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A challenge to myself

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IngredientX
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I've been designing games for about three years now. I can tell that I'm more experienced now because they're much more complex. Does this mean they're better? Well, they are more complex... :)

I've put a lot of thought into what exactly I want to do with my games. Do I want to run the gauntlet of publishers? Do I want to self-publish? And I've come to this conclusion...

It's all about solid games. A solid game is not a solid game idea that you're convinced will work, nor is it a game that you've invented that you need playtesters for.

A solid game has been playtested, both with the designer and blind. A solid game not only has a strong game design, but an understandable and attractive graphic design and a clear, consice rulebook.

A solid game is a game that a complete stranger - a person that I've never met, and will never meet - will open up, read the rules, play, and say, "I like this game. I want to play it again."

Simply put, a designer who's never designed a solid game (like me) who is thinking about getting a game published is like a 13-year old trying to decide what luxury sports car he wants to buy.

So my challenge to myself: before I even think about pulishing, I need a few solid game designs. Not one, but at least three.

Once I have three solid, tested designs that can work with almost any game group, I'll concern myself with publishing.

I wonder if anyone else has made a similar ultimatum to themselves. Or if anyone has just jumped in with a design that isn't solid, and has lived to tell the tale.

Do tell!

phpbbadmin
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A challenge to myself

Gil,

Wow that mirrors my own sentiments almost exactly. My New Year's resolution was to come up with 3-4 solid games (to use your terminology) this year and then try to publish (either through self publish or via a publisher) one of them in 2006. In all reality, I'd probably like to DTP at least one and sell it on an on demand basis. I'm glad you voiced your opinion, sometimes I too get sick of 'talking about designing games' and I want to get down to actually creating a high quality game, perhaps even just a nice prototype that the folks in my game group will ask to play every now and again.

Great comments, it's good to hear other people are having the same concerns/frustrations that I am.

-Michael

Anonymous
Re: A challenge to myself

IngredientX wrote:
So my challenge to myself: before I even think about pulishing, I need a few solid game designs. Not one, but at least three.

From what I hear all over, that is a good ultimatum to give yourself, but also once you have one solid game there is no harm in sending query letters to game publishers to see if they will either buy your game or even look at it.

Scurra
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A challenge to myself

Yes, fundamentally that's about what I feel about it. I've run through a lot of designs with my testing group, and - while some of them were fine, there were very few that did feel "solid": that I knew the testing time would be lengthy but it would result in a good game.
And yeah, I felt that I wasn't going to even think about publishing until I had hit three or four designs that had survived the testing process in a truly robust condition. I suspect that Seth & I jumped the gun with "All for One", which was submitted to Hippodice in a semi-robust form (it works fine, but lacks a spark - the current version may still be lacking it, but it feels more interesting.)
As it is, I've now got about three games that people have actually asked to play (which is, as designers will know, a significant step!) and a couple more that look as though they might reach that point some time this year.
In which case I might actually have to think about that "publishing" step, instead of prevaricating about it... :-)

IngredientX
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A challenge to myself

Phew, I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Sid Sackson used to playtest with family and friends. They always said they liked his prototype, but he said he could always tell whether they really enjoyed it or whether they didn't want to say anything negative.

I'm trying to learn to make that distinction myself. Much more difficult than one would expect.

Anonymous
A challenge to myself

IngredientX wrote:
Phew, I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Sid Sackson used to playtest with family and friends. They always said they liked his prototype, but he said he could always tell whether they really enjoyed it or whether they didn't want to say anything negative.

I'm trying to learn to make that distinction myself. Much more difficult than one would expect.

I think it is all about watching them during gameplay. that is the way to be able to know, and hopefully you know your friends and family well enough to know when they are having a good time.

Oh and Darke, I posted a little about the road to being a publisher. You might want to check that out since you want something to talk about besides design.

ensor
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A challenge to myself

It's good to see others set goals for the year, thanks Gil for the inspirational post.

I set the goal back in February 2004 to have two games ready to submit to Hippodice. It really pushed me, and I half met this goal by submitting one. Attending Protospiel and getting feedback was a huge inspiration for me to keep going, but, yeah, the game doesn't feel as solid as I want it to be, there's just something missing. I also started playing games once sometimes twice a week, which has helped enormously with seeing how good games work and why I don't like some others, and changed my games dramatically. My bgdf participation has been sparse after summer, as I was crossing a hurdle in my PhD work, but I hope to have more time to contribute in the GDW and elsewhere this semester.

For this year's goals, it's the same thing, two games for Hippodice, attend Protospiel, as well as submitting one to a publisher, just for the experience. Attending a Con would be nice, too. I'm playtesting some games with another Madison game designer tomorrow, and I'll make a post in the playtesting forum on the Ultra Violets progress.

Mark

jwarrend
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A challenge to myself

Interesting topic. I think Gil is quite correct that many of us put the cart very much before the horse by making plans for publication before the game is even done. Creating a game that’s good enough to publish is very, very hard, and to assume that a game will eventually get to that point is indeed naive. On the other hand, though, I don’t really think that maturity as a designer should really be assumed to have been reached when one has created X “solid” games. If you have a game that’s done and ready to submit, submit it! Don’t handcuff yourself with a silly limitation that you may never even reach. I do, however, agree that every designer should try to design several games before even beginning to think of the next step. It’s reflexive for folks to plan to self-publish the first game they design, and I think that’s a mistake. I think it’s important to practice to become a good designer, just as you wouldn’t expect to get a recording contract after just one singing lesson.

Although I know it works for some people, I also don’t really find that setting time constraints on myself is at all helpful to my design process. Usually, it just results in putting in mechanics that feel forced and end up getting changed anyway. When I’m having a problem with a design, I’m willing to put it on the back burner to wait until a solution presents itself, sometimes for years, and I don’t mind the wait. Sometimes, letting a project marinate is actually quite helpful, as I can look at it with fresh eyes after a long hiatus. I’d rather leave the game in limbo than compromise the goals for the project. I think that this is why I have relatively few all-the-way-finished designs, but also why I’m pretty happy with the ones I have finished. I also tend to have a pretty specific idea for what I want a given design to accomplish, though, and I think that I sometimes aim higher than is really realistic or productive.

That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with others setting designer goals for themselves, I just find that for myself, doing so doesn’t really improve my rate of production of “solid” games, and would take me away from the somewhat schizophrenic way I currently work on game designs. I like the flexibility to focus intently on something when it’s working well, but also to blip to other things when something isn’t working or when inspiration for one of those other projects strikes. My hope is that there’s no rush: that a good game will always find a willing publisher. Of course, several of us have seen our brilliant mechanics come out in published form in other games, so maybe I should speed things up after all...

-Jeff

Chip
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Re: A challenge to myself

I never really established a goal for the number of quality games I wanted to design while creating various games over the past several years. In all my designs, whether it was kids games or games geared towards adults, I did continually asked myself one question though. "Can I launch a company around this game?" To answer this one question, it's was necessary to ask several others, including:

Is the quality of play good?
Is there an identifiable and reachable market for the game?
Is the price point and cost structure okay?
Can I differentiate the game in the market?

I probably created a dozen games or so until I hit on the idea for Coopetition. I knew early on after formulating the original idea that this would be the game around which I'd create a company. The trick then was testing and refining, testing and refining, and so on until the game was ready for launch.

IngredientX wrote:
I've been designing games for about three years now. I can tell that I'm more experienced now because they're much more complex. Does this mean they're better? Well, they are more complex... :)

Interestingly, I've found that my games have gotten less complex over the last couple years since launching Coopetition - both from a playability standpoint, and also from a production standpoint. Stumblebum, which we just produced a few weeks ago, and the games I'm currently testing are more simple in concept and design.

"Teach us to delight in simple things." - Rudyard Kipling

Chip

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