Kickstarter Thoughts: Chronicles of Crime
Should Kickstarter projects include expansions, too?
Chronicles of Crime is a cooperative crime-solving game for one to four players that includes a virtual reality element (and, at the right pledge level, some virtual reality glasses.) It’s a bit like TIME Stories in that it features a set number of replayable stories, but it promises to be a bit different, as new stories can use the same material.
The Kickstarter project for Chronicles of Crime launched on Tuesday, and the same day, it funded.
It looks like a quality title, and perhaps that’s largely down to the art in place, the well-designed components, and the thought that’s been paid to the entire experience. If they manage to get the virtual reality right, it could be one of the more innovative experiences of 2018.
This isn’t a huge game with loads of minis, nor is it a complex dudes-on-a-map game. But it is a crime-solving game, and while that alone doesn’t elevate it, it does have an app. That must make it exciting, right? But what’s more is that it comes with a virtual reality app, and that’s even more out there.
This game could totally bomb. I get that. It could also be obsolete in a year’s time, and that’s just a consequence of featuring technology at the core. Virtual reality is a bit of a nascent idea, and everyone’s jumping on that particular train.
But the real reason I wanted to write about Chronicles of Crime is that it features several expansions available at backing time, and while I totally get that designers need to design with expansions in mind — if they don’t, they’ll just get thrown on later anyway, and it could well be done poorly — I still like to keep the illusion that these things are surprises to be doled out at a later time. Imagine if Scythe had launched with its three expansions thrown in at an additional $40 cost — would it have been the same game?
I do get that this is a different scenario. The expansions, given the premise, shouldn’t change the play of the game much at all, but rather would be additional stories, right? And maybe that’s different enough, but I’d like to see a game that really focuses on its core player experience before deciding that it’s time to release more stories that would likely follow the same format.
I think the important thing here for a designer to remember is that expansions should be iterative, not an added value to boost initial numbers. If they’re being designed before anyone gets their hands on a game and starts experiencing it in the real world, outside of play testing, then they lose a valuable opportunity to iterate on their design.
It’s a key principle in software development, and I’d love to see it come to board games a bit more. Designers shouldn’t treat their designs as static. People will invariably break the game in different ways, and if you’re open to the feedback, you can use an expansion to truly improve a game, not merely expand upon it. (I say this, but I’ve designed exactly zero games. I am, however, in software, so I guess that’s something.)
None of this is to say that I think Chronicles of Crime is committing some new sin, or that they’re doomed to failure. It’s just a trend we see now and will almost certainly continue to see, and as a gamer, I’d like to see a more measured approach.
