Hi all! My name is David Taylor and I'm a co-director of online board game retailer SeriouslyBoard.co.nz.
My wife and I also run a series of board game events around different towns and cities under the name Board Games By The Bay (http://boardgamesbythebay.org.nz/). These weekend events are designed to encourage the existing gaming community to gel together better, to grow the hobby through new attendees, and also to offer designers a means by which to get additional playtesting.
In 2013, Martin Wallace will be at most of our events to playtest his upcoming designs.
Although I'm not a game designer myself - I have a few concepts but lack the time to work out how to get them onto cardboard - we do a lot of playtesting and have a genuine interest in the design process.
On a side note, I enjoy the odd bit of writing as a hobby, and have pondered if there is a way of combining a love of writing and a love of board games into some form of income. Not so much a blog or news reel, necessarily, but writing within games, whether that be rule booklets or flavour text. Does anyone have any tips on where I might go to chase such a pot of gold?
Anyhoo, that pretty much sums me up from a board gaming perspective.
Outside of board gaming, I'm a happily married man with a 2 and a half year old daughter - the light of my life - who keeps me constantly on my toes. We also have a dog and a cat and live near sunny Tauranga on the east coast of the North Island.
Hi. Yeah, SeriouslyBoard and Board Games By The Bay certainly keep us busy! (Hopefully the business [SB] will earn us enough money so we can step back from our regular day jobs!)
The writing thing is a bit of trial and error at this stage, but I'm currently toying with board game fiction. My background is of no writing qualifications but experience in sports journalism so this is very much testing the waters. My first few efforts can be found here: http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/151406/board-gaming-tales-short-story-...