Take that, Little Guy!

This follows up on my previous post, We're all international backers when it comes to shipping, and addresses some potential weaknesses of that first article.

I went onto Kickstarter and pulled the last six months of successful board game projects. That is, any project in the last six months that received funding and was selling a physical board or card game. I excluded a handful of projects based on some miscellaneous criteria, but I'm fairly confident in the data set being a good snapshot of successful Kickstarter board game projects.

There are two important findings that I think validate the takeaways in my prior article.

(1) As the cost of the game increases, the average backer donation increases. This is going to seem obvious, but let's walk through it real quick. At the outset of collecting data I decided to collect the dollar amount of the reward category where you actually got what they were selling. If they were selling a deck of cards at $20 but you could get three extra promotional cards at $22, I entered $20. If they were selling the base game at $50 and it included every promo they could imagine, I entered $50. It is the lowest reward tier where you actually got the physical product they created.

Next, I took the total amount raised by the project and divided it by the number of backers to get an average backing amount. I then sorted the data by the lowest reward tier where you got the product and plotted the average backing amount. So the left side of the horizontal axis are the projects with the cheapest reward tier to get the game and the right side are the most expensive tier to get the game. The vertical axis are those costs of entry to get the actual game. The trend line is pretty definitive--as the cost of entry increases, the average backing amount increases.

This should feel really obvious, but it is still important to confirm. People are mostly backing to get the game and if the cost of that game is high, then they pay a lot to get it. This validates the premise that more expensive games are required to ensure the margin required to advertise.

(2) The cost of the game has little bearing on the number of backers. This is much less obvious and should be, perhaps, downright shocking. My first article pointed out that the cost of advertising to customers was so expensive that it often exceeded the margin on cheap games, thereby pushing everyone to produce expensive games. This was just validated in (1), above. A rebuttal could be that the conversion rate will be much higher on cheaper games because convincing someone to back a $10 project is much easier than convincing someone to back a $75 project. The data doesn't seem to agree.

I sorted the data by the number of backers and once again plotted the cost of the lowest tier where you actually get the game. What we see is that there is almost no correlation between the number of people who choose to back the game and how cheap it is to back. Now, the data isn't definitive, we don't have unsuccessful projects nor do we know the marketing budgets of these projects, but the line is almost shockingly horizontal (indicating no correlation). This suggests that regardless of the cost of entry, projects tend to have the same conversion rate, meaning the cost of advertising is also equal. The $10-$50/sale figure in the last article holds true whether the game costs $10 or $100.

The next takeaway
A lot of games are simple, fun, and cheap to produce. This means they can be simple, fun, and cheaply delivered to your door... but for the realities of the system. People like watching a game climb into the $20-30k range and that is when Kickstarter really starts to promote it as an editor's pick or 'popular this week;' those are also the points where paid-for advertising takes a back seat to word of mouth. This shows that games with low costs of entry struggle to ever get there.

One conclusion is that we're overly rewarding expensive games. I think a more important conclusion is that we're encouraging makers of simple, fun, cheap games to complicate them and start adding on unnecessary features to justify a higher purchase price because without a higher price they will fail. That's a huge bummer.

A fresh perspective (design theory 2)

When I last talked about my design theory I argued that the fewer rules you have in place the quicker the learning curve for the game which facilitates sharing and getting to that competitive sweet spot with your friends. A really great example of that is a standard card game I invented a long time ago called Equals (1 page pdf). The entire PDF is under 500 words all in so I won’t waste too much space here describing play since it would be about as long.

When we first started playing Equals it was instantly addictive. It is a lightning fast game where all the strategies are pretty obvious early on, which ended up meaning it came down to psychology. You had to get inside your opponent’s head and bluff them with what you were playing while trying to read into what they were playing so that when you get to that last card you don’t find yourself drawing a whole mitt of new ones. It’s a surprisingly fun game.

Then I decided to make it even better. I decided that all those face cards (which are not at all special anymore) were a great opportunity to introduce some special cards. Maybe you could reverse play, skip people, or have wilds. Basically all the standard stuff you’d expect in this type of game. All of them made the game worse. They were flashy and fun and you got really excited when you drew a face card, but the game became more about the rules and getting lucky and less about having to really dig into your opponent’s strategy to predict their final actions.

Let’s take one example and really explore it. One of the changes we made was to decide that Kings would be wild—they match any card. It felt like a really simple introduction that made a lot of sense. Immediately, the dominant strategy was to hold a King for the last card to ensure you wouldn’t have to draw extra. All of the tension was gone. Obviously, we just fixed this by saying you couldn’t play a King as your last card (or, rather, second to last card—this will make sense if you read the rules).

All this did was shift the break in tension one card earlier. Remember, the goal of Equals is to discard all of your cards while trying to match your opponent’s card as closely as possible. This introduces really elegant tension because as you get closer to winning (fewer cards) the probability that you can’t match your opponent increases. If you introduce a wild card to the game, the dominant strategy will be to horde those wilds until as late in the play cycle as possible because that is when they have the most value. Over the course of a long game, the likelihood of getting a wild is extremely high, so all that is really happening is that we know that when you get to the arbitrary point where we decided no wilds may be played beyond this point, you’ll probably play a wild. There is no tension what so ever.

We also punish good play. Let’s say that I have a 4 and a King in my hand and my opponent plays a 4. That means I was really good at predicting what they would play by holding onto my 4. But I cannot benefit from that good play because I can’t save my King for the last card.  So I must play my King and get no advantage for accurately predicting my opponent’s hand.

Finally, ruining the elegant tension that grows throughout play and punishing good play comes at the low cost of adding extra rules that make the game harder to teach and harder to master. Instead of the first few games immediately being a psychological duel, they are a teaching phase where you have to tell your friend, “No, you can’t play that because of this arbitrary rule which had to be introduced to fix this other rule.”

We played maybe 20 games with the extra card rules before reverting back to the simpler format and it has been a better game ever since. If you have 10 minutes, you should give it a try. After two or three games you’ll have mastered the basic strategies and you’ll start to see the psychological side of the game emerge. For this reason, I actually prefer it with just two players to emphasize just how much of a duel it really can be.

We’re all international backers when it comes to advertising

One of the most frequent complaints I see on Kickstarter projects is the cost of shipping for international backers, and rightfully so. It is really expensive and no one feels good about a huge portion of the total cost going to something that doesn't add any value but merely facilitates acquisition. As I've been researching how to conduct a successful Kickstarter project, I've come to realize that we are all international backers when it comes to advertising.

Throughout this article we’re going to use banner ads to represent ‘advertising’ as a whole. There are different ways to advertise, but banner ads are the most common and since we’re talking about industry averages, should be reflective of the true cost of advertising. That said…

Banner ads are expensive. The general rule of thumb is $1 for 1000 impressions. Prices can vary, but most of the big sites seem to fall in this zone. The way they really differ is in the minimum quanitity of impressions they are willing to sell. Some sell by the buck, most sell in bundles, and some only sell in big bundles ($500+).

Regardless of quantity, what we really care about is click through rate (CTR). Every time a webpage loads, all of the banner slots are filled with a banner. That is an impression. If someone hits refresh or goes to a new page, that is a new set of banner impressions. CTR is the percentage of those impressions where someone actually clicks on the banner to be taken to some other site where they might learn more about the product and hopefully purchase it. Note that in all of this we never measure whether or not the person clicking is ‘new.’ If all 1000 impressions go to the same guy and he clicks every time it would look like we had the most amazing banner ad campaign in existence despite the fact that we only ever reached a single person.

CTRs vary by website and also vary during the course of the project. Because many of those impressions are delivered to the same people, and people are more likely to click something when it is new, CTRs tend to fall throughout the course of a project. Many websites will tell you their average CTR prior to purchasing and they seem to fall in the 0.4% to 0.2% range. Sometimes you can also get samples of successful ads that have CTRs in the 1-2% range.

This gets us to our first math: calculating the cost per click. The cost per click is how much we actually paid to get someone to click on our banner and see what it was we wanted them to see. Here’s what it looks like:

So if we assume our banner is going to be on the high side of average (0.4% CTR) we can calculate a cost per click of $0.25 ($1 / [1000 * 0.004]). That is $0.25 for every person that looked, even if they’ve looked before and even if it was an accident and they immediately close the browser window.

Because the point of advertising is to generate incremental revenue beyond the cost of advertising, we need to next calculate the conversion rate. Conversion rates are hard to calculate. The overall global average seems to be about 2.5%, but this is for mature companies who know what they are doing. Amateurs seem to average closer to 1.5% and a lot of reports I’ve been reading are indicating closer to 1% for Kickstarter advertising.

Sidebar—I have a hunch for why this is. For most advertising, someone clicks and makes a determination. For Kickstarter advertising, someone clicks and makes a determination, but then also becomes interested in watching the progress of the campaign. Many, many times I’ve seen a banner and thought, ‘Oh hey, I wonder how they’re doing.’ I think Kickstarter conversion rates are artificially low because the information the advertiser wants me to see (why their game is great) at the other end of the link is different from the information I might be going there to see (how much money they've raised).

Let’s take the global average, 2.5%, and presume that we’ll be more successful than most Kickstarter projects. The cost per sale looks like this:

So if we assume our 2.5% conversion rate along with our 0.4% CTR, we come out with a cost per sale of $10. Just getting the sale cost $10. Real quick, if we change our assumptions to a 0.2% CTR and a 1% conversion rate, that cost per sale jumps to $50. Note that both of these changes are actually closer to what most people actually experience. A cost per sale nearing $50 is not unrealistic!

This probably seems pretty shocking and you might even wonder why so many people bother advertising if what I am saying is true. The reason is that you need this advertising to generate a baseline of support. A lot of people will only back successful projects because they assume it means other people vetted it and it is worth backing. Kickstarter only promotes projects that are already doing well. When a project has a lot of backers, word of mouth kicks in and people like to check in from time to time and see how high the numbers will go. I checked the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter daily for the first few weeks of the project just to marvel along with everyone else at its rise. Somewhere along there I decided to back it. Small, new game designers can’t get that level of exposure on reputation, so they have to buy it. They buy it through ads.

There are two important takeaways from all of this. 

First is that these costs, the $10 to $50 per sale, are real costs. They are real costs that are passed onto the backers because if a project isn't profitable it is going to fail. These costs also don’t add any value for us once we get the game. Just like shipping, they are this huge portion of the total we have to pay that we could avoid if we just had a better system.

Second is to think of the ramifications this has on what types of products are produced. The costs are per sale and whether I’m trying to sell a $200 game or a $10 game, those costs are the same. What differs is that the $200 game has a lot more margin to absorb the cost of advertising. The $10 game has almost no margin and so traditional banner advertising is a fool’s errand. Since banner ads are the main way to generate that initial enthusiasm that builds into momentum that culminates in a successful project, we’ve essentially rigged the system to ensure that fun, cheap games struggle to get produced. 

Scratching the Surface: card frequencies

Cards fall into one of three frequencies in Scratch: Common, Rare, and Unique. Each of the frequencies plays an important role in the game and conveys significant information. We’ll run through each frequency in turn and while doing so talk about what information it conveys and how it impacts strategy.

Commons

Common cards are the weakest of the three frequencies. Every card is built with formulas and the formula for building commons is the weakest. Commons also don’t have powers. These two facts are important when you remember that at least half the cards in your deck (5 out of 10) have to be commons. This speeds up play because it ensures that you aren’t juggling a bunch of cards with varying powers around and also introduces more action to play because commons are easier to beat. The game would be awful boring if cards couldn’t be gained and lost, so commons help increase the overall tension.

There are no restrictions on commons in play. You and your opponent can play duplicates of the same common. You could make a Goblin deck where you only play Goblin. Good luck winning with that, Champ, but you could give it a try.

Rares

Rares are the middling power of cards. While they are unabashedly more powerful than commons, you might notice that few rares are able to have a 7 while many (if not most) commons can do so. This is important because it ensures some baseline of competition between the two frequencies. Commons can often overcome rares, albeit only on one side.

A rare in play blocks the same instance of that rare. What this means is that if I play ‘Griffin’ and you also have ‘Griffin’ in your hand, you cannot play it. Similarly, if I have a second ‘Griffin’ in my hand, it is still blocked. We talked a bit about why you might want duplicates of the same card when you can only ever play one instance the last time we Scratched the Surface. This rule won’t come up too often if you have only a single set of cards that you are divvying up, but if two people each have their own set, it may. It adds an important strategic aspect to deck building and match play where you start to learn what your opponent might play and seek to block it in advance.

Uniques

Uniques are the most powerful cards. They have the biggest numbers and powers available and can really change the shape of a game. Because they are so powerful, they are also very vulnerable to being blocked. Only one unique from any faction may be in play at a time. So if I play a Kingdom unique, all other Kingdom uniques are blocked. That puts a lot of pressure on deciding which uniques to include in your deck and also when to play them. There are a lot of really attractive unique cards that you might want to play, but you’ll need  a good balance of factions. If you build a deck with three Monster uniques, you will only ever get to play one (or none if you get blocked early!) and will have to discard the rest. That is a big chunk of your deck to discard.

Recall that the first card on the board cannot be a unique. This simple rule really opens up the possibility of wanting to go second to ensure you get to play your unique. There is a constant sense of pressure to use any unique in your hand because you know that at any moment someone could play any unique from the same faction and make it obsolete. It doesn’t feel great to discard a really powerful unique that you were just about to use. On the other hand, it feels really great to watch your opponent discard a really powerful unique that would have won them the game. It’s fun.

Surface Scratched!

Card frequencies are a simple method of dividing the cards into various levels of power. They have been specially designed to ensure that they all can still compete with each other, so even if you just toss together a deck it will be competitive. The strong cards have weaknesses (uniques can be blocked) and the weak cards have strengths (unlimited commons which can still have 7s). Collectively, they ensure a fun mix of cards that develop a lot of action and make sure the game doesn’t get too cumbersome with too many complex cards.

A fresh perspective (copyright)

Since I already trudged out my old law outlines to check up on trademarks, I figured it wasn’t far out of the way to review my copyright notes. I think this was a good call because I have been seeing a lot of threads about copyright and the answers people are being given generally don’t sit well with me. It isn’t that any of the information is wrong, it is that I don’t think the information is put in a proper context to address the heart of their question. People are asking how they can share their ideas and still be protected and the actual answer is that they cannot. Instead, they are being given accurate and correct advice on how to register their copyright with the federal government. What this article aims to do is give a copyright overview in laymen’s terms and let you see what copyright can do and cannot do (foreshadowing—it isn’t going to protect your idea).

Executive Summary

Copyright exists to protect original creative works fixed in some permanent form like a book or audio recording or digital message board forum. You gain copyright the moment your creative work becomes fixed without having to do anything extra (i.e. you don’t have to put that little C in a circle next to anything). Your specific wording, the art you use, and your graphic layout are all creative works and are all protected.

If, a year later, someone else creates the almost identical creative work without ever having seen yours, they would gain copyright in their version and you would retain it in yours. Copyright doesn’t let you block someone else from the same creative space, it only allows you to protect your creative space. Copyright also only covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. The vast majority of people seem to want to use copyright to protect their great idea. It will never do this and even if you found a way to make it do that, the courts would go out of their way to not protect your idea because that is not the intent of copyright.

The nitty-gritty law

The authority to protect copyright and issue patents comes from the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,

by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors

the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Sort of ironically, when the Founders said ‘science’ they meant things like writing and painting and when they said ‘arts’ they meant things like chemistry and engineering.

The core language of copyright law states in pertinent part:

(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:

(1) literary works;

(2-8) extra stuff like music, drama, pantomimes, pictures or sculpture, movies, sound, architecture.

(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

Let’s break this down. Paragraph (a) gives us copyright with the following conditions: (1) original, (2) work of authorship, (3) fixed in a tangible medium of expression. We’ll handle them in reverse order.

(3) Fixed in a tangible medium of expression really just ends up meaning that it is reproducible. If you skywrite a poem it is really hard for us to give you protection because we have no proof that you ever did it. If you video record yourself skywriting a poem, though, it is fixed in the video and you gain copyright at the very moment it is recorded. This requirement is mostly here for evidentiary purposes (to help us prove you created something to copyright).

(2) Works of authorship are the subcategories listed in (a)(1) – (8). For most of our purposes, we’re dealing with writing which is (a)(1). Slam dunk.

(1) Original is an extremely low threshold to cross. The courts don’t want to become the national censor, deciding what is and is not original, so they just went ahead and decided that almost everything would be original. So long as you independently created it and it has some minimal degree of creativity, it is original. ‘Independently created’ means you didn’t steal it from someone else. Minimal degree of creativity can be as little as asking Oscar Wilde to lean towards the camera while you take his photograph (see Burrow-Giles).

So the vast majority of works that people want to protect will satisfy paragraph (a). They are original works of authorship fixed in digital forms that are easily reproducible. Where we’ll run into problems is paragraph (b) where copyright expressly does not protect ‘ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation,’ and so on. Basically, everything that makes a game unique, the fun mechanics and ideas underlying it, that we all so desperately want to protect are specifically exempted from protection. How we express or present those ideas is protected, but the ideas are not. This is known as the Idea-Expression Dichotomy.

The Idea-Expression Dichotomy is a tricky part of copyright law and it is where you’ll spend most of your money if you try to protect or defend yourself. A very famous case of Baker v. Selden is pretty illustrative for our purposes. Selden was an accountant who created a new system of bookkeeping, published it in a book, and then developed forms to facilitate using that new bookkeeping method. Eventually, someone decided to reproduce the forms, slightly altered, cheaper and Selden (via his estate) sued. The court found that his words were copyright protected, but the forms were only protected in their exact layout. Even minor alterations were enough because the forms were expressing an idea (not copyrightable) and the slightly altered forms expressed that same idea somewhat differently.

Overlay that case onto game design, whether RPG or board game or whatever. If you create some new system and develop forms (character sheet, board, cards, etc) to help communicate, interact with, and resolve events in that system you are only protected to the extent of your exact layouts. Even minor alterations lets someone else express that same system and those same ideas as their own.

This brings us to our final topic: merger. Imagine a scenario wherein the idea Selden created could only be expressed by the layout he selected on his form. In other words, he comes up with some brilliant game mechanic and perfectly expresses it and no one else could express it any other way. In that case, the idea and the expression merge. Because you cannot copyright an idea, if they merge, you lose copyright even in the expression. In fact, merger is broader than that. If there are only a few good ways to express an idea, they all can be lost. Basically, courts really, really don’t want to let you use copyright to block ideas and so they will go out of their way to make sure others have room to get at those ideas. 

A fresh perspective (trademarks)

I knew that I wanted to refer to Scratch as ‘Scratch,’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean I would name it Scratch. After all, everyone calls Magic: the Gathering ‘Magic’ but that isn’t really its name. There are a lot of legal considerations to weigh, but ultimately I just decided to go with simple old Scratch. Here’s why….

The area of intellectual property law that names deal with is almost always trademark law. Under some conditions you might be able to copyright a genuinely fanciful name, but the government isn’t going to let you put a fence around common language (like Magic, the, or Gathering) and claim it as your own. The government grants trademarks not to protect the business, but to protect consumers. If a business goes out and invests heavily to associate a certain level of quality with the name Coca-Cola and consumers then decide they are willing to pay a premium for that quality, another company coming along and marketing soda in a similar can under the name Coka-Cola might lead to some consumers erroneously purchasing it and paying that premium when they otherwise would not.

As a result, because they are intended to protect consumers, trademarks only protect products used in commerce. If I have a copyright, I can take it home, put it in a trunk, and it is mine. If I have a trademark and I don’t use it, I abandon it and it is up for grabs.

Part 1: Some definitions.

A trademark is any word, name, symbol, device or any combination thereof,

(1)    used in commerce by a person, or;

(2)    which a person has a bona fide intention to use in commerce and registers,

to identify and distinguish his or her goods from those manufactured or sold by others and the indicate the source of the goods, even if that source is unknown.

‘Use in commerce’ means the bona fide use of a mark in the ordinary course of trade and not merely to reserve a right in a mark. In general, a mark placed on goods (like a board game) is used in commerce when,

(1)   it is placed in any manner on the  goods, containers, displays, or documents associated with the good or their sales, and;

(2)  the goods are sold or transported in commerce.

What this means is that putting a little TM by your name is only going to work if you’re actually in the process of selling or transporting your goods to be sold. If you are planning to sell or transport to sell your goods, then you can gain the protection but you’ll need a registered trademark (the little R in a circle) which costs money.

Part 2: Distinctiveness of the Mark

The mere usage of a mark in commerce doesn’t guarantee you protection. Trademarks are to protect consumers, so we only grant protection to distinctive trademarks. If a consumer would be unable to identify it, why protect it? Distinctiveness is measured on a spectrum. On the far left we have “inherently distinctive” marks that are fanciful, arbitrary, or suggestive. In the middle we have ‘non-inherently distinctive” marks that are descriptive. On the far right we have “generic” marks which are generally unable to be protected.

It looks something like this (you can click to enlarge):

Fanciful trademarks are made up words that convey no meaning at all other than their trademark meaning. Words like Kodak or Exxon are gibberish but for what they represent in commerce. These trademarks basically automatically gain protection.

Arbitrary trademarks are existing words used to identify a product that have no intrinsic link to that product. Words like Apple (computers) or Blue Diamond Nuts are arbitrary and also gain protection. However, they will tend to gain protection in a narrower scope of commerce. Exxon’s protection would extend to all spheres of commerce so I could not try to register an Exxon Pretzel Cart. Because Apple is arbitrary, it leaves space for Apple Records to exist in its own sphere of commerce.

Suggestive trademarks are evocative (or suggestive) of the product but it takes some thought to get there. Marks like Greyhound, Coppertone, or Victoria’s Secret are suggestive and also almost immediately gain protection. This is the border, though. Once you go beyond suggestive marks you have to fight for protection. As with any spectrum, there are areas where the two zones touch, so selecting a suggestive mark exposes you to argument that you are in fact a descriptive mark and could jeopardize protection.

Merely descriptive or non-inherently distinctive marks convey some immediate idea about the product in a direct fashion. Marks that describe some quality of the product (Crunch Bar), use a surname (Smith’s Games), or are literally descriptive (Pizza Rolls) are all merely descriptive. IMPORTANTLY, merely descriptive trademarks receive no protection until they can demonstrate that the mark has acquired distinctiveness or a secondary meaning. While inherently distinctive marks are automatically protected through their mere usage in commerce, you have to demonstrate that your descriptive mark deserves protection. This is an expensive process that generally involves consumer surveys showing that they recognize your mark and associate it with certain products. For small, independent companies, this ain’t happening.

Let me reiterate, if you name your business John Smith Game Company, you probably cannot block any other John Smith from naming his company the same thing and also trying to sell games. In fact, Doug Johnson could name his company John Smith Game Company and you'd still probably have no recourse.

Finally, generic trademarks are literal pronouncements of the product. Marks like Peanuts to sell peanuts will not be protected. If you’re too successful or you don’t protect your mark, you might become generic (Xerox, Advil, escalator, etc).

Part 3: Penumbral Rights

Once you have a trademark, it begins to develop a zone of protection around it, again to protect consumers from confusion. The size of that zone, sometimes called penumbral rights, depends on the strength of the mark (demonstrated by consumer surveys). We talked earlier about Coka-Cola. If a coffee company tried to create Mocha-Cola, a coffee-soda hybrid, they’d likely get shut down. Coca-Cola is such a strong trademark that no one can get anywhere near it. It can even get weirder—Starbucks has stopped small independent coffee houses from using green straws because consumer surveys have demonstrated that a significant chunk of consumers can identify a coffee beverage solely by the coloration of the straw. That is now a trademark of theirs without ever trying.

Alright, so why just ‘Scratch.’ I bantered around a few ideas for “Scratch: Draw the Line” or “Scratch the line” and then just expect people to abbreviate it to ‘Scratch.’ But the reality is that it doesn’t really matter for me. It is unlikely that the game will ever get successful enough to really need protection and if it does I’ll have the resources to protect it. Scratch would likely be an arbitrary mark which means it acquires protection but it will have a very narrow set of penumbral rights. I’m not going to be able to throw my weight around and push people out of the market… I can deal with that. The importance of trademarks are to make sure that when some kid goes to Target looking for Magic cards because his friend said they are awesome, he doesn’t come home with Magik cards and wonder why anyone thinks this trash is fun. I don’t see Scratch having that problem, I imagine if it sees any sales, they will be direct sales that I promoted. As a result, I might as well just call it what I like, have fun, and see what happens.

The Scratch symbol

When I first created Scratch we never intended it to go beyond our home. It was a quick, fun game and we tried to make it as pretty as possible within our meager means. The Scratch symbol, the intertwining circles that make up the banner, was just a convenient symbol that we threw on the cards to give it some visual flair. The symbol actually stems from the old days of D&D where every character sheet had a prominent place for 'character sketch or symbol.' The symbol was drawn for my first D&D character that I actually played for more than a few sessions. It felt rather fitting, then, within the confines of friends.

Over time, the mere fact that it was familiar made it 'the symbol' for the game. At some point, I'm not sure when, the fog of familiarity was lifted and I really looked at the symbol with an incredulous eye. It immediately became apparent that it probably is not the best symbol for the game. I like the symbol and all, but it is hard to see how a game about controlling three cards in a straight line and played on a 3x3 square grid is well represented by a bunch of circles and diamonds appearing in triangular patterns.

What I really learned from this evolution is just how important time is to the iterative process. There were a bunch of points where I sat down and looked at the cards and tried to think about if there was anything I should change. The symbol pretty much always passed unscathed because it was perfectly adequate. It took time to process through all the different parts of the card until finally my gaze fell squarely and critically on the symbol. Then it became too obvious.

I think this is a common problem when you are too close to something for too long. It shows the importance of getting an outside impression whether that is play testers, a publishing company, or just someone who isn't related to you and doesn't have to worry as much about your feelings. I think it also shows the importance of a long development cycle on a game to flesh out all of those quirks that exist only because of an assumption you made early on.

A fresh perceptive (design theory 1)

Anytime I design something I strive to ensure it is in its simplest form possible. At first blush this sounds fairly obvious, but it actually requires ongoing discipline because it is really fun to add flashy mechanics to a game. Flashy mechanics are a great hook, they make the rules jump off the page, and they give you something to brag about. That quick gain, however, comes at a long term cost as the flash wears off and you’re left with a game that is a bit worse to teach and play. Simple games, on the other hand, are easy to teach and more quickly get to that sweet spot where everyone is really competing at their best.

All systems that involve people can improve and do improve along a learning curve. The learning curve isn’t just some term, it is a real curve that you can chart, track, and use to project future performance. For our discussion, I am going to refer to the learning curve within the context of the deterring effect rules have on game play. By that I mean that period of time from when you’re first introduced to a new game to when you feel reasonably competent enough that the result of the game is actually reflective of your relative ability. If someone teaches you rock-paper-scissors, within two or three matches you feel reasonably masterful at the game that when you keep losing, it pulls you into the game. You want to know why you are losing and you want to win. The same is not always true of more complex games. If I am introduced to Magic the Gathering and my very experienced friend thoroughly routes me game after game, I’m probably just going to want to quit and play something else instead. I figure I lost not because of anything I did, but because I haven’t yet mastered all of the rules, the different card types, memorized what is in my deck, memorized my opponent’s deck, and so on. That’s a lot of work to get to a point where I feel like I’m ‘playing the game’ instead of just ‘learning the game.’ Maybe MtG can ask that of people, but most games don’t have MtG’s name recognition and reputation.

The general formula for a learning curve is that the curve decays at a set rate every time the total time invested is doubled. For example, let’s say that the learning curve represents how much you are impeded by lack of familiarity with the rules and that it has a decay of 80%. During your first game, you might be impeded 100% (you’re just awful). Your second game (already double your investment of one game) you are impeded 80%. By four games you are at 64%, at eight games you are at 51%, and so on. The graph would look like this.

What we see is that the rules fairly quickly get out of your way, but they remain a significant factor throughout these first 50 games. If we look at just doublings, the graph looks like this.

It takes a while, but eventually you get so familiar with the rules that they largely recede and your strategic game play mostly dictates the outcome of the game. This is the good point of games, the point where you feel in control and where you feel invested in the outcome because you can see how things followed from your decisions. It can be hard to get here, though. Think about how much time it takes to be competitive in Warcraft 3. Most people have sunk hundreds of hours into the RTSs in general, in the WC3 campaign, and playing against friends before they ever become competitive on a server. Most games, particularly competitive board games, can’t ask that of people.

Board games are meant to be shared with friends and I think a huge barrier to getting someone to try a new game is the psychological cost of having to invest in learning the rules and knowing that you are going to lose a bunch before you ever really ‘play’ a game. That isn’t true for all people, some people love learning new games, but I’m sure we all also have friends that are reluctant to play something new. I think their reluctance would wane with a quicker learning curve and I think you can achieve that with better rules.

As you remove rules, there is less to get distracted by and it is easier to project the outcomes of your actions. The learning curve begins to look more like this.

And more like this when we focus solely on doublings.

The take away here is that the rules get out of the way much, much quicker. After even a handful of games the rules start to get out of the way and empower the player. The difference between someone who has played 32 games and someone who has played 256 (or 512, 1024+) isn’t that significant. It’s more likely that the game was decided by talent than familiarity, and that’s an important feeling. Perhaps even more importantly, you can see tremendous improvement over those first few games. When you introduce a friend to a new game you can usually get them to play a few matches and that is your one chance to hook them. If the learning curve is tough, they’ll balk at continuing the hike. If it’s easy, the game becomes an easier sell and a new favorite.

Simple rules and streamlined game design are critical. Not only do they remove clutter from the game, but they make it more approachable for new players and more quickly allow people to invest themselves in the game. This makes the game more fun for all parties and easier to share which is really what good games are all about.

A fresh perspective (beta edition)

I've decided to test the market and see if Scratch has the legs to become a real live product. If all things go my way, Scratch won't be the only project that I run through this gauntlet and so, as I said in my intro post, I really do want to record my process to improve upon it next time. My plan is to do that in full public because (a) transparency keeps you honest and the easiest person in the world to lie to is yourself, (b) it just might catch on and turn into some free advertising, and (c) it might just help some other folks make something great that I want to buy.

This is not a new concept; many designers publish design blogs and many more try to give you a transparent glimpse into their process. I think what might make this interesting is twofold. First is that my job is to take complex business information and figure out ways to present it clearly and persuasively. Basically, I get super familiar with annoyingly complex stuff and help people who don't want to spend the time to understand it understand it. Second is that I've never done this before, so the mistakes that I make (and hopefully overcome) are the kind of mistakes other recent entrants to the indy-gamer scene are likely to make.

I'm actually pretty excited because as much as I love designing games, I really love trying to manipulate lead times, shipping rates, economies of scale, economic lot sizes, and all the rest. It is the best game of all. I like reading contracts and I like trying to parse out the asymptotic fixed costs to find the variable costs of a manufacturer. The great news is that everything I like doing is actually really easy to do if someone just shows you how it is done. So hopefully as I push through this project and share with you what I do and why, people see it, comment on it, and gain a little confidence in me (and themselves!). It should be great.

Scratching the Surface: the role of factions

We've focused on presenting Scratch as a rules light game mostly because when you come to people with your pockets turned out and ask them to try your game and give feedback, you want to make the game seem as approachable as possible. Asking for 20 minutes of your time is a lot simpler than asking you to gather 3-5 friends and invest an afternoon. The reality, though, is that Scratch has a lot of nuanced complexity hidden away in its rules. We're going to spend a few articles looking at some of those complexities in a little series aptly named, Scratching the Surface. [Just a warning, I sort of enjoy puns...] First up is the role of factions.

Factions play an important role in the meta-narrative of the game (that of warring armies) and also serves to break the game down into more discrete chunks which facilitates understanding and mastery. While both of those roles are really important, I want to save in-depth discussion of them for another time. Today we'll just look at how factions interact with the rules and impact game play.

Tendencies
Each faction tends to have higher numbers on a single side. For example, Monster tends to be higher on top and Kingdom on bottom. This stemmed from an old draft of the game in which each of the four stats were named. Beginning at the top and moving clockwise, they were power, morale, tactics, and troop (basically sheer numbers). Early powers referenced and sometimes modified the stats (like a fear based power that reduced troop and morale of adjacent cards) but they tended to muddy game play. Eventually, we realized that we had culled the last power that referenced specific stats and so the stat names were also culled.

During the game, tendencies help you strategize. If your deck is heavy in one faction, you might try to anchor the game on a certain side. For example, if your deck has a lot of Monsters (top tendency), you might decide to start the game and play in the top middle with a Kingdom card (tendency bottom). Since all subsequent cards have to share a side, this anchors the game at the top of the grid. Your monsters will then often be able to pit their top stat against the exposed undersides of cards.

Factions also help you take a mental snapshot of your opponent's deck. In match-play, you'll have an idea of what cards your opponent has after the first game. If you get the impression that your opponent is Wild heavy and you are trying to decide between one of two potential plays, you might inform your decision by assuming your opponent's strongest cards will have their biggest numbers on the right.

Deck Building
Factions afford a few considerations during deck building or drafting. In addition to the ability to anchor the game discussed above, you'll want at least a few cards of the same faction if you plan to use the Champion! power (+1 all stats while adjacent to 2+ cards of a specific faction). It isn't necessarily required since Champion! triggers even if your opponent controls the card, but it helps.

The more important role of factions is probably in selecting uniques because only one unique from any faction may be in play at a time. We'll talk more about this rule when we Scratch the Surface on card frequency. One really neat thing that people tend to discover, though, is that putting multiple uniques from the same faction in your deck is not necessarily a bad move. In fact, even putting duplicates of the same unique is not a bad idea. If you really love playing Dragon, putting two of them in your deck dramatically increases the likelihood that you'll have one ready to play. The reason it isn't a bad play is that you will almost never run out of cards, so having to discard that extra Dragon (or any blocked unique) is really only as punitive as playing a single round down one card. The payout (having the unique when you need it) is far greater than the penalty (playing a round down a card).

Game Play
Most of the impact on game play has been covered above with one exception. That is, playing uniques defensively to try and block your opponent's ability to play uniques of the same faction offensively. If after the first match you learn that your opponent has two Dragons in his deck and you have a Hydra that isn't ideal but could be played, you might want to play the Hydra just to block his Dragons. Remember, if you're behind on points during match-play you get to decide who goes first after looking at your hand. You could force your opponent to go first (and recall that uniques cannot be played as the first card) to ensure that you get to play your Hydra as the second card.

All of this feeds one final tactical suggestion--sometimes you might want to hold onto a card you could discard (like that second Dragon) just to hide your strategy from your opponent.

Surface Scratched!
Hopefully that puts a little more insight into how factions, a seemingly simple addition to the game, add layers of tactical complexity that slowly emerge as you move from a new enthusiast to an old-hat at Scratch.

Full factions released

I finally managed to put together a grayscale PDF of all the factions. You can find it here or on the downloads page. You might want to also check out the updated quick start guide available in the sidebar and on the downloads page. I streamlined it by cutting all of the cards except two pre-made decks to get people started faster, lightened the darker cards to make it easier to read, and rotated the icons on the bottom bar of the card so they can be held like regular playing cards.

So about that banner...

It was 1:30 in the morning and I was looking for feedback on the layouts of the front of the cards. On a whim, I decided to toss together a potential card back since if you're fishing for feedback, you might as well cast a wide net.  I tossed together this:

The feedback was universally negative (albeit very good natured). It was also accurate and so I easily laughed along, realizing full well that the card back would never pass muster to anyone who wasn't sleep deprived and hurried. At the same time, though, the chaotic little background was sort of fun and it reminded me of all of the good parts of being an amateur at something. Being an amateur means doing something out of love (root amator or 'lover') and that is certainly where the card back came from. You don't sacrifice your sleep staring tiredly at a computer monitor trying to align pixels for your hobby unless you really love it.

Even though it didn't turn out great, I like what it reminds me of. Every time I log into the site to report some folly or eagerly share some success, I hope I see it and remember why I'm here. At least until I get something better to replace it...

Time to scratch that itch!

Welcome!

Like a lot of great games, Scratch is a game that organically evolved over time. It started as a simple idea to fill a perceived gaming need and has grown into something that we excitedly play on its own. Every game of Scratch has been different and we find new layers of complexity every time we play.

A few weeks ago I got the idea to develop Scratch even further and see if it could be produced as a real, saleable game. This is my first attempt at developing a game so I have found myself scrambling up learning curve after learning curve. There is a lot to learn, but fortunately the folks out there (and particularly at Board Game Geek) are eager to help out. It has been really fun and very rewarding.

I decided to develop a site not only to provide a centralized location for the game, but also to record for perpetuity the lessons I've learned. Although Scratch is my first, I intend to make sure it isn't the last game I develop, so this site will also be a tutorial to help me remember my personal pitfalls my next time around as well.