Why Great Games FAIL - Board Game Design

A potential purchaser comes to your product with preconceived ideas, biases and their own frames of reference. When they first encounter your product, they look for clues, however tiny - to place the game into a predefined box: to pigeonhole the product based on past experience.

This poses a problem for game designers who are attempting to rise above the crowd in a saturated market. If you innovate, you risk confusing potential purchasers; but if you stick with familiar concepts, how are you ever going to stand out?

An effective product designer controls the context in which their product is seen. A brilliant game in the wrong context is always going to fail.