Gaming: Hobby and Mass Market
Board gaming has often been described as a luxury hobby aimed at a dedicated and niche audience. “Hobby games” offer complex mechanisms, interesting tactical and strategic choices, and a learning curve that, once overcome, adds richness to the experience.
Mass market games, by contrast, are typically designed to appeal to a wide audience, with a particular focus on casual players and families. The games’ rules and mechanisms are more approachable, and this simplicity is reflected in component quality and price point. Many current mass market games are tied to intellectual property like TV shows, books, and movies.
Crossing Over
Sometimes a game crosses over from hobby to mass market, garnering a wider consumer appeal after starting its journey with hobbyists. Ticket to Ride, released in 2004 as a hobby game, now boasts more than 30 versions, expansions, and anniversary editions, several of which can be found in big box stores, libraries, and classrooms. Less common is a crossover from mass market to hobby, partly due to the perceptions and habits of stereotypical hobby gamers, but also the feature of those games.
Stuck in the Middle
Still other games can get stuck in the mass-hobby-middle and reach neither audience. Reasons are usually connected to a mismatch of approachability, difficulty, and consumer perceptions.1 Examples include:
- A cute box cover or setting/theme, but a game with complex rules.
- A heavy, large box full or serious-looking components (including overproduction), but with a simple rule set.
- A family-friendly IP on the outside, with a heavier and more difficult game within.
One of my favorite games in this middle-place is Disney Sidekicks, designed by Eric Lang and published by Spin Master Games.
Disney Sidekicks
The traditional Disney heroes have been captured, and it’s up to their sidekicks to save the day! Peter Pan has been locked up by Captain Hook, Jafar has captured Aladdin, and Scar slammed the castle door on Simba. Their friends have work to do, collecting star tokens to unlock magical locks and free the heroes!
Disney Sidekicks a cooperative game using the tried-and-true Players Take a Turn, then Bad Things Happen mechanism (e.g., Pandemic, Legendary: Marvel), and it incorporates elements of the Disney stories in a way that is familiar, yet different. It plays 2-4 players in about 45 minutes.
Overview / Gameplay
Disney Sidekick’s cover art and price point (often less than $10 on sale) can lead families to believe it’s a very light roll-and-move type game. It is not. The rule set it surprisingly medium-weight for a game like this, which has led to approachability issues for some gamers.
Also, this game is hard to win. Purge Review described Sidekicks in this way: “Famed game designer forgets he is designing a family board game… prepare to lose and frustrate your children.”
For me, this is the genius of Eric Lang’s design, but it’s also what puts Sidekicks in that spot between mass and hobby gaming. I anticipate it will continue to have a small, dedicated fan base (I know at least one enthusiastic fanatic—keep reading) who will encourage others to give it a try.
Accessibility Review
Even though mass market games are often designed for families to play together, accessibility needs can be overlooked due to the low-cost components used to keep the price down. Disney Sidekicks does a pretty good job in the visual accessibility department.
Color Vision
All characters are sculpted miniatures and come in several colors, making it easy to distinguish them from each other. All icons on cards and most components are easy to tell apart, too.
The one exception is the set of victim tokens, which come in four different colors. The game provides double-coding, which is easier to see in this zoomed-on photo than on the table. I found it sometimes difficult to distinguish the victims from one another during gameplay.
Low Vision and DEXTERITY
Several of the tokens—including the victim tokens described above—are very small, which I found annoying and fiddly to handle. For those with motor limitations it could make the game unplayable, and low-vision gamers might need help to clearly see the icons and colors on these tiny circles.
Additionally, I sometimes found the small icons on the cards to be hard to read. Even though they are double-coded with color and an icon, I used my smart phone’s magnifying glass a few times to make sure I was seeing it correctly.
Accessibility Mod and Upgrades
Component Quality
Disney Sidekicks is a budget title that includes 12 character minis plus a sculpted castle and bridges, making it an exceptional bargain for Disney components alone. That said, some of the other components are not great, leaving room for upgrades.
Upgrades
To develop what might be the only deluxified version of Disney Sidekicks in the world, I added or replaced my components as follows:
- Coin capsules for the larger round tokens, including the castle locks and some character sets. This adds a clicky feeling to the game, like in Azul and Mandala Stones (CBG review).
- Plastic hearts for the player’s life. Along with an upgrade from carboard, these tokens add verticality to the player board, which is another accessibility benefit.
- Mini meeples in 4 colors to replace the very small and tough-to-distinguish victim tokens. I added a bag that I draw these victim meeples from to place on the board.
The mini meeple addition requires a bit of explanation. While this change improves the game for me by adding verticality, making the components easier to hold, and introducing colors with better contrast, it won’t be a desired change for everyone.
- Meeples are not double-coded, while the original design has slightly different designs for each villager color.
- Modifies original gameplay. The original victim tokens are 2-sided with a “!” on one side, designed to be added to the board face-down. Pulling them out of a bag instead means I can see the color when placed, instead of waiting for it to be revealed after saving the victim. This house rule enables faster character upgrades, making the game a little easier to win.
Miniature Painting
To enhance my copy of Disney Sidekicks and my game experience by improving visual accessibility of game components, I reached out to Jamie Daggers, award-winning mini painter, to take on a different type of project.
I was thrilled to meet Jamie during my process upgrading Disney Sidekicks, and I’m just as excited for her to share her experience working on a different type of painting commission.
Enter Jamie!
When Brian asked me about painting Disney Sidekicks, I loved the concept of deluxifying a game like this. Painting minis for a $3 discount game felt funny, subversive, and awesome. And in the end, Brian may be one of the very few people who has a fully painted version of Disney Sidekicks.
Painting Plastic
This commission to paint Disney Sidekicks came with some challenges, which became great learning experiences that kicked off my interest in the materials science part of mini painting. I learned that board games use a lot of different type of plastics.
Outside of board games, most minis we paint are high impact polystyrene (HIP), which is highly resilient and has a low interaction with solvents. Mass market games use polyvinyl chloride (PVC) because it’s cheaper and resists chemicals. But because PVC is not porous and is designed to not absorb things, it can be difficult to work with as a painter.
I started priming the Disney Sidekicks models with an aerosol spray primer, and when I went to paint them the paint did not stick. I needed to strip the models and brush prime them instead. They still didn’t take to the brush primer well, but I made it work. The experience led to me providing more education on my stream when I talk about painting minis for board games.
Encouraging Painting
Deliberately creating unique game elements, using your own time, skills, and efforts, you can get closer to your games. It creates a connection, and the game can become yours in a way it wasn’t before, and isn’t for anyone else. It’s a great way to spice up a game you’re considering getting rid of, as painting it might make you more excited about the game in general.
The purest form of creation is taking something that’s supposed to be one way and making it something else.
Conclusion
Disney Sidekicks is a delightful, challenging cooperative game that received criticism for its apparent mismatch between aesthetics (light, cheery, simple) and gameplay approachability (medium-weight, difficult to win). I continue to enjoy the challenge and beauty of this game, enhanced greatly by Jamie’s art. I highly recommend giving this game a try!
Image Credits: Box art by Spin Master. Photos by Brian Chandler. Sculpt painting by Jamie Daggers.
- For more on definitions in gaming: Words Matter: Game Accessibility, Approachability, and Difficulty. ↩︎
Colorblind Games 