"A laptop and some free time." Lol
I don't have experience making board games, but I've made plenty of computer games on my own. Not many good ones, mind, but I know enough to say this much.
Unless we're talking abut flash games or Meet 'n Date stuff, making a board game independently seems simpler than making a video game independently to me; it requires different skills, but making a game, at least a competent one, is a bigger time investment than you are letting on.
Just a small list of things you don't have to do when making a board game on your own, but do have to do when making a computer game on your own:
- learn an entirely foreign language (whatever programming language/languages)
- learn how to program graphics to work and look nice, which is basically a beast in and of itself (you may have to draw things, I'll concede that point)
- hire a musician or learn to make music and sound effects
- write a narrative (instruction manuals/blurbs take some talent, but aren't nearly as long as a story-driven game)
- spend months or even years finding bugs caused by your scripts not understanding what you wanted them to do
- get Steam or whatever distribution channel to take your game
- promote a game with an absolute sea of competition to the most angry, obnoxious fanbase in the universe
I have only made small projects. (my longest game is about 10 hours long) Multiple ones took me years to finish because of work and school and weren't near the quality of the most popular indie titles. The folks who finish those are really talented/possibly loaded and major exceptions to the rule in the indie game community; for every Cave Story there are ten thousand games that you will never hear of that failed.
I am guessing that to make a board game you (warning: I am making assumptions here):
1. Come up with an idea for a game
2. Probably spend a while stewing things over
3. Mock up the game for probably no cost whatsoever, probably in an afternoon or two
4. Test the game with some friends or people at a FLGS. Maybe pay some of them, who knows
5. Make changes based on testing
6. Continue to make mockups and test/balance the game until you're satisfied (and with no code bugs to fix!)
7. Get the physical products you need and create the game. Obviously this is probably the most complicated and costly step, but it still takes less time than programming a game from the ground up. Odds are you actually can't even do this alone unless it's a card game or something real simple since you'll want to make multiple copies and have some printer create those for you
8. Promote the game somehow
I should stress points 3-6 here: one of the worst parts of making computer games is that you can't even know for sure how well something works until you've already done a whole bunch of work on it. Sometimes a thing that took you ages to finish ends up being terrible and you have to scrap it or make changes. One of the coolest things about making a tabletop game is that if you have an idea you can just print out some stuff on paper and try it, then throw the paper away if it sucked. Any computer game developer probably envies that.
Obviously I've never published a board game and I am probably missing a few steps, but it sure seems a lot less complicated to me. I am not saying making a board game on your own is easy and doesn't have its challenges (of course it does), but there's just so much less you have to learn to do on your own if you're flying solo. Making a video game requires a silly number of skills, which is one reason mainstream games have so many people working on them. For the record, I don't mean to sound like I'm whining. I find the idea of making board games really thrilling; you can put a personal touch on them and see the fruits of your creativity right away, which is fantastic. If I had any good ideas I'd go for it.