Mastering the Art of Board Game Video Reels 

Good luck with it!

It's a good point - and sensible advice for rules-writing too! Gaming jargon can really get in the way of a rules explanation.

Haha. My first RU-vid videos were a lot like that! I found that writing scripts was useful - and then delivering them with pace and a smile really helped to make them more engaging! On video of course you have the opportunity to do lots of takes, so you can always choose the best!! Hope it works out well for you.

Good question. I don’t tend to show people playing because any seconds spent on that, are seconds spent not showing the game itself. I strictly adhere to 2 minutes for most video pitches, so I can’t afford the seconds spent on wide shots. Secondly, it’s hard to set them up! You need a group playing, and it’s hard to make that look smart & slick. You also need permission from the testers to be featured. But I would always do shots of people playing for any game which relies heavily on player interaction. For example, a party game would benefit from shots of people laughing and having fun. A negotiation game or social deduction game would probably benefit from watching people interacting. Some dexterity games (like Yogi) wouldn’t make sense without a player being visible.

@@AdaminWales Thank you for such a detailed response! I am going to attempt to get some footage for a party game this weekend, but it will probably be 10x more difficult than I think. I’m sure I won’t be able to highlight the game as intended since everyone acts differently if they know they are being recorded.

I think you only really need to show your “hook”. Everything else is really irrelevant. Ark Nova is a complex game about making a Zoo, but that’s a pretty weak hook. Companies which make complex games would want to know what decisions a player makes on their turn. In the case of Ark Nova, the action selection mechanism is the most interesting and distinctive bit of the game, so it makes sense to highlight it. But the nitty gritty of the mechanisms is rarely helpful.

@@AdaminWales thanks Adam! That makes things clearer to me now. Love the work you put into this channel!

It’s not easy, and the increase in video production correlates with a reduction in gaming time throughout the pandemic. Because I play fewer games than before, I take some comfort from “spending time” with games - thinking about them and making videos. I haven’t been a big socialiser since the pandemic, so I don’t make it out to gaming groups often these days. I play a lot of games with my wife - and probably manage about one other gaming session each week with friends. I produce the videos well in advance - and I’m generally a few weeks ahead. The biggest jobs are scripting and editing. Filming is just a small bit of the process. But the good thing about scripting and editing is that they can be done late in the evening or early in the morning - to fit around my other commitments. The main thing that suffers is game design time. I don’t get many opportunities to playtest, so my production is very limited. Nonetheless, I have four simple games ready to pitch at Essen Spiel, so I really hope I make it there this year!

Hi, here’s a video on the topic :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oTbHvDb8DHg.html

I’ve done this a few times during the pandemic. I would apply exactly the same processes as described in my video: record my screen and then demonstrate each of my actions on TTS - then heavily edit down to 2 minutes. It can make quite a slick looking final video. I don’t think this would be my first choice though. I’ve only done it when the entirety of the playtesting was done on TTS, and no physical prototype exists. I’ve also played games on TTS with publishers I’m pitching to. It’s really not ideal. It never shows off your game in its best light.

That would be fine, but it assumes that the viewer knows the rules of Ludo! For example, I know a lot of board games but I don't know the rules too Backgammon. So if someone said "... just like in Backgammon" I'd be lost! There must be many people out there (even gamers) who don't know the rules to Monopoly, Poker, Chess and other classics.