From idea to execution: how much planning?

I know that I sometimes have full games kind of appear like that. I don't tend to whip out a prototype for others to play right away, though: I usually write the idea down in on of my game journals (paper sketchbooks, actually) and then if I'm still feeling solid on it a couple of days later (that is, I didn't think of ways to improve it/make it work theoretically better) then I'll commonly work up a quick prototype and then solo play it a time or two. I commonly then realize a couple of things I hadn't caught before, make some changes, and solo test again. This can go through a few rounds sometimes.

I don't put early prototypes in front of other people, however, because I'm concerned that I'll burn them out on unintentionally crappy games and lose the ability to get them to do some playtesting when it's a bit more polished.

However, of course, YMMV. :)

I want to echo Matthew's comments -- don't rush a game to the playtest stage. You don't necessarily need to keep tinkering with it endlessly if you feel pretty strongly that it's close to done, but just put it down and let it marinate for a few weeks, then revisit it. The last thing you want is for it to turn out to be poorly thought out, as this will diminish people's enthusiasm to playtest games in the future. You may have a group that loves to playtest and will playtest anything, but if you don't, you want to build a reputation for quality by only putting your best efforts in front of them. That's not to say everything you bring out will be flawless, so much as that something that's obviously flawed in such a way that you could have caught the bugs yourself, has wasted your playtesters time for them to make that "discovery" for you.

I totally know what you mean about a "Eureka!" moment where a game idea seems to come fully formed from the start. Some of my games are that way, but a lot aren't. But even the ones that are still change before they end up being "done" for real. You want to go through as many of the early iterations as you can before the playtesters see it. But, when you've thought through all the particulars and potential problem areas, put the thing together and test it! No sense waiting for perfection, just don't let your justified enthusiasm for a new game cause you to put less than your best work in front of your playtest group!

Good luck!

-Jeff

Very interesting - while I don't think there's anything wrong with working on a game for a while before playtesting it, I never or almost never do. My typical path is to come up with an idea, then some time later (anywhere from a second to two years, to this point), having the "eureka!" moment of a good, hopefully new mechanic to go with it. From that point, it's just a question of how long it takes me to put together a prototype - as soon as I do, we're playing it, even if I don't know all the rules at the time. (And this is not an infrequent occurance - there have to be at least a half dozen times now when I have not said how to win during the first play - usually because I have no idea myself. And at least once I've gone in to the first play without having been able to say for certain what the objective was.) And the only time I ever have written down rules before playing a game for the first time was the first, thankfully forgotten first game I designed as an adult.

Now, I'm really, really lucky - I have three local playtest groups who put up with this, which allows the _other_ groups I playtest with to only look at the games that have passed the first test. If I was less certain my playtesters would put up with it, I'd be more careful - but I don't think it would work as well for me.

Joe

Since I don't have regular access to playtesters, I do a lot of solo playtesting. I usually spend between a week and a few months scribbling my idea out in a notebook, and then I assemble a very cheap prototype and give it a whirl. I want to get as early an insight as possible into where the "fun factor" of the game lives.

Wow, Joe, it seems like you are quite lucky indeed! It sounds like you have access to 3 or more playtest groups, which is something that I'm sure a lot of us would really be happy to have! But the fact that your groups are willing to playtest a game that you're making up the rules on the fly is really something. To me, I admire your confidence in your ability to come out with rules off the top of your head like that. I could just never do it -- for me, I want to analyze as many of the particulars as I can and try to identify possible problem points. The advantage that "your" approach would have over "mine", I guess, it that if I have a genuinely good idea but can't build a working game out of it, it won't see the light of day, whereas under your scheme, at least a good nugget would come to light even if the game as a whole was subpar.

I guess I also just feel like playtesters are doing me a huge favor, and I feel somewhat in their debt as it is, even when they really seem to like the game I've brought out (which has happened from time to time). So, I could never bring something to the table that I knew to be "half-baked". That's not to say that you are "wrong" to do so or anything, so much as to observe that even if I had access to your very forgiving playtesters, I could still never design games in that way.

But hey, if it works for you, that's awesome. Though I haven't played Scream Machine yet, it looks pretty solid, and I did have a chance to playtest one of your games once (at Danger Planet in Waltham) and thought that was pretty good as well. So, while we may all take different paths, the proof is really in whether at the end of the line, one is designing quality games or not. If one is, you can't disagree with their process too much, even if you yourself don't use it!

-Jeff