In a garage in Southlake, Todd Porter and Jim Galis are trying to revolutionize tabletop gaming with the help of some 3D printers.
Both men are veterans of the video game industry, with Porter being one of the key members of former Dallas-based development studio Ion Storm, but they're taking some of their digital skills and applying them to the physical world of board games. They hope the system they've come up with, BoardCraft, will make it easy for people to not only print out game pieces at home but also design their own pieces, rules or complete games.
The concept itself isn't that complicated: They've created a flat base, called SecureConnect, that serves as a sort of locking mechanism for individual board game tiles (think of something like the little dots on Lego pieces). You can buy those boards and individual tiles/game pieces the same way you'd buy any other toy or game, but if you have a 3D printer you can also download the 3D models for every piece online and print them all out yourself. Lost a piece? Just print a new one. Decide you want to add a cathedral to your game board? Just download the model and send it to your printer.
They've created a wide variety of tiles already -- from the city streets of a zombie-filled modern setting to treasure-filled fantasy dungeons -- that can be mixed and matched for custom games, but the key is that any BoardCraft user can design their own tiles and game pieces for other players to use.
"Tabletop gaming has always been around," Galis told me when he and Porter brought a set of boards and tiles to the Dallas Morning News offices. "When you talk to guys who have been doing it forever they'll say, 'Well that's not new.' But there's a resurgence in it, and there's a much bigger growth that's happening right now with it. And our idea was more making this like Minecraft of board games. You can take our toolset, build what you want with these 3D pieces or 2D pieces ... And then you can 2D print it or 3D print it and have the board game delivered to your house. So it is taking advantage of that crafting craze that's going on as well as the resurgence in board games."
It's not entirely new territory for them. Before he was making video games, Porter played tabletop games with some of the people that helped role playing legends Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson create Dungeons & Dragons. "So my pedigree really comes more from that side than video games," he said.
Their company has designed a game with which to prove the BoardCraft concept, called NecroVirus. They've been taking it to various trade shows around the country, including Dallas' own QuakeCon, to get feedback and evangelize their vision for the tabletop future. At the time of this writing, they're selling NecroVirus on Kickstarter in order to raise funds for the BoardCraft system itself. They want to make the design tools as user friendly as possible so you don't need to be a professional game designer to make new pieces and games.
A Minecraft of board games
BoardCraft's success hinges on the community it develops. The entire concept -- and the entire business model -- revolves around users creating new games, rules, pieces and more. The company will take a cut of the profits from those user-generated models (similar to how Apple takes a cut of profits from apps sold on the App Store), but the sharing of content is key.
"The business plan behind this is to try to get as many makers out there generating artwork that fits the system," Porter said, "so that way when you have your terrain tiles and Jim has his castle tiles and I have my village tiles and Joe over here has his dungeon tiles, we can get together, put them all in the same system that expands all the way across a conference table and be gaming. And we can mix and match and create a Civil War zombie game, or we can create a far future-meets-Civil War sci-fi game. And the idea is that because they all fit in the same system, every time someone makes something new, it adds something for the entire community. And that's really what BoardCraft is about, it building that community."
3D printing
Chances are you don't currently own a 3D printer. While they're becoming more common and going down in price, they're not nearly as easy to find in homes as standard 2D printers.
But Porter and Galis think that's changing fast, and they want to be there for users when the 3D revolution comes. Part of BoardCraft's sales pitch is that printing new pieces will be easy, no matter what model of 3D printer you end up owning.
"Everybody could go out and get a 3D printer, but knowing how to successfully print 3D models is the catch," Galis said. "Because right now everything that's out there on Thingiverse [a web destination for printable 3D models] are those little trinkets, like jewelry and little characters and stuff that nobody cares about."
"Or if it's out there, it's not even guaranteed to print," Porter adds. "Many, many models don't even print right. What we want to do is have an environment where gamers know when they download a model from our system that it'll plug into the Secure Connect boards, which is the bottom boards that connect everything together, and that it'll actually print. And not only will it print, but we'll have the files for that 3D printer.
"Because unlike 2D printing, where you simply go up to Microsoft's window and say 'Print,' a 3D printer has a lot of settings that can affect the outcome and you can make something look really ugly or something look really beautiful," he continued. "And what we do is we certify all of our models on the printer -- and we're expanding the list -- and then when you go to print the model you're not just getting the actual model file, you're getting all the settings for your 3D printer. And you load it up as a profile. So it's pretty easy at that point, and that's the thing, is that this is a brave new world and a lot of people are reluctant to get involved because they're scared that [they] don't know what printer to buy or how to build a printer."
The future of board games. Maybe.
Porter thinks that this democratization of board game creation will change how people buy and play tabletop games. "Our vision for the future is you walk into the store, you buy a BoardCraft-certified game, you get home, you log onto our BoardCraft tool and all the models are there, ready to print. So if you lose a piece you can print it, or if you want to add new pieces, maybe this game has existed for a couple months and people have already added new missions, new cards, new pieces to it, and then with your trusty 3D printer, boom, you're printing."
After the initially high cost of a printer itself, printing each 3D model is not very expensive. Porter estimated that each piece could cost around 12 to 18 cents in materials (depending on the quality of the piece and your printer), and that a complete set of 171 game tiles could be printed for about $44 — not a bad price when you compare that to similar products you can find at a local game store.
But it's the ability to expand your game and create new pieces on the fly that has Porter really excited.
"When suddenly you can think up an idea and later that day have it printed, it's magical."
You can find more information about BoardCraft and NecroVirus on Kickstarter.
