speculations on a d.i.y. board game culture
I love board games but I am bothered that it is such a consumption oriented hobby. In video games and TTRPG's, there are d.i.y. subcultures that accompany commercialised parts of the medium. Cultures that foster experimentation, and artistic expression. Zinesters of these mediums have found themselves places, built social infrastructures like itch.io to be able to distribute games, and talk about them. In this post I want to speculate about what a d.i.y. culture in board games could look like and what methods we could use.
Before I start, why can't we locate d.i.y. cultures for board games? There are probably many answers for this, and I would love to learn more if there is. Maybe it 's the intimidation of physical production and distribution. Maybe another one is that board games are quite difficult already, especially if you're not familiar with the culture very much. The possibility of playing broken things, things that don't fully make sense, maybe we don't have much room for this. We give effort, mental effort to learn and play board games, maybe we seek for safety that it will reward that effort. I think this might be a limiting factor on what we think the medium is capable too however. There are probably other, more material answers for this too, but in this post I don't want to analyse this to the core. What I want to do is to highlight some existing efforts for a d.i.y. board game culture, and also speculate on what else could be done.
So here are some ideas:
1. Using The Shared Materials and Language of Board Games as a Resource
So many of the board games we play, they share a language. Tokens, currency, workers, cards etc. In video games we define genre on a high level: metroidvanias, visual novels, grand strategy games. In board games, we define genre often through much more specific mechanics: trick taking, worker placement, bag building. What this leads to, we have similar pieces from collecting many games. Could we use these existing materials instead of buying them over and over again?
Apparently in the 90's there was a company called Cheapass Games, and in 2019 they came back publishing work under Crab Fragment Labs. Their idea was exactly this: as the designer James Ernest explains, their games assume you have most of the necessary pieces like tokens, currency, etc. So the games they sell are usually game boards and cards. I think you can also print them. I love this approach very much and want to try some of them very soon. The designer also apparently wrote a book about this.
2. Open Game System Revival
In early 2001 James Kyle designed a board game system called Piecepack, the aim with this was to make a similar thing to deck of cards, but for board games. There have been many games made for this, also available in the website, and it is also possible to make your own piecepack pieces. I love this idea too. A deck of playing cards is now a game language we see as a natural and engrained part of culture. There are many different games, many different cultures. Can other system become part of culture like this?
There is also Icehouse Pieces. It's made by the same people who made Fluxx, and it's a game system with over 400 games to date. I have not played anything with this yet but I am very curious to try. I think the way to get a hold of this is to buy their Pyramid Arcade box.
What I can see is that these initiative seem to have slowed down, or maybe people who are interested in it are waiting. Maybe a piecepack game jam could help bring people out of the woodworks.
A problem with these game systems is perhaps the abstraction. In trying to create a game agnostic system, we give up the art, the setting, the intention. This is a big part of why I, and many people, love board games. Maybe one way to deal with this would be to again, combine these game systems with art people can print. Or just buy whatever they need to complement this.
3. Remixing Board Games
Another alternative could be to use the board games we already have, and remix them, recontextualise them. Catan, for example, is one of the most famous board games of our time and it has quite a lot of unique pieces: roads, villages, towns, one thief, and various types of tiles. With a game such a popularity, there are already existing house rules and variants, people mention some of these in this reddit thread.
Then also, what about combining games, and their pieces. Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a collage of Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Between Two Cities. What games have synergies that we can use? Or what game pieces, and their own language we can borrow and use, and make new games out of, giving new lives to the games we already have. What is stopping us taking existing games and using them as material to make other games out of?When I am thinking about this I am very much inspired by Plunderludics, a group of gamedevs which have made their own tools to collage emulated video games.
4. Living Board Games
A concept I love is Keepsake Games, games where you make an artifact as part of playing it. A Mending, for example, is a map making game where you embroider a map as part of playing it. What if the board games we have, they became lived objects, rather than things to keep pristine. What if we added house rules to games, legacy house rules, or ways to mod existing things in the game. I saw a video once where some players added a house rule to Catan where the winner of the game can name one of the sheep, and write it on the card.
A baggage that comes with board games being such a consumer hobby is that resale value is a thing. People sometimes want to keep their games frozen because they are collectible items in one sense too. However like that Garfield plushy, to be loved is to be changed. What are the ways we can make games our own as we play them?
5. Alternative Materials
Last one I have on the list is using alternative materials. Yes, board games have built quite a toolset, a game language, to express many things, on many different levels of depth. However what all these share is that these materials are replicable, meaning they can be mass produced, and that they can be put in a box. What kinds of languages we can't explore because the material for them we find it difficult to fit the format. A board game you play with fruit, or maybe with the keys of a piano. Are there other tools that can become part of a game language?
Another alternative material idea would be making the game become a ritual too. Much like learning the rules of a board game is a ritual part of the activity, or similarly, popping pieces, and organising them. What if this preparation session was more artistic? Like doing some crafting, doing paper cutouts, or maybe collages from magazines.
I am sure there would be more ways, more experiments to push the medium, and bring a d.i.y. element to board games but it also always comes down to materiality, having spaces and resources to give to these things. I do not know what a d.i.y., zinester board game culture would look like, but even just speculating about it has made me feel so inspired I am dizzy with inspirations. Hope you enjoyed the piece, and happy to hear any thoughts you have.