Hello all. I'm new to this forum, but not to Game Design. I've been working in the video game industry for the past six years. When the economy exploded, the company I was with went down with the ship. I've done contracts on and off for a year now, and I was getting frustrated. I wanted to keep making good games, games I liked, but all the programmers I know still have work.
That's when I had a 'brilliant' idea. Make a board game! yeah! Don't need no crummy programmers for that. So I started work on one... and then I started doing research on how to actually make money on it. Daunting. You either kill yourself trying to do everything, or you get a sliver of a sliver of your sales price. Still, I have a game, I have a plan, and I'm a little crazy. Let's do it!
I would like to know, if someone could tell me, the best way to reveal / talk about my game on this site. My game is called Gladiator, and it's a tactical representation of Gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome. I've played it a few times with friends, and it's working very well so far.
So: Should I post a Game Journal, images of my board / cards / characters, blogs about my progress, or some combination thereof? I'd like to get as much response as possible. What to you guys think.
By the way, amazing site! I've been staying up 'till the wee hours, following links and staring at pics. Yawn... so happy...
I was doing mostly creative design for high-quality Flash games. On many projects I was the only designer, and would have to do all the design aspects. I started as a writer, so I'm great at character/world design, but level design, mechanics design and gameflow are all things I'm pretty good at. Links to two of my best games (in my opinion) below.
As to the digital/physical divide, I agree, they're coming together. I still love video games, and many aspects of making them, but they're not something you can make yourself unless you're a good programmer, and I couldn't program my way out of a wet paper bag.
Still, I've been thinking of ways you could mix the digital experience and the physical experience. For example, the 3DS has a developer module that allows you to 'animate' real-world objects, through a barcode-type deal printed on cards. You point the 3DS cameras at a playing card, and if it has one of these barcodes, a 3D character will appear to be 'standing' on the card, and can be animated. This would be great for many board games, and 'monster combat' CCGs like Pokemon.
Here are the links I mentionned:
[link]http://www.bikingviking.com/index.php?sec=4[/link]
[link]http://ndimedia.com/earth_rangers/portal/4_SnapAPatch/[/link]