The Physicality of Games with Daniel Zayas

Daniel Zayas works for Longpack Games, runs Tabletop Backer Party and has designed Tangled Timelines, When Cutie Met Patootie, and more!

Watch the live chat below:

Physicality in games is definitely something a publisher should care about, but it can definitely be important to game designers as well. Having a game with a good table presence or unique use of components can definitely make your game stand out and can hopefully make it easier to find a publisher.

Physicality includes things like the material, size, and type of components.

The material can be chosen for things like cost, but it’s really important for some components, like the item meeples that need to hold things. They were made with plastic instead of wood as throughout gameplay, the players would be constantly putting things in and out of meeples and over time natural materials, like wood, would wear down, whereas plastic would not.

Size is important as you can have a game be any size, but if you go to extremes and make people play with tweezers, that’s not going to be fun or accessible. You also can’t make a massive game without there being a significant cost involved.

Have a Reason For Your Game’s Physicality

For example, Welcome To uses cards instead of dice. For the first draw or roll, a card deck and die can both have the same probability for a value. However, once you start drawing from the deck and eliminating options, the math for a card deck and what value will show up next changes, while dice always have the same probability of what can be rolled.

When you’re choosing between cards and dice, the changing probability can be one reason to choose the card deck instead of dice. For instance, if you want certain numbers to only show up a specific amount of times, then cards would be a good choice. However, if you want the game to be more random and possibly roll the same thing multiple times and never roll something else, dice would be a better option.

Fiddlyness

There’s a lot more fiddliness to be found in older games. For instance, if Twilight Struggle was made today, it’d be different. Having fiddliness in games can be a way to make your game drive away people that are new to the gaming industry.

If you’re trying to figure out the difference between fiddliness and fun, the broad answer is the time that it takes to play the game shouldn’t result in dull moments. Dull moments can happen due to same-ness of turns, because it’s too fiddly, or there’s too many components for what the experience is. Think about how many bits the game has compared to the amount of time it takes to play.

Rulebooks

Always include an in depth diagrams on how to lay the components out to make it easy for the players. Make sure to label all the components, so they’re easy to differentiate. If there’s something complicated that a setup diagram can’t solve, there’s the option to include a link to a video.

Kickstarter

Showing off the components during the how to play section is a great thing to do on a Kickstarter page. You should do things like say what the component is and what it’s used for. You really want someone to feel like they’re going from zero to hero when they scroll through the Kickstarter page and you can do this by building on each component and it’s uses as the reader reads the pages.

When should you spend money on game design?

If you’re well connected and you’ve designed a game, you can do a lot less. You can pitch an idea that is ugly but still playable. However, if you are new to the community, you need to present art direction that makes sense. Google it and you can use art from the internet, but make sure the publisher knows when they see your prototype.

Saving Money on Manufacturing

When you get a quote for a game, you typically ask for a certain amount of units. The amount of cost savings below ordering 3000-5000 units (depending on the components), typically have zero to do with the raw material costs and much more to do with labor costs being spread across more units. The material itself is a small cost compared to starting the machines to make the project.

If you can, try to go for all the same card qualities and sizes instead of different ones. This means much lower labor cost.

Daniel loves games with toy elements, like CTRL from Pandasaurus or Funkoverse. Funkoverse has made a game with all the collectable figures that people buy on their own, which gives people more reasons to get all the expansions. Making players hold and move large toy like pieces makes the experience more immersive.

Getting Off the Table

Daniel suggested to make the components go higher than the table to bring people in. (This means to have components that have a thickness to them, unlike cards and boards.) The most grandiose off the table games will bring people in and get them really interested.

For instance, the tree in Everdell serves no function other than coming off the table.

You can make a variety of things out of chipboard that set your game apart and make it eye catching that don’t cost an intense amount of money.

Another example is Amerigo, which has a cube tower. You drop cubes down the tower and not everything makes it’s way out. You can also use it on the map.

Physicality and Gimmicks

It’s ok to have gimmicks! Everyone needs a gimmick and it’s ok to lean into it. It’s fun to throw a burrito, which is why Throw Throw Burrito exists. When you’re working on games, you want to be selling fun. Bears VS Babies has a furry box and Exploding Kittens lets out a meow when opened. You can have silly things that have nothing to do with serious game design.

Learnings from Working on Slide Quest; the game box is a component.

COVID Status

All manufacturing came to a standstill for 2-3 months, but Longpack has now caught back up. Lots of publishers that are being more conservative on their release cycle and less publishers are making games.

More safe purchases are happening instead of obscure purchases, which means people are buying the evergreen titles that they know they’ll love.

Last thoughts From Daniel

Don’t shy away from the idea you can be in the physical space, especially for large publishers. Challenge the idea of ‘what is a game?’

You can find out more about Daniel here:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/zayasgames
• Facebook: TableTop Backer Party

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