Hello everyone I'm hangzai. This issue is a half-chat article, recently a friend in Shenzhen through Alan (Alan at this time in Shenzhen entrepreneurship) found me, said that it is a board game host, hope I play to put forward opinions, I am very interested in this project, rushed to agree.
Soon the other party sent it to me, it is a console and two games in the test, because the game is currently in the development stage, so I am not sure how much I can disclose, but in simple terms, it is a host device with enough programming, which can directly cooperate with two board games to complete the operation, and give player feedback, which is a magical attempt of board games + electronic peripherals, my experience is very novel. This game will also be released overseas later, and I expect it to perform well.
Also because of this original board game host, let me also observe what the recent foreign board game people are doing, I found several board games that are also ready to be released, including electronic peripherals, so I want to share it.
In 2021, a new board game product has attracted the attention of overseas investors. The product, called Last Gameboad, which raised $4 million in 2021, is a square device that looks a bit like a tablet, and its biggest feature is that, in addition to the traditional touch screen function, there is a built-in operating system that can recognize the trajectory of limbs or objects above the device.
Ah, it's like assembling all your imaginations of board games.
For non-board game diehard fans, this feature sounds a bit chicken, but for those who need to immerse themselves in board games for a long time, traditional cards and props are cumbersome and difficult to store, and online board games do not have a real immersive experience, and the form of Last Gameboard's virtual and real combination just meets the needs of some die-hard fans.
Last Gameboard was founded in 2019 by board game core player Shail Mehta, a former financial manager with hardware guru Rob Wyatt, who was a former system architect for Microsoft's Xbox consoles and holds several patents in the AR/VR space.
In 2018, at a beer party, the two of them complained together that the experience of the touch screen game device was very poor, and it was impossible to let the limbs or real game props participate, so the two hit it off and planned to make a game device that could recognize limbs and objects. In January 2019, Last Gameboard was launched.
As their own board game players, they have seen the negative impact of the online tide of board games, and even the entire online tide- depression, ADHD and other episodes are closely related to online, and people are becoming more and more isolated, which is contrary to board games.
They believe that games like Last Gameboard can push to solve these problems and push people to socialize face-to-face, which is the point of the board game itself.
It's a bit like a semi-open source game store, with existing games on the market and users being able to develop their own games. At present, the Last Gameboard hardware is priced at $699 (about 4600 yuan), which can be purchased with the game, a single game purchase or a monthly subscription system of less than $10. In gaming hardware, this price is not cheap.
As a startup, Last Gameboard seems too greedy, it is making a tool, but it is talking about the platform and the community. The two can follow different logics, with tools focusing on experience and functionality, and community focusing on operations and content.
There seem to be only two paths last Gameboard. Either to develop a good enough game IP, or to make the user's own experience of developing the game this function to the extreme, to open up a game UGC track.
In 2022, digital maker Tilt Five has chosen a different path, combining AR technology with board games to enter the market in a way that is closer to consumers.
Tilt Five is priced at $879 in a three-piece set of glasses, a magic wand-style grip, and a large gamepad offered through Kickstarter. Its system enhances visibility above and below the game board while allowing users to naturally see friends, family, and physical environments. As Tilt Five's website says, it's a way of reinventing the way to play tabletop games.
By using the dedicated AR glasses, game boards, and controllers launched by Tilt Five, players are able to play board games and video games in a shared 3D holographic environment. Players can watch gameplay footage that is constantly updated as the game progresses, exploring, fighting, and solving puzzles with local and remote friends.
Tilt Five notes that its hardware features include AR glasses designed with a patented 110-degree field of view optical system that brings immersive 3D worlds to life on the desktop, and according to the company, the AR glasses weigh less than 95 grams and can keep players comfortable during long games.
Its controlpad boasts 6DoF, giving players more freedom to physically interact with the game environment and characters. The product also includes an embedded camera system that tracks physical objects such as game objects and hands and seamlessly blends them with virtual objects, in addition to stereo speakers and microphones to enhance the player's sense of immersion and talk to friends who play remotely during gameplay.
The company added that all types of games will be available on the Tilt Five platform, and third-party developer content will include games from Asmodee Digital, Tabletopia, HappyGiant, Niffler, PlayStack, Beatshapers, Playito, Monocle Society, Deck13, GFX47 and Battle Map Studio.
At present, tilt Five is priced at $879 (about 5800 yuan), and the delivery of the equipment is still in progress, and it is subject to the international supply chain problems that are affecting mainstream hardware manufacturers (in fact, they have been skipping tickets for 2 years).
To say something else, Tilt Five still needs an external computing device to power its glasses, and currently the glasses device can only be connected to a PC. Since each pair of glasses requires a computer, the cost and complexity of ar gaming nights powered by Tilt Five increase dramatically.
At the end of 2019, "Catan" further embraced the trend, ushering in the AR (Augmented Reality) mobile game "Catan: World Explorer" that combines the world map, and the producer is Niantic, who is famous for creating AR games.
Founded in 2010 as a google-in-house startup, Niantic launched its first mobile game, Ingress, in 2012, in which players joined two camps to battle and seize portals distributed around the world, all associated with actual landmarks.
With data collected by Ingress, Niantic became independent from Google in 2015 and released Pokémon Go in 2016.
Niantic hit the iron while it was hot and released Harry Potter: Wizarding League in 2019, bringing the wizarding world and many classic characters/magical creatures to everyone.
"Catan AR" is currently on sale, because it seems that it can't be played in the mainland, so let's post a few game introductions and player reviews.
1. The Earth becomes a giant Catan Chessboard, in which players collect resources, exchange resources, build roads and towns, team up to win points, and compete with teams around the world on a season-by-season basis.
2. There are five kinds of resources like board games: bricks, wood, grain, iron ore, wool, and different regions have different resources (you can pick up wool all over the world). In addition to the player can exchange resources, you can also exchange (and flirt) with high-IQ NPCs.
3. Landmark buildings (the dojo in Pokémon Go) can "provide resources and build towns".
AR games can be a big success one after another, in addition to the popularity of smart phones, it is a big point that AR games have improved the sense of substitution of games. Whether it is a board game or a mobile game, in today's frequent works, the sense of substitution is crucial to the player's gaming experience.
Catan: World Explorer Chinese Player Reviews:
Shan's most precious: a real experience for a veteran micro-Krypton player. It does not force the liver, does not force Krypton. The goods in the store also allow middle and high Krypton players to have a sufficient kryptonite experience. Truth be told, there are very few such games at the moment. More is either high liver microkr or microhepatic heavy krypton. I really get tired, the game has no sense of relaxation, in the end I still hope to play more.
Mephastophilis: It's really fun, the picture quality, the sense of percussion, the fluency, the map details, the background music, the operation, the gameplay are all in place, and the plot is also very good. I've always said that I wanted to find games that would move me, but after playing countless games, I was just okay and could play. There are too few games that can really be touched. I really hope this game can get better and better, and I will keep playing it.
Finally, let's talk about my feelings about the electronic board game, in the traditional concept, the board game has always stood on the opposite side of the virtual world, incarnated as a solid barrier to resist the excessive virtualization and networking of life.
But in fact, now the traditional board game has been constantly exploring outwards and embracing technology. Nowadays, there are more and more conditions for playing board games to break the inherent boundaries between online and offline. I am not only referring to the electronic version of the board game, now such as "The Great Search", "Return to the Black Tower" and other board games are electronically assisted, including the board game host I mentioned at the beginning, the AR and PAD technology mentioned above, but also to make the board game more abundant, in the final analysis, it is still to serve the player, so that the player has a more sense of substitution and has a more fun time.
I am very optimistic about the future of board games electronics, and I think that the future of electronic board games and physical board games must complement each other and develop together. The two will increasingly be inseparable, which can be said to be mutual achievements. The progress of science and technology is unstoppable, the board game industry does not need to escape this reality, I think the future world, we will definitely break the boundary between games and reality, to explore more possibilities in the world of games.
Source: Silicon Rabbit Race, APPSO, VR Gyro
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