel and juice to ensure your game retains that emotional resonance and doesn't feel "flat" on the screen. Also watch out for things that you get automatically with physical games, but are easy to overlook for digital versions:.

Take care to show the transitions between game states, pieces moving from here to there. This is impossible to miss when the player has to literally haul them through space, but can vanish invisibly in a digital state transition, especially if you automate any of the book-keeping-type mechanics. Combined with the point above, you need to carefully message how the remote players are taking their actions on the shared game state, otherwise it can feel like playing against a mysterious phantom presence instead of another human being.

Messaging why a particular game action is taking place. In person, I can tell you, "My basilisk attacks you for three damage, but since I have the orb of serpents it actually does five. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Gerald Fitzsimons, who also happens to be the designer of an upcoming tabletop game called Banker of the Gods. That means the digital game knows the rules of the board game.

In Scythe Digital, when you decide to attack another player, the computer knows the rules of combat and helps guide you through them.

The AI also acts as digital players you can compete against. This is in contrast to physics-driven digital games like on Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator. You need other human players to use these types of games. I like that both options exist.

The physics-driven platforms are great for playtesting and demos, and if you know the rules to the game, it can be a way to connect with people around the world.

Why would you license your game to digital? My primary goal for pretty much any decision I make at Stonemaier Games is how to bring joy to more people. This applies to digital games in several ways:. Please note that I do not consider digital games to be a revenue-seeking endeavor, at least not for Stonemaier Games. Two different developers—both very nice people—have spent months working on it, with no final result to show for their efforts.

This experience has made me much more likely to work with a company even a small company in the future instead of an individual. Companies typically have their risk spread out over multiple projects, and they seem to have a better grasp of budgeting and timeframes. This seems to be a pretty common split. For Scythe Digital, we basically just paid for the music, with Asmodee funding the rest of the costs. They will want to see that there is a significant audience for your game in terms of quantifiable sales of the tabletop version.

These include:. Charterstone Digital is also in the works. None of them has ever remained even remotely on the original projected schedule. This has helped keep what could be a stressful process relatively stress-free for me.

What do you think about digital ports of tabletop games? If you gain value from the articles Jamey publishes on his blog each year, please consider championing this content! It can cost a few hundred thousand dollars to develop an app. The economics of producing game software for profit is at least as daunting as for producing cardboard versions.

Great post Jamey! I know this is from pre-covid, but I imagine everything still rings true in this new day and age? Has your attitude towards the business of digital changed at all now that more tabletop gaming has started to occur online? Taking a quick glance at your catalog of games, and the different digital platforms you offer them on, why have only some on Tabletopia Euphoria , others only a standalone products Charterstone , and others that cover both Scythe, Wingspan?

Additionally, have you ever considered offering digital copies of a game packaged with physical copies? Seems like that might diminish the revenue for the digital product, but it would be a win to the customer. Is there a business model where this makes sense?

Great questions, Mike. I would say that the post still rings true in this day and age. The biggest thing the pandemic opened me to was the value of platforms like Board Game Arena human players are needed, but the platform knows the rules of the game.

However, several of them have offered promo codes, and we incur the expense of including pieces of paper with those codes in the matching games.

With BGA, as I understand it, the products are community developed? You just have to turn over the licensing rights. Or do you shop around for a BGA specific developer? With Asmondee now owning BGA, does that complicate the process of getting games on there at all? From context, it sounds like all the digital deals you have are licensing deals.

Do you see value in a model where you simply contract a company to deliver the digital version to you, and you publish it retaining all revenue, etc. That model might afford you the freedom to package digital copies more freely, but puts the weight of support, etc. We send all of our products to Tabletopia to implement on their platform, and our agreement with them is non-exclusive.

So we then also try to find another developer for the full-AI version to whom we license the digital rights. I wonder if these concepts appear in the contracts you sign when you grant digital rights licenses? Ultimately my goal is to spur overall interest in these games and specifically build a community around more robust AIs. However, I bet there are lots of full-AI companies that would love to have an AI system they can just buy instead of creating a new one for every game they digitally implement.

Thanks for the response Jamey — that lines up with the sense I got from reading your post. Under that concept, anything you do for your own use is probably fair. If your web site allowed users to create an AI for a game which has a digital implementation but no AI, the AI itself is an original work. It seems like a catch that the AI might be an original work, but is dependent on a digital implementation of the original work, which would be impermissible once I provide it for use beyond my own.

That was the case with Wingspan. But if rights are defined by what is created e. Would you recommend I digitize some games before I reach out to companies to pitch them on my prototype?

Or should I just not even put any work in before hand? I think i can impresss people with what I can create solo and without funding. That sounds exciting for me, but why would I as the developer take the lions share of the split in perpetuity? I think i was made for digitizing board games so all info is very helpful. So yes, absolutely, I would highly recommend that you digitize something to show companies what you can do. You deserve it!

The actual embodiment of the game is protected, but the essence of the game is not. For simpler games, both the implementation are straightforward. For complex beasts such as Jamie develops, the digital implementation is very challenging, and a decent AI is the stuff of PHD theses.

Sorry for the late response but I think I missed some emails from this blog. Would love to hear more from you and Jamey as well. This is the category that the Boardspace. Making good AIs for complex games like Viticulture and Scythe is a large and difficult task, over and above implementing the rules.

Typically we use it as a learning experience to help us determine which developers we want to work with in the future. The quality of the developer, their level of commitment, and their community engagement all have a huge impact on the future of the game. If you felt a digital release was hurting the game, do you keep it? What would stop you from finding another developer to reimplement the game?

We have contracts with our developers that are tough to get out of unless they completely give up on the game. Ah, okay. What BGA does best is bringing random online people together. What should be done, say, to bring Wingspan to BGA? My husband and I are trying to build out a digital platform similar to Tabletopia but with full AI scripting and are very interested in licensing your games.

We talked to Joe and found out all of your digital rights belong to other companies. We were a little confused about how Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator have been able to license them. Also, do those agreements hold for future games you create or only existing games?

We really appreciate you being so open and transparent with how you run your company and how you have been willing to work with digital platforms in offering your games. Our hope would be that our digital platform can get your games into the hands of people who would never play otherwise. Thanks Natasha! When you agree on a revenue sharing model with a digital game studio to create apps for your game, which tools do you use to monitor app sales?

I became aware of Scythe last year when I got it for a Christmas gift and have loved it every since. Of course Covid three months later and I have hardly gotten to play it with anyone other than my wife since.

Putting aside that it is impossible to give Scythe as gifts the way I can with other digital products, it seems there is no pure digital version of Scythe available for purchase. Unlocking factory cards? Come on. Playing video games trains various skills, from strategic planning and critical thinking to social and collaborative skills.

They also foster creativity, promote relaxation and can combat anxiety. Video games are a novel kind of classroom experience and the curriculum may need to be redesigned to incorporate them properly.

Pupils will need to be equipped with tablets or PCs, which are often sources of great distractions, so teachers should remember to make the objective of the game clear to everyone. Biggest drawback? It goes without saying — cost. Video games require electronic equipment, which needs to be purchased prior to incorporating them into the curriculum.

Mature teachers might benefit from additional training in order to become tech-savvy enough to manage the gaming experience without any hitches.