More than a score at DevCon 4

On Saturday I attended the fourth mini-conference known  as BG Dev Con, hosted in Enfield (those of us not from London regard it as part of London, about which I gather we are incorrect!) by Bez Shahriari and Andy Yangou. I missed last year's event, but attended the first two and had a great time at both.  The key to this event is that, while it is a gathering comprising mostly game designers (from unpublished rookies to grizzled veterans with many published titles), with a few other folk with compatible interests, there is no playtesting allowed. The day is focused on talking and sharing experience.

About 2/3 of the attendees. Thanks to Dave Wetherall (of the Guild of Good Games) for the pic.

For me, the heart of the event is that everyone is encouraged to get up and speak, if only to introduce themselves for two minutes, and most of the rest of the day is shortish talks (many only around 10 minutes) on a huge variety of subjects, not all of which are obvious at first. This year we had a couple of different perspectives on art, a talk about using games in language teaching, another on the mechanics of parcel delivery services, some thoughts on the design of freeform LARPs, and a comparison of game design with the scientific method.

There were planned sessions of speed designing/concepting and some parallel discussions, but these didn't occur as the group was relatively small (I made it 24 of us) and everyone wanted to stick together rather than split the party. This resulted in some of the planned longer talks being sped up so that they could be fitted in, meaning that we lost a little detail, but the day kept up its high tempo.

Of course, this frantic pace gets very tiring, but there were several breaks of about 15 minutes (as well as the hour-ish for lunch) giving everyone a chance to grab refreshments, take their ease, and chat about the matters discussed so far.  This seemed to work very well.

So, overall an exhausting day with a lot to think about and a great opportunity to get to know a group of reasonably-like-minded people a load better -- and make some new friends along the way.  There is another run of the meet planned for mid-August next year (dates to be confirmed), but I'll be along again if I am able.  Thanks to everyone involved for a great day.

Talking Shop in Enfield

After the success of the initial "BG Dev Con" last August, hosts Andy and Bez arranged another for the Saturday of the Easter weekend.  The choice of date meant that fewer people were able to attend, but there were still twenty-something of us there and many great conversations were had.

This was an event focusing on all aspects of game design, with anyone with any interest in the field welcomed, and the agenda pretty much led by the interests of the attendees.  On arrival, there was a generous allocation of time for coffee, snacks, chat, and a "getting to know you" puzzle before the programme started for real.

About 2/3 of the attendees at the end of the day (several had left and a couple
were out of the room at this point).  Thanks to Bez for the pic.

As last time, the real business of the day kicked off with a series of microtalks, this time with everyone in attendance taking the floor for two or three minutes to introduce themselves.  Some basically just did the introduction, while others gave a piece of advice or a quick outline of some topic of interest to them as a conversation starter.  No time was allocated for questions, so this zipped along at quite a speed until we hit lunch, when all those introductions suddenly exploded into conversations around the place.

The next session kicked off with a general discussion about self-publishing, or more generally being a small scale publisher.  There was some great advice about what to do and, just as importantly, what not to do, and the real takeaway for me was the range of approaches and the understanding that while some people are great at publishing games, others are just not cut out for it and don't enjoy it.  It's fine either way, but the key is to recognise your own strengths.

We then moved on into a series of short-ish talks (mostly around 10 minutes), including such diverse topics as using mobile apps within boardgames, history and development of wargames, and an eye-opening talk by Hamish MacPherson about using choreographic techniques and notations (yes, dance choreography) to make activities that are a form of game, though of a different style to those discussed by the rest of us.  I gave a talk here about the 24 hour game design contests I occasionally take part in, and once again seem to have brought my slides on media that wasn't recognised by the "house" computer, so I mostly had to bumble through without.  Need to plan better in future.

During the next break we had one of the BG Dev Con signature happenings, the "redistribution of objects", which is a bit like a raffle where everyone is guaranteed to win a few times.  The idea is that attendees are encouraged to bring three things that are either games or game-related, so books, game components, etc, are all OK.  These are all piled up on a table and everyone takes it in turn to pick one of the objects until they are all gone -- or nearly gone, at least!  I ended up with a couple of small games and a bag of pleasingly chunky wooden bird shapes which I now feel I need to use to create a game.

The final session of the day had a talk from Mike Nudd about the development of the card game Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, which I used to play a fair bit in the mid-to-late 90's.  Despite the game having been out of print for some time, it seems there is a thriving community that has been producing print and play expansions for years, which is very cool.

We then moved on to a discussion on relationships with publishers, led by Adam Porter and a load of anonymised anecdotes about his experiences which were funny, inspiring and terrifying in equal measures, but made it clear that most game publishers are just normal people trying to do a job and sometimes you have a good experience with them, and sometimes less so.  Adam's experiences were expanded on by several other people who had had published games, and for a newbie like me this was a great way to demystify the whole process of pitching games and negotiating contracts.

There was meant to be a slot at the end about collaborating with other designers, and this happened but was very much truncated due to the previous activity prompting so much discussion.  There was time for a few helpful tips though, and a couple of requests for design input on projects.  One interesting suggestion, from session leader Matt Dunstan, was that there could be some sort of a collaboration marketplace set up for Playtest UK members to help facilitate matching people up with potential design partners.  This is just an idea at the moment and may not work out, but it's certainly an interesting one.

So, that was my day.  I stayed around for a while after the close of proceedings and a group of us ended up having a couple of games of The Resistance, which was a lot of fun and a welcome little release.  Then it was the drive home.

Thanks to Bez and Andy for organising another great event, and to everyone else whose contributions made the day so enjoyable.  There is another of these meets planned for August.  I don't have the date yet, but if I can make it, I will.

Talking and Improving Knowledge

I've just had a big weekend.  On Sunday it was another Playtest UK meetup, which I'll write about later, but Saturday featured something special: the snappily titled, "Convention to talk about Board Game Design and improve our knowledge", which ended up on Twitter with the hashtag #BGDevCon.

This event took place thanks to the efforts of Bez Shahriari and Andy Yiangou, building largely on the Playtest UK network.  I didn't do a head count, but there were between 25 and 30 attendees, with a wide variety of backgrounds and skills, but all with the common interest of tabletop game design and development.  While many of the attendees meet at other times for playtesting sessions, the rule for the day was that there was to be no playing of prototypes until after the end of the scheduled programme.  We would just be talking and listening for the day.

I seem to do weird things with my hands when giving a talk.
Thanks to Matthew Dunstan for the pic.

The doors opened, and for the first hour or so there was an opportunity for chat, grabbing a drink and a biscuit, and to work through a "getting to know you" puzzle that Bez had prepared, which was an amusing little diversion to get us to find out snippets of trivia about each other in order to crack a code.  With that done, we assembled in the main meeting room and got into a series of 5 minute microtalks given by about half of the attendees.

Subjects for the microtalks varied widely.  I gave a very quick (and somewhat gabbled) look at nanDECK, the software I find very useful for creating prototype cards, but other folks were talking about things like Kickstarter (from a couple of different perspectives), graphic design in games and the way it seems to be underused, and experiences with pitching games to publishers.  One of the attendees, Matt Evans from Creaking Shelves, has already written up a good summary of the microtalks, though he misses out his own talk, which was very helpful advice on getting reviewers to look at your game.

The microtalks were, for me, the highlight of an excellent day, giving a good idea of the breadth of interests within the room.  The pace was really kept going, and the lack of time for questions on the talks worked very much in the meeting's favour, as the session was followed by lunch, which quickly burst into discussion as groups formed up to discuss the various subjects introduced during the morning.  I really hope that future events, if they happen, also use a microtalk session like this.

In the afternoon there were longer talks, with associated discussions: again, a couple on various aspects of Kickstarter, one on the past, present and future of Playtest UK, and one on some of the design decisions that led to the creation of the Really Rather Good game Waggledance.

We then split into a couple (or was it three?) of groups for smaller discussions.  The group I was in was led by psychologist Christian Nica, who presented some of his thoughts on how we can use psychological principles to examine the development of boardgames and challenged us to think about how we design games in the context of these ideas.  We didn't have enough time to fully explore this subject, but there was some really interesting chat about interaction, trust, uncertainty, skills, and more.  I would have been more than happy with another hour in this group.

Finally, the day was rounded off with some thoughts on the subject of collaborative game design from Matthew Dunstan, himself a serial collaborator, and an opportunity for us to discuss some ideas within the group to see if there were any potential teams in the room.  I wouldn't be surprised if one or two collaborations emerge from that session.

So this isn't really the most insightful write-up of an event, but hopefully I have managed to communicate my enthusiasm for the event.  This was the first time that I have really been able to talk shop with so many game designers (and others) or in such depth, and it felt good.  It also felt great that, as a relative newbie, I was still welcomed as a peer and my input listened to with as much respect as the seasoned, published designers in attendance.  There is a real sense of community at events like this, and it is a real honour to be becoming part of it.  Hopefully there will be more of these -- if there are, I will do my very best to be there.