Down The Rabbit Hole,
A Reflection on my Journey into Game Design, part 1,
The Delusion,
It's hard to believe that almost 12 months ago now i was scrolling through kickstarter while walking my dog that i thought. F*** me, some of this stuff has funded? How? I can make better games than this! The more i looked at different tabletop games the more inspired I got. I have since evolved as a designer (i like to think like a magicarp) but here is my story.
Although i had played many an RPG, i was relatively speaking a newcomer to boardgames, maybe 18 months under my belt in to hobby. Having played most of the gateway classics and starting to indulge into some lesser known titles and heavier games (well as heavy as my wife would allow). I had DMed and built custom worlds for RPGs more times that i could count. How hard could it be?.....
Very F****** hard actually.
Luckily for me the guy who got me into the hobby had been wanting to design a game himself and had a list of ideas a mile long. Over a few beers we bounced ideas off one another and low and behold we came up with a theme. Babies.....well parenthood, as we knew it anyway (him having recently become a father and me with a little one on the way). And not the glamorous lovey dovey stuff. The poo, the vomit, the more non pc the better. But where to from there?
After deciding on a small card game we went our separate ways and worked. Apparently we had very different ideas from the get go. I wanted to build a mechanic and apply the theme from there. He wanted to run with the theme and work out the mechanic later.
Thus the age old question 'Theme or Mechanic first?'
We decided on a set collection style with the one card in hand idea from Love Letter, but instead players would play good things like teethers and nappies on our babies and bad things like explosive diarrhoea on other peoples. It was fun, not great but hey it was a game and we had made a start. We were going to take the tabletop gaming world by storm...
Unfortunately we worked at much different paces and with both of our lives being taken over by our newborns. Our dream started to become less productive and regular meet ups of design were less frequent. Because lets face it, the time we did have, we also wanted to play games. We kept working hoping our idea would regain momentum, it didn't. We started to design other games and i started to listen to podcasts like Ludology and The Board Game Design Lab.
While our first idea didn't quite work out. My creative juices were flowing and i loved the design process. It became evident very quickly that we mostly do this for the love of design and not for the money, the power and then the women. We were doing it because dammit it was fun!
Then I found James Mathe's and Jamey Stegmaier's blogs......
My mind was blown. Taxes, Copyright law, prototypes, designer or publisher, hiring artists, contracts..... WTF?! I just wanted to design a game.
But hey, Challenge Accepted. Maybe not with our baby game, but i had a few more ideas......
That was a year ago. I have learnt a lot about the design process including entering game design contests, quotes and submitting to publishers. Keep an eye out for what happened next!
Comments
Glad to hear you know what a
Glad to hear you know what a delusion this is. There is so much to do that is not design!
I took optimizing the manufacturing piece as part of the design challenge, but the Kickstarter page alone was a HUGE amount of effort, not to mention spending two months building an email list ahead of time (which had something under a 10% conversion rate)...
Welcome to the club!
Yeah every time I start to browse Jamey Stegmaier's blog, I have to back away with a not today Satan with the amount of hard truths in that blog. Best to chip away at the process, but kudos to listening to those podcasts, they are great!
What's hard is...
Ensuring that your design is not "over-bloated" with too much content and/or elements. Sounds to me like you both designed a "simple" Set Collection game. That's good, it's a start. I can say that I started in a very similar fashion too!
My first game was a fantasy Set Collection game in which players competed to complete three (3) Quests. Thus the name "Quest Adventure Cards(tm)". It was pretty simple Set Collection, with some optional scoring for bonus points (a bit of a euro feel) and take-that cards to mess with the opposing player's game. Purple Pawn gave it a 3/10 (dull and uninteresting play).
Sure it's a game for kids — it's easy for adult gamers to consider the game not so interesting... I'd say it would be FUN for 9 to 13 year olds. The time when kids start to learn "strategy" and how to play more involved games.
So I too could have decided that a 3/10 would be the only game that I would design... Instead I persisted and continued to design "TradeWorlds". It's an amazing game, that people seem to really LIKE. And it has elements for kids, their parents and adult gamers. And we are Father Geek Approved too!
The point I am trying to make, had my very first game been the only effort I would undertake in the design realm, "TradeWorlds" would have never been a reality. And as my second (2nd) game, it shows how much I have learned in terms of design: theme, mechanics, streamlining, playtesting, rule writing, etc. All of that good stuff.
So I guess in my conclusion I would simply like to ADD is this: if you enjoy designing, keep a journal, jot down ideas to new games and works-in-progress too. Read into that journal every once and a while when you feel that you aren't making any "progress". That journal will become your reality check that: "Hey, I'm designing... just by writing down my ideas and sometimes reviewing them to see if I have something interesting or even exciting to want to prototype..."
Cheers!
Keep distance on a regular basis
I know your feel.
And some wonder why I don't go "profesional".
I heeded THE warnings done by people who experienced the ordeal. I am good at that. Learning from others.
I ignore those that don't know what they are talking about. The "start it already" kind of people.
And just to be clear
That journal will show the amount of IDEAS you may have on all kinds of different topics: be it themes, mechanics, things people like, things you dislike, a game you think is awful and could do better, etc.
Soon you'll find out that with all those pieces of information, you could have a decent "game idea" (or several) you can start to work on whatever your personal preference (theme-first or mechanics-first).
Without that journal, all you'll have is passing ideas. And some of them might be very interesting "design-wise". But if you don't write them down you can't, at a later time, REVIEW and see if: "Hey, I think some of these ideas might actually work together...!"
I write in both Notepad and in a physical journal. For me, I like to review my journal just before going to bed. Maybe I'll sit down and think of extra elements I would like to add to a WIP (Work-In-Progress)... Or just read a few pages to see if I feel as strongly I did as before (on a particular topic)...
Try it out! And then let me know if it does or doesn't help you...
Cheers!
Thanks guys
Hey all.
Thanks for the kind words and advice.
A bit of back story to this post.
I started designing over a year ago and have learnt more than i could have imagined. I have designed almost 2 dozen games some good some aweful and so broken no amount of cable ties and paper clips or glue could fix them.
The process has taught me a lot and helped my to grow as a person. I wanted to reflect on how it i evolved through this processs by writing a blog :)
I want to write about how i embarassed myself infront of big publishers, made my wife play my games thought i had a winner but had plagerised a game id never heard of and had a whole lot of fun in thhe meantime.
Quest ccg solid advice!! I have a journal full of games and a shelf full of prototypes. Carrying a notebook aroubd is essential. Never know when you're going to come up with a sweet new mechanic or concept!
Thank you guys!
I can't believe how welcoming and engaging this community is.
Not your first time, eh?
Well I don't usually "carry it around". But I have one handy and I probably got about 6 or 7 of the around my apartment... Usually when I go "digital" and maintain something on my PC, I still use the notebook for ideas and just to review some of the older ideas, just to make sure the design "sits" well.
From Part #1, I had gotten the impression that your Set Collection game was your first game — and that you had not yet moved on. But from your reply I gather you've been "storming" away and bringing ideas to life... even if for a limited lifespan.
I guess from what I gather, you're aware that most "game ideas" suck! To me, they start off super interesting as an "idea" ... but when I actually take the effort to spend time prototyping the idea... Rarely do I have a WINNER. Most of the design ideas suck.
That's not to say ALL of my ideas suck. "TradeWorlds" was a worthy design and I'm hoping "Quest Adventure Cards(tm) — Second Edition" will also be a special game. But you never know... You've got to put all the pieces together and TRY. Only then do you know if you've got a worthy concept or maybe it needs tweaking or you have to shelve it (as you already know)...
But great on you for sticking to this hobby. Designing is a tough battle at times: when you playtest with people, you don't want anyone telling you that your "baby" is ugly! LOL That's just a metaphor for when people tell you the game is bad — and you still have hopes for the design...
Again, welcome to BGDF! Feel free to share in your experiences what you've learned. It's always encouraging to others to know we all fail with many of our ideas and that only a select few are worthy of publication.
Cheers!
Thanks man. I keep my notepad
Thanks man. I keep my notepad in my work bag and the memo part of my phone is full of game ideas lol.
Im hoping to do a few entries starting from a year ago when i started designing up until now where I'm hoping to ks a game that my wife actually enjoys and wants to play.
Sometimes though you may not want to hear your baby is ugly but a good friend telling you they arwnt going to be a super model is exactly what you need.