Let's throw the dice: what video games can learn from board games

Two years ago, when I left video games criticism to work full-time in table top games, a lot of people, my mum chief among them, were startled.

These days, it’s easy to explain. Board game cafes are springing up all over the world, and investors are pouring millions into the industry.


But I didn’t have this evidence two years ago. I was working on my instinct that these games were just as interesting as video games, and it seemed board games and card games represented an absurdly thick seam of ideas. The money might still be in video games, but there’s huge success waiting for the digital designers who implement those ideas first.


Digital card game Hearthstone already makes more money than World of Warcraft, and it has managed that success while really just being a beautifully presented stop-gap before video games get a truly strong card game.

So what are the biggest ideas in contemporary board gaming that video games have yet to pick up on?

Whether you’re figuring out who on your ship is a Cylon in the Battlestar Galactica game, or just earnestly telling your friends that you won’t invade them (you promise!) in A Game of Thrones, modern board games often offer an interesting social dynamic on top of their puzzle. Maybe to win you need to coerce two other players into fighting. Or you can swap who is on whose team halfway through. Or you can win by correctly guessing who will win, and on what turn, and then engineering it.