How Much Should Production Matter in a Board Game Review?
I was recently watching The Dice Tower review for Flamecraft Duals and one thing struck me as I watched: how much does a solid production matter? Both reviewers praised the games production, but neither of them particularly enjoyed the experience, with one score coming in at a 4/10 and the other a 6.5/10. In this situation, despite a great production, there wasn’t enough game there for this group to rate it any higher than mediocre / just ok.
If you’ve been reading the website for a while, you know that we always like to post two articles when it comes to our board game reviews: a components overview and impressions article and an actual review of the game outside of production quality. We don’t score our reviews, simply recommend or not recommend based on preferences; that said, I generally purposefully ignore talking about production in the reviews for one reason, and this is my opinion: a game can look really good, and should get praise for that, but that doesn’t mean the game itself is good.
It’s worth noting here that I don’t think there are many bad board games. Unlike video games – where we can say a game with really bad framerate, pop-in, etc. is objectively bad – board games are a bit harder to pin down like that. In fact, very few board games have broken mechanisms or mechanics that make the game objectively bad. We might prefer one type of game over another – I generally don’t review hidden role games – but are many games really just straight up, universally bad?
That said, good production can, in the eyes of the public, drag a game from a 6 or 6.5 to a 7 or 8, while bad production can weigh a game down, despite solid gameplay. We are, for good or bad, vain people who like things that look nice. I think we all agree that we would prefer to play a board game that looks nice and has a good theme, over one that doesn’t, even if the mechanics are the same. Still, I feel it is important to separate the two because when push comes to shove, good mechanics outweighs good production any day, at least for one play.
Flashy games sell, we get that. And people like to own flashy games. The way we do things on GamesReviews is for a specific reason, and I hope I’ve outlined that here. Production is important, but it should also stand alone when compared to mechanics. That is why a gorgeous game like Flamecraft Duals can get the scores it got from The Dice Tower: mechanics and gameplay matter. And let’s not forget that.
One last small word of wisdom, though: good production is indicative of a companies desire to put out good work. That’s why so many mechanically good games look great as well!
Article By Adam
