Podcasts Business Community Signal Online Community Building Lessons From Collaborative Board Games

Online Community Building Lessons From Collaborative Board Games

Published: Jan. 17, 2022, 10:30 a.m.

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When was the last time that you trusted your community with the responsibility of collaboration? In this episode of Community Signal,\\xa0Matt Leacock\\xa0shares lessons he\\u2019s learned while designing popular collaborative board games like\\xa0Pandemic,\\xa0Pandemic Legacy, and\\xa0Forbidden Island.

Matt also discusses how he leans on the board game community for his own games. In the pre-launch stages, he has rallied supporters to pre-order his games and prove demand. In the development stages, he\\u2019s openly shared rules documents, inviting feedback from fans. After a game launches, he also discusses the role that players have when it comes to helping one another as questions and loopholes arise.

Having a shared goal \\u2013\\u2013 winning the game \\u2013\\u2013 is perhaps what motivates players to come together at all stages of the game\\u2019s development. Knowing that your community members also have a shared purpose or goal, are there ways that you could trust them with collaboration opportunities that could lead to positive outcomes for everyone? That\\u2019s winning!\\xa0

Matt and Patrick also discuss:

  • Competition within collaborative games
  • Establishing norms within games and communities
  • The importance of establishing straightforward nomenclature

Our Podcast is Made Possible By\\u2026

If you enjoy our show, please know that it\\u2019s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor:\\xa0Hivebrite, the community engagement platform.

Big Quotes

Trust as an integral part of cooperative game design\\xa0(6:54): \\u201cIn a cooperative game, you can guide people along. You\\u2019re all working toward the same goal, so you can help each other out as you go along. I think that does help build trust. Having that common goal really helps. The opposite is true with semi-cooperative ones, or even the ones with the hidden traitor. Most of the game is really about social deduction and trying to guess what people\\u2019s agendas are.\\u201d \\u2013@mattleacock

Getting buy-in on community norms outside of the context of guidelines infractions\\xa0(8:45): \\u201cTo the extent that people can understand what the norms are before they exhibit the behavior, the better. \\u2026 It\\u2019s not just, \\u2018Here\\u2019s the rules. Follow them.\\u2019 It\\u2019s, \\u2018Here\\u2019s the intent of the community [and] where we want to go, so that\\u2019s why we have these rules.\'\\u201d \\u2013@mattleacock

Board game communities step in when players need help\\xa0(13:43):\\xa0\\u201cI lean on BoardGameGeek pretty heavily because there\\u2019s so many rules questions about so many of the games. Some of them are quite simple and very easy to monitor. Especially when the game is released, I want to make sure that no one\\u2019s found any loophole or has any big questions. I look at those [communities] pretty carefully after release.\\u201d \\u2013@mattleacock

Trusting your community with collaboration\\xa0(18:52):\\xa0\\u201cWe put the rules [for\\xa0Thunderbirds] up online \\u2026 in Google Doc format and invited people to edit, which was this leap of faith. People would see the text, and they could make suggestions right in the text. I would obviously monitor this stuff and pull out any abusive language. I was really impressed at how just meeting people with good faith, how far that went, and how much buy-in that created.\\u201d \\u2013@mattleacock

The upsides and potential pitfalls of crowdfunding\\xa0(20:25):\\xa0\\u201cThere are certain advantages of trying to get buy-in [for your board game] from the community, where you\\u2019re listening to them and understanding what\\u2019s important. If that\\u2019s taken too far, then you get perhaps people that feel entitled to tell you exactly what they want and expect it.\\u201d \\u2013@mattleacock

About Matt Leacock

Matt Leacock\\xa0has been designing board games full-time since 2014. He is best known for his cooperative titles,\\xa0Pandemic,\\xa0Pandemic Legacy, and\\xa0Forbidden Island, and he has designed and developed over two dozen titles for the international market. He is currently working on\\xa0Daybreak, a game about taking on the climate crisis. His games have won many awards including four nominations for Spiel des Jahres and the Sonderpreis in 2018. In a prior life, he was a user experience designer at Apple, Netscape, AOL, Yahoo, and the chief designer at Sococo.

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Your Thoughts

If you have any thoughts on this episode that you\\u2019d like to share, please leave me a comment,\\xa0send me an email\\xa0or a\\xa0tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported\\xa0Community Signal on Patreon.

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