The Future of Tabletop Gaming
Board Game Geek wouldn’t let me discuss this in their Facebook group, so today, I’ve decided to share it with you.
A Little About Me
Hey, the name’s Vincent. I was raised in a small town with no stoplights and some of the most fun I had was making up my own games on index cards. Since then, I’ve published over a dozen games and have run 20 Kickstarters. As a kid, my dad paid a pro MTG player to teach me how to play MTG professionally, and needless to say, I’m obsessed with card games, creativity, and business.
This Research Blew My Mind
So, real quick, to my surprise, I realized I was slightly off and from this research, my opinion changed! I now feel even better about the direction I’m going with Vindicated and even more well equipped for what steps to take.
I’ll go more into that at the bottom of the article.
Now onto the research!
A Look at Media
ALL other entertainment media is character driven. If you search for the most popular tabletop games, you’ll see results of Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Scythe, all of which have no character relevance.
So, looking at this we see… popular character after popular character and then… farms and trains…?
The one exception is Monopoly, which is coincidentally the most popular board game of all time. I wouldn’t say it’s all thanks to the Monopoly Man, since there’s many other factors that contribute to its success, but I’m sure he plays a bigger role than what people realize.
You may even think, “what about music?” Well, in music, the singers are very much the character and the more they play that up, the more they tend to resonate and do well with fans. Lady Gaga is a clear representation of this, but even Taylor Swift uses this in her favor, which you can learn about here from the brand expert Sebastian.
(Note: I’m not dissing current board games or board gamers. Scythe and Ticket to Ride are popular for a reason. They’re obviously great games with fans. I’m not saying anyone is wrong for liking them. Merely pointing out a new space for some people to enjoy tabletop games.)
Marketing Has Changed
As outlined by Brand Expert, Marty Neumeier his book, The Brand Gap, “The Emphasis of Marketing Appeals Has Shifted.” You can read what they were and are below:
Features “What it is” 1900 ->
Benefits “What it does” 1925 ->
Experience “What you’ll feel” 1950 ->
Identification “Who you are” 2,000 ->
People connect and identify with characters (and stories are a big piece of that pie, but it’s not as straightforward as needing a story to have people connect with the character.)
Francis Marion
"Character exists in emotions and sensations. Without it, he no more represents a living person than a fleshless skeleton.
Margaret Atwood
"You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come with it".
Japan cracked the code decades ago with mascot characters that are now more popular in the U.S. than ever before.
Read about the phenomenon here:
https://tokyotreat.com/blog/japans-mascot-obsession-cute-kawaii-crazy-japan
Read about the appeal of Sanrio here:
Hatsune Miku
Take Hatsune Miku for example. Miku is a vocaloid from Japan. No one really associates a particular story with this character, yet she’s still very popular because people connect with her design, art, and music.
People can find Miku on posters, collectibles, and now even Magic: The Gathering. You can read more about her and here popularity here.
Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast has misfired quite a number of times, with things such as trying to retract the OGL license in Dungeons & Dragons, sending the Pinkertons after someone, diluting their brand, and aggressively attacking others legally, but it does seem like their designers are onto a similar wave of thought in regards to this “character focused” approach.
Magic: The Gathering for example has been telling stories, basically since its inception. However, what interests me is some of the more recent swings they take with this in mind, such as their “Showcase” worlds, where they promote their characters “like mascots,” placing them front and center in a world.
You can see this with their Outlaws of Thunder Junction set.
Speaking of mascot characters, look no further than what they're doing with their new character Loot, a character that’s caused some controversy because it doesn’t feel “Magic” (which may be a valid concern), but WotC’s aim is onto something.
If you don’t know about Loot and the controversy, you can watch this video here.
What Changed?
Going into this article I was going to note how important it is to focus on stories with characters being an obvious part of it, but through this research, I realized it’s not a story focus that matters, but rather people identifying to the characters. I was on the write track but had it flipped!
When people see a character they like, they impress their own identity onto the character, filling in the gaps where the character lacks story. This is why people can fall in love with Hello Kitty, Hatsune Miku, or many League of Legends characters when people would argue, “how could this be, there’s barely any story here?!” (That’s until Arcane of course.)
In any way, I truly believe we’ll see some real trailblazers in the tabletop industry use this to their advantage. Whether this will be a thing a few, successful companies will do to great results or this will change the industry, I’m unsure.
What I am sure of however is that games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket To Ride are definitely here to stay, just as tabletop games have remained ever popular, even in the advent of video games.
In any case, you can bet Vindicated is taking up the challenge and rising to the ocassion. As a small designer and publisher, it will take time to build. If you’d like to be there for the journey, you can join here.
A Little Anecdotal Evidence
There’s so many examples I can find in every day life, but here’s a neat one that just happened. My girlfriend is super into Fluxx and astronomy, so I thought it’d be fitting I pick up the Fluxx: Astronomy deck. Low and behold she enjoys it, but she enjoys Adventure Time one more.
One could chalk this up to simple preferences, which I’m sure is there, but after this research, I really believe connecting to the characters on the cards and things like “Mr. Pig” and his “Floop The Pig” card go a long way for many people. More so than many board games that would just have you adding numbers (which can still be a lot of fun too.)
In Summary
I foresee more and more companies using branding and characters to expand and I see no reason why this won’t happen in the tabletop industry.
And Vindicated will be leading the crusade.
If you’d like to follow my journey in building a character focused Tabletop company, you can learn more about Vindicated and what I do right on this very website!
Additionally, you can sign up for infrequent, yet awesome updates here.
Last but not least, we have an amazing Discord server here.
Stay awesome!
Vincent