Mass-market & accessibility… aka your rulebook is too long
This Eric Lang tweet was going around some board game forums last week.
I found Eric’s follow up tweet (that wasn’t broadly screenshotted) more enlightening.
There is an important distinction between bloated rules explanations, versus games that necessitate lengthy rules – due to their complexity.
Hobby Board Gaming is Niche
As hobby board gamers it can be easy to lose sight of the broader board game market outside of our own echo-chambers. Away from the BGG hot list, SUSD reviews, forums, and TikTok. It can be easy to lose track of what the average consumer is familiar with.
It can be easy to see big sales numbers from a game like Gloomhaven, or Wingspan, and assume that it has broad consumer penetration, or that it is well known among non-hobby board gamers. These assumptions would be wrong.
Catan is likely the most ubiquitous hobby board game, having sold over 40 million copies in the past 18 years, and featured in pop-culture like the Big Bang Theory.
I would argue that despite its massive sales numbers, Catan is not a mass-market game. This assertion has nothing to do with how well known it is, and I would argue that whether a game is mass-market is also not based on how broadly distributed it is (although this can be a covariate).
What is Mass-Market?
The best working definition I could find for what makes something a mass-market product is from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary:
a product that is intended to be sold to as many people as possible, not just to people with a lot of money or particular interests.
Mass-market board games are agnostic to your experience with board gaming as a hobby. They offer a play experience that doesn’t require you to have expertise in rules and are sold at an accessible price point.
Definitionally this means simpler and more easily understandable rules.
I would consider mass-market games to include:
Monopoly
Cards Against Humanity
Ultimate Werewolf
Flux
Kabuto Sumo
Don’t Break the Ice
Throw Throw Burrito
Onitama
And of course, many, many more.
The gating factor as to whether a game is mass-market does not revolve around its popularity, but rather whether consumers who are unfamiliar with board gaming as a hobby could and might pick it up, play, and enjoy it.
It might also be reasonable to add a secondary restriction to our mass-market definition based on its mode of distribution. In order for a game to be mass-market does it need to be marketed to and distributed to storefronts that do not cater to hobby board gamers?
Through the Gateway
I like BGG’s definition of a gateway game:
A game with simple rules that are easy to teach non-gamers in order to attract new players into boardgaming as a hobby.
This definition also leans on simplicity of rules, and accessibility. However, it also implies that gateway games teach or expose non-hobby players to rules, or concepts that appear in hobby gaming.
A gateway game is not definitionally accessible to a mass-market consumer without a guide or player more familiar with the game or games broadly. But, some gateway games are mass-market accessible.
It’s All Relative…
At the end of the day, all these terms are relative. There is no cut and dry line for what makes a game mass-market, or gateway accessible. And since our definitions are partially defined by broader consumer accessibility – games could migrate over time.
That is – a game like Poker is not mass-market in terms of rules complexity. But, the game is so ubiquitous that nearly everyone has some level of awareness around the game mechanisms, and so poker and poker-like games are much more accessible than we might consider them in a vacuum.
Psychographics & Player Preferences
From a publisher perspective, it is important to contextualize our games. It matters for how we balance them, for how we market them, and for what illustration style we choose for them.
Every gamer has different motivating factors, called psychographics. Some like deep strategy, some value immersion, some are there for social fun. These motivating factors tend to correlate into clusters.
My psychographic profile
That is players who enjoy high levels of conflict tend to also enjoy social manipulation. Gamers who enjoy deep strategy tend to also enjoy discovering new mechanisms and gameplay.
Understanding preferences and accessibility around rules complexity is equally as important as understanding preferences around gameplay, and immersion.
There are gamers who enjoy complicated and fiddly rules. Mass-market or even gateway games may not be right for them. I believe that this segment of players is de minimis relative to the overall market.
Of course, mass-market games can have substantial strategic depth despite an accessible rules-load. This is especially the case with abstract strategy games like Chess, Checkers, and (in my humble opinion) Onitama.
The Importance of On-Boarding
A corollary to this discussion is that increasing rules accessibility increases the potential audience for your game. That is, whether a game is a mass-market, or gateway game is determined by accessibility, not by complexity.
Easier on boarding means that your game will have a larger potential customer base.
Well written and clear rules can increase accessibility. The same goes for clear figures, a well-organized and intuitive rulebook, rules videos, and structure of a turn sheets.
Not every game is for every player. And, there are inherent structural roadblocks to onboard novice gamers to some of the more complicated games.
But, this thought exercise and discussion is re-affirming my belief that we as publishers should be trying extremely hard to make our games accessible, our rules intuitive, and our rulebooks easily digestible.
How have you seen games improve their accessibility despite their level of rules complexity?
