Exploring Tabletop Gaming Clubs
With this new year 2020, I started learning about Entrepreneurial design and started my project of designing a simple card game following the advice of Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Game. “Play a lot of board games with different themes and different mechanisms, with a broad range of player counts — that will allow you to get a lot of ideas and how you can combine those ideas into new combinations or new mechanisms.”
I started researching about board game cafes and clubs in New York, NY. I found some intriguing options to check out. I made a field trip to “The Uncommon.” The staff member suggested me a few simple card game to get a head start.
Later, I also found another casual tabletop gaming group located in Chinatown called “Righteousness Tabletop Gaming ” through Meetup.
A board game called Imhotep that consists of a legendary architect of the Egyptian monuments. I played the board game with Brandon & Lawerance. Brandon helped me throughout the first round explaining all the rules. He is an avid game user, and he goes to many such game meetups. He taught me so well. Surprisingly, I won the game. That was super unexpected, and another board game that we played was “Takenoko” with a group of four people. Takenoko is about growing bamboo in the competitive farming game. As I was a beginner, Brandon & Lawarence helped me out, explaining all the game rules for Takenoko as well. It was an exciting game. Both the games were very engaging with a lot of new mechanisms and rules.
After making the field trip to build up a simple card game, I will categorize my target audience as light gamers and game enthusiasts.
Light gamers are the people who have the least amount of time, interest & aptitude to understand the nitty-gritty of the game. It includes busy professionals or even a working mom with multiple responsibilities of work & home. This target audience is always active & limited time to relax with friends. A simple & fun game can be the reason for them to sit together for two hours and have some great time together over drinks. They often found playing in cafes & bars.
Game Enthusiasts are a dedicated set of people who have an ample amount of time to sit for a day, watch Youtube instructional videos & understand the rules of the new games and teach others. They always look for a new adventure and a game that can challenge them, give them a winning spirit. They hang around playing in Tabletop boarding game clubs & other gaming meetups clubs.
So, the two potential communities that I could create a game for are light gamers & game enthusiasts.
