Turning popular video games into great board games is a lot harder than it sounds

polygon.com:

We’re eight months into 2023, and already board gaming fans have spent more than $18 million crowdfunding new games. And not just any kind of board games, mind you, but board games based off of video games.

All told, at least eight campaigns across three different crowdfunding platforms have garnered interest from over 96,000 people. It’s a segment of board games that is quickly gaining in popularity, with more being announced every month. But there’s more to turning a hit video game into a successful board game than just slapping some intellectual property onto a box and making sure there’s some excellent miniatures inside. Polygon spoke with a handful of designers to learn more about the process.

Perhaps the hardest part of adapting a video game to the tabletop is deciding the scope and scale of the project as a whole. Designers must first ask themselves what aspects of the source material they hope the board game brings to life. Do they stick with the familiar haunts that players are already used to? Or do they try to take them someplace entirely new? Either way, they’ll need to get the owner of the rights to the video game to sign off on the concept — and they’ll need to get the existing community of fans excited.

However, board game designers are often tasked with translating unique video game mechanics to a platform they are poorly suited to — aspects of a game so tied to its identity that come hell or high water, they have to be included in the tabletop version. Trying to tackle these kinds of stubborn systems or thematic requirements can lead to revisions, alterations, or even total reworks in order to create something fun. This was a predicament that Larian, a studio known for its computer role-playing games