Research and Discussion

I have always enjoyed video games and board/card games. I think games that are more about skill rather than luck are more fun, but some luck is also important I think especially in board games because you usually use a dice, and some luck aspects make the game more exciting and not so thought out, the situation is always changing for example in monopoly you cant always predict your next best moves because it depends on how much money you will have unlike something like chess where the are strategies and moves that can be very planned out. In this case I think using a dice would be very appropriate for my game.

Card games like Pokemon cards are exciting because so many cards are available which is the case in many card games and it means so many future possibilities and also continuous income for the company. This is another aspect Sony talked about, how game can release new ideas that alter the rules of their games slightly and people will pay money in order to get new game pieces and rules that will change the playing environment. This is also relevant to Super Smash Bros because there are different fighting arenas in the game. Of late similar ideas have been applied to video games in the form of DLC (downloadable content) this is where you download extra parts for a game such as more maps to play on often for an additional cost, DLC has proved a very clever way of making even more money from games.

The video game and physical game markets are both very large, the video game market still continues to grow, but the board game market seems to have stagnated. Board games and card games still sell very well especially classic ones; they are still very popular, and new updated versions such as Trivial Pursuit 21^st anniversary addition, and completely different versions such as Monopoly Nintendo addition are released all the time.

There are not many board game based on video games though. Pokemon cards was a very popular kids television series that also had many different types of games, they all did vary, but the basic premise was usually Pokemon battles, they also battled in arenas and is even more related to my game because there playable Pokemon characters, Pokemon items and arenas. I can look at the trading card game and others for inspiration. Card games are and have been very popular, the first successful battle card game was Magic the Gathering, but they all have similar concepts of battling and damaging your enemies health level until you defeat them.

The key difference between board/card games and video game is they tend to be more sociable, “usually the fun part of older board games was the player interaction, not the game play itself.” (Yehuda, 2008). So if you combine the exciting game play mechanics of a video game and the interaction of a board game you should have the elements for a very fun game.

It was pointed out to me that my game sounds very similar to a board game called Marvel Heroes, so I will have to look more into that game and maybe draw some inspiration from it.