One of the biggest tips for designing games is knowing your audience. However, even if you know your audience, you have to let your audience know that they are your audience. If the right player things it’s the wrong game, then they might not like it, or even try it out.

Name

The name is often the first thing a player knows about a game. The expectation it most often sets is theme and tone. A game called Pandemic is going to be about disease, and maybe be a little tense. Abandon All Artichokes is about food, and sounds kind of lighter. Sometimes names try and be cute, and this can sometimes be an issue. One of my games, The Scoop, is about newspapers, but a lot of people when they first hear it assume it is about ice cream. Some games try to be very minimalist. What would you assume Scythe is about without the context? Farming? The grim reaper? The tone works, since it sounds rather scary, but you wouldn’t guess what the setting is. A lot of abstract games have trouble here, since they need to convey tone without a theme attached. Usually, so long as it’s something the average consumer doesn’t have context for, they will assume it is themeless and as complex. After all, if they need to think about what the name means, maybe they need to think while playing the game, too. If you don’t know what Onitama, Azul, or Sagrada are referring to, then you might assume it’s in the same nonsense word camp as Gobblet and Qwixx. However, those sound silly enough they might convey the game as being a little lighter.

Genre

Almost every game has it’s genre listed right on the front of the box. This is a very risky thing to do, since not allplayers will make the same assumptions when given the genre. If you have a trick-taking game, one too many changes and people will think they were lied to. Sometimes even more subjective labels can feel strange. Your game may be described as a combat game, but if the defeated units are just moved backwards or if combat is resolved via resource allocation, it may not feel right to call it combat. You’ll need to focus on the feelings your game evokes. Listen to how other players describe your game, especially if you’ve done unguided playtests. No matter what, though, you’re going to end up misleading some players.

Winning

Winning the game is both something you need to feed expectations into and use to form expectations. If your game is about disease, then people are going to assume you’re trying to cure the disease (or spread it). If the game is won in any other way, then players will get confused, or come out feeling dissatisfied. Conversely, if the only way to win a game is to eliminate other players, then players are going to assume the game is aggressive if not outright violent. If the game ends up being about slowly draining them of resources, they might feel tricked. If a game has multiple avenues to victory, then players tend to assume each is equally viable, even if it’s not true. A lot of games end when a deck runs out, so players might end up trying to play the long game, only to learn (or never realize) that that form of winning is only there so games reaches an end point regardless of player actions. When describing the end of the game, make it clear what the expected outcome of the game is, and try your best to imply how to get there.

Art

I can’t say much about this one, as I have little experience in it, but wanted to include it. Art has a huge impact on what people expect of a game. If there’s no art, they’ll assume it’s a very tactical game. If the art looks childish, they’ll assume it’s a childish game. If there’s a particular thing about the setting you want players to know about, then make sure to put it in as much art as you can.

Conclusion

Think carefully about how you lead players into your game. A player who comes in with the wrong expectations is worse than a playr who comes in with low ones.