OUGD405 STUDIO BRIEF 4 - GAME ACCESSORIES RESEARCH

In my board game, there isn't just the board that you need to play the game with, similar to most other games, you also need playing pieces to play most games. For my game in specific I need playing pieces and question cards, with questions about places within the world on them. To help me design these extra aspects of board games I undertook research into existing playing pieces and cards, to see what the typical style of these are, any if there were any really interesting designs that would fit the style of my board game nicely.

These are the community chest and chance cards from the original Monopoly. They are printed on coloured paper and are very simple in design. This I expect would be to save printing costs, as when the game was first produced I can't imagine they had a lot of cash spare to print fancy, expensive cards. I like the simplicity of the content on the cards though, as it gets straight to the point, there are no distractions, so you can just focus on the information rather than the design of the cards. I think this could be a style that would work well for my question cards as I want the information to be the focus point, to help not only the person answering the question, but the person reading the question out to learn.

These are some hand made snap cards that I found on Pinterest. I found these cards especially interesting because of the green border around the edge of the cards, which is in fitting with the content of the cards. I also think the simplicity of the bold title and the little illustration of the crocodile on the cards is really interesting and funny, with the link between snap and crocodiles. I could try the simple, punchy title on my question cards, to make them seem a little more exciting than they actually are. 

These are two cards from the adult game Cards Against Humanity, the black one the question card and the white card the question card. These cards are very simple and have no detail on them whatsoever. The reasoning behind this is because the whole point of Cards Against Humanity is that the questions and answers put together makes the game as funny as it is, there is no need for any extra illustrations to make the game more fun or hilarious, because they just don't need them. This is what I think I want for my cards, I want the information to be the main point of focus, and not for the design to take over. 

I found it really hard to research different kinds of playing pieces, as a lot of them are like the the photograph directly below, with primary coloured rounded pieces. There really wasn't much variation in style except for the Monopoly playing pieces. These are a lot more unique and unusual, and have different pieces for each edition of Monopoly, which makes them even more interesting, wondering what the pieces will be. They are also make out of metal so are quite heavy in comparison to the normal plastic hollow playing pieces most board games use. I want my playing pieces to be something more unusual as well, something memorable and special, to give my board game a bit more quality to it. Ideally I'd like to make them out of metal the same way that the Monopoly playing pieces have been made, only painted to get the different colours perhaps. This wouldn't be actually possible for this brief, due to me not having the facilities available to me. If I was to get this board game professionally manufactured, then I would choose to have my playing pieces made out of metal.

Ordinary, highly common playing pieces.

Monopoly metal playing pieces.

Whilst doing this research into accompanying aspects of games, I realised I hadn't given any thought into how I was going to portray how my game is actually played, and the rules of it. Pretty much every game comes with some sort of instruction booklet telling players how the game works, and I feel that I should produce one for my game, so that people can experience it as best as possible, and because this is a key aspect of every game. Before producing my own instruction booklet for my board game, I researched into existing rule booklets to see the kind of style is most commonly used. 

This is a very plain and simple Scrabble rule book, which is printed in black and white, possibly to save money on printing. There are several headings in a uppercase, bold typeface, which separates up the different sections of the rule booklet clearly. There are also small illustrations to accompany some of the rules, which help to break up the text. This is a very simple layout, but also very clear, something I must ensure my rule booklet is, as the whole point of a rule booklet is to make people understand how to play the game.

This is another example of a pretty simple instruction booklet. This follows similar layout techniques as the Scrabble instruction leaflet, in that it has bold, uppercase headings, and is printed in black and white with little illustrations dotted around to illustrate the content in the text. This works on more of an A4 landscape size paper, so only one column of text wouldn't be appropriate, which is why this design has got 3 columns of text, to make it easier to read. This is a major factor I must consider when designing my instruction booklet, what size stock I am going to print it on, and at what orientation as well, landscape or portrait, as this will determine how many columns are appropriate. 

This instruction leaflet for Monopoly is one of the only leaflets I found that used colour, except for the leaflet below. The colour is pretty subtle though, and matches the same style of the board design itself, which is something I could try and do to my own instruction booklet, making sure it still fits with the aesthetic style of the board game in some small way. Although this is a small stock size it appears, the text is still split up into two columns to make al the information fit in a lot better around the GO TO JAIL illustration.

This is an extremely cheesy instruction booklet, definitely one you'd find in a knock off children's game. What makes it so cheesy is the swirly typeface that has been used for the headings, making it look like something from the 60's. This instruction booklet also uses mainly primary colours for the layout, appealing to the younger child target market. This is also separated into three different columns, separating up the information in the same way as the previous instruction booklets. Columns is definitely a massive part of instruction booklets as a tool of breaking up the text to make it look more manageable. I should definitely consider this when designing my own instruction booklet.

This research into all of the other elements that make up a board game has been really helpful to me in seeing what is already out there, and where there are gaps in the market for something a little different, such as the playing pieces. It has also taught me about the wide use of columns for the instruction booklet as a tool for managing the text to make it look less dense than it is. These are all things I must consider and potentially employ when creating my own game.