The Importance of Being Board

Board games have always had a special place for me. The family sitting around the table rolling dice and yelling at each other brings back such fond memories. But terrible family nostalgia aside board games are great template for designing gameplay in the interactive world. I recently purchased the new version of Settlers of Catan, a very popular game of trading resources and building towns set on an island. The island setting gives a great way to limit the 5 different resources available and when you play with 4 players (using the standard edition this is the maximum, there is an expansion available for adding up to 6 players) forces you to think about how to strategically place your settlements to maximize your ability to expand while simultaneously blocking the other players. Now this may sound very complicated and people who know me know I love deep strategy games but all this comes in an incredibly easy to understand set of rules. I was able to pick it up in 5 minutes and was even able to teach my girlfriend's mother how to play very easily. Back to the point of the post though, Catan was recently translated into a digital version on Xbox Live by Big Huge Games, a developer of fine RTS products. So as a developer I've decided to use board games as a test bed for new types of gameplay. At the very least I may come up with a great board game and at most be able to fine tune the design before I implement it in a video game. Either way simply the act of playing board games can be used as inspiration in the creation of new ideas and projects. I'm currently working on an idea in Unreal 3 inspired somewhat indirectly by the venerable classic Battleship. I've also been working on a fun board game where teams of engineers build robots in a junkyard. Board games can teach us how to create engaging yet simple gameplay that can be picked up by anybody and isn't that the point?