So here's 'Did You Say Tin Mining?!', a game about games, for gamers.
Each player is on holiday for five nights (each night = a round) with their games-resistant families and friends, and their aim is to get as many people as possible around their table for a game to raise kudos (kudos being the currency of the game and the defining factor in winning after round five). At the start of each round the potential players are turned over - the skeptic, the credible, the artist, the entertainer, the child - and real players use up kudos points bidding for them. Children are the easiest to get to the table but score you the fewest points, and skeptics obviously the hardest/most valuable, as they will be scathing of the thought of playing a game with you when they could be watching Inspector Morse, or making a red pepper reduction.
The other obstacle in your path is the game you're offering - there are only as many games as there are (real) players, made up from four building blocks of design, theme, mechanic, and time - which again, are assembled at your own cost during each round. Putting together the poorly designed, nerdily themed, clunkily mechanised 3-hour marathon about philosophy that is Eureka Moments will be a very hard sell in terms of getting your family to sit down with you. Whereas the great-looking Detective! (case-solving dice-based twenty-minute game) will be an easier sell, but won't get you as many kudos points per player when you 'play' it. As ever, the game is about diversification and striking a balance - going all out for a coup de grace in family-games-conversion could win you the game, but it could just leave you with Open Derision - yourself, sitting at an empty table. Minus twenty kudos!
It's early days but I think there's something in it, don't you?
Hello?
