When designing new games, themes are always at the fore of a game designer’s mind. Designers may have a brilliant set of game mechanisms, perhaps backed by sound mathematical or logical principles, but if they get the theme wrong, the game could potentially suffer. From my experience with this hobby, there is seldom, however, a good or bad theme per se, but rather a well-timed or badly timed one.
I am here referring to themes which are in their turn derived from established intellectual properties or IPs. Timing in this sense, is more about timing the release of such games when their IP is enjoying highest visibility. This could be following the release of a related movie or the publication of a book or an anniversary related to that same IP.
To further elaborate I will use a board game by a renowned game designer, Reiner Knizia. Knizia is an icon in the industry and a PhD in mathematics. When he talks about games or writes about them, people usually listen. Knizia is a German game designer born in 1957, who has designed several games to date, as well as published books on card and dice games. If you want to have a taste of his game designs I have included two book titles at the end of this blog. In 2000 he published what was to become his best selling game, Lord of the Rings (LOTR), the board game.
The game itself has some very interesting game mechanisms such as the corruption track where the heroes, in this case the hobbits of the shire, battle the dark lord Sauron through four distinct scenarios, with the sole objective of destroying the one ring. The track itself is very visual with, on the one hand, the “light” side where the hobbits strive to remain, and a “dark” side where Sauron’s ominous tower of Barad-Dur stands at the start of a game. Throughout the course of the various scenes, the hobbits will progress towards or away from the dark side. Likewise the tower will progress towards or away from the hobbits. If at any time the two meet then the hobbits fail in their quest and the game is lost.
This fascinating board game also pre-dates the popular board game Pandemic by 8 years, as well as other similar co-op games. It was among the first board games to introduce cooperative play in a modern game format. The hobbits (albeit the players) win or lose together, depending on whether the ring bearer completes his ultimate quest or not.
Yet while the chosen IP was an established one, which went down well with fans of JRR Tolkien, what really brought the game to the attention of mainstream gamers must have been its close proximity with the release of the first instalment of Peter Jackson's LOTR magnum opus. In fact Jackson had started filming all three LOTR movies in New Zealand precisely between 1999 and 2000, with the first instalment of the trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring) subsequently released in 2001. Knizia, in this sense, can be said to have pre-empted the flood of other LOTR themed games which followed, by placing his creation first out of the gates.
Seen from the standpoint of 2022, as I write this blog, cooperative games have since advanced in leaps and bounds. Pandemic, for instance, introduced a dynamicity that you will not find in Knizia’s earlier game. It caters for diverse starting configurations, through randomly assigning the positions of the various starting pieces. Yet these modern co-op games, as thematic as they may be considered, do not require to follow a fixed plot, in a specific sequential, episodic order. This was the brilliance of Knizia’s creation; he translated the book’s original plot into a sequence of events (or scenarios) whose order never changes. To the extent that this adopted stratagem aligns with the novel, it also makes learning how to play LOTR sensibly more challenging than, say, playing Pandemic or other modern co-op games.
Timing games to coincide with the release, or popularity, of movies linked to specific IPs is a rather common tactic in marketing board games. One other such game that comes to mind is Marvel Splendor.
Marvel Splendor is a reskinning of an earlier game called simply Splendor, released in 2014 and designed by Marc Andre. The original Splendor (2014) offers a simple resource building mechanism, which starts off with a finite resource of gem tokens, which players need to secure in order to buy increasingly valuable cards. The more valuable cards are themselves worth victory points, with the game’s objective being to be the first to score 15 points before all other players. These same concepts and goals lay at the heart of Marvel Splendor, albeit with a few twists. The gems are now “infinity stones” and the first player to secure one of each type of stone (represented through captured cards) wins the “infinity gauntlet” and the game. The game also includes a special 3-point award token, that moves to the player who would currently have the most Avengers among his or her claimed deck of cards.
Basically Marvel Splendor is just Splendor with some very unique Marvel related artwork, and actually proved the critics right when they say that Splendor does not have much of a well articulated theme. Mind you, the game is good, but the theme employed fits loosely over the core game mechanisms, making it rather simple to switch themes as in this case.
I’d like to end this review of board games, based on established IPs, by going over games that were built around the Dune saga by Frank Herbert. One can say that Dune is to Sci-Fi what LOTR is to fantasy. The 1984 movie rendition by David Lynch was received poorly in its time, but having said that, the movie itself was a product of its time. I will not go into what were its failing points, nor its merits, it’s beside the point in this instance. What that movie did do was bring the original book to the fore, as it were. Having said that, back in 1979 Avalon Hill published what I believe to be the first Dune-based board game. Closer to Lynch’s version of Dune, Avalon Hill then published a second edition of this game as well as two expansions. The game itself was a lengthy affair but one cherished by board game aficionados. For several years the board game went out of print right up until 2019 when a new publisher, Gale Force 9, once again published the game while tweaking the original ruleset. Once again this IP-based reprint was published close to the release of a related movie, in this instance Denis Villeneuve’s interpretation which has since received rave reviews as well as won 6 oscars (Best Score, Visual Effects, Cinematography, Production Design and Film Editing). As might be imagined, other publishers and game designers were equally quick to come up with Dune-based titles with two of the more interesting being Dune Imperium and Dune: a Game of Conquest and Diplomacy.
Dune Imperium, which I happen to own, is a product of modern board game design, incorporating diverse gaming mechanisms which have found favour among board game enthusiasts. This version in fact includes deck building, worker placement and resource management. The design is strongly influenced from the movie visuals and the characters in-game are artistic renditions of the actual actors themselves, including Timothy Chalamat (Paul Atreides), Oscar Isaac (Leto Atreides), Jason Mamoa (Duncan Idaho) and others. The success of this game, its theming and timing can be appreciated by the fact that it is currently ranked 15th on BoardGameGeek. While the game itself is unquestionably interesting, the question beckons, would it be as successful if the movie hadn’t been made? Would it have been published at all?
In truth this synergy between IPs and board games has existed for as long as modern board games have been published. While the end products may not always be memorable or long lived, the fact remains that a subsection of the board game industry does tend to lean on the popularity of established IPs to sell their games.
I would like to leave you with a couple of questions. The first must be, how important is theme for you when you decide to purchase a game? Also, do you like games that rely on established IPs for their core theme? Feel free to drop me a few lines, I would like to hear your take on the matter.
Reference and Links
Books by Reiner Knizia
Dice Games Properly Explained (ISBN 978-0-9731052-1-6)
New Tactical Games with Dice and Cards (ISBN 978-0-9936880-1-0)
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