But has the BGDF community ever consider(or tried) to jointly design, produce and attempt to sell a game, together?
Just wondered if this would be helpful to BGDF and its members, sort of a give back to the forum that has helped so many of us.
Maybe a plan could be put into place to "divide" any profits that "might" occur from such an attempt. Maybe each active contributor would get x% and maybe we donate y% to the cost of running bgdf.
Just a thought....
As a matter of fact, we had a project about a year back called the collaborative design project. It kind of died out mostly but there were still a few us still working on it before the last hack killed the project for the time being.
We've discussed it in great length, but from a business stand point it's nearly impossible to sell such a project and divide the 'profits' among the designers. Too many hands in the pot so to speak. Who would get a share? If you contributed more, would you share be larger than someone else's? Etc. Etc. Such a project might be neat, but it would probably be best if it was available for free download for anyone who wished to play it.
Anyone else have thoughts on this idea?
-Darke
Ultimately, the CDP pretty much died from "too many cooks, not enough playtesters" in my opinion. However, I wouldn't mind trying it again.
Ultimately, the CDP pretty much died from "too many cooks, not enough playtesters" in my opinion. However, I wouldn't mind trying it again.
A new project or continue the old one?
I don't know. Either way I think that ultimately it will fail as different people want to do what they think is the "right" way. Again, it's tough to do without any playtesting.
Having said that, I found the stuff that I created for "MY VERSION" of Spelunker. So as far as I was concerned, "my version" was finished until I had a chance to play it!
http://home.comcast.net/~doho123/games/spelunker/1119cards.pdf
http://home.comcast.net/~doho123/games/spelunker/1119tilesandchits.pdf
Well... How could we playtest it when we hadn't even finished the rules?
Any way, was that the same version with the cool look up table? It looks different.
Did you ever get a chance to playtest your version?
-Darke
A new project or continue the old one?
I'd like to try it again, but with a new project. Hopefully we could apply what we learned about the last project and approach a new design from a completely different direction.
Last time our general design methodology was to have everyone propose ideas and then vote on which ones to accept. We discarded a lot of good ideas, and it seems to me that what we ended up with was an assortment of mechanics that nobody was entirely happy, and no real way to integrate everything into a game.
We also had lots of people pitching great ideas, but very few people doing anything else. There were a few proposed tilesets people did.
We can model it more on an open source software project. There will be one or two project leaders who decide the direction the project goes and maintain an overview of where we are as well as a list of what sub-tasks we should be working on now. Other voulenteers can claim and then do the sub-tasks that appeal to them. The subtasks would include designing mechanics as well as a prototyping, mainting the rules in progress, even meta work like maintaining the overview of where we are.
It would also probably be better to use a wiki rather than the forums to keep track of everything. Part of the problem with the forums is it was very easy to fall behind on what was going on and then very difficult to read through dozens of (often contridicting) posts to catch up to where we were.
To come in as an outsider who hadn't been working on the project from the start, it would have been almost impossible to see where we were.
Jason
The look-up table version is here:
http://home.comcast.net/~doho123/games/spelunker/
And, of course not, I never had a chance to playtest :-). of course now that the baby is 13 months old now, life is a little less hectic, and we've got a game day coming up. A prototype play session of Isla Margatira is scheduled, and maybe if I can get the time, I'll get a prototype of the Spelunker! stuff put together,too.
A Wiki for the the project might be a good idea; it would allow all the different participants to also put up their variants and rules of whatever the main project would be.
As for the argument of "well people won't agree" that's what polls are for.
That's what we thought last time. It just doesn't work because the ideas that win the polls often don't work well together. Then we put a lot of effort into integrating the ideas and the result still isn't very good.
Jason
Or ... for a different slant on events, we come up with a basic theme and/or mechanic and set up 2-3 person groups to each make a game matching the specifications ...
Hello
(First: I was not involved in the project the last time).
Rules by voting
(This could be an own thread, it is an interesting idea).
I have participated in "Rule creation" PBEM games. There were 5 starting rules (3 that could not be changed and 2 that could be changed). Each turn:
- Every player could suggest any number of new rules.
- The rules suggested in the previous turn were voted on.
- The vote result from the previous turn was presented, and the rules was in effect.
- Every contestant could vote yes or No to a rule.
The goal was to win the game.
I have also used the same mechanism in a football game (with 4 sides). After each goal, each team could suggest one new rule and the other teams voted on the rule.
It was a great way to play a game, you get funny effects, but the result could not be used for anything else.
The reason for that the result was useless, was that everyone had there own goal with the game and they did not work together.
The same thing is with this rule creation. Every member has to agree on the goal (the gametype, the theme etc) before the mechanism is started.
World creation
I am involved in a project to create a new fantasy/dark future/SF world (there is a long timeline in the game). We start with a very small setting.
We are a limited number of persons involved, each of the participants has there own goal with the result. I have at least 5 games that would benefit directly and the same number that will benefit indirectly from this project (I got a real background). The other persons have at least two games each that they get a world for. The side effect from the project is that we got ourselves the world for a RPG (and a RPG is planned) including history, religion, maps and so on…
This is another way to do the project. All members will (read must) contribute, but they can use the result as they like (You have to give some to get some).
// Johan
P.S. To be able to get somewhere, you have to have small project teams and moderators that have the power to accept or reject the suggestions (Keep on target).
I think that there's a lot of potential in collaborative design. I also think that if anyone should be able to come up with a set of mechanics that would encourage people to effectively collaborate, it would be a bunch of board game designers.
I wasn't there for the first attempt at collaborative design; thanks to everyone so far for posting information about how it went the first time. I'm sure your experience will be invaluable in arriving at a viable collaborative game-design process.
Let's figure out how to make this work.
I think that project leaders and wikis are good ideas. I also think that voting could be useful.
Voting can be an informational tool for the project leader. It also has the potential to work as a decisionmaker, but the project leader would have to handle somewhat carefully the candidate choices that the project members might vote on. The fate of any given rule would not be voted on independently. Instead, rules might be voted on like this:
Which combination of rules do you prefer, given assumptions A?
Perform a similar vote for a different set of assumptions B, then hold a final vote to decide between A and B.
I imagine that the project would start with a very, very simple seed of an idea, and possible additions to that idea would be judged on the merits of how well they interoperate with what already exists.
There will be situations where two competing groups of designers will have ideas that don't interoperate with each other, but both believe that their ideas interoperate with the initial idea. What should be done in such a scenario?
My first reaction is that the alternatives should be voted on. If no decisive majority exists, both alternatives should be allowed to independently go through some number of design iterations, with members of both factions allowed to contribute to both design candidates. Then, either the designs will be independent enough to be considered viable on their own, or as variations on the same central game- or one of the designs will end up dying as the initial supporters realize it was a dead end.
In summary- I think collaboration could work if we use the right process, and I would like to provoke further discussion of what that process should be.
[/]
I don't know. I've worked with teams before, and even the simplest project suffers from "Project bloat", where the scale and scope keep increasing, and the project eventually implodes from its own weight. Games are so complex and vaired from the start that I think such a project is doomed, no matter how interesting it might be to try. Getting it off the ground would be a game in itself, assuming people could keep their emotions in check (Ha! Good luck with that!).
One possability is the Nomic system suggested above (Google "Nomic games" to see more on this kind of thing). The problem with this is that often such a system results in nothing playable, or playable, but without the fun. Tension in gameplay is rearely created through such a process.
The next is a genetic system, where two competing rules are proposed, and everyone tries both versions. The losers of the test games get to decide if their rule version is kept. Ties result in another round of playtesting. Competing rule pairs are decided by a single person, usually with Rule A being the game as it stands, and Rule B being the game altered in some way. This is not necessarily so, as both A and B can change the game in different ways, but each must apply to the same game element. This is a huge time commitment, though it would result in well-tested rule sets.
Anyway, with the number of possible game elements involved in a board game, a group would have to be really open minded and patient to get anything out of the experience. Good Luck to everyone willing to try!
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Being the newer person to this site I was never around for the first game. I think the idea of making a game together would be neat, and then having it for download would at least get it out to the community. As for the argument of "well people won't agree" that's what polls are for.
I'm psyched!