New to the Forum

It's great to have a new member in the community...remember, everyone here started out exactly in your current position. They had unpublished ideas for a board game, so this is exactly where you need to be.

As to your specific questions, I'll take a crack at them, and more veteran BDDFites will certainly chime-in, as well.

1. Keep it simple...and more importantly, make it memorable. I'm the throes of developing a 4x Space game for a designer...in that genre, you have around a dozen worthwhile titles, including Twilight Imperium and Eclipse. Both titles evoke a sense of great exploration. Think about what you want your game to evoke and the name will come to you.

2. At this stage of the game, you want to prepare fairly polished rules, craft the pieces to play the game (make them playable; don't go overboard) and get it play-tested by a number of teams. Once you have the write-ups, you can enhance your rules (if necessary) and prepare for blind play-testing.

3. I can't speak for some of the other companies but FFG tends to work on their own games or ones in which they're heavily invested. There are a number of publishers out here and they'll identify themselves. You're in very good company of game designers, publishers, developers, artists, play-testers, etc, who want your ideas (if worthwhile) to succeed.

Hope it helps...please don't hesitate to respond here or send me a PM if you have a chance.

Cheers,
Joe