FROM VIDEO GAME TO BOARD GAMES: A MINIATURE TAKEOVER

Why is it that video game after video game are getting tabletop makeovers, and why is it seemingly always with miniatures? With Halo: Flashpoint amidst these pages, the news of a Mass Effect game on the horizon, and work of Steamforged Games in general, we’re taking a look at why this is the case.

At first glance, board games and video games are from two opposite worlds. Video games are about the latest technological advancements and teleporting away from everyday life into fantastical digital worlds. Board games, on the other hand, are grounded in tactile reality and celebrate the physicality of its components. Their gameplay is about engagement with the game pieces on the table as well as fellow players sitting right beside you.

Yet these two mediums have a lot in common too. For one, a whole genre of roleplaying video games owes its roots to Dungeons & Dragons, so both mediums have a long history of storytelling and continue innovating on their narrative approaches. But even beyond that, a lot of core principles of game design are the same or similar for both mediums. Setting up a dungeon in a dungeoncrawler board game is a lot similar to exploring the map in the video game. Puzzles are a big part of both. Luck, skill, strategy are all at the core of what makes us return to the table or the screen again and again. After all, even if they have different approaches, the goal of any video game or a board game is to entertain through play.

THE VIDEO GAME TO BOARD GAME MAKEOVERS

It comes as little surprise then, that there is a large crossover between video games and board games. As board gaming boomed, more and more video game properties decided to get a board game makeover. After all, it makes a lot of financial sense as it attracts fans from both camps. Video gamers get to play another version of the thing they love. Board gamers get to experience something new that already has an established universe. And fans of both win all around.

This significant crossover in audiences encouraged all sorts of video games titles to jump onto the tabletop. From the classic blockbusters like first-person shooter Doom,

which found its tabletop re-incarnation as a dungeon crawler Doom: The Board Game,

to indie darlings, like farming game Stardew Valley that planted on the tabletop as a cooperative Stardew Valley: The Board Game.

As the interest in these makeovers doesn’t dwindle, but continues to grow, the games have to up the ante, and keep getting larger with more things to stuff in their game boxes. In many cases, their pièce de resistance is the miniatures.

NOT SO SMALL

Miniatures have become a pretty permanent fixture in the board game adaptations of video games. There are exceptions, like the aforementioned Stardew Valley: The Board Game, but they are far

and few between.

In the games, miniatures can be used for different purposes. They can represent player characters, like in Resident Evil: The Board Game, where you can play as Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Rebecca Chambers, or Barry Burton. Or as monsters that players will face off during the course of the game, like the majestically terrifying Cleric Beast in Bloodborne: The Board Game. Or they can even be objects, like the non-so-mini miniature of the Generator in Frostpunk: the Board Game.

It may be easy to attribute the miniature prevalence in video game-board game makeovers to the general trend of big-boxed miniature games. Crowdfunding platforms are filled with them, after all. However, we pose that these adaptations have other reasons for favouring minis. Three reasons, in fact, that go back to video gaming roots of these board games…

THE MAIN CHARACTER

In many video games, players take on a role of a character within the game. This can be a character they created themselves, by selecting their gender, body and facial features, clothes and even starting abilities, like in the post-apocalyptic Fallout Games. Or it can be a character already specifically designed for them, with their own backstory, attributes and goals, like for example the robot-dino hunter Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn. Through them, players get to explore the games’ worlds, make decisions and be part of the story.

When the video game makes it to the tabletop, it offers players these familiar avatars as the point of connection. And here, miniatures make the most sense. Sure, mechanically a simple pawn or a standee could serve the same function. But a pawn or a token cannot deliver the same emotional impact as Jill Valentine in her iconic blazer tied over the mini-skirt get-up ready to headshot some zombies in Resident Evil 3: The Board Game. Players are used to seeing these characters in the digital 3D on the screen, and they want to see them in the physical miniature 3D on their gaming table too. When they move the miniature from tile to tile, or roll dice to shoot, or play an action card, it feels more like inhabiting these characters again and so helps with the overall impression.

THE VISUAL IMPACT

Gone are the days when Lara Croft’s pyramid chest was the height of the video game graphics. Modern video games do not only strive for a realistic depiction of people, down to freckles on Aloy’s face, but they want their fantastic worlds and creatures look believable too. That comes down to hardware advancements and improved graphics, but also, more importantly, to the ingenious designs themselves. Bloodborne players can instantly recall the look of the Blood Starved Beast, not just because they died to him a bunch of times, but because its appearance with deformed hanging skin flapping like a terrifying superhero cape has become iconic to them. Games could try to replicate that through artwork or a standee, but it would not compare to the dramatic effect of placing Blood Starved Beast miniature on the board and bracing yourself to face him.

The visual design of these set pieces is of the great importance to player experience of the game. And the intricacy and detail in the miniatures is an ode to the thought and care that went to design them in first place.

THE COLLECTABILITY

Be honest, have you ever bought or backed a game just because the miniatures looked just too damn good? Both video games and board games have a strong culture of collectability. Plenty of video games have Collectors Editions that along with the game also include a statuette of one of the characters. Whereas, in board games there is a long tradition of miniature collecting and painting.

So when you see the Thunderjaw expansion, containing their mighty terrifying miniature, and recall fighting them in Horizon Zero Dawn, it is so tempting to press ‘add to cart.’ When the 15cm Gaping Dragon ‘miniature’ from Dark Souls: The Board Game Expansions challenges you to a fight, you answer the call. Even if the goal is just to keep the dragon statue on your shelf. The familiarity with the property only increases the temptation to get a physical piece of it for yourself.

The publishers, perhaps, are all too eager to explore this by putting the most iconic monsters and creatures into separate expansions (that require the purchase of the main game, of course!), or by encouraging people to back games by offering crowdfunding only add-ons. Yet, in the end, even if the game doesn’t find its place in the player’s heart, the miniature can still be proudly displayed on the shelf in all its intricate detail and beauty.