How “Mansions of Madness” Misses the Point
WARNING… this post is a hot take.
Potentially very polarizing.
So this past weekend “had the pleasure” (to put it nicely) of playing Mansions of Madness 2E.
And… in my perhaps very unpopular opinion… it was a great illustration of a huge mistake businesses make in marketing:
Forgetting WHY your particular customers enjoy your particular service or product.
Mansions of Madness is one of the Lovecraftian horror board games by Fantasy Flight Games. Its a top notch publisher responsible for some modern classics (Twilight Imperium is #5 on Board Game Geek).
And given that there are tens of thousands of board games, with hundreds more published every year…
THAT IS PRETTY DAMN GOOD
But while Fantasy Flight Games’ has had other very successful games (Star Wars Rebellion at #9 & Arckam Horror at #27)… even the best of the best publishers can’t win every single time.
Players have limited time and money. Which means you can’t just make a great game … you have to make a game that players choose instead of others games.
Its why I repeat over and over and OVER on this blog that, as a board game developer, you need to STAND OUT.
You need to find something UNIQUE about your game… something only YOUR game has… a reason a board game customer cannot find a reason to pass your game up.
Usually, board game designers have a number of ways to accomplish this one-of-a-kind identity:
Art style
Theme
Number and quality of game materials
Unique combination of mechanics.
Teamwork instead of PVP
Player roles
Mansions of Madness found another way I’m calling “cross platform integration”. Or… more simply:
You play MoM with a board and a TV.
This is definitely a way to “stand out from the crowd”, and it combined with the publishers stellar reputation was enough for me to devote 4 hours on a Saturday.
I’m not going to dive into all the mechanics and review the game in detail, because that is not why I am writing this post. If you are looking for that, watch this review from The Dice Tower.
And sure, it was fun, but I would never play it again.
Why?
Because one reason I play board games is to get away from screens.
Do you realize how MUCH I stare at a screen? I’m staring at a screen everytime I:
Type
Watch football
Read online
Email
Text
Play DnD remotely
Most days I live in a virtual world doing digital work, and that irritates and drains me. So I take any chance I can to escape back to tangible, physical, grounded reality.
And in 2024, board games are one of the few things that are still “incarnational”; you get with friends, sit at the same table, look at and talk to each other, hold physical pieces, and play the same thing in the same space.
Its something I love about board games, and something I think a lot of other board game enthusiasts love as well.
So what the problem with Mansions of Madness?
MoM 2e pulls you BACK into the virtual world.
The game is run off a companion app that players must engage with via tablet, computer, or TV.As a result, we found ourselves constantly moving back and forth between the screen the the tabletop.
And because an essential part of the game is on the app, you can’t choose to not; to play the game you MUST interact with it digitally.
In fact, I would say that 60% of the time I was looking at the TV, not the board game or my friends.
For some players, this isn’t a big deal. After all, it is just ONE board game of many that does this… its not like ALL board games are abandoning the in-person element.
And that’s fair.
But for me it IS a big deal, and despite being THE target audience for the game, it alienated me and made me never want to buy it.
So what’s the lesson here? What do businesses have to learn from this when it comes to their marketing?
Don’t let “cleverness” or “creativity” get in the way.
Yes, its super duper important to be unique.
But there is no point in standing out if you confuse or threaten the very thing that makes people like your services or products in the first place!
Some examples:
No one cares you have purple apples if they make terrible apple pies
No one cares about your speed shoes if they cause ankle injuries
No one cares about the super comfy bed if it is cursed to cause nightmares
I know those are silly, but do you see what I mean?
You can’t abandon the heart of your industry, the essential elements that make people like you are your competitors, for the sake of standing out from your competitors.
