Game of the Year is a board game that involves designing a video game. With this idea, the Bonn publisher Nice Game Publishing wants to score points with game fans as part of a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Wanting to playfully combine two worlds is ambitious and interesting at the same time. In addition, one seems to want to bring the nostalgic charm of some classic games to the home gaming table. The financing campaign will start at the end of June.
The indie publisher Nice Game Publishing wants to bring a board game onto the market that, of all things, uses the video game industry as its setting. The simple idea: Up to four players should design the “Game of the Year”, the best video game of the year. You can also choose to play the title in solo mode. The Bonn-based publisher wants to finance the project via Kickstarter. Let's start with that kickstarterGame of the Year campaign on June 28th.
Board gamers are turning into video game developers
At Game of the Year, board players slip into the roles of game developers to create a video game from various elements. About the basic idea. This should be implemented on the gaming table by combining different game factors, some genre or features, in order to ultimately create a complete work: the game of the year. The board game concept was developed together with experts who are familiar with the history of video games - this is how it should be possible to capture the special charm of some gaming titles.
An intermediate goal: Build a hype. This means that Game of the Year is thematically close to the games industry, whose players are trying to do just that again and again: to make a video game so popular that the marketing campaign is practically a sure-fire success. It is not uncommon for this to succeed, but success in response to a hype is not always sustainable. With Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red recently demonstrated how fragile fans' enthusiasm for a game can be. Sometimes a positive hype turns into a negative one.
At Game of the Year, players should avoid this and do everything right in solo games or cooperative or competitive processes in order to ultimately create a masterpiece. According to the authors, every round of the game should be unique, this is guaranteed by a wide range of different game elements that make up the best game of the year.
Last but not least, this board game lives from nostalgia and the rise of the games industry. The CEO of Nice Publishing, Simon Schwanhäußer, reveals: "As children of the 80s and 90s, there is a lot of nostalgia for us." In addition, it is a "fresh topic" - for the scene as a whole, but also for Nice Publishing itself.
"Our last games had post-apocalypse, classic fantasy with orcs and elves, as well as vampires as a theme - terrible monsters, fantasy defense, vampires: heritage - this time we just wanted something completely different," explains the publisher's boss about the game idea of Game of the Year. "And yet we're kind of geeks. And that's what comes out of it.” But there's more, and that's on the meta level. Schwanhäußer: “We also love the creative and meta character of the whole thing. So the fact that we can now make games about orcs, elves and vampires again in Game of the Year.”
Game of the Year: In development for two years
Developing a board game into a video game takes time - but not nearly as long as developing a video game. "The game has now been in development for about two years and has changed a lot in the process," the Nice Publishing managing director tells us. “We started with the topic and gradually developed mechanisms and systems that can carry the thematic feel that we want to convey. We also looked at what comparable games exist in the video game sector - there are a few - and looked at what works and what doesn't."
According to Nice Publishing, the board game game of the year is primarily aimed at fans who also like to play video games – i.e. gaming board gamers or video gamers who want to venture into the analogue world of gaming. "People who get wide eyes when they see these iconic game covers from the 90s," explains Simon Schwanhäußer to the target group. "And those who like to be creative themselves and have fun coming up with silly game ideas."
However, the head of the publishing house also says: "The game is primarily a thematic game, if you are now a pure Eurogamer who does not want any randomness or creative elements in your games, then Game of the Year may not be the right thing for you."
Being a video gamer or at least liking video games is a good prerequisite for having fun with Game of the Year. The team behind Nice Game also plays digitally. "Christian, our art director is more of a console gamer," says Simon Schwanhäußer. "The last thing he did was tell me how Last of Us 2 annoyed him."
Simon himself, the tough, strong-willed boss, has made the jump: "I used to have consoles, but I got out of Playstation 4 or something like that and actually only play on the PC." short reviews of the latest games someone has played.
"Because we're all very busy, these are often games that can be played in small chunks, such as roguelite card games like Slay The Spire or Monster Train. Or just games that are currently “under discussion”, such as Disco Elyisum at times or – inevitably – Cyberpunk 2077.” Schwanhäußer throws himself protectively in front of CD Projekt Red’s action role-playing game: “Which, by the way – attention, controversial opinion – I really like despite its quirks played and what I find the criticism excessively exaggerated, at least as a PC gamer."
Of course, Simon Schwanhäußer himself also gambles analogously: "For me, board games are incredibly important as a balance and as an "unplugged" experience, especially in these increasingly digital times." Even with solo games, it is something different to perceive dice and cards haptically. "
And sitting really physically close with friends and exchanging ideas over the table is simply a completely different experience than playing games over the network on the computer. Of course, both have their right to exist, according to the publisher.
"Speaking from the point of view of the game maker, I think board games also have other exciting properties, especially compared to video games: On the one hand, there is the creative limitation caused by the material: Mechanisms have to be much more sophisticated, often more abstract, because you just can't Possibility has 1000 values to save or manipulate as variables from a program. This generally leads to more elaborate and elegant game ideas and concepts.”
Perhaps also because you can't just "patch" a board game like it is common practice with video games, says Schwanhäußer.
Nice Game Publishing?
nice publishing? You might have heard the name of the publisher, but maybe not yet. "Dragon Canyon", "Fantasy Defense" and most recently "Vampire the Masquerade-Heritage" are three of the titles in the Bonn-based company's portfolio. They don't see themselves as established in the industry yet, although they have been active for around a decade. The boss describes it like this: “We've been in the industry for a good decade now. I started around 2010 with an internship at the Taiwanese board game publisher Swan Panasia”. Nice Game Publishing sees itself as an indie publisher and thus uses the term that is increasingly used in the games industry to mean outstanding game quality.
"So somehow I still see us as the lovable amateurs who just see what's going on," says Schwanhäußer. "But of course some employees have been added in the meantime and we had to and have to become a little more professional and also pay a little more attention to making money." The main motivation of the publishing house is nevertheless "the joy of trying out new things and developing ourselves further". It started with the Foundation of the online shop for games from Japan, Taiwan and Korea. It then continued with game releases, "where we tried out a wide variety of topics, materials and distribution channels," says the publisher.
Nice Publishing currently has two bestsellers: “Since we are also trying to sell it, we bought “Kluster”, a party game with magnets, from our French partners for German distribution. This is a very simple game that is also interesting for non-gamers and it is selling very well at the moment. As far as our own games go, Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage is our best seller.” The game has been sold out even at the moment, adds the publishing boss. The title is a legacy game in the pen and paper role-playing game universe of Vampire: The Masquerade.
crowdfunding?
The board game Game of the Year should now be via Kickstarter be financed through crowdfunding, which is a good way for an indie publisher. However, criticism of the platform is growing because sometimes large publishers Kickstarter use it as a kind of hidden online shop. Not so Nice Publishing, who live and breathe the topic of crowdfunding: “For us, crowdfunding is an integral part of the business model, especially for a game like Game of the Year. We simply cannot manage the realization of the project without this form of financing.”
That is a clear strength of crowdfunding: Simon Schwanhäußer is pleased that original ideas and small developers get a real chance. "It's all the more annoying when you have to compete on Kickstarter with competitors for whom this is certainly not the case and who are ultimately measured by the same standards."
Superficiality is often mentioned as another weak point. "Visual design, beautiful minis and so on seem to count more than content," explains the CEO. "That's certainly true, somewhere. On the other hand, I keep thinking: there is no other way. What else are people supposed to look for? That's why it's very important for us to try to work well graphically and to have a good presentation, even if we're not interested in making games with minis, for example."
The funding amount is not yet final, but Simon Schwanhäußer is currently counting an amount somewhere between ten and twenty thousand euros for the campaign Game of the Year is expected to start on June 28th.
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