What to Do If... No One Wants to Play Your Game

Imagine this scenario: last week, a new game was released at your local game store. You had been excited to acquire it since seven months ago when the first press release announced its impending arrival. With great anticipation, you sped to the game store on the day of release and gobbled up the first copy (as well as all of the necessary card sleeves and containers for tokens, if you are anything like me). You spent a few hours sleeving cards, punching boards, and sorting the contents, relishing each component and piece of superlative artwork. You even found a place of great esteem on your game shelf for your new acquisition.

As you placed your shiny new box in its designated spot, your mind began racing. Who would I invite to play this game for the first time? Who would be available? Who would not be interested? Hurriedly, you bursted forth from your bedroom with notepad in hand, feverishly jotting down names. With your short list of would-be enthusiasts, you flung open your laptop computer, toggled to your email client software, and clicked New to create an email. You added the names, typed the message with urgent intensity, and clicked Send. Your email shot forth like a cannon blast. Then, you waited. And waited. And waited.

"Sorry, I can't play. I have to wash my dog."

"That game? No thanks. Why not play Power Grid?"

"That game looks way too complicated."

"My wife wants me to spend time with her."

"Ugh. I just bought a new game, too. Do you want to play that one?"

Obviously, the enthusiasm for your new game is decidedly low. You are despondent. You begin pondering your life goals. You resort to prayer. Things do not look good... What do you do? Well, there are solutions, some of which you may have already devised, but some might have escaped your attention.

Bring Your New Game to a Larger Gathering
From time to time, your friends might host a large gathering during which games can be played. Use that time to introduce yourself (if there are people who are strangers to you) and your game. Strangers are often the best people to whom you can introduce a game because they have no preconceived notions about you or what you brought.

Entice Your Friends with Food
The fastest way to a gamer's heart is through his stomach. Set up an invitation to play your particular game, and then advertise that you are providing pizza, burritos, or whatever your friends enjoy. This establishes a quid pro quo situation in which you are giving something (food) and getting something (opponents for your game) in return.

Enlist Your Captive Audience... er, Family
A great way to get your new game to the table is to make your family play it. Spouses are difficult to convince, but your children (or nieces and nephews) are impressionable, pliable, and usually more amenable to playing a new game than anyone else. Take to time to know the rules of your new game and practice teaching it to yourself so that you can prepare for training your children and young relatives.

Ultimatums!
A not-so-subtle variation of the quid pro quo arrangement is the ultimatum: "If you don't play my new game, I won't play yours next time!" Now, this kind of forceful declaration must be done with great care and humor, and can even be off-putting for your more thick-skinned friends, but a kind reminder that you are agreeing to play someone else's new game may compel your comrades to partake in your game. However, if they do not agree to play your new game despite your efforts to play theirs, then you may have to consider other options: patience, non-attendance to future sessions, or finding a new game group.

Find a New Group
As I mentioned in previous posts, they may come a time when you need to find a new game group. Of course, leaving your current group forever simply because they would not play your game is extreme and childish ("Fine! I'll take my ball home and you guys can't play with it!"), but their refusal to play your new game may be symptomatic of deeper issues. Perhaps someone in your group has an issue with you and his grudge has affected the group; maybe your group has collectively soured to each other's company. Instead of ditching your old group entirely, find another group at the local game store, at work, or at your church who would be open to meeting. It is fine to be a member of multiple groups, and looking for a fresh group of people with open minds has the ancillary benefit of creating chances to play your recent acquisition.

Be Patient and Plant Seeds
This may not seem like a solution because patience changes nothing in the moment, and it is the most difficult thing to do, but waiting for the opportunity and planting seeds of interest in your friends' minds is often the best approach. Some gamers like familiarity with a game, so they prefer playing a known game and not having to dive into rules explanations, which is why presenting a new game can be a daunting endeavor. For these folks, instead of the brute force tactic of forcing a game on your group, drop hints about it during your next play session. Spend a few weeks reading the rules and shoehorning comments about it every time you meet people in your group. Point out reviews on Board Game Geek or other sites. Talk about how the game's mechanics are like other popular games, but the theme of your game makes those mechanics feel fresh. The process may take a few weeks, but keep trying and, eventually, your gaming group will relent... even if it is to silence you at last.

Find Solo Rules Variants for Your Game
One of the many wonderful aspects of sites like Board Game Geek is the pooling of ideas that people have formulated on their own, especially solo variants for games. Though some games have rules for playing alone in the core rules (such as Robinson Crusoe, First Martians, Le Havre, and Agricola), most games do not benefit from this extra development on the part of the game designer. However, there are folks out there that have taken the time to devise a kind of artificial intelligence for your game so that tasks are essentially automated as if you are playing against a computer. Solo play does require much work on your part to move pieces, draw cards, and follow what can be complex algorithms simulating other players, but playing solo may be preferable to never playing your new game or doing what I am about to suggest...

Sell (or Store) the Game
The last resort is to either store the game and consider it a collectible, or sell the game on eBay or to other gamers. There is no point in keeping a game no one will play (unless you are content with collecting games), so consider selling it to buy expansions for games that your friends play. To avoid this altogether, though, even before buying a game, think about whether or not your friends and/or family will play it.

Before you attempt any of these solutions, there are a few requirements that you must satisfy:

• Learn Your Game
  Read the rules again and again before even attempting to introduce it.
• Practice Teaching the Game
  Brainstorm ideas of how you would teach the game and organize those ideas into a chronological outline. Use your outline to practice teaching the game, perhaps to a family member or just to yourself.
• Organize Your Components
  Have every component of the game organized so that they are easily accessed without wasting valuable game time hunting for them.
• Anticipate Player Counts and Set Aside the Requisite Components
  Some games' setups stipulate how much of any items you need for certain player counts. Instead of counting out tokens and cards at the start of the gaming session, use plastic bags to separate the required items beforehand so that setup is accelerated.
• Know the Comparable Games
  One thing that assuages fears of learning a new game is drawing parallels to existing games with similar mechanics. This further requires knowing your gaming group, but sticking with popular games helps. Here is one example: "My new game has a set collection mechanic, much like the way you collect cards in Ticket to Ride." Also, mentioning that similar games can be found at Target, Barnes and Noble, or other popular retailers sends the message that your new game is not that strange or difficult to learn because games like it are readily available.

Getting your game group to play your most recent purchase can be challenging and disheartening, but with some foresight and planning, you can mitigate this circumstance trying any of the solutions I mentioned. Usually, novelty is not so alluring for people; do not be insulted if your friends refuse to play your new game at the start. Entice, convince, entreat, bribe: there are yet more options you can pursue to help your game see the light of day.

Despite my suggestions, I believe that the best approach is thinking about your friendly opponents and what they would want before you buy a game. For me, I often think about my wife and sons: would they play the game I'm thinking of buying? A few years ago, my sons had the time and desire to play pretty much anything I bought, but now they are teenagers and their tastes have changed. My wife is much more selective, so I try to pick some games she would not mind playing. Also, because I no longer have to kind of gaming group I had at my previous job, I have to think about my old games and how often I can get them to the table; when I do think about that, I am often convinced to not buy a new game.

Furthermore, I encourage you to think about your current inventory of games and ponder how often you would like to play your existing games. The board gaming hobby is heavily steeped in a "cult of the new" mentality in which gamers are often excited to purchase the hottest novelties. This may be you, and if you have the money to engage in this, then I am happy for you. Yet, if you really enjoy your old games and would like to play them more often, reconsider that purchase you want to make. In this way, perhaps the best solution for what to do if no one will play your new game is to not buy that new game... Or, if you have already bought it, take it back to the store and buy some pizzas to tempt your friends and family to go to your house and play games with which they are already familiar.

Comic Book Stores: 1HN Nerddom Fellowship

In the early 90s when I was in the latter days of high school (and even my first couple of years at UCLA), I was an avid comic book collector. I didn't collect EVERYTHING as I didn't have that much money to blow on comics, but I collected a lot of X-titles, such as Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, and Excalibur (the British mutant superhero team). You may recognize some of these titles, especially if you are a fan of the X-Men films (Bryan Singer directed the first two; Brett Ratner directed the sub-par third one). I also collected a lot of titles from Image Comics, which was (at the time) an up-and-coming comics studio that boasted a stable of ex-Marvel superstar artists who had their own stories to draw and tell. My dalliance with Image notwithstanding, I was a Marvel homeboy as I expanded into Incredible Hulk and Amazing Spider-Man. However, as artists and writers changed and inferior storylines infected my once-beloved titles (Scott Lobdell, I'm looking at you... how could you ruin Excalibur in the span of three issues?!), I lost interest in comic books until I eventually gave up the hobby for good.

So, why am I writing about comic books? Well, I was driving to work today and my thoughts began to drift wistfully to those days of excitement when I awaited every Friday eagerly. In high school, I used to save my part-time job money for Fridays when the local Comic World would stock their shelves with the newest titles for that week. Sometimes, I would buy one or two comic books with bag boards, which were absolutely necessary for preserving comic books (they were collectible items, you know), but on certain weeks a flood of X-titles would come out and I would clean up... Anyway, what struck me this morning was that comic book stores are harder to find. In my hometown, I knew of two comic book stores (one of which was right down the street from my high school), and I knew of four others in neighboring towns. Now, there are no comic book stores in my hometown, and those four others outside my hometown are (as far as I know) gone.

What contributed to this turn of events? Obviously, the advent of online shopping has killed many comic book stores (and the video store... and the record store... and the big-box electronics store... okay, not yet, but Best Buy is going the way of Circuit City), but I also think that the advent of high-quality films based on comic books (ironically produced by Marvel and DC Comics) has largely rendered comic books and the stores that sell them an afterthought. Oh, and when Marvel and DC pulled artists and writers from titles, those titles became shadows of themselves (why did you let Alan Davis go from Excalibur, Marvel?!). But, I would also contend that the flooding of the market with titles and companies in the early 90s contributed to the downfall of comics and, consequently, comic book stores. Back then, there was Marvel and DC, but then came Dark Horse, Valiant, and Image; titles entered the market at breakneck pace; and the "Issue Zero" trend also came into effect, in which every title seemed to have a prequel issue (I'm talking about you, Valiant!). There were so many choices, so many companies, and so many pencilers, inkers, colorists, and letterers out there putting out mediocre to amazing work. How much could one really collect?!

I'm not a comic book historian, but there seemed to be a point in the 90s when comics declined. For a long time, they were collectors' items, but because of the flooding into the market new comics rarely gained value, and often lost value relative to their cover prices. People seemed to care less about buying comics, but cared more about movies. First, Marvel had Blade, then X-Men, and then Spider-Man movies; DC, of course, had Batman movies going, but the Batman Begins film saw the character reaching a wider audience than even the Tim Burton films did (though some may contend this). And, because of the availability of information and images via the Internet, no one needed to buy comics to follow the story lines; they could just read about how each title was going online.

Okay, so where am I going with this? I must admit that I don't miss comic books, per se. My nostalgic feelings stem more from missing the excitement of Friday: that feeling of buying the latest issue of X-Men; wondering what was going to happen in that issue; beholding the Jim Lee artwork; gingerly turning each page, and then carefully placing the issue into a secure bag board. I miss going to Comic World with Ed and Tim to check out what was on the shelves, and I even miss going to the comic book store near UCLA's campus in Westwood with all the colors and the smell of newly-minted comics. But, what I miss most are the odd, nerdy characters I would encounter in those comic book stores and the conversations we would have about the first appearance of Carnage or which comic was really Cable's first appearance (I think it was in a cameo in New Mutants #86, right?). For a time, comic book stores were the nexus of nerddom and esoteric comic-centric discussions where one felt like one belonged and wasn't rejected because one loved school, D&D, Star Trek, Star Wars, or Warhammer. Now, Facebook, blogs, and forums have replaced comic book stores for such talk, and Wikipedia has become a reliable source of comic book information.

I guess I miss all of that, but not enough to start collecting comics again. Interestingly, I have a place where I am accepted and can have all the oddball discussions I want, and you wouldn't suspect it: my church.