Wild hunt for video game monsters
New trend in board games
By Peter Budig
Headed by the married couple Martina Dobrindt and Andreas Dobrindt-Ostner from southern Germany, a group of gaming enthusiasts has been working together under the name APEX Ideenschmiede since 2018. Even before they chose the name, they were already active – not only as frequent players (of both analogue and digital games) but also as sources of inspiration and inventors who worked alongside publishers and authors. So far, they’ve made a good name for themselves, particularly in professional circles. But now they’re about to make a big breakthrough as board game inventors. The big idea is to invent board games on the basis of licenced video games and movies, which already have a large fan base. The initial spark for this international venture took place at the Spielwarenmesse.
APEX
Already available from APEX:
Die Schriftrolle der Geheimnisse (The Scroll of Secrets) – a cooperative hidden object puzzle game for 1-4 players in which exciting puzzles have to be solved while experiencing fantastic adventures.
Pfad der Elemente (Path of Elements) – a competitive tile-based puzzle game for 2-4 players.
News from the APEX:
This autumn, Dust Race will be released at www.mm-spiele.de.
Board games with a gaming licence
But first things first… In 2023, Martina and Andreas presented their game invention “Die Kinder der Fay und der Danse Macabre” at the International Games Inventors’ Convention during the Spielwarenmesse in Nuremberg.
This event was the start of several meetings and brainstorming sessions with Arnaud Perez, who recently developed his own business idea under the name No Loading Games to the point where it was ready to be launched onto the market.
The German team meets an international manager
Arnaud has always wandered between worlds: the Frenchman, who graduated in electrical engineering in Besancon, worked for Peugeot for decades, including three years in China, where he worked as a coach for local engineers, among other things. Whilst there, he learned Chinese and established contacts with game manufacturers. “At some point, I wanted to leave the automotive industry and try something new,” he says. He and his wife, an art director, moved on to Canada, where they now live in Montreal with their two children. He hopes that No Loading Games will now allow him to break through as an entrepreneur. His collaboration with APEX means he has a team that can cover everything: Martina, who studied graphic design and works in an advertising agency, is responsible for design, visual language and, specifically, adaptation to the video worlds at APEX. Andreas, whose main job is dealing with building regulations and land development, is the game designer, in charge of mechanics and storytelling.
True gamers enjoy both analogue and digital games
Arnaud had studied the market and noticed that increasing numbers of gamers play in both analogue and digital gaming worlds. Why not – he mused – tie in with well-known video games and their huge fan bases? But to do that, he needed suitable board game mechanics. When he met APEX, they immediately spoke the same inventor language. The Dobrindts are keen players of both analogue and digital games; as APEX, they develop innovative board games that are easy and quick to get into but still challenging and designed to be played repeatedly without becoming stale. So it came about that, on the basis of “Die Kinder der Fay und der Danse Macabre”, there was a promising division of labour. With the aid of his international contacts, Arnaud Perez will obtain licences from the gaming scene, while APEX is to supply the board game mechanics. “Die Kinder der Fay” will be released under the name of “Hunted” under a video game licence. It’s a game designed for cooperative play, with a time limit (a fixed playing time of 30 minutes) to get the players’ adrenaline pumping.
Announcement of the licensors
In the meantime, the partners have forged ahead with their work. APEX has made good progress in finding the right balance between game mechanics, storytelling and design; Arnaud has stepped up negotiations with the licensors: “We are glad to announce that two licensing agreements have been signed and the game will be released under two very popular entertainment brands: Cyberpunk Edgerunners by CD PROJEKT RED® and a second gaming brand to be announced during SPIEL in Essen (Germany) from October 3 - 6, 2024! Stay tuned!" Production will start soon and from 2025 the aim is to achieve what APEX stands for: in astronomy, the term refers to the highest point in the orbit of a celestial body.
APEX puts its trust in EMPAMOS for game development
When developing the game, APEX set great store by understanding what exactly triggers players’ motivation to play. The APEX team used brand new AI-based analysis tools that were developed in cooperation with the EMPAMOS research project at the Nuremberg Institute of Technology.
EMPAMOS stands for “Empirical Analysis of Motivational Game Elements”. The business informatics expert Professor Thomas Voit and his interdisciplinary team have accomplished a mammoth task in the German Games Archive in Nuremberg: from over 50,000 empirical pieces of evidence, they worked out the typical game elements that motivate humans to act. “Based on this, we’ve built a unique AI assistant that helps to develop customised motivation concepts,’ is how Professor Voit summarises the project.
EMPAMOS wasn’t originally designed for inventing games. In collaboration with APEX, however, options have now been developed in several APEX games for breaking down games themselves. “This makes it possible to isolate motivating elements and show which networks of relationships interact in the mechanics of the idea behind a game,” Andreas Dobrindt-Ostner explains.
About the author:
Peter Budig studied Protestant theology, history and political science. He worked as a freelance journalist, headed up the editorial department of a large advertising paper in Nuremberg for ten years and was the editor of Nuremberg’s Abendzeitung newspaper. He has been freelancing again since 2014 as a journalist, book author and copywriter. Storytelling is absolutely his favourite form.
