#50 - Board Game Industry Predictions

Music. Hello, and welcome to Fun Problems. The problems are fun. I'm Keircey Hayward.

I'm blind as a bat, Brandon. What? Since when did you get a wrestling nickname? Is that a wrestling nickname? I'm not wearing my glasses. I just took them off because they were glaring too much. Oh, that's true. Yes. People who are listening, you wouldn't know this, but AJ can't see you. I am at an Airbnb, so if my audio quality is different than normal, I bought this microphone just to record today. So I'm on a different microphone, a different location, wearing a different

pair of glasses. So it's all wildly different today. AJ, what's your favorite number between 49 and 51 non-inclusive? I think 47. Nope, nope. Between 49 and 51. 49, 51, 50, 50. Yes. Okay, AJ, this is great news for you then. This is our 50th episode. If we released weekly, we'd have been doing this for less than one year.

When did we start this? we started in 2021 i think or 2020 it was pandemic time it was one or the other it was either 2020 or 2021 for sure uh so we're at almost four to five years and 50 episodes so an average of 10 episodes a year turns out when you take two years off it brings down the average quite a bit, it really does yeah so we wanted to do a special episode and we asked the discord for advice or suggestions and one alex cutler friend of the podcast who's about

to be our most recurring guest, because we're doing another episode with him in the next few weeks, suggested what do, you know, we've been going for five years, what do the next five years of board games look like? So we've prepared our answers, we got some Discord answers, so this is going to be, it's almost bonus episode territory, I don't think it's going to be like actionable advice in here.

I have divided my predictions up into three sections, and I set the sections to you, so I don't know if you did the same or not. I loosely did. There's a couple things that slightly fall outside of that five-year window timeframe, but I tried to follow the same structure.

Okay what have you got you want to leave us off what's our first what's that go for it take it away yeah this is clearly my podcast not yours listeners stop saying it's a peter's it belongs to me and we talked about that comment we got where someone was like look bluebeard guy when you get a guest on like aj you gotta listen to what they say i was like yeah you're right when aj comes onto my podcast i guess i'll which is

we were just talking about i'm actually the only one who's been on every episode of the show yeah every full one not counting little peter monologues yes so my first prediction is a juicy contentious one that's going to get everybody riled up which is of course that ai is going to be much more widely adopted and i think that's going to be more widely adopted in a few different ways i think the clear obvious one is art i think most small publishers are going to be are you taking a picture Sure.

No, I'm trying to show you my list, but only the first item, which is number one, AI accepted. Well, so I think that there's always going to be people who are vehemently against AI. They're going to be very loud about it. And I think most people, especially consumers, most importantly, don't care. Most consumers are already buying stuff that has AI art, and they don't even know that it's AI art.

And a lot of AI art is already more convincing or at least better quality than low-tier art or some of the stuff that has been used by companies that needed to cut costs. I always like to use Terraforming Mars, my whipping boy, where Terraforming Mars used clip art and public domain stuff. It had no consistent art style. Some of them were actual pictures. And then I think it was in the Terraforming Mars card game, but I could be mistaken.

It was one of their newer Terraforming Mars products. they just started using ai art and some people stunk up a fuss and some people most people didn't notice and didn't care and i think art aside i think the big thing to think about is this is not a moral judgment by the way whether or not this should be happening i'm just saying what i think is going to happen yeah these are prediction not hope so yes and i i think that larger publishers you know if you have

especially larger publishers within the hobby space specifically so i'm not talking about hasbro but i think like stonemaier games ag i think they're always going to have uh talented artists i think what you'll see basically is at the when when you have publishers looking for high quality art they will always go for real artists and when they're trying to cheap out or you know get lower quality art there's just no reason to not use ai over real artists because the

cost savings are incredible and the quality is going to be better than the low tier artists and yeah yeah go ahead there there is some ai art today that is indistinguishable like you i can show you some images and if without the context of this is ai you literally just would not know that it's ai and and sort of as to your point there are also some very unskilled artists and you know there is a lot of ai that looks better than bad bad art i i can't remember i I heard this quote.

I really liked it, but someone was saying that they used to play a lot of Battlestar Galactica. And in Battlestar Galactica, one or more players are the Cylons, who are the secret traitors, and they're trying to take down the ship. But to avoid getting detected, they will play as a human. And some of them played it so effectively that the humans overwhelmingly won. And the person who was writing this said, look, AI is going to get to the point

where it's like a person simulating a human so well that they help the humans. Great. All in favor of that. If you look at a piece of art and you're like, that's a problem whether or not it's AI. I think, separate to the moral issues of AI, if you look at something and you're like, oh, that's gross. If it's gross because it was made with AI, cool. If it's gross because it was like Ascension version one, also a problem.

And similarly, when something is AI but looks as good as a human-drawn image, I don't think that people will notice, let alone care. And I can see the benefits of it. Now, to your point, I don't want to get cancelled and kicked out of this industry. As a publisher, we use artists for everything. We pay people to make our stuff.

But I completely agree. My first note when this subject was raised, I was like, look, in five years' time, I think that 30% of games will use AI pretty consistently, and some people will still be against it in the same way as some people are against whatever, but I think generally speaking, people have moved on from the debate. Yeah. I also expect to see more AI adoptance as a tool for designers to be using, and this is where I think it's really interesting.

And I think it's a lot less controversial to say that you used AI as a tool. Again, as a tool. Another prediction is I definitely do not think you will see a game published where it's like, chat GPT, make a game, and then hit publish. I don't think it's possible in the next few decades, if ever. I mean, if we're at the point of AGI, sure. But that's a sci-fi future anyway. Making a game is such a... I mean, the idea... Have we said this quite before?

Idea is one percent it's the most important one percent but it's only one percent execution execution execution so like you can you can generate 10 chat gpt ideas and if you give them to a first time never beta game designer or give them to someone like you and me like you're going to get such vastly different results that it almost doesn't matter that it came from ai but ai will never be able to do i genuinely think like llms will never be able to do the work that you

and i do now maybe there's some other form of ai i can't speak to that but large language models which is what people mean chat gpt dali mid journey won't be able to make a game in that sense i just think that there's too many complex systems so much of it is literally getting it on the table and throwing out what doesn't work i've probably talked about this before i had a game called future traders i had the idea it was brilliant it was amazing i wrote it all out i sent it to

multiple people to be like look at this game they're like that's so fun that's incredible i brought it to the table sucked. Just nothing there something that on paper was genuinely like so interesting compelling and so puzzly i could never get it to even function did you play that one i'm trying to remember that that's when you and i were playing games together a lot anyway it was it was an 18 card game that was frankly brilliant except for the one tiny flaw of it didn't work and it wasn't fun.

Yeah, I think at best, you'll get like a first draft, you know, you could use it. Yeah. Like, and that's what you're saying to it. It's a tool. Like, in the same way as literally, like, people have used random word generators to come up with game ideas. No one's been like, AI, say it about games. Like, it doesn't matter where the spark comes from in my mind. I think we've talked about this. We actually should do an episode about this.

So many of my games are remixes of other games. Fiction is Fibble.

I'm sure I've done other games. that time you killed me is 3d chest like french toast converge is red seven french toast is french toast apropos of movies is no more jockeys like i am often starting from an existing game and being like cool i want to do a cover of that like you know like cover music what's my version of that in a way that i think is ethical and this is why we should do an episode about it because it's a really interesting topic but like if that's

okay then a random word generator is presumably okay as a starting point if you show me a published game that was fully designed by llm i am not expecting it to be functional yeah and i think to your point it there's so many intricacies and tiny tiny nuances in game design like if you let me change one number in a game i can turn it into a different genre you know like you you have you go from having a thousand bullets in your gun

to having five i just took it from an action game to a horror game you know what i mean right yeah yeah if if you have a hand size of one that's a very different game to having a hand size of 10 exactly yeah i had a game just the other day that was like it played like an abstract strategy and i took the number of actions you had from one to two in a turn it's completely different like it could not feel like more of a different game yeah and yes

so little of the game is the the rules writing i suppose i mean in a sense that's 100 of the game but you know what i mean but yeah so i completely agree so first prediction for both of us was ai accepted.

I'm gonna go next i think that in the next five years we're going to see a big shift away from anthropomorphic animals cozy and spooky things i feel like they are the rising hotness right now have been hotness for a while i'm already seeing backlash critications just releasing to everyone right now lots of very lovely things are being said but also the overwhelming theme is like oh cool anthropomorphic animals great we're doing this again so i i think we will see a shift away from that.

By the way, this first broad category of predictions, I've got listed as changes. What will change in the industry? What will change in games? Mm-hmm.

Any thoughts on that i don't think i agree i think oh it sounded like i think you're gonna be like i don't have any thoughts but yes you have the biggest though which is no yeah so, to me this is this will come part of it i guess i'll just like fast track this prediction i expect to see a lot more of the same in themes i think that i actually think we're, mining through most of the unique themes very, very quickly and we're actually,

I think that you're going to see more and more repeated themes because there's only so many themes that could possibly exist. And yes, of course you can always like this plus that plus the other and be like, it's a new thing, but it's not going to necessarily feel like a real thing. I guess I'm speaking of like right now in the year of our Lord 2025, I think it's safe to say the default theme for a game is Anthropomorphic Animals.

Mm-hmm. And I don't mean like 90% of them are. I mean, like, if you don't have a theme, you tend to resort to that. And again, CriticHit is my own game, my biggest hit. So it could be argued that I'm dissing my own stuff here. But I think that the default right now is anthropomorphic animals. And I think we will start to shift away from that in five years.

I can agree with the shifting away from the default. I can't agree with them just not being... I wouldn't even say that it will be uncommon to see them. I think, in my mind, it's just like a multiplier.

It's like anthropomorphic animals plus a thing. you're still definitely going to see that and like i'm not saying i'm not saying animals will go extinct but i remember like when i when i was first starting to get more into the hobby and like taking a look at other games i remember they were like dice tower top 10 videos were like cool themes and even back then they're like oh another fantasy or sci-fi and it's like guess what we still have a whole lot

of and oh see i think we've shifted away from fantasy sci-fi i think that maybe it's because i'm pitching so much, If I see a game and the theme is sci-fi or fantasy, I'm like, cool, you need way more than this. You need some kind of twist on it. So Terraforming Mars is sci-fi, but no one thinks of that as a sci-fi theme.

It's way more than that. And so I think that where 10 years ago the default was fantasy, sci-fi, trading the Mediterranean, today it's cozy, or today the game's being signed anyway, are cozy, antamorphic animals, spooky cozy.

And in five years time i think we'll have moved on again to something else and i've got some i've got some predictions of what that could be sure i i have a prediction that we're going to see more small publishers and even some medium publishers closing i think that's going to happen partially as a result of the ongoing and ever-increasing trade war and also as competition in general for people's money becomes more difficult

as the risk as a looming recession becomes worse and And many miscellaneous global geopolitical tensions and stuff arising. Yeah. I should say we have limited our predictions to the scope of board games, not general politics. But obviously, general politics affects it. Question for you. Do you think that small-medium publishers will go out of business and not be replaced? Or do you think that we'll just see a cycle?

I think it's a cycle. I think they will come back in, you know, maybe, you know, it depends on a lot of things.

But let's say out of 10 publishers 10 small medium publishers five closed do you think in that same time period one will start 10 will start 100 will start like you're there's two answers there's existing companies going out of business and there's the number of small medium companies i'm just curious which way i think the replacement rate will be very low i think you know if 10 if 10 go out one replacing it that you know sort of a sort of thing but i think in the long term they

will come back i just think in the like five-year cycle time frame that we're looking at it's going to be very tough to be a small publisher i think it's going to be very tough i suspect and i cannot back this up i suspect the replacement rate will be very high and the reason for that is i'm going to point to greece as an example when the i don't know what the grecian currency is when the euro took over and they weren't able to fluctuate their cup their currency based on world events,

Greece went bankrupt. I don't know if you remember this was about 10, 15 years ago. So the nation of Greece suddenly had no money. And what happened was there were more creative full times in that recession than any other time, and a lot of them have kept it.

And so I think, I'm not saying this is a good idea, I'm not recommending this, but I think if a recession hits and suddenly half the people lose their job, I think a lot of them are going to be like, cool, well, you know what, I'm going to make this board game, I'm always going to. And so I can see a world in which the people are, like, you're right, it's a disaster, people going out of business even now from the tariffs.

But I think the replacement rate will be high enough that it won't be as significant as a factor. This is just a disagreement. It's somewhat semantic, if anything. What's your next one? So I said that we're going to shift away from anthropomorphic animals, cozy, spooky. I wanted to throw in a guess of what some replacement themes will be. And this one's entirely speculative, but this is just my prediction, which is the theme of the episode.

So that's okay aj it's okay for me to have predictions in this prediction episode stop shouting at me in my ear the three that i listed are sports themes i think sports themes have been on the edge of board games forever never quite worked for reasons that we probably discussed in a previous episode they lend themselves more to dexterity and themselves more to like team management etc but i i think that there is something in the sports themes that someone will crack it not me i

think someone will crack it and we'll have a wave of sports themes games They're maybe not as big as, you know, the anthropomorphic animals themes, but I think that we will see more in the next five years than we have in the past five years. It's funny, I'm finishing up an anthropomorphic animal sports game right now. Oh, really? Hopefully I can get the tail end of that and start the next. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can ride the wave perfectly.

And by the way, just to be clear, I do agree. I think we'll always have anthropomorphic animals. We always have had anthropomorphic animals. You can go back to like early board games and you'll find them in there. Historical themes, I think, will make a comeback. They're sort of out of vogue at the moment, but I think that we'll see a return to those.

Especially like more specific interesting like moments so like matt wolf's game uh raising chicago or square circleville he's found these like two specific historical incidents and made them into really interesting compelling board games and i think we'll see more of that that's my prediction and then hobby thing and this one we're already starting to see so like stamp swap from stonemaier i could name some others if i if i thought to write them down but i think

we'll see a rise in games that capture i mean wingspan is an obvious example it's about birding i think we'll see a rise in games that capture specific hobbies i agree i think that's my three predictions i think it has the most fertile untapped theme design space because that there's so many different ones, and board games are abstract enough that you can apply them to a lot of different things yeah and oh a place for all my books that's a really good example um alex cutler's

game which is about reading and collecting books charcuterie it's a it's a theme that charcuterie yeah they appeal to people outside of our hobby but who are into a specific hobby and i think that's such a rich vein i think we'll see a lot more of those sorry let me cut you off uh that was those it, What you got? On that note, I think we're going to see less military games, not less conflict games, but less military games, especially World War II or modern military.

Again, as a result of rising geopolitical tensions and hitting too close to home. Similarly to how post-World War II America was pretty, you know, being the victors was pretty high on Ameritrash conflict games and Europe coined the term Euros as being like less conflict driven. I think we'll see a lot more of that, especially in Europe. And personally, I'm at the point where I would never under any circumstances design a, unless someone paid me directly up front, to design a World War II game.

Like I wouldn't do one of those like on spec, you know what I mean? Because I suspect that give it like five, ten years, those will be very out of vogue and very distasteful, especially games where you have a player playing as the Nazis. I think that's true now for the most part, isn't it? I think we're trending towards it, but even a few years ago, Undaunted is still coming out with new expansions. That's a World War II game. It still happens.

It's just getting rare, and I think that it will continue. I think that's the current trend, and I think you're absolutely right for the next five years. I think past that, we'll bounce back.

We talked about the magic circle right or the yeah the magic circle what what's it called the magic circle is the framework for sitting down in a green on these uh yes yeah yeah so i think about the magic circle all the time and the magic circle specifically well historically not to use a confusing term in over the past like 100 150 years of board games whatever let's say the last 20 years of board games the the accepted

thing was you sit down and you were playing a game and you are not your character so like i played sheriff of nottingham with my girlfriend and i lied to her face and she lied to my face and we were fully accepting the fact that we were in the magic circle that you know i was not actually lying to my girlfriend we were playing a game that i'm using yeah yeah you you are yeah and so i think that the magic circle is being pierced by a lot of people the example i have the example i always

think of is a bg thread being like as a vegan i can't play great western trail because it's about shepherding cows and like sure obviously you know make your own choices, whatever. But as a vegan, you're not doing anything un-vegan. You are playing a game, and these...

It's not a criticism it's just fact these people are unable to go into the magic circle they think it's too close to home and so that's sort of what you're talking about now like people being like i'm not going to play the nazis because they refuse to enter the magic circle in that context, totally totally fair choice etc that wasn't historically the case and i'm curious if we'll ever get back to kind of that direction where people understand that when i'm playing sheriff of nottingham i'm not

condoning lying to tax people like you know there is there is this separation that we accept except for a few cases and whether that will go back to oh the headphones just like you say something yeah something something so whether we will whether we're trending towards the magic circle like is is more and more permeated or whether this is a blip and we kind of go back to like it's a game it's okay i'm not really called stanley i don't really work in this office you know yeah

it's interesting uh so i i think that in the next five years i absolutely agree with you in 20 years time i'm curious which way we will we will have moved yeah what's your next one and i think i think that's that's why the cozy games are so popular right now because it's.

Escapism yeah as opposed to immersion uh this this one is this one's a result of like talking to a lot of publishers about what's happening smaller boxes lower price points fewer minis yep stuff that doesn't rely on china stuff that you could not necessarily print in the u.s but print in vietnam or thailand or germany which minis china owns minis basically like if you want minis you have to go to china or 3d printed home which currently is not not sustainable for large print

runs so i think at least over the next five years smaller games lower price points fewer minis less risk more games yes i think there will always be some big kickstarter games that have tons of minis generally speaking ip-based those sorts of things but i as a trend to completely agree i think that less games are going to be published overall i think that this is sort of in addition to the fact that i think that some publishers are going to be closing i think you're going to see publishers that

are going more with the direction of aeg currently where they want to publish fewer games and focus on them and say like we want to do this thing very well because it is a crowded market and they don't want to become the type of publisher where they're releasing 12 things a year and seeing what sticks and not able to like properly market them and spend all this time on the back end they want to focus on making fewer games that are big hits at least

for the top i think you're right i do think if we hit a recession that's a. Counterintuitively the opposite might be true during the great depression in the 1920s the most profitable business like percentage wise compared to where it was was movies people just wanted to go and escape board games provide that escapism at a you know 100 times x per dollar that that the movies do so there is a chance that we will see people

like destitute and wanting to buy a game and so more games getting published i'm not saying this will happen it's not in my prediction list, but that's what I counter is that there is a chance that, there's a counterintuitive move there.

Yeah, that's possible. I think more likely, again, totally possible, but I think that my guess would be that if consumers who buy lots of board games go into a recession, their money becomes tighter, they'll become choosier, and so I think maybe the total sales of board games won't drop dramatically, but I think it'll be way more centered at the top. More focus. Yes. I think that the hits will really pop because people are going to be choosier. They're going to look at reviews.

They're going to ask their friends. They're not just going to buy every little thing. They're going to be more conscientious about the specific games that they're spending their money on. So I think the hits are really going to pop. And I think that a lot of the smaller games are just going to die in the vine. Interesting. I don't disagree. I'm just curious to see how it'll go. Hopefully we survive to see it, AJ. Hopefully we don't die right now.

I really want to survive just until we get our ag game in our hands then i can die i'll be fine okay so i actually had a bomb planted on your chair for that very moment and it didn't go off so uh something's gone horribly i had two more for this section do you have more for this i'm empty.

Okay i've been predicting this for so long that it's a very stupid prediction but i'm going to keep on going for it i think we'll see a rise in trick-taking games trick-taking is what designers seem to be obsessed with and i feel like there is a pattern where what the designers are obsessed with eventually enters the vogue we saw it with roll and writes roll and writes i saw so many roll and write prototypes like three years before they popped off i see so many trick-taking games everyone

wants to do their own trick-taking game now trick-taking is in this weird spot my girlfriend.

Have you met kristin i can't remember if you met my girlfriend kristin so she i took her to dice tower con it was her first ever convention uh we had a great time and at the end of day two she turned to me he's like peter what is trick taking i keep hearing people describing a game and the first thing they say is trick taking and then they add some some stuff so the the pro of trick con is that i think it's so popular with designers i went to a indie market which

is designers who have literally like printed a run of 20 of their game so not not at a not at a chinese printer like at a local place or they've handmade them or whatever they're selling them in boxes they've made themselves it's this really kind of cool underground i know it's an indie market of of the 10 games there nine were trick takers like designers love trick takers so the plot the reason i say this is that i think designers just

have to trick takers and so there's something there that hasn't been mined yet the downside is they're a little bit insular and trick takers like i said christian said hey what what is this everyone assumes i know it and so every trick taking game is like okay it's tricking game with no follow trumps this this that this that like it's just a list of keywords and remixing those what makes the game so if you're not already into trick taking you're not likely to get

into it something like the crew obviously broke that i think you've described arts as a trick taker yep so i i feel like trick taking is going to be an increasing trend but pretty good this 10 years ago and it didn't happen so. My last one oh you have thought no go for it, Last one was, I think, heavier games will bounce back. And this is sort of countering my smaller boxes, lower price point, fewer minis. I think that heavy games have been in a bit of a break for a while.

And again, this one comes from Total Publishers. They basically described this new wave of gamers who came in from Wingspan. And the Wingspan audience has now been in the hobby for five years. And that's when you start wanting to level up and hit your ARC nobes and your stuff like that.

So the prediction from these publishers that I thought was worth sharing is that heavy games, which have been on the on the doldrums for a little bit lately are about to see a big second wave interesting i have no thoughts this will be fun to listen to it in five years time yeah okay my next section of predictions was was called stay the same so my first one is that i think.

And i don't think you'll disagree with me people are still going to consistently launch games and be funded on kickstarter ever since kickstarter started people have been referring to it as a bubble the bubble is going to burst the kickstarter bubble it's it's you know one really bad game and people are going to stop using kickstarter my prediction is that that is not true and kickstarter will still be kickstarter such crowdfunding like back a kid or crowd up not crowd up

so it's called game found etc i think that'll still be a huge driver in this industry i don't think it's a bubble that's going to burst absolutely not yeah it's just when you hear two people talk about predictions it's like oh kickstarter is gonna die you watch crazy people now do you have any predictions on game found versus kickstarter i mean game found's pretty steadily growing i think it'll continue i think it'll be a viable competitor i think kickstarter will still be king for the next five

years but as opposed to being 95.5 it might go up to 80 20 or 70 30 like i think it'll still be the same thing where if you have a built-in audience game found probably makes more sense and if you but for discoverability yeah and also if if you don't have a lot of add-ons and stuff if it's a very simple kickstarter you have like a basic like 15 card game then it's got to be kickstarter just makes more sense all right what you got to stay

the same i already said that there were i think a lot of the themes are going to be the same i already said that i think there's still gonna be big expensive kickstarters even though i also agree that i think generally speaking we're trending in the airway. I think that games are currently on a trajectory towards slowly getting more and more elegant, faster and faster turns.

A lot of the things we've been talking about with Daniel.Games blog and our personal design aesthetics and tastes, I think the market as a whole has been slowly moving towards that step by step. I think that will continue. And I don't think that's necessarily going to accelerate dramatically or whatever. I think we'll just keep seeing it. The existing trend will continue. Yes. I think you can see that really clearly in arcs.

I was talking to Jeff Frazier and I think he said that he heard somewhere, or maybe it's just his theory. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but that there's arcs with the full like campaign mode and all the extra stuff, really complex. And then I didn't play that. I played like the basic version of it and it was so buttery smooth. It was so nice. It was so elegant.

And I was complimenting that versus root and he said that the original intent was to be closer to oath it was that sort of big complex thing with all the bells and whistles put in but then they realized it was too much for people and had that tidied up version and whenever you know i talked to people about these like big complex games like oath and whatever and and complain about how how much how complex they are and how these like little things are there and to be

fair cole really is an amazing designer he puts each of those things there for a very good reason you know don't don't come at me this is not me throwing shade at cole by any means but i think that if you come just go back and listen to the episode we rake about root for 20 minutes yeah but if you compare root or oath to arcs i think you can sort of see the trend of like okay cole is working to get the same high amount of depth and strategy all these juicy things that we love but

in a very very elegant package and i think you're going to continue to see that. I didn't even think of that one, but yeah, I think that's a good point. And I think that we can take full responsibility. I think this podcast, a hundred percent, the reason that's the case. Essentially, I agree generally. I think that my point earlier about heavier games is not the exception, but I think it's more tolerated in heavier games.

And I think that we will see that second wave of heavier games where people, I mean, it's, it's gaming literacy, which we've talked about. Like, if you understand trick taking, then you can have three extra rules on top of that.

Heavy games are not meant to be you know my first game so they they sort of allow that it's funny alex and i are working on a game right now that i can't talk about but we showed it to a publisher who we're hoping will sign it and we mentioned that we were thinking making this part of a campaign he's like cool this version that you showed me that should be 70 of the way through the campaign and as as you know i prioritize elegance and that kind of thing but when i'm

working with alex particularly i think i think alex brings this out to me this is in no way criticized for alex as you know he's my primary design partner no offense aj when we work together we do do a lot more of those fiddly rules a lot more of those kinds of exceptions we might talk about this in the upcoming episode with alex because they have thematic justification they add thematic weight to the game it was too much for a first game but the publisher was like

yeah look this is all great i want to be eased into this so we're actually going to go back and do, a peter aj level design for like your first games and then campaign out to where we got to basically.

Yeah it's interesting i have this might be a controversial one i think that sustainability, is still going to be a niche part of the publishing process so like publishers like the eisner brothers how they did was a verdant they did they did a game that was entirely wood no plastic whatsoever and that's great i'm glad that's happening i don't think in five years time that'll be the primary way that games are done i think it's

always going to be like a selling point for smaller publishers not the way that it is done as a whole yeah I, frankly nobody cares and i don't mean literally nobody like listen i i care about the environment i'm not gonna buy a game because you made it out of wood not plastic like. Yeah i'm gonna be on to another one which is i think legacy and campaign games are still gonna be a very small chunk of the games that come out that i think i must have been googling we.

Wrote this list a few weeks back when we're gonna record and i got sick i think that when i was making this list i was googling like what people thought the trends would be and some people were like kickstarter is going to go away sustainability will be all the rage and one person was like legacy games will be i'm like they're always going to be initiators i think i think i think we've ridden the legacy wave i'm going to not continue to decline or have a second wave i think we're just

going to go on today of like what 0.1 percent of games have legacy campaign elements having said that i'm designing a few of them but i don't think that they're going to like take over the market when you've got you know other other options out there well i think it's very similar to vr in the video game space it's very niche because it's not accessible if i i had a friend come over one time and he saw pandemic legacy and he had heard it was a good game that's all he knew he knew he

had played pandemic and he heard pandemic legacy was good he's like oh i'd be down to give that a spin it's like no we we can't like do yeah are you are you cool do you have 10 week commitment yeah so uh what do you have next uh growth so this is under my stay the same board games have been in a boom i think that's going to keep on happening i don't see it leveling off or coming up i just think we're going to have that same growth

year over year where more people are getting into the hobby just i i think that we have not yet finished tapping the untapped market for board games i think your point about elegance and simplicity is going to keep on drawing people in and keeping them here and i think that that paradoxically the the change is going to stay the same i agree the i think the one thing that could. Cause a big spike is another.

Video-based medium that has a close board game tie. Tabletop did wonders for board game discoverability. The show Tabletop. Yeah, the show Tabletop, sorry. Or even a TV show based on a game. If there was a Netflix series based on Scythe, a lot of people are going to come into the hobby because of that show.

So I think if we see more properties based off of board games, which i wouldn't be surprised because the the movie industry seems to be tapping more and more into existing fan bases for things so if we get an executive who knows you know about root or other like very popular board games that could have some sort of hook for for you know that.

I'm doing my best aj i'm trying my hardest out in la having those meetings yeah no i can see that having said that i don't think that it would move the needle enough to like changes from a from a two billion dollar industry into a five billion dollar industry it wouldn't be uh to the moon by any means yeah i think it'd be a wingspan level effect the wingspan obviously did a great job of expanding it but it didn't you know triple the industry yeah okay my

next point actually relates directly to that i think this is under my stay the same area ip is king right now so many games are ip-based i do not see that changing anytime soon dice tower did a most thematic games list recently and i think nine out of their ten were ip and it's like yeah obviously those are thematic game they're built for that ip stuff like villainous you know i i think that or lorkana i think that ip will continue to be king in the board game space for a long time.

Yep ip as in adaptation of existing media yeah i think similarly to anything else it's very hard cut through the market, the more full and saturated the market is, the more things like IP help you cut through the noise and reach an audience. Okay, last one. I don't understand my own note. Do you have anything else to say the same? Nope. Oh, okay. So that's what we were talking about earlier. I've just written BoardGameGeek, Kickstarter.

I think those will still be the two center points of the industry. I don't see... Tabletopia coming in and taking over anything like that i just think that board game geek is such a institution that's not going to change the next five years kickstarter is such an institution that's not going to change the next five years and my third and final section was personal, predictions for the next five years did you do a list of these i did so here's my list about me.

What you got what's the aj list so this isn't a prediction it's a hope i hope peter will be very unsuccessful following his dreams and will be stuck in this dead-end board game industry and is not successful as a Hollywood writer because I'm a selfish, horrible friend. This relates to two or three of mine. Go for it. So my second one, I'm going to save the numbers for no reason, is I think we'll still be doing a podcast in five years.

I think that this is a fun time for us. We get to hang out and chat once a fortnight.

We generally batch a few episodes, then both get very busy and then come back and do a few more episodes uh so i i predict in five years time fun problems will be celebrating its 200th episode because we've really increased the pace that we do these i love doing this podcast you love doing this podcast we have a really beautiful lovely community over on discord and people who leave youtube comments and write us emails i find this very rewarding i

find this very interesting i find this very i don't see this going away yeah from a personal level i have leveled up so much as a designer just doing these topics with you like not just because i learned from you but like when i'm preparing for a topic i'll do research into it or i'll just think very deeply about a topic at the very least or that sort of thing the best way to learn something is to teach it and some of our discussions afterwards sometimes we'll say something in the

podcast and then it will it'll trigger it yeah in the discord and we'll have a great talk about it and that they'll be really really rewarding and like you said this is super fun and we've got like a thousand topics so oh yeah we can i tell the story of how we ran out topic sure, So, AJ told me once, like, hey, we will never run out of topics. I will have topics forever and ever and ever. He said in the Australian accent. And I was like, cool. Okay, that's great. And then two years later,

I was like, what's next? And you're like, I'm actually out of topics. And so, I was like, oh, crap. And then we just kind of winged it from week to week. I mean, we had a two-year gap. That definitely helped. But we winged it for a while. And then just in the last, what, month or so, we were like, we should put together a spreadsheet. And we started filling out the spreadsheet of our topic ideas. And we're at 50, 30, like some crazy number. So yeah, we are not running out of topics.

And then we have a separate tab in our spreadsheet, which is a listener's suggestion. So please write in with anything you want to talk about and we will add it to that list and get through it because we have so many interesting topics to talk about. Like this episode was a listener's suggestion. Thanks, Alec. We have 45 topics listed and five of them are in our number one priority. We are chomping at the bit to do this. Yes.

And we have new recurring segments. such as next episode. Do you want to give a little teaser for next episode? I don't know which one. I know we don't do that. Oh, cell sheets are our next episode. That's the teaser. Yes. We're doing community submitted cell sheets. So we're going to be, similarly to how Peter reviewed my cell sheets on air for everybody to check out, we're going to be doing that with user submitted cell sheets.

And everyone, I love this. Every person. I like how you say user submitted.

I think if not literally everyone, virtually every single person sent along with their sell sheets a sentence saying tear me a new one like really like go to town on this we know what we're here i don't know how to not do that yeah and as well so as well as our sell sheet series which depending on you the listener may or may not continue we have our publisher series and we have a list of really cool publishers that we are going to be

getting in contact with we're also going to resume doing the designer diaries we used to do hopefully people like those because i want to do some of those we've got that's what alice is coming on forward until back pretty kitchen and And I've got some more games coming out, and AJ will have some games coming out, so we're going to keep doing our designer diaries. So as well as our 45 topics, we have three series. So yes, we are not planning on running out of ideas for a long time.

So that was keep doing the podcast, and the other one that related was transitioning out of the industry. This is my last point, which is that I do think within five years, I'll always make board games. I'm a writer when I'm not making board games, and I will always write no matter what else I do, like fiction.

I will always write fiction i will always make board games it's how my my mind works but in my ideal situation in five years time i'm making the majority of my income from either screenwriting or youtube and not from board games much as i love board games but i do i do want that diverse income stream which is i realize how cockily ambitious that is to be like oh yeah board games is a full time income no i want to go for two other creative credits but that is

genuinely my my five-year prediction well i i do genuinely hope that you you know reach your dreams and get to oh you want to kick me out of the industry geez i can't win over here all right what you got so my personal feature in board games uh this one is also peer related i think that the game we have with ag will be a significant hit i think i think it will be on love it many many people's top 10 best two player list of all time,

I think it has this is not my prediction ends there where I think it will be a hit I think it will be on a lot of short lists of best two player games ever. I wouldn't be surprised if it makes it onto a Kenner Spiel nomination or nominations. I wouldn't be surprised. I would be surprised. Oh, yeah. I think that the Kenner Spiel is looking for a really specific thing and this is not it. I've seen a lot of different kinds of stuff over there, like Exit being on there.

Exit literally doesn't fit with their normal framework because they have to play the same game 50 times or something, and you can't play that one more. They have a week of judging.

Sure. and it's the exit series so if they played like five of them and that that that covers that criteria i i i don't want to i don't want to be a downer i don't see i mean i love our game as you know i don't see it hitting the spiel audience it's it's too american i think for that crowd maybe and i'm not gonna be heartbroken by the way if it does.

Here's a question do you think it'll be my best-selling game oh that's so interesting i know yeah i think i think it will make you the most money i think it'll make you the most, because it's ripe for expansions and we are planning on doing many expansions for it. So I would be surprised if it as a series isn't the best selling or it doesn't make you the most money. Interesting. Well, I'm very curious to see in five years how that sits.

My next one is I fully expect that even though I'm trying to transition out of industry in five years time, I'll still be working with you. I'll still be working with Alex. I'll still be working with Allplay.

I'll still be working with Carbon Alchemy. I just think that I've got some really great partnerships that i plan to continue because if i if i'm doing this as a hobby if i'm not doing this my primary service living company this is like a side hustle for me suddenly then working with people like you and alex is the reason to do it you know like that is that is fun for me it's now an excuse to hang out with you not that i didn't excuse but it's how

i'm built like if i'm working with someone i keep in close contact with them if i'm not i tend not to and so i really think that even if i'm only doing two games a year it'll be one with you and love with alex yeah i think it was you who was telling me like if you want to make sure you maintain a relationship with someone have a project with them and that's just an excuse and that project can be hiking that project can be doing a podcast that project can be designing a game but yeah if you want

to befriend someone have a regular reason to get together yeah last year i was doing a lot of stuff with jeff fraser because we were doing development work together for all play and uh that was great and now this year it's like oh we we don't have any projects on together so we're actually like oh let's play a video game every week you know let's do something you know that's lovely okay my next one is that i think so in 20 i did my 2024 income

uh industry i don't think any year is going to match that until maybe 2027 2028 that's my prediction i think that that was such a bumper year in terms of what got signed what came out the kickstarter earnings coming in from critic kitchen i don't think i'm going to match that number for at least two or three years and.

Speaking of i think i'll be making a full-time income from board games i have no idea what that number is going to be but somewhere you know i would say i'd like a minimum i think i'll be seeing you know 30 000 a year from my board canadian are you canadian it's a very modest goal but, i think you do live in a in a relatively affordable area yeah and deliberately yes.

I literally moved here not having ever been to this town before because it was cheap, actually i've been here once before and i didn't even realize that i had at first because it's so small but i think as well like going along with that i think i will have multiple successful games i don't think any of my games will be as big of a hit not even close as the one that we have with ag i i really think that one's so good and so well positioned in so

many ways but i think that i will have multiple other successful games and i think that people will be like where did this guy come from because right now i've got like 18 games that are i think good and pitchable and i've just been dragging my feet on actually pitching anything and yeah now i'm you'll have a wolfgang warship that's exactly nothing nothing nothing and then cracks and webbingberg wavelength that's so clever all at once now illusion to be clear

i don't think i'm going to have 12 multi mega hits like wolfgang wars did but i think it will be a similar sort of thing where people are like yeah it'll be like my back catalog where i've got 25 published games and three of which people have heard of sure yeah i've got one more which is i think actually no but i want to get a number from this is a prediction episode give me give me a number how many signed games do you think for me five years or for you yeah for you i think five years.

Signed not not released necessarily so you're you're one as of time of recording, yeah i march 28th 2025 five years from now i really want to say 15 i i feel like i should do the same let me let me see what i have now i finally built a little spreadsheet it tells me what i have signed okay i have 29 signed games and i have offers coming in on three more i'm I'm going to say 70. 70? No, that's too high. 69. 69, yeah, yeah. Oh, fuck. Let's say, I mean, dang it, let's say 70.

70 games. That's a lot, but who knows? Could happen. Sure. Okay, my last one is I think I will have some more of my Grail publishers knocked off. So I have a list of publishers who I really want to work with. Since writing this list, I signed a game with one of those. So this is already going well. Nice. But I think that I'll have at least like five more of these publishers who I'm like, I just want to work with you.

Bad i think i will have games signed with them do you want to give us the list of grill publishers.

So the one that i don't think i'll get is cge they are my favorite publisher they're a dream second that would be leader who i also don't think i'll have but i'm gonna mix the one that i signed in into this list so that it's uh it's blurred so i'd love to work with roxley i'd love to work with stoke and dagger i'd love to work with keymaster i'd love to work with pegasus spiel like yeah there's so many like just different just different publishers around

the world who i just really like their stuff and so i i predict that like let's let's say i have a list of 10 i don't physically have a list but let's say i had a list of 10 i think like five or six of those i'll have knocked off that list cool i'm gonna i'm gonna keep over the next day i'm gonna be like oh this publisher this publisher this publisher that is my list anything else from you no not for me okay we opened this up to

our discord and we got some really interesting answers and in fact answers so good i was like i gotta stop reading these because i want to go back and edit my list yeah i intentionally did not read any of them because i didn't want them to inform my own yeah okay ian t friend of the podcast the monopoly movie will bomb at the box office and it'll be panned by critics for its self-contradictory anti-capitalist message.

Oh i like this one there's going to be a really big hit with a noir theme which will lead to an influx of publishers putting out noir themed board games i just i love how like offbeat that one is i think it's great i'm gonna keep reading you gotta interrupt if you have thoughts i'm gonna interrupt for the monopoly one i think if they did a monopoly movie they would pull a barbie and they would know how they'd lean into it really hard and and they'd sat they just make

fun of themselves so much to the point where no one else could make fun of them dustin a gray says there will be a jubensha hit as a breakout as a western original but but jubensha is a script murder mystery game similar to Parler LARPing and this little image comes up when you search for it, He said, yes, I watched that People Make Games episode. I don't know what any of that means, but... So I can fill you in a little bit.

I also haven't... Fill me in my... Oh, I get a drink. Sure. So I haven't watched that People Make Games episode, but I assume that it's to do with the craze in all of Asian countries about murder mystery-esque experiences. And I'm going to give a big thing away on this podcast. I've talked a few times in the Discord about finding holes in the market. I think the number one biggest hole in the market is murder mystery games.

I want to make a murder mystery game so badly, but... What do you mean by a murder mystery game? Have you ever seen that episode of The Office? Exactly that, where you... Yep, yep. Yeah, a party game with the scripted, etc. Yes, I think that... I've played a couple of them. They are atrocious. They are so bad, and I think that there is an existing market for them that could be broken into. And I think it is the genre that has the most potential that is very untapped.

You and I, AJ, once played a game that had really poorly written murder mystery writing and then spent six months of our life making a better version and regretted it. So I think you're right. And also I struggled to feel optimistic about that. Well, we regret it not because we didn't make a good thing, but because the publisher... No, no, no. The publisher is just so sound for me right now. Right. Yeah, murder mysteries.

It's interesting because actually no i'm going to dive into this a little bit it's similar to people who say like well talisman is a bad game and then you got to look at like what experience talisman is providing so i've played several of those murder mystery games and i was like this is just not for me and you'll notice i use the phrasing not for me and not bad game because it's not meant to be for me very fair and so the question is is what that product's delivering.

What its target audience wants from it? And if so, does changing the model scare away that target audience and attract a different audience? Which is totally fine, totally valid, great thing to do. But similar to people who are like, I could make a better Uno. You can't. You can't make a better Uno because Uno is doing what it does perfectly. You can make a different game, but you can't make a better Uno. And so can you make a better murder mystery game? Maybe it's not like Uno or

Taliesin. Maybe that exact demographic would just like a better experience more, but in the same way as you can't point to.

Fantasy realms is a better uno that's a terrible example i just couldn't come up with a better one off the top of my head because it's it's a different game for a different audience and if you show that to people that's not what they want from uno maybe the better version of a murder mystery is not one that what those like people don't want to go to a party and be challenged, that's not a fun party experience and i'm not saying that's what you're doing but can you

provide a better experience to that audience than what being provided is an open question and one absolutely worth pursuing but i don't think it's simple as like just write a better thing a better a better written one might be the opposite of what those people are looking for i think that's a very thoughtful intelligent answer and i agree completely so let's that's the end of the episode uh i'm joking i've got some somewhat to go through seth seth jaffe who is a former developer of that

time it could be uh taste your minstrel games and has many published designed under his own belt regular in our forum he says sadly i predict that in response to tariffs tariff related confusion slash shenanigans we will see manufacturing shipping costs swing up again like they did during the pandemic leaving many people fearing the worst and a couple small independent publishers closing up shops so this is much like your suggestion but ultimately the industry

as a whole will be mostly unchanged maybe average prices will go up a couple of bucks i think that's a fair yeah a fair prediction i think i agree with that.

Duncan hecht i don't know how to pronounce that name duncan i'm sorry if i got it wrong it's so difficult to predict but here's my guesses from most likely to least certain i expect we're going to see more games that integrate technology but use web-based platforms that have to keep pace with mobile ecosystem updates that's an interesting one do you have any thoughts on that i'm not sure i quite understand it can you repeat that back so so instead of

like a single app that you download to a company of your game it'll be like go to this website and then they can you never have to worry about like the the app being deprecated or anything like that oh i see so for for app assisted games you would you just be going to this like central resource instead of like a specific app for your phone.

It would be a website so it would be a web-based app in the same way as you know you can access discord on the web or discord as an app so i'm gonna and that way they don't have to jump through the hoops of the app store and worry about like oh what if what if windows phones come back or whatever so that should be my last prediction window phones are coming back so that might work i could see like you you know you scan a qr code takes you straight to the website and it's doing the same thing

but the thing is is i think the broader point here is how popular are app games? And the answer is not very popular. Most people are on screens almost the entire time that they're awake. The board game community has been very, very against app-driven board games. And even if you can guarantee that it's going to be around, I think that it's still going to be a very neat thing. It's a vocal minority rather than a general fool.

I think it's similar to people who are anti-AI. And there's a lot of them and they're very loud, but I don't think they reflect the majority of the audience. So something like Alchemist, huge hit from CGE.

And that was in the days where people were adamantly vocally against it you need to have to play that you always have where words is is a as a more recent example and then all play is releasing merchants of andromeda which is uh based on the old merchants of amsterdam game by rana knizia which had a physical thing they've just replaced it with a web app and when it was announced they got some comments being like web app i'm never going to play this but i don't think it'll impact sales at

all right but i still think like.

Right now it's still a niche thing like i could name more that work you know chronicles of crime unlocked there are games that do this but i still think it'll be a very niche thing so even if they have a solution to that problem i just don't see it moving the needle on how many of those games get made a year i think we're going i agree that wasn't me dismissively being like cool he stopped talking i think we're going to see fewer new designers getting published by the major clearing

houses as they consolidate their marketing market share with trusted designers and name recognition what do you think on this aj i think that's already a thing and i think that it's not going to be exact that trend's going to continue or oh you think it'll i don't think it's necessarily a trend i think it's like there's sort of an even keel of publishers that have been established for a while already know a lot of designers and generally get flooded with so many submissions.

That they don't have to close the portal and just go with people there now yeah and they already know so many people that they don't need outside submissions and they already know what types of games they're capable of that sort of thing like ag last time i checked isn't accepting outside submissions i think that's changed because they accepted to come on to our podcast and talk about what they were accepting but at least when when we first pitched they were like we're actually not looking

at other pitches but luckily we had an in tell me if i've told this story before about five maybe six seven years ago i made a facebook post i used to be very active on facebook i am not anymore because it is a bad thing for me and a bad thing for my friends it turns out i'm not good i'm not i don't like myself on facebook so i just stepped away from the platform but i made a post about five six years ago maybe a little bit more basically making the case that,

quality will always win when it comes to board game pitches that it doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter what race or gender you are if you come up with a game that is capital h. Amazing, then you will be able to get it signed. Have I told the story? Don't think so. So I said that, you know, obviously privilege is a factor in being able to make the game. You need, you know, free time and access to pen and paper and literacy, and those are not unsurmountable obstacles.

But if you can make something that is genuinely amazing, no matter who you are, no matter where you are in the world, no matter who you're connected to, if you can start showing that to people, it will eventually get signed. Now, I'm not saying I 100% stand by this, but I think that broadly speaking, I still think that's true. I think that the biggest obstacle to getting games signed is the quality of the game. I think it always has been, it always will be.

You can find exceptions, you can find games by very well-known designers that are very crap, and you go, ah, I see why that game got signed. But you can also see games published by very unknown designers that are very crap. But I think that the number one factor in publishing a game has always been and will always be how well will that game sell, how much do people love it. I just think that that is the book that I always talk about, So Good They Can't Ignore You.

That's what the title of that book refers to, and I think that's true.

I got a comment from someone saying no false some people just have access that other people don't have and i said okay cool open invitation this is not true anymore do not do this at the time i said open invitation send me your game that is so amazing that it'll definitely get published but just no one's seen it and if you're right i will send it to every publisher i know and say guys you have to sign this and then someone commented being like

yeah but what about people who don't have internet and don't see this post i'm like like sure yeah what about people who died 150 years ago great you're right whatever like i i firmly still believe that the best designs best obviously having multiple different meanings the the most saleable the most compelling the most intriguing the most novel designs will get published no matter who you are yeah i have i told this

story oh i don't think so go for it i was gonna say okay a story but go for it finish your story, so the person who commented being like not true I have this game they sent it to me it. It was a 15-page rulebook for a game that combined chess and poker as a five-hour experience with a campaign.

What is Zinger's end of it? never before have i felt so vindicated in this idea of like it's not it's not your lack of access that's holding you back here it's the game itself it it it couldn't have been written better than this i should i should go through my it's a little bit cruel it's a little bit cruel to tell this story at all but i don't remember the designer's name it was me peter.

But it was the textbook example of i promise you your access is not the problem, yeah and so i i do undeniably think there is a huge leg up to being established i understand i have a lot of privilege in that regard when i posted this i absolutely did not when i posted this my biggest hit was i guess scuttle and dracula's feast which i i lost a hundred thousand dollars making which is its own form of privilege etc etc i'm not i'm not trying to claim i'm not privileged but i i

firmly believe that if your game is actually saleable that i'm going to use saleable as a more specific term than amazing it will sell regardless of who you are regardless of who you know ark nova one of the biggest hits the last 10 years what else is that design done literally nothing who does he know no idea like he is not a bellatro i realize it's a video game but like same thing the thing holding your games back and this this could almost be the tagline

of the podcast is your games every time yeah with AEG I did get the chance to pitch one-on-one with the CEO but at that time they were also just accepting sell sheets so I didn't have realistically anything more than just being able to show him the game after the sell sheet he didn't know me from a hole in the wall basically you know like I are you not a hole in the wall he knew that I you know he knew me from like managing the forum but not in any way as a designer or anything

and he didn't know peter which is like the one person who didn't know peter in the industry.

And when we had the pitch like immediately was on board with it you know that yeah he raves about that game he's he's a close friend now we hang out i really like mr zinzer he's going to be on the episode in a week or two so uh so to duncan's point by the duncan these are really interesting predictions as you tell by the fact that we are talking about them i see if you and you designers getting published by the major clearinghouses.

They consolidate the market share with trusted designers and name recognition. I think that broadly that is going to be true to the same degree it is now. And I think this is what you said, AJ, not necessarily like doubly so. Yes. And I undeniably have a leg up. I can contact publishers and they've heard of at least one or two of my games.

I can go to convention and, you know, people know my name and the blue beard and the Australian accent and the incredible good looks and the overwhelming modesty. But ultimately, the game is what sells 100% of the time. Well, 99.9% of the time.

And so yes i don't do sell sheets someone called me up on the on the discord have i told this story on the podcast yet i don't think so so i said like on the podcast i don't think you need sell sheets i don't i don't think they're super necessary someone was like peter f you not literally but that was very much the tone of like you are in this insane position that most people are not in where you don't have to sell sheets the rest of us do i went and asked a bunch of new i asked a new

designer who's like had five games published in the last two years that's his first five games he did sell sheets for every one of them i was like okay cool apparently sell sheets aren't necessary i hate that they're necessary i found out that joe from all play won't look at games without sell sheets i think he said that on the episode that he did us like sell sheets are a mandatory part of the industry i was unaware of that i have a level of privilege that

i'm not trying to be a dick about but it is you don't notice it when you have it but i don't think that that level of privilege expands to like only i can get published with uh ravensburg there's another one of my grail publishers. They are very open to new designers. They are very open to getting pitched to. It's not just me. And if your game is this amazing, start showing it around. Don't do the NDA route. That's the opposite of what you want. Start showing it around.

Buzz will spread and your game will get signed. Yeah. Even if you're just going to a playtest meetup with your local group or whatever, if anyone there has any connections and they play it and it's that amazing, they will tell the publishers that they do know.

And if that publisher doesn't like it, or it's not a good fit for them, but it is that amazing they will go find the publisher that's right to them i've seen this happen countless times yeah i i don't think i'm an exception in that if i play a game that's actually amazing i immediately message publishers being like hey you should check this out.

I i can name double digit games that got signed because i literally just like saw it at a random play test didn't know the person loved the game so much got it got it pitched and signed with no active benefit for me well the benefit for me is publishers listen to me more if i bring them hits you know like that that's a that's a good sign but yeah it's not a selfish thing it's a this game deserves to exist and as aj said i've shown a game to a publisher one of mine or someone

else's i mean like not for us but you should absolutely immediately go and show this person that happens all the time i did that for dvd just yesterday oh right i foresee this is still duncan I foresee that at least one more crowdfunding platform will emerge, but then we'll start to see M&A activity. Merger and acquisition activity on the crowdfunding and pledge manager front. I suspect Asmodee will get sold again and chopped for parts, spinning off into niche studios with their own exit.

Those are two, but they're related enough that I lumped them together. Asmodee has already been, I think Asmodee is its own company once more. So I don't think they're going to start selling parts off, but who knows?

I'm so out of the loop for big business acquisitions and mergers, I can't comment. I do think one more crowdfunding platform is a good guess. I don't know. Oh, here we go. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I feel like it's Kickstarter. I think it's saturated. Yeah, so GameFound is so board game specific. Kickstarter is already like where you go. It's almost like saying, oh, there'll be another YouTube. In Web 2.0, you converge on specific points and gain someone to go to a different point is so difficult.

Yes, I agree with you. i think that disruption would be something where they come in with some feature that we haven't thought of well and that's why i think that it'll be so hard because we already have game found which is so tailored to board games specifically and so well suited to that it's hard to imagine a third one i guess i'm talking about like a like an orthogonal move where it's i'm gonna give a bad example just to keep this is how we co-design i'm gonna give

you a bad example so you understand the direction i'm talking about a a platform where built into it is you get 0.1 of all sales of the game in retail. That's a really, really bad example. But something that is not being offered by a crowdfunding platform and makes sense.

Like if in in 15 years time a crowdfunding platform that's entirely make the game at home because everyone has a 3d printer and everyone has whatever like there's ways to innovate that i think we just can't imagine yet because they haven't been innovated but i could be wrong, hugo labravo says antimorphic animals won't completely die off but they'll be less and less frequent i think this is a smart and handsome man and i think we should get him as a guest on the podcast to

explore this brilliant idea that i completely agree with what do you think okay well counter to what i said earlier this podcast what else you got rick rick rick says much to the chagrin of sleevers box sizes will get smaller and more compact as publishers attempt to reduce the per unit shipping costs do you know aj and i realize we're going long so feel free to say i don't care do you know about volumetric weight i don't know

boxes have a default weight for shipping purposes based on their volume as in their dimensions so if you have let's say you had a box that was one meter by one meter by one meter you are doing something horribly wrong but even if it was empty it would be treated as a, 20 kilogram whatever so i remember stonemaier was talking about how their big box cost like 80.

Canadian back like eight years ago and they were like we can't do it any cheaper and it was just a big empty box yeah rick rick rick micro publishing 20 to 100 copies will be the new sell sheet designers will make small print runs of games and sell them at indie game markets buzz from these limited releases will drive publisher interest in signing of these games for wider release this is the one that made me be like i gotta stop reading these because it's going to

affect my predictions that's super interesting i i like that a lot i thought that was really sharp i don't know that that's going to be a thing but that's that's very very forward thinking for sure.

I i think that he's picked up on the trend that i've seen in the last six months there's a local designer to me in la chris lawrence christopher lawrence who is he i know he goes to a lot i think he helped run them and he got his game reviewed by my favorite board game critic space beef dan therall and he doesn't publish he doesn't like review unpublished games because it had been these were micro yeah micro published chris just made these units himself he just made some cookies sent one

to dan dan gave a really interesting review spacebiff.com look up chris lawrence and you can read it i can't remember the name of his game unfortunately and i who is friends with chris and never heard of this game now know how his game works you can imagine other publishers listen to dan that's obviously a very specific kind of direction but i went to the indie game market at dice tower west with kristin and people other publishers there multiple other

publishers there looking at what they have so i think there's a completely viable thing now again your game is going to be the number one obstacle to your game getting signed but this is a great way of skipping the sell sheet skipping the sell sheet it's a way more expensive and laborious way of skipping the sell sheet but it shows off the game as opposed to your sell sheet making skills Over. To me, it's just, if your game's really sellable, then I feel like it's an extra step you don't need.

And if it's not really sellable, I don't know that it pushes your game over the edge in one way or another. But I could be wrong, and it's a very, very interesting thought.

Yeah i think i think you said it perfectly and that's a really interesting direction to be thinking much like we've seen ip themed i'm gonna read through all these by the way i realize we're going long but i think these are so interesting much like we've seen ip themed reskins of popular hobby games over the last few years i think we'll see a number of ip themed skin reskins of party games oh yeah i think it's an outlet one i have no particular thoughts on that the only thought

i have is a lot of party games now i think wouldn't necessarily fit as well because they're not as like Bland or Blank of a Slate. Codenames is something where you can very easily... I was going to say Codenames or Just One. Yeah, it's harder for me to picture a Just One being able to have enough content to work with that and not be super obvious and not have all your clues always overlapping. So I think a lot of the modern part games that I can think of aren't really

good fits for that, but maybe there are some. Yeah.

It's an interesting idea for sure. yeah we will see some publishers offer expansions directly consumers skipping retail distribution expansions expansions man we could do a whole episode on the future of expansions because who knows what's happening but basically expansions back in the day of i'll use puerto rico as a go-to example every game night every table would have a puerto rico running for over a decade it was just guaranteed that if you're at a game night someone's playing

puerto rico the market is so wide now expansions traditionally sell about a quarter of the base game at best like that's a hit expansion so with with more games out and fewer games selling you know arc nova can safely get an expansion because that's a mega hit critic kitchen came with an expansion but if critic kitchen hadn't come with expansion i don't know and critic kitchen was pretty well i don't know if an expansion would be offered you know more and

more we're kind of seeing that content move into promos or into standalone sequels or being built into the game base game but expansions i would say generally a dying trend i don't think in the next five years there'll be a significant a difference in them but i think like where we are now with expansions we're just going to keep going in that direction i agree i think like you say for any mega hit it's it's just automatic free money if you win the

spiel there's absolutely no reason to not like do an. Expansion and that sort of thing but for the vast majority of games as people are buying less and less games according to my prediction you'll be choosier and choosier yeah i think that i think i think you'll see even less expansion with your model it would go the other way wouldn't it if if people are buying more or fewer games and those games that you already have are more likely to get an expansion. That's true. I take it back.

A contradiction in your logic. Last one from Rick Rick Rick.

The man's so nice they named him thrice. We will see more mini travel sized games of popular hobby games. Sorry. We will see more mini travel sized versions of popular hobby games along the lines of Azul. I don't know about that. Travel-sized versions of a lot of games just can't function because the bits are so small and fiddly and there's so many pieces and it's too easy to knock around. Some games work with that better than others, but I think for the most part, I don't really agree.

I think that the current trend of two-player versions will continue, and that is, to my mind, the expansion replacement.

If you've got a hit and you want to make that extra lot of money, instead of making expansion to the game, which has an inherently smaller audience, you make a standalone sequel, expansion, two-player, whatever, res arcana did it really interesting whether it's a two-player standalone that you can shuffle into the base game as expansion and they said it's because like we've done three expansions now the market won't support a

fourth we want to do more content we have to make it standalone right i think heaven prevails oh sorry again i was just gonna say last time no you can keep going probably not that big of a deal kevin prevails says an ai generated board game with ai generated art will win the spiel the yard and i will cry softly into my career.

I am going to make a future prediction I don't think ever in the next thousand years of humanity will a purely AI generated game ever win the spiel, Yeah, I think the spiel will be gone before AI takes over. I remembered my thing. This is a minor thing, something I think will stay the same. I think basically all successful hobby games will get digital ports. And I think that digital ports... Oh! Well, like I'm talking hits, you know?

Like right now, it's hard to think of a hit board game that doesn't have it. Joel, I just want to be so contrary. Oh. I want to be like, oh, really? So you think dexterity games will get apps?

Uh yeah you know take take my words with you know you think just one's gonna get an app take take it in good faith maybe wild idea peter what if you took it in good faith instead of being a dick i mean there's a wavelength app that's really good really yeah and it's free and i think that yeah i think that will be a way that board games kind of break into break into the greater market of people and could even see it bringing people in because board games are so much better designed than

so much of the mobile game slop that as long as they can find pricing models that match what people expect from that market if you're trying to make it free to play i could see that being a good indication i think uh sentinel's multiverse is my favorite app in terms of pricing model because the base game is just free but every hero every every expansion which is heroes villains environments you just pay a flat fee for so you can play like you can play the base game and see how it works

if you want more cool just pay five bucks per expansion i think it's an amazing model and they did really well from it i love that mom i've seen that too for niroshima hex the video game and a few other ones i think it's great especially if you already have a lot of content yes yes niroshima hex is a great example okay our next one is from jay who is from australia and you don't know this aj is gonna have a whole episode dedicated to him soon.

Okay five years five predictions probably well be wrong but fun to think about tariffs shipping costs and environmental will generally push the market towards smaller box component count including more micro games button shy or imitators we sort of discussed that yeah we didn't take the specific button triangle but i think that's probably what we're saying.

Secondly this will give rise to a new niche of medium heavyweight smaller footprint games i think that's interesting because i think as someone who designs in the 18 card space that is a, difficult target to hit it is very not very easy it is relatively easy to make a light game in 18 cards, making a heavy game in the 18 cards, that is beyond my skill level. Converge is the heaviest 18 card game I can think of and it's really 54 cards and it's not that heavy.

Yeah, I agree with you. I have a very hard time picturing that sort of a heavy game, really tiny footprint.

Seems very different medium heavy is what he said but still yeah i completely agree trick takers will die back out so the exact opposite of my prediction and some new classic inspired mechanics slash component replace them maybe domino based games poker based game uh we've actually had two in between video game and board games had two huge poker based hits in the last year, balatro and the gang so i think that's an interesting one to see if

we keep going that direction well i can tell you that board game designers love to jump on trends so i guarantee you within the next six months to two years publishers will be flooded with poker variant board games just flooded use of ai for art and text will fluctuate as publishers experiment but the market will push back and the publishers will follow proudly human made will become a feature i think this is the same as my environmental point

earlier i think it'll always be a niche thing of like proudly advertising this and again assuming the ai can meet the quality of current artist which i think we all agree it currently doesn't so yeah this is sort of the opposite of our points earlier but did you have thoughts on that no nothing i haven't said already his last one is now that the hobby board game market has been around long enough we'll start to see it following similar cyclical trends.

Of other cultural industry e.g fashion cinema where what's old is new again think remakes and reimaginings. Of old classics we already have i feel like we're in that era yeah have.

You not seen all the reiner knitsy games can read yeah okay very last one is from staff fan and lots of s there i don't just have a strange list but i think though imagine if i'd done the podcast this long and no one would notice that i think that there will come at least one new game during the coming five years that creates a new type of category of games like dominion or pandemic it's so hard to like define what that even means you know what i mean like i again i i'm the

last person who wants to be pedantic about this kind of stuff but i think i think you i would say that root is that or vast more accurately is that i was actually gonna ask if you thought that ours was worthy of that conversation no ours is vast we we are absolutely jumping on the vast trend i'm sorry i don't want to sound like i'm down on our game i love it again very much but i think that we doing root and root was doing vast and vast started that trend now i didn't invent

it but dominion launched i'll say launched because that doesn't necessitate being the very first dominion launched deck builders magic the gathering launch trading card games pandemic launched cooperative games love letter micro games love letter micro games vast asymmetric games there's there's probably more that i can't think of what was the last one to do a shake-up like that like what's i would say yeah for sure so it's been you can make a case for like.

That's so clever for rolling rights i i wouldn't make that case but so yeah what what what do you think started the rolling right massive trend.

I mean yahtzee is obviously the progenitor but yeah i mean maybe you're right i i don't remember there being like one specific game where i was like this is the moment like welcome to is obviously a big inflection point but i feel like there were multiple very popular ones all around the same time and so to me i i think if you look it up and please fact check me on this i think that's so clever came out like a year before that wave or two years before that wave maybe for the record vast

the crystal caverns came in 2016 so it has been by our definition nine years since the last new genre came out unless there's yeah i was trying to think if there was something with like above the table wavelength style games but i don't know that's really a a new genre in the same way that we're discussing but like the the mind launched like a whole bunch of yeah but put the stuff in the order but realistically i don't see the mind as like having started a new genre like i think the

mind itself is so unique and i think that i can name three games that sprung from it but does that qualify a genre yeah i i don't think i can say that uh by the way welcome to was the same year as that's pretty clever really oh wait that's pretty clever that's so oh that's pretty clever you you're right so i'll have to see that was the sequel i think it was that's so that's so clever that that's pretty clever and that and three so clever or something stupid.

It was it's click wolfgang and sorted stuff by year no i think i think that's pretty clever was the first one oh that was the first one yeah that's uh twice as clever was the year afterwards. And clever forever was 2022 clever cubed that's pretty clever kids all those were later oh yeah okay so you're right then it was it was a fuel at once i just i don't know what triggered them such a weird i guess that's how trends work bob's life and ants and all that yeah i mean.

Terraforming mars and the the big deck of like that that's a genre for sure the the card diggers or whatever people call them i don't know about that i mean we've we've had there is a central deck for a long time like part of magic the gatherings design was like being like oh you each get your own deck like i guess yeah i guess i'm talking about like a game where from a central deck you build your engine and you're all like there's enough

stuff in wingspan that i would not wingspan in terraforming mars that i would say wingspan forest shuffle arc nova like they're all part of that genre and i think terraforming mars definitely launched that genre but if it's i don't think it's as widespread as cooperative and and see this is sort of what i'm saying here is like to me we're getting to the point where we're just splitting too many hairs and like we're getting too specific in

like a sub-genre for me to consider it i do think vast is a good example as like you are playing different games at the same table it is that level of asymmetric to me that is different than the asymmetry we saw and even like twat imperium or those sorts of games before yeah yeah so player power is just different player game yeah so i don't necessarily see a new one of those popping up the next five years but who knows i mean yeah you never know that's the thing like yeah.

This is me being super semantic, but I'm just curious. Would you say that there are more wildly asymmetric root-style games than the engine-builder from a single deck list that I gave? I don't know. I haven't been paying a lot of attention to new releases the last couple of years, but from my... I can name root hegemony.

I really struggled about that. I would guess that there are more of the central deck, engine building ones than there are so then then the the debate not to formalize it as a fight is is whether the number of them constitutes the genre or the difference from what came before constitutes the genre yeah and to me it's the difference to me oh legacy legacy would be the most recent one oh no that predates that predates yeah but legacy is firmly like a new genre yes yeah

that was 2011 oh wow some point i got old aj okay aj how would you feel about coming to the order we do these in it's funny because you kept giving me garbage for mixing it up and now you're mixed up because i i kept confusing you i think i think we do publish advice and then we end on the yes correct yeah we should switch them in the chart then so i am going to give some advice for how to get your game published. My piece of advice is be professional when you're talking to publishers and

mirror them. I assume you're familiar with mirroring, no? Yes. I'm just curious how this is going to apply. Sure. So I'll give a specific example with Joe, who is just on the podcast. So I have never received an email from Joe that is more than two sentences long. That's because he doesn't like you. Well, you know what? Then I'm going to pretend I don't like him either. Yes. Mirror their distaste. Yeah. He usually sends one to at maximum two sentences, very direct, very to the point.

No hi i'm joe thanks you know best wishes all that sort of stuff he doesn't have any of that flowery stuff and the first time i ever emailed him i sent him like i think it was like two paragraphs of of stuff and he the only thing he sent me back was a one sentence question that i had answered in the text block so i was like okay clearly now the roast joe uh well no like he's clearly an extremely busy guy he doesn't have time to read through all this flower stuff he.

Care about the flower stuff he just wants to get to the point no problem every email i've sent him after the like second email i got where i was like oh this is just how he does business no problem i've only ever sent him two sentence long emails at most and always very direct very to the point first thing that he cares about right up there so that he doesn't have to sift through all this stuff and i think that a lot of designers would benefit from trying

to sort of meet publishers where they are and pay attention to the types of language that they use if if i'm with with you and joel jellybean and i'm chatting i can you know swear i can be casual i can make jokes and you know if i'm if i make like slightly off color jokes you know that that's like a fun you know the time you've read the room yes and like similarly with aeg i had a game that i played with john zenser and he mentioned that he likes to like tease people

and stuff just save that in the back of my head okay teasing is on the table that's the thing that i can do and it's he's a very feasible man to be fair so i i think just pay attention to publishers meet them where they are and be and be i'm gonna i'm gonna give a caveat um.

There is i think about signaling a lot if you are sending your first ever email to joe don't listen to this advice and be like i'm going to send him two things if you're contacting john zinzer don't be like hey poop head like you you have not built up that rapport he's comfortable with other someone's got rapport with joe maybe take the advice keep it short but i think with your initial contact with someone you haven't

met you should you you are correct mirroring is the key aj's experience is not something that you the listener can mirror i just want to give that that warning i think it's uh for anyone who reads it the wrong way no i think that's really good advice.

I'm cheeky i tend to be cheeky with publishers i i get away with it by being australian and blue-bearded and and at this point somewhat well known but i've been cheeky my entire life with publishers uh even before that but i've also spent you know decades of building building the people skills to get to be cheeky and also if a publisher is not okay with that i'm probably not gonna have a good time working with them i'm not rude i don't i don't i don't cross any lines but

yeah i tend to i tend to be cheap aj how do you feel about fun i love having fun but only briefly what you got what is your favorite nickname you've ever received oh i don't i'm not a nickname person do you know this really stinky butt face you don't have anything that's actually what the c stands for sticky butt face so i i've never been a pete i i don't know why but there was when we were playing halo once i called you pete for like no reason at all and you were appropriately

offended yeah no i've not been a nickname person um having said that i can answer this which is, upon learning that i didn't want to be called pete and again don't do this this is a story about a specific person uh one of my friends back in brisbane when i lived in brisbane was like okay we'll call you something else peach and so for the entirety of our friendship i was peach to him and it was just kind of cute delightful for him and him only.

I don't know about you, A to the J. So last year I went to my wife's best friend's wedding. And while I was there, I obviously didn't know anybody except for her. And I've only seen her a few times in my life. And so everyone was busy with wedding stuff. The guys were doing the guy thing. And because I'm there with my wife, I ended up spending all my time with the bridesmaids, with all the girls.

And I think partially because guys are guys and can sometimes just drink and be a little bits not so helpful shall we say at the times stuff like that it sort of put me in a good light and because i'm sort of they're non-threatening just hanging out and you know meeting the girls you're very affable yes i got along and i just get along with girls generally speaking very well comparatively to not that i don't get along well with guys but yeah i i just find if there's

if there's ever like a party and like there's like a group of girls or a group of guys i'll go chat with the girls. I just find I get along with them really well. You're a ladies fan. And so they started calling me the king of the girls, which is just the most flattering nickname I could possibly imagine. Flattering slash possibly problematic. Well, it's the girls that started calling me it. Yeah, sure it is. After you ordered them to as their ruler.

That is all from us. If you enjoyed the podcast, and I really hope you have an outro, please leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on what I mean, we did a whole episode of what is genre, but do you consider Root to be a, Vast to be a genre starter? Do you consider Terraforming Mars to be a genre starter? Are there genre starters that we missed? Come join our Discord and chat there. We'll be back next time with episode 51.

Selshi. That was a great outro. Thank you. I'm going to leave that in about when you said that. Music. Thanks for joining us you can find us and our incredible discord community in the show notes or reach out to us privately at funpromispodcast at gmail.com we'd love to hear from you if you enjoyed the podcast please tell a friend.