Game Design: How We Birthed Baby Boomer
As well as satirical posts about Boomers, we also want to use this blog to show you how we made this game and convince you that it is something that you will love to play with your friends and family. Baby Boomer – Have it All! plays well, has a simple but nuanced set of rules, and looks good. Above all, it’s funny – all of our test groups spent the hour laughing.
One of the weird things about going from game player to game designer is the way that it makes you start thinking of games differently. You start trying to break down the elements of enjoyable play and work out what it is about a board game that works and what doesn’t.
A key concern for me is how a game feels: both the feeling you get from playing a game but also how its feels to touch and play with. When I think about how much I enjoy games, a big part is the physicality of moving the pieces in their own integrated world. As a kid playing big-box strategy games like Axis & Allies, Fortress America, and Shogun, one of the best bits was the way they straddled the world of games and toys. Realising that these impressions have stayed with me was a key insight.
On this theme, if you haven’t seen Irving Finkel from the British Museum talk about Lewis Chessmen you really should – it’s clear not only that he loves chess but that he loves these chess pieces as objects. I had a real ‘aha’ moment years ago playing Stonemairer Games’s Scythe – putting the little pieces onto the player board functioned not only as a great way of demonstrating the rules but linked the game to a specific tactile experience. I think that a part of the popularity of HABA games for children is the use of wooden pieces and the way this evokes a certain romanticised notion of childhood for the parents who play the game with their kids (how the kids feel is something else!).
Ryan and I have an ongoing argument about Carcassonne. Ryan likes to divide the tiles into separate piles for each player while I prefer they are all in a bag together. Ryan’s argument that it makes no mechanical difference is true, and it allows players to ponder where to place their tile while waiting for their turn. But for me it changes the feel of the game and how a game feels to play is surely a key part what we like about board games – that you play them face to face, in a variety spaces, with snacks and drinks…. all that stuff. In the last 3 years I have started playing table top role playing games again (after a 15-year hiatus) and I know that during the pandemic the rise of D&D’s popularity (and that of other games) has continued, especially playing it online. But for me it doesn’t have the appeal of actually playing on a table with friends, with the clink of the dice, the scratch of the pencil and the comforting ‘tssshhh’ sound of opening a beer.
So when we came up with the idea of Baby Boomer the board game these concerns about how the game felt to play and the integration of concept and rules was foremost in my mind. We quickly went from a classic monopoly style game, where you move around the board driven by chance, to one where the game is driven by player choices and the board works to visualise the choices that players make. Ryan set to work physical constructing a board out of Styrofoam so we could experiment with these ideas in practice.
This is how we tested the rules, making different characters with picture from a trashy magazine.
What we ended up with was something like a control board for each player – a headquarters for your Boomer’s life. Then there is the central board that shows the material incentives that drive Boomers – shares, property, aged care and so on. What we want to do here is make the dynamics visually clear so that you can see how a player’s choices affect all Boomers and their children. This is obviously the core of the game: the growth of Boomer wealth has social implications. By contrast, the control panel or character board captures the personality and priorities of each Baby Boomer – each Boomer’s happiness responds differently to the shared material constraints of life. Some Boomers get tremendous happiness from wealth, others less, while some Boomers privilege their own comfort in old age above all other concerns. Our design aim is that all this is straightforward to understand through the art and flavour text on the character boards.
Oh yeah – the art. It is just brilliant. Cop a squiz at this.
And then there is space on the board to track the stats of your randomly allocated children so that you can see how your efforts to improve their desirability either succeed or drag them down!
In the game you need to set your kids up with partners so that they will give you grandchildren. Each partner comes with different risks and benefits, but overall there are a few good partners and there are a lot of losers. This creates a key temptation for Boomers – to force their children into dead-end relationships for the sake of getting to enjoy grandchildren. And then you can make them divorce and get together with another loser to get another grandchild!
We wanted to ensure that the complexities and diversity of sexualities and gender in the world are reflected in the game. Our first attempt had us using traditional Mars and Venus symbols, which failed this test, and were confusing in gameplay. So we replaced these with generic shapes. If your child has a triangle and a potential partner has a triangle then they are compatible. Compatibility now maps onto personality, allowing a wide variety of pairings.
This means that we can exit the dominant narrative and players are free to imagine the dynamics at work. For example, some pairings will likely be interpreted as true love, some as desperation, while others may only make sense as elective co-parenting.
We have been very fortunate to have the support of German manufacturer Ludo Fact who will produce the game. This means that the production of the game will meet labour and environmental standards that make us feel we aren’t just pumping plastic shit made by children into the world.
So what do you think about what you’ve seen?
We’re currently play testing all around Brisbane (and have already witnessed some *epic* intergenerational conflict!), so hit us up if you’d like to have a go.
Send us an email, catch on the socials (Facebook and Twitter) or sign up below to find out the minute we launch.
