Lately, I’ve been visiting friendly local game stores (FLGSs). Bliss is a completely free hour in a game store with shelves and shelves of games: games I have played until the pieces are worn, games I crowd-funded, games on my birthday list, games I never heard of before, games of all sorts by an amazing array of designers, and “Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall” looking so good on the shelves of several shelves that I began to regret pledging at the print-and-play level.

Personal conflicts aside, I had the great pleasure of talking to a number of FLGS owners and staff and learned many things. Some information pertained to one publisher in particular but some was valuable advice for any game designer. In particular, one conversation has me thinking about another layer of game design, which I am calling “Designing for the back of the room”.

Long ago in the far-off times, I was in theater. One of many common sayings of our director was, “Remember: we are playing to the back of the house.” For actors, it was a reminder to keep every feature engaged at all times and to project. For choreography and set design, it was a reminder always to consider the effect made at the back of the house.

On one of my recent visits, the owner of the Tabletop Gaming Center made a great point: games attract more newcomers if they look novel and showy to people from the back of the store. I freely admit I should have had this in mind for some time now. Certainly, designing so that the game itself on the table is a visual hook, yes, absolutely, do more of that. But extending the concept to designing so that the game is a hook from the far side of a game store or a convention hall game room—it may be Game Design 101 but it was new to me.

So, a present for those game designers who (like me) haven’t considered the idea: given a demo day in a crowded game store that might be the size of a postage stamp or might be a spacious hall of narrative delights, ask yourself what you can add or adjust in your game to make it stand out to the person casually glancing from the other side of the space.

The first game that came to mind when I thought about the question that way was actually Dark Tower. I had the great good fortune of having uncles who played games, one of whom owned Dark Tower, so I got to play several times as a child and had a blast. The sight of that tower, complete with light and sound effects, from any point in even a fairly large gaming space would sell more copies, guaranteed. Of course, Restoration Games knew that and kudos to them for bringing it back. But the next game I thought of was Mag Blast.

In case you haven’t met Mag Blast, it’s a fast-paced spaceship-battle strategy card game. The deck fit in a jacket pocket and could travel around the country with you. It’s great fun to play but the point here is that it involved sound effects: mandatory sound effects. If you didn’t make some kind of noise when you fired a weapon at someone’s ship, the damage didn’t count, period. We loved the sound effects mechanic, especially when playing with people who were naturally reserved. Mag Blast became one of our icebreaker games. After you’ve spent half an hour or so making ridiculous “pew pew” “whoosh” “b-b-b-b-rrr-g” noises at each other, the people around you start to feel less like strangers.

What I overlooked was the sales value of those sound effects. Given an ordinary evening in a game store, some of those sound effects will be heard over the buzz of conversation and the ambient music. Once heard, these sounds will be investigated. Bystanders start to move in closer to see what is going on over there. Congratulations, you just won the first and hardest quest in game distribution: getting audience attention.

From there, I rapidly identified a set of tools for the “designing for the back of the room” toolbox: embrace the third dimension. Games that build vertically can be seen from farther off. Get moving. Humans are rigged to notice motion so get the players gesturing and manipulating objects, like a large inflatable club (thank you, Poetry for Neanderthals). Design for sound effects (thank you, Klask). Consider collective action. A game that involves multiple people doing the same thing at the same time should attract some attention. And as always, keep it simple at first. What about a game where the box doubles as an easel that displays some large symbol or figure related to the game?

These are just my off-the-cuff ideas. Clearly, not every idea is suitable for every game or every audience. But by spending time evaluating, applying, and communicating these ideas, I just solidified my learning, and hopefully, someone reading this walks away with a new idea, too.