Hello guys, I wanted to ask you if you think is a good idea to develop / publish board games. I'm finishing a nice board game, but I don't know if I should sell it.
Thank you.

I'm sure there's a market for board games. But I don't that you'll learn much about it here.

It's too bad the "Game Inventors Handbook" is out of print. That's a great book for people interested in making board games or other more traditional (non-computer) games. That book came out in 1993 or 1994, if I recall correctly, and I'm not sure anything has come out since then to replace it.

Best of luck!

-David

Well, I mean Computer Board Games...I will have a look at that book anyway.

Ah...well...aren't "computer board games" basically multi-player strategy games? :)

I think there's a huge market for those. I hope to make a few in the next couple years, anyway.

-David

Yeah, I'm a bit confused... board games typically means games with a real unfolding cardboard or wood board, pieces you can swallow, that sort of thing. :) I'm not sure what a "computer board game" is exactly.

FWIW, I went to the GAMA (http://www.gama.org/) show a few years ago. It was sobering. Many indies but with small runs and a huge amount of attrition. What I've since been told is that the most difficult cut-throat market, bar none, is toys (remember the scenes of the conference room meetings about toy lines in the movie "Big"? A Mattel person told me they got it right, except those people were all far too nice!). Next up is family/board games, and somewhere above that is computer games.

Now this data is a few years old, so take it with a grain of salt (or three).

Well for starters there are computerized versions of cardboard boardgames. For example, computer chess. This applies even for original games. Even though the game does not exist as an actual boardgame, the videogame is a computerized version of a boardgame design.

I think there is a market for computerized boardgames. I'm certainly banking on that; I have a couple such designs on the backburner. Just as people enjoy computerized card games, people respond to game genres they are already familiar with and for many casual players they are more familiar with boardgames than they are with uniquely videogame genres.

It's too bad the "Game Inventors Handbook" is out of print. That's a great book for people interested in making board games or other more traditional (non-computer) games. That book came out in 1993 or 1994, if I recall correctly, and I'm not sure anything has come out since then to replace it.
A new book just came out called the Game Inventor's Guidebook (Feb 2003) by Brian Tinsman. My copy of the Game Inventor's Handbook is packed away right now, but a few months ago I had been looking at Amazon for an updated version (and found that the original Handbook now goes for a lot of money) and I saw that this new Guidebook was due to be released in Feb so I've kept an eye on its availability.

I haven't had a chance to read the new book (I just got it) but it seems like a reasonably good overview of the topic for just over $10 (the discounted price at Amazon).

(Similar to many books on the video game business) each topic seems diluted a bit in order to provide room in the book to talk about both self publishing and attracting a publisher.

The book features a bunch of interviews with different people in the industry, etc. It seems to be one of the few texts readily available on the topic.

- Eric

Ferret,

That's great! Thanks!

-David

And what about copyrights of current board games like Monopoly, Battleship, Chess, etc...If I make a game similar to, say, Monopoly could I get into problems with the legal owners of the copyrights? My game is supposed to be similar to Monopoly, the same way of playing (buy property, sell property, buy houses, etc), but has some original things.
What is your experience here? thank you.

Sounds dangerous. Doesnt hasbro own the rights to monopoly?

Yes, and probably according to them they also own the word "monopoly." They've made the claim that they own the word "clue" before http://www.clue.com/legal/index.html

they claim the "clue.com" violates their trademark on the board game "Clue". Hasbro is arguing that only they have a right to use the word "clue" in any manner, any where.

So I'd be very cautious with that stuff if I were you.

Yeah, I know Hasbro has bad reputation with this kind of things...I'm obviously not gonna use the word Monopoly...but its obvious the game has some kind of relation to Monopoly (or Metropoly)...

For more information about Monopoly specifically see:

http://www.antimonopoly.com/

The site seems to have changed a bit since I last looked at it and since I think it uses frames I can't put links into it.

Basically it details how the traditional story of the invention and publication of the game Monopoly is a fabrication and that the game was actually invented by Quakers. The person who created the site, Ralph Anspach, created an Anti-Monopoly board game and after a long battle actually prevailed in the US Supreme Court.

If the link below works, it is to the Amazon details page for the book "The Billion Dollar Monopoly (R) Swindle by Ralph Anspach. This page contains a lot more information about the topic.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0966649702/reviews/ref=ed_oe_p/103-8799485-0223841

I would also note that since discovering the anitmonopoly site I've also come across a lot of other "similar but different" products. My guess (This is not legal advice, just a guess) would be that since the basis for the Monopoly game has now been shown to be public domain, it's a lot easier to make similar games without needing a license from Parker Bros.

See
http://dogopoly.com/

for such an example. Note that I think there are actually TWO companies that make games called Dogopoly. I don't remember the URL for the other one.

- Eric

Hi, all.

Just ran across this thread. I'm one of the co-creators of Dogopoly.

There's a lot of history behind it, and everyone seems to want to know if we'll get sued for using the name.

The simple answer is that anyone can sue anyone, and if Hasbro wants they can probably bully us out of business (and apparently they're considering it,) but if it ever went to trial, there's really no way they can reasonably win.

The reason is that our game, unlike all of the other Monopoly knock-offs, is really a different game. The other ones that I've seen are simply "Monopoly with a theme." Even the "other" Dog-opoly game is simply Monopoly with dog pictures and dog text. If you look at our game, you'll be able to easily tell that it is not the same (although it is similar.)

As for computer versions, I created a computer version of the game in 1990, but never released it since it was a DOS game. I'm currently developing a PC version and a Java version.

--
Rob