How-To Publish Games, The Tasty Minstrel Way

Eminent Domain accomplishes this. Prior to its release there are plenty of people that played the Print and Play version dozens of times.

Really? Name one Michael, seriously.

I'd also like to point out that a hit doesn't mean a hit on BGG. The community here is a good starting point but you need much broader reach to be a true hit.

Really? Name one Michael, seriously.

I'd also like to point out that a hit doesn't mean a hit on BGG. The community here is a good starting point but you need much broader reach to be a true hit.

I must admit that I am not one of those people as I found out about the game during the kickstarter campaign. But your statement is utterly ingenuous. There were plenty of people on the forums that were very vocal and I think Michaels statement is potentially an understatement.

A hit on BGG is a hit because the people who make waves on BGG also make waves in their local gaming group. It could often take about a year for convention buzz and BGG buzz to reach gamers that aren't active on BGG but it does reach them.

Then again if you are talking about being a mass market hit then that is something that is reserved for very few hobby games, I don't believe that is what Michael is talking about as even Catan is barely mass market let alone a mass market hit.

Kenny was one of the people that have been an extremely vocal supporter. He just wanted me to say "Kenny was a great help".

And we have, in the rulebook. I think...

Interesting read, Michael. I'm looking forward to the series, but I disagree with the central argument. I think that if you look at the few bona fide "hits" that the hobby had produced, none have all of these qualities and few have most. Here's how I'd stack the hits that I can think of against these criteria:

Settlers: ARF (S is arguable)
Agricola: RFOX
Ticket to Ride: STARF
Dominion: SARFOX
Race for the Galaxy: SRFOX
Pandemic: TRFX (X = cooperative, still pretty new at the time it came out)
Through the Ages: TFX


Maybe there are other hits I'm failing to include (Puerto Rico? Carcassonne? Small World?). But other than fun, which is obvious, these games differ strongly with respect to your criteria. And they differ in more ways than that; some have great artwork, some not. Some had incredible pre-release buzz, some came out of nowhere. How, then, did they all become hits?

I think there are two qualities that all of them share, that are much more important than the ones you've listed (except fun, which again is obvious).

First, the games all have high Replayability. You can play each of these games many times, with many different groups, and never get sick of playing. This is important with respect to the "outreach" aspect you noted -- games that don't have staying power for a given player won't inspire that player to teach it to others. And this quality is important given the "cult of the new" mentality that pervades boardgaming: what makes you want to buy Settlers instead of the shiny new game that was just released? You're only going to do that if you're not sick of Settlers, and that only happens if Settlers has high replay value. What's interesting is the way the different hits achieve replay in such different ways; Settlers and TtR do it with strong player interaction; Dominion and Agricola, with lots of variability to the cards that allow players to explore many different card combos.

Second, these games all combine something familiar with something original. Games that are too derivative won't ultimately achieve standout status as hits, whereas games that don't have a touch point of familiarity that anchors the games contextually in players' experience may be successful, but will have a harder time becoming hits. Dominion has strong similarities to Magic; Race had strong similarities to Puerto Rico and San Juan; Through the Ages had strong similarities to Civilization (the computer game). Yet each also invested their source material with enough creative additions that something new and interesting was created as a result.

I don't think any of the qualities you've described will hurt a game's chances of becoming a hit, but I think the real reasons a game becomes a hit are not primarily to be found in STARFOX...

Replayability is so essential and foundational that I left it out in error.