Looking for a Game to be designed!!!

I'm surprised you haven't got more of a response of this, looks like the sort of thing that should have people quite keen as an opportunity to try and get something into print, foot in the door and all that. I don't have time myself to take a bash at this, but a few things leap out as likely to be helpful to those that might:

- When does the game need to be designed/tested by?

- How many players did you have in mind, particularly important from a design perspective if it needs to handle a very large number (or be only a two player game, though I hadn't got that impression).

- Is it meant to be a quick playing game with a fair bit of luck or a longer, more involved game? I'd been assuming the former, something around the 30-45 minutes mark maybe especially if you really want it aimed at all ages, definitely worth specifying though in my eyes.

- When you say you want a game accessible to all ages exactly what do you mean? I see quite a difference between a game that a family can play together that includes some somewhat complex rules adults/older kids will need to handle/explain at least initially versus something that anyone that can read should be able to pick up almost immediately. Especially important if you want a bit of depth (pardon the phrase) in the game to get a different feel for recreational fishing versus competitive versus commercial - could have some approachs be more straightforward and others more complex to cater to different types of player (though assumedly all with a reasonable chance of winning/having fun).

Hope this helps a bit/you're still checking here - I'm quite sure there's no deliberate snub intended by the lack of responses, just a forum that can be a bit slow moving sometimes :).

As one of the people who looked at the thread, then did not reply, I'll speak up. I read the requirements, balanced the amount of research I'd need to do (plus the actual game design and revisions) against the other demands for my time, and realized that I would not be able to commit to producing a high-quality product that met your specifications. Consequently, I did not reply. This probably puts me in a similar boat to Grimfinger:

I wish you the best of luck in your venture.

Designing a game where the entry level age is five years old will probably limit the cross appeal across age levels. Is the game to be aimed at children? Adults? Is it to be a family oriented game? Or, is it to be aimed at those who love fishing?

I would advise you to place obtaining a quality product ahead of meeting an artificial deadline, no matter whom you select to design the game in question. You may be pushing your luck, is my gut feeling, where the time frame in concerned. There is research, design, playtesting, refinement, prototype, and production issues, even if it is a relatively small quantity of games that you are looking to start with.

I am inclined to believe that you would definitely want to include cards as an element in the design of this game. Of course, at five years old, reading comprehension skills are going to sharply impact how much freedom that the game designer has in what to put on those cards.

If the object is to get kids hooked on fishing, while they are still very young, in the hope that their affinity for fishing will grow as they grow, then simply taking them fishing is probably going to be vastly more successful than having them play the game in question.

I doubt that kids five years old will really care very much about your product line being featured in the game. You can certainly incorporate your product line into the game, but I think that that particular aspect would be suited to an older player base.

I doubt that including all fish caught in fresh water and salt water around the USA and Canada is realistic, if keeping the selling price of the game at or beneath twenty dollars is a pretty firm design criteria. Regardless, I think that you can certainly include a wide variety of fish in the game, and keep the price in that general area or below.

Each physical component that you add to the game will cause its price to increase. One of the things that I like about cards as an element of games is that they offer the designer such a great amount of flexibility in the design stage, and on a cost-comparison basis, you can have a good many cards in a game, even as you don't bust your budget producing an end product. And, of course, both text and images can be printed on cards, so you have flexibility in that sense, also.

To convey those consequences, you must have one or more mechanisms in place. Cards would work, as would spaces on a board of some type. Consequences could be printed on either. For younger children, images will be proportionally more important than text, I think, in retaining interest in the game.

If you want to have an actual board, then I would suggest something very colorful, perhaps even comical - something to make the whole experience of fishing come across as a light-hearted, fun affair. Games are supposed to be fun, after all, aren't they?

Lots of details on a map type board can make it interesting. Having exaggerated features on the map can lend itself well to such a game, I think.

There was a similar contest posted on this site two years ago; it was an international contest held by the World Bank. Both winners were BGDF members: bluesea and me. So I think I can make a couple informed comments.

At first sight, designing a game to suit specific needs is not necessarily too different from the monthly GDS contests. You have some criteria to meet, but also a lot of room to develop your ideas. But one thing is to come up with a game idea (as in the GDS), and quite another to have a playable game. Sometimes the game will work from the first prototype, and only need minor adjustments, but most times it will take months, if not years, worth of a repeating cycle of testing and making small changes, even if the first prototype works reasonably well.

Designing a specifically themed game takes research. Often a lot of it. That means time. Giving shape to the game mechanics to turn them into something worth of prototyping might take less time than the research, at least in my experience, unless you're already familiar with the requested topic.

Once a game works, it might still take several months of hard work to produce a printer-ready version of it. If you want a quality product, you will need to test every small change to the rules or the components. That takes time.

Most game designers are just hobbyists, which means they don't have lots of time to devote to game design and playtesting, nor access to loads of playtesters. So changing the hand size or the values on the cards or whatever might take one or two weeks to be implemented and tested.

Final graphic design will probably also take several weeks to be done and approved. As will having the game printed and ready to go once you have all the art done.

What do I mean by all this?

a) Even if lots of people around here would love to have a game published, they might not want to invest a huge amount of time and effort designing a game specifically for you. A hired designer would, but from a designer standpoint, there are a lot of contests where you can enter any game you want, no need to design something specific. I won't expect 50 or 100 entries. That said, I don't think there's nothing wrong with your request; had I more available time in my hands, I would at least give it a try with a simple game.

b) Other than really easy to produce ones, I doubt you can have a game created from scratch, playtested, laid out and produced withing the expected timeframe. But maybe someone has a game ready right now that can be adapted to match your thematic needs; that could help a lot. Otherwise, as already said in this thread, you risk ending up with a half baked game.

c) Usual royalties for the designer, AFAIK, are around 5% of wholesale, which is usually around 40-60% of retail. That means your small royalty is way higher that the usual. Evidently, number of copies sold is a big factor when evaluating these numbers. In your example, if you think you can sell 500 copies, your offer is comparable to having 1500 copies sold at 5% or wholesale, which is probably reasonable for a game in the small hobby market.

I wish you good luck on this, and good luck to any BGDF designer submitting a game. I like seeing BGDF members succeed. :-)

I'll chime in regarding this subject.

First, It's great that you are asking this community to submit proposals to produce your game. When I first started this community, one of my goals was to connect people who wanted game designs created to people who could design them. So far this is working out rather well.

Second, your specifications are vague, although you've somewhat cleared them up. But I must admit I'm still a little confused. You may get better results if you lay out what you'd like in a clear and concise manner. Remember, this is a business opportunity. Some of the members here have gotten burned by people promising to publish their games, only to have nothing come of it. You might get a better response from some of these 'gunshy' individuals if you lay out exactly what your requirements are and exactly how you are planning to choose and compensate the designer, as well as who will own Intellectual Property rights of the design, and for how long.

Third, even though you have obvious experience producing fishing equipment, it is unclear as to whether you have experience publishing or distributing games. Saying you're going to do something and having the know how and resources to do it are two different things. Now, I'm not saying you are not capable of doing it, but it is not evident from your posts thus far. The last time I checked, most games were distributed through one of three giant distributors. How do you plan to compete with these distributors? Do you have experience publishing and/or distributing games? If not, perhaps you should look into the process before you offer those services to people.

Just my thoughts. Please know that I'm not trying to discourage you in any way, but just some things to think about.

-Darke

Lilfisher,

I have decided to try my hand at designing a fishing board game along the lines of what you are after. Fishing isn't my forte', but let's see if I can make anything come from the undertaking, just the same.

I have started a game journal here, if you wish to check in on it, from time to time:

http://www.bgdf.com/node/402

People say I shouldn't post my ideas lest they be stolen, but the whole purpose of this board is to encourage discourse, right? So here's what I'm thinking.

You have a board that you are forced to go round a la Life. The board should drive you from a fresh water lake into saltwater. Each square has events or options to purchase gear/insurance or whatever, also like Life. Each square also has a number 1 - 12. Each square will produce an appropriate fish (drawn from a deck of cards) if the number for that square is rolled, as in Catan. The gear you aquire will come with modifiers, that you can add or subtract to the roll. Better gear will have better/more flexible modifiers. So If my Rod, Reel and Lure each give me a +1 Modifier, and the square I sit on has a 4, I can catch a fish if 4,5,6, or 7 is rolled. Fish can then be sold for cash or kept (mounted) for Victory Points.

Maybe the saltwater areas will have impossible to reach numbers without the modifiers, and the salt water fish will be worth substantially more. There would also be a hand limit, probablly only one each of a Rod/Reel/Lure/Net or whatever.

Any suggestions?