I stumbled upon the Game Crafter by accident. I thought it was neat, looked through their products, and found they could print hexagonal cards.
"Why would anyone want hexagonal cards?" I wondered.
That night as I lay in bed, I couldn't stop thinking about how to make a game out of them. I started work on my first design the next morning.
The thing is, I tend to get all kinds of ideas.
Stories, Movies, Videogames, boardgames.. and I keept walking around with them so I just have to write it down and see where I can go with it.
Usually not that far since I'm just on my own in this and I'm not too great with the technical part and tend to be better with working out elaborate characters, backgrounds and lore.
In the revised BG series, Starbuck and the others were often seen playing cards, most likely a poker-style game with what appear to be hexagonal-shaped cards.
My foray into game design began with testing a miniatures arena combat game a friend was working on. It used a synergy mechanic where each fighter would play differently depending on the other fighters they were paired with. Sadly, it was very bloated and broken. Most of the possible synergies were useless and made the viable character combos very narrow. Also, some of the fighters themselves were very unbalanced. *I dodge your biggest attack and redirect it at your ally, killing him.*
Through critiquing his game and brainstorming solutions I started coming up with and developing my own ideas.
I've also been keeping a idea/invention/business journal for a while that I call my "Entreprenhour". I used to spend an hour everyday writing whatever terrible ideas came to mind. "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" "Why has no one solved this problem yet?"
Now I mostly write out terrible game ideas, running with and iterating anything that might have potential.
Cool Among Camels – how did you know I LOVE talking about myself?!
I had a blog where I wrote about video games because I found (and still find) a lot of writing about games to be lacking. So I did that for a while, then asked myself, "Okay cool, you like to talk about games. But how hard is it to make one? Do these skills transfer?"
It was a self-imposed challenge. Having no programming skills, I decided to make a card game. This was all back in 2012, and I've learned a ton through the insane and emotionally devastating process. Turns out I knew very little about game design, and I fell into all the traps a newbie makes. But each failure brought new lessons and stronger designs and an increased toolbox to draw upon.
This stuff is not for the faint-of-heart. You have to be completely open to criticism, but I think that's an immensely valuable skill. People take themselves – and especially their work – very seriously, and it's important to listen to what others think, and cultivate an environment where people feel totally okay to critique and speak their mind. Your feelings are irrelevant.
A friend of mine commented that he was watching "Making a Murderer", when he was struck by the lack of board games about the courtroom. He and I went about exploring ways to go about creating one, and lo and behold, my first design was ready to play a week later.
Through a long history. I grew into board game designing. However, I think I started to call my hobby, a board game, about 5 years and 20 weeks ago. But it took some time for me to realized that a forum like this exists. 2 years and 34 weeks right now.
Every step in an "official direction", accelerated my experience and knowledge in how to do things. The more I come in contact with people that know what they are doing. The faster I learned about game designing.
On the other hand, I am starting to realize more and more. That my own game will forever be.... a hobby. Since day 1 when I entered this forum. But I love doing this none-the-less.
My journey started around 10 years ago when a colleague from work, who knew I had played military war games asked if I wanted to play test a game in which the premise was "What would happen if the Japanese had invaded Hawaii?"
After several plays, I had the bug, and over the course of the next few years, I added more than 30 games to my professional resume as a developer. Since then, I've worked with several designers, but I'm most appreciative to both Kristopher (Aka QuestCCG) and the Outer Limit Games Team who have included me in a designer role where I've been able to make an impact.
Cheers,
Joe
I'm studying digital game design & a programmer & I had been working on game ideas for our portfolio. One idea led to another & 30mins later I had made our first prototype. We took it around getting people to play test it the next week asking if they'd prefer pass & play on a tablet or a single player (AI) version. They all said they wanted a physical version & so began my rapid, steep learning curve about boardgame stuff. We have 100 prototypes that we take to local conventions for people to play (& buy if they want to) while we try to find a publisher.
We looked at self publishing via Kickstarter but it is an unthemed abstract game & from what we found they have a pretty low success rate.
about 2 years ago, I had just gotten into board gaming with Pandemic and 7 Wonders, and was enjoying the idea of board games as a way to break out of my introverted shell. At the same time, I was also trying to overcome an addiction, and needed something to sink my teeth into to take my mind off my cravings. I decided to make a game of my own with a friend (still unpublished), and I discovered that I loved deconstructing games and trying to come up with new ones. Since then, I've made quite a few failed games, and I just keep moving forward with new designs. Although I don't have any artistic talent/training (I can't visualize things in my head unless I draw them) I now have a creative outlet that lets me put my analytical mind to work in the late hours of the night, and it's helped me break free of my addiction!
When I was a kid, I got a game designer's kit which had several boards and various cardboard pieces of people, animals etc. I designed a few (mainly abstract) games.
Was the kit home made or did they manage to find one somewhere? Because that's a cool idea I might steal for birthday presents for my kids friends.
My introduction into "Game Design" happened when I was 35 years old. I previously had worked with another Consulting Company in the field of IT. They were the selling arm of the business, and I was one of several of their consultants.
Needless to say because of taxes (or deferred taxes), my accountant suggest that I open a "Sole Proprietorship" (Incorporation) and it would mean that my effective tax rate would go down from 50% to 21% (something like that - plus all kinds of perks like deductions, etc).
And so I did so... Over the years I accumulated a small "nest egg". And I knew that I wanted to use those funds to see if I could "make something of them".
Through an artist friend who loved Magic: The Gathering, I told him, I could also "make a game"! And so the process of designing "Quest Adventure Cards(tm)" began... This adventure continued during Comic Con where I met my "artist/illustrator" for the game. I spent some of my "nest egg" making the artwork for the game.
When it came time to manufacturing the game - I had the cards made in Canada (a local Printer). It was a BIG order for me and very costly. It ate *seriously* into my "nest egg". I had 100,000 cards printed!!!
Then I had to find a packager who sealed "boosters" as if they were candy wrappers. I went to a few businesses and one finally told me where I should go... And oddly enough it was very near to my home (at that time)! That also cost me more of my "nest egg". I had 10,000 booster packaged!!!
But at the time I was not at all concerned... I figured all I needed was to get a distribution deal with the local distributor (there is one - and everyone deals with him...) It seemed logical, but that distributor did not return my e-mails, nor phone call attempts to discuss re-selling my game. At this point in time, I had invested 2/3 my "nest egg"... And I had not much left over...
The game sold a bit online when it was available for sale - but not much. I donated 3,000 boosters to a local charity for their Christmas Baskets. I figured I'd maybe get more sale - nothing...
Oddly enough now that I am NOT selling "Quest AC", I still sometimes get e-mails about where to buy the game (since it is no longer sold online).
I had paid a "big chunk" of my "nest egg" and realized at that time there had to be other facts that I had overlooked. That is when I found this forum and met another local designer and his friends...
For my second game ("Tradewars - Homeworld"), I had to really watch my budget... Because I had limited funds left to work with. I've managed to realize this "last" project and hoping to see a return in order to break even. There are still opportunities for this game and I await the results of our online sale.
I know for a fact - my second game is GREAT compared to my FIRST. I have learned a lot about modern day games, mechanics and putting it all together. I have also realized that this is sort of the "Last Hoorah" because financially speaking, there is not much left over of the "nest egg"! :( So I hope to continue this last leg of the journey and see where it may lead.
Both games were designed during very "troubling" times for me.
I did it in the hopes of gaining some success - which was not the case because I knew nothing about how the local distribution worked... Anyhow at least I can say that I have enjoyed my design time - and it's been about 6 years now.
We'll see if my WIP ("Tradewars - Homeworld") can earn more than just "accolades"... We have a *fresh* list of designers who will be involved with generating new ideas and giving some honest feedback to help increase awareness of our game.
We will be Self-Publishing via The Game Crafter very soon.
And we have to start discussions with some publishers who may see the potential in our game - so as to lower the cost of production and be able to resell Friendly Local Game Stores in my area and around North America.
So it's been a SLOW BURN... At least I have enjoyed the process...
As I like to say: "It's an EXPENSIVE Hobby!" :P
Cheers everyone!
Note: My artist friend kept telling me that he did not understand HOW I was going to design a GAME?! He didn't know how I was going to transform the idea into an actual product (which I have done twice over!)
The horizons still look good for "Tradewars - Homeworld", we're getting some deserving attention. Our accolades are "kicking-in" so to speak! ;)
It was commercially available. Here it is on EBay. Kind of expensive though!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-1968-Game-Inventors-Kit-Board-Game-by-Selch...
Why not make your own using "The Game Crafter" (TGC). How I would design it, would be something like this:
This is just an example, but you can put together something pretty FUN and interesting...
PM me if you want to know how to "filter" for the different "Blank" products sold by TGC. You can of course design a "nice" game box with something like a nice name such "Game Designer Kit"... etc.
Cheers.
Note: You could also get "meeple stickers" but I'm not certain of the price... You could just buy the blank sticker sheet (I think).
Update:
52 x $0.09 (Poker Cards) = $4.68
5 x $0.41 (Blank Dice) = $2.05
26 x $0.14 (Flower Mats) = $3.64
1 x $0.71 (Dice Stickers) = $0.71
8 x $0.10 (Joysticks) = $0.80
8 x $0.09 (Meeples) = $0.72
1 x $6.00 (Medium Game box) = $6.00
Total = $18.60 (Under $20.00)
And it's a pretty darn good kit if I do say so! :)
Update #2: And why I would use the "Flower Mats" is because A> They are relatively inexpensive and B> They can link together pretty easily and C> They're big enough to get some details drawn on them.
I'm an artist and sotryteller who's always looking for a creative outlet. I often toyed with narratives for video games, but they never got beyond early concept stage. A couple of years ago I got into tabletop gaming as a social activity and fell in love with all the experiences people have crafted and the passion for new encounters among gamers. I wanted to be a part of that so I began designing a tabletop game. It's been fun and challenging, and I'm looking forward to continuing with my current game, plus more in the future.
Great topic. Fun conversation everyone, thanks for sharing!
My road into designing board games I guess started in college where I majored in toy design. We had a semester-long class on game design led by (as almost all of our design classes were) a Mattel designer/manager. This obviously made the focus a bit lighter and appropriate for the types of games Mattel produces, but for an entry-level design study, it worked quite well. My first design for a "family game" was a tabletop adaptation of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" complete with Drew Carey glasses. Looking back, the class was VERY short on the most important aspects of game design (like rigorous playtesting), but if nothing else it taught me the difference between designing a toy product and designing a game.
What really made me fall in love with game design more recently is a mix of the following experiences:
1. I started playing a lot of great modern games, starting (as so many do) with Catan. It opened my eyes to the fact that games had evolved into an incredibly creative medium, where the old standardized mechanics like "roll-and-move" not only didn't apply, they were outright shunned.
2. Most of what I design professionally is plastic, and much of it spends far longer in a landfill than it does being enjoyed in the hands of kids. Toys by their nature are fickle things, with huge spikes in interest followed by quick declines...then the machine starts up all over again. While I use this to try and create products that have lasting play value, it is still something that I consider often.
3. Games, at least the really good ones, have that lasting value that I most want to design into products. They also are often made of recycled or recyclable materials, and while we could get into the ills of the paper industry, It definitely has a lighter impact on the environment.
4. Games are cheap to prototype. As someone who has over $10K in toy prototypes sitting in my office that have yet to be placed with a manufacturer, I can tell you that invention is a VERY expensive proposition, with little odds of success. One hit pays for years of effort, but the costs can pile up quickly before you get that hit.
As a toy inventor, I found that games offered a very intriguing and satisfying change of pace from building mechanisms to writing them. There were enough parallels of building something, trying it out, debugging, trying again until you have something that works well...and it wouldn't cost me much more than my own time and design discipline. I can handle all the skills needed to get to a play-ready prototype before spending a penny on anything substantial, like art. This allowed me to try out a lot of things at once, and revel in the early stages of game development like theme, unique mechanics and research.
Now with the planning of my first Kickstarter, I'm able to combine all of these elements from my 15+ years in product design into my first DIY product. I've always wanted to produce something on my own, and a game just felt like the right product to go for. I wanted it to be a game for all the reasons above; relatively low cost to develop, lasting play value, something that all ages can enjoy...something that can make a big impact in a small package. Sure, it's a light party-style game, but I chose it just for that reason. It may not win any gamer awards, but average people who have never even heard of Ticket To Ride genuinely enjoy the game. I guess it's a "Mattel game" after all!
That's what got me into game design...and I don't see myself ever giving it up!
For me, I found strategy games like Catan and Dominion in college and got hooked. I started collecting, got into some TCG like Magic the gathering, got into Roleplaying games with Pathfinders, and then got into "tweaking" games, adding/removing/replacing rules to make the game different. Then, I got into re-flavoring games, making basically the same game to play with friends, but with variations like turning Hex Hex into a water-bending battle from Avatar. Then, I started realizing there were games I wanted to play that I couldn't find and started trying to design them instead of waiting for someone else to.
I usually get stuck during the creation process, but half the fun for me is just the concepts and flavors of game ideas. In a sense, I design board games for the same reason I play them. It's fun :).
about ten years ago i started playing wh40k with my younger brother. we loved it. but for me the battle rules never lived up to the hype of the fluff.
the bg for wh40k, as most know, is well developed and totally bones space marines.
so we were pretty awestruck by the potential carnage space marines should be able to wreak on the tabletop.
but nay, they dropped like flies under the barrage of game balance.
so i took it upon myself to right the wrongs wrought upon the heroes of the imperium. i rewrote the 40k rulebook and put space marines in their rightful place as dons of war.
after that i set about imagining games that included wh40k miniatures but straddled other genres, unwittingly going down the rpg path, and over the years i left the grimdark future entirely and designed and partially developed games of my own, none of which have fully ripened yet but im sure there is still time.
recently i have delved gob first into the labrynthine warrens of the boardgame underworld, drawing on so many ideas i come across in current games and applying the mechanics to themes i have penned that at the time might not even have been game concepts.
likewise i can take most real life situations and craft a mechanic around them, turning something like building car seats into a game of subterfuge and doublecrossing, making inane jobs part of a fantasy world of side missions and bonus rounds.
i love to take a random idea plucked from the ether and apply bolt on rules and limits that make it a game.
the most recent being a game crossing the bridge between cod and wow.
the idea, to see modern soldiers fight skirmish type battles with elves.
something about machinegunning wood elves to pieces satisfies me in an inexplicable way.
i took the idea, applied it to a hex based territory conquest mechanic and have no idea how it works. but thats why i started doing this and why i continue, even amid the strange looks and baffledom of my peers, there really is no limit to what we can create and no guessing how our creations will evolve.
the eternal promise of 'wouldnt it be cool if...' is my inspiration.
just the same as me and my brother used to say wouldnt it be cool if space marines could actually take on ten orks each.
My interest in board/tabletop game design begins 15 years ago when I was introduced to a game called Battletech. Shortly after that it was Warhammer ancients and Warhammer 40k by the time I was in my mid-teens. I always found some the rules in the game either too complex or too rigid and always wanted to house rule these games to the point that some of my friends and opponents suggested I just play another game instead. So why not just make my own?
Since I suck at programming I decided designing tabletop games suited me more towards my level of comprehension versus having to learn a programming language. So here I am.
Many years ago I drew mazes for fun. Added many different shapes and hearts etc within these maze drawings. I still have those maze packages to this day.
In 1984 Gauntlet for the Arcade came out and I was hooked. The coolest maze game ever and with monsters and tons of levels.
Years later in 1992 I started drawing my largest maze yet. Then got to thinking to add monsters, portals , hidden walls and passages. So it was my homage to Gauntlet, but asy own version. I almost stopped drawing during the year I started but then I said to myself,"If you stop now, you'll never know what the end productwill look like." So I kept drawing.
Two years in the making. A 13 1'2 feet long and 4 feet wide.
In 1999 I staryed to write backstories for a Ancient Fuedal Japan and China warfare type game. Fantasy storyline of course. Hand cut 60,000 graph paper poker type cards in a month. Just to massive of a game. Had tons of information.
During this time from 2001 to 2002 I came up with a Survival horror board game. Still on the shelf as it were. Maps has been drawn out, encounters etc. I did this game for the love of all things horror, zombies and my experiences with the paranormal.
I still have the information on that game to.
Then years later a golf game with cards and hand drawn golf courses and other stuff.
Then onto an abstract card game with an expansion deck.
And so forth. Etc.
It is expensive, maybe I should make my own up & print out some info from the interweb.
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