I have recently broken my vow to not touch video game programming ever again. So I am trying to revive my wizardry legacy video game implementation.
While getting back into the code, I starting to realise things that I have not before. For example:
The work behind video games could be considered as composed of 80% production and 20% design. Why, because the design of a video game does not have to be as sharp as a board game, but on the other hand a lot of production work is required to make the game work. Since it needs to be coded to be playable.
While for board games, it's the opposite. It's 20% Production and 80% design. Board games takes much more time to design because you need a lot of testing and refinement to make the game run correctly. But when the game is working, the production consist only in building the print-outs and the rules. And sometimes a proportion of these are made by the publisher.
When I work, I generally have a variable mind set. Sometimes I am in production mode, where I just want to produce stuff, while sometime I am in a more creative mode where I want to design stuff. So I am trying to see what kind of results I am going to achieve if I mix and match video game programming and board game design. I could be able to constantly feed the need of production and design when I need it.
Maybe I should clarify my definitions, it's not that easy to define.
By production, I mean something that you need to do and know approximately the time it will take to do it. I consider programming, drawing, Prototyping and writing to be production activity. Of course there is a bit of design activity included in drawing, writing and programming. (ex: how will the rules be layout, what style of art will be used, what architecture will be used.)
In video games, when you know how the game is going to work, most of the time is put on production. In RPG, again most of the time is put on production. Dream Pod 9 said that they don't play games, and they designed tons of RPG and supplements.
By Design, I mean something you need to create that you don't know how it is going to work and have no idea how much time it will take to do. This primarily include the activity of creating and designing the mechanics, layout of a game.
This is one of the reason that board game design is done mostly through free lancing. Because a game idea can take from 1 month to 10 years to design. It's very hard for a company to finance such kind of activity. So they freelance prototype and when they accept a game, the only part left to do is production. Now they can plan ahead the cost and time it will take to produce the game much more easily.
For example, in my wizardry legacy projects, it's a video game inspired on D&D. I am going to design a rule draft and make a couple of test just to make sure that it works. But the amount of play testing required to make it work is far less than what is required for a board game that has a much tighter design. A wrong rule/value in a RPG will be less game breaking than in a board game. Also tabletop RPG tend to be more flexible and adapted by players during play. While in board games, you must play the game by the rules until the end of the game.
So the impact of badly designed mechanics/values does not have the same impact between video games, Role Playing games and board games, this is the reason why less time on design can be placed for video games.
For example, in Skyrim, there are a few mechanics that I find badly designed. For example, poisons are almost useless since they are one time use and does not have useful effects, except for paralyze. Many stones also have useless abilities. But even with these flaws, the game is playable. While in a board game, that would have given different results, it could have created a dominant strategy and break the game.