Getting In The Zone

Volunteering at the Playtest Zone at UK Games Expo is always a privilege and a pleasure (if one that completely wipes me out, both physically and emotionally), and I get to meet so many game designers, from folk working on their first ever design to old hands with many published games.

I had several conversations with people saying something along the lines of, "I'm working on my first game design and would like to bring it in for testing next year, do you have advice on how I can get there?" Similar things came up in the conversations each time, so I thought I'd summarise some of the points in a blog post.

This is all just like, my opinion, man.

An experiment from 10 years ago that didn't
go anywhere: musical chairs, the board game.

Just get it played

How much effort you put into building a prototype is down to you and what you enjoy doing, but the sooner you get a game played, the sooner you can start finding the problems with it and focusing on the fun parts. You don't even need a "complete" game: even if you are planning to make a huge, multiplayer 4X game, setting up enough for 2 players to play a couple of turns can at least help get things on track. If you spend months - or years - theorycrafting or creating all the content you might need for a published game, you may find yourself doing immense amounts of work that is just wasted. You'll almost certainly learn more about your game from the first 10 minutes of playing a crappy first version of it than in any amount of thinking and planning.

Don't sweat the prototype

This is related to the previous point in that, early in the process especially, if you have put a lot of effort (or money) into building a prototype, you might be less willing to make changes that could involve modifying or even scrapping the components you made. But even when it comes to public playtesting somewhere like the Playtest Zone, don't worry about it. Looking around, you see some folk with prototypes that look professionally printed, but also there are people with components that might have been printed on a home printer onto regular paper, or maybe even hand drawn components. It's all good. Sure, put in some effort to make it so that the components are decently neat and don't get it the way of playing the game, but other than that, whatever you have is awesome.

There is a piece of advice that I have heard a bunch of times, and that I often repeat: your prototype shouldn't look more finished than it is. If it looks shiny and professional, it should probably be around the final iterations; if you are in the early stages, rough and ready helps your players understand that there are a lot of changes to come, and may encourage them to be more forthright with their feedback.

Go to designer meetups

Here in the UK we are fortunate to have the Playtest UK network that runs meetups all around the country separate from the presences at various conventions, and I'm certain there are other groups around. There are other groups elsewhere in the world too. I'd really recommend going along to one of these if you can, bring along a prototype in whatever state you can, and make sure play other designers' games while you are there. Just being with other designers, seeing how they playtest their own games, and generally talking shop can be really instructive and encouraging.

I often tell people about the first time I went to a playtest meetup in London. The first testing slot had me playing a game by a designer who had, at that point, had a couple of games published, and since then has gone on to become a very well-known part of hobby game design. We were just a couple of turns in and some parts of the game were clearly not working properly, so the designer just took out a pen and modified a load of the components so we could carry on. This isn't the most exciting anecdote, but the impact on me was huge: I saw for the first time that experienced designers (or at least some of them) are OK with their games not working and with changing things on the fly. If it's OK for them, it's surely fine for me. It's just one example of how you can absorb skills just by being with other designers if you have the eyes to see.

Oh, and many of us have impostor syndrome at these sort of events, especially when we are in a room with far more experienced (and better-known) folk. It's fine. If you have designed a game, even if it doesn't work well yet, you are a game designer, and everyone you meet at this sort of event (with very few exceptions) will treat you as a valued peer. 

Nobody makes their first jump

As with everything else in this post, this is not a hard and fast rule, but the first game you make is unlikely to be commercially publishable, let alone a success. If you think about people in other creative endeavours, they will all have been learning the craft for years - decades even - before getting anywhere. Think of your favourite writer; they will have been learning to write since their early school years (sometimes before) and practising regularly until they were finally published. While you might be able to revise your first game design into a great form, don't count on it. If you are in love with that concept, don't be afraid to step aside and work on some small, simpler designs that allow you to practice the craft before going back to your main project. 

Coincidentally, while I was first trying to write this post up and attempting to find the right words, Matthew Dunstan posted a video on YouTube on developing your craft as a game designer, which covered a lot of what I have tried to say here. I'd really recommend giving that a watch - as well as all his other videos, if you have the time. His final point put me in mind of a TV show from my childhood called Why Don't You...? The show had a very catchy slogan: "Why don’t you just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?" Still applies.

Of course, there is so much that could be said, but I feel that this stuff is probably a reasonable starting point. Please do feel free to comment if there is something you would say to someone working on their first board game design.

Sen's Lens

You may have come across Sen-Foong Lim, an experienced game designer with an impressive portfolio, and part of the Ludology and Meeple Syrup teams, as well as plenty of other cool things he has done. Well, he recently shared an image titled, "Your Board Game Critique. Things I'd probably tell you if I had playtested your game", I believe initially on Facebook, but it soon started getting passed around on Twixxer, Bluesky, and I assume other bits of social media too. I gather there was a bit of pushback due to the slightly blunt language, but I was instantly taken by the truth of the document. I have heard most of the points Sen makes aimed at my own designs over the years, as well as at other people's games.

A day or two later, Sen released an updated version with slightly softened and also tightened up language, but making the same points, and I've added this version below.

I first saw the list just before a planned chat with Alex, who I am working with on The Artifact, a game project that I need to blog about again soon (though this post kinda counts). We're working through some structural ideas at the moment and trying to figure out if we are on the right path, and Sen's points proved to be a really useful starting point for discussion. We went through the list, point by point, and had a discussion about whether that criticism applied to our project. 

So, is there too much going on? Is anything detracting from the core experience? Maybe - we have a couple of elements that are currently a bit extraneous, but overall we think the game is about the level of intricacy we want.

Is the audience ill-defined? We have to admit that we're basically making a game that we'd like to play together rather than having a strongly defined target, which probably isn't great for when we get around to pitching the game.

Would the game be painful to manufacture? We don't think so - despite having been developed mostly in virtual form, it is manufacturable with a pretty standard number of cards, a few punchboard sheets for tiles, and not-that-many additional tokens (maybe wooden, maybe punchboard), plus a board, so while it won't be a budget game, it shouldn't be a problem.

...and so on. We got to identify a few things that need further thought, and had some good discussion  about some other areas that should help us move forward. We've both worked on assorted games before, and this game has been through a good few playtesting loops, so we were pretty sure we wouldn't be too far off the mark here, but it's interesting how revealing it can be to just work through some of these basic points.

If you're working on a game yourself, I'd really recommend having a look and asking yourself to answer honestly to each point: does this apply to my game?

 

Has This Idea Been Done Before?

Every week on Board Game Geek there are threads started in the game design forums which basically say, "I have an idea for a game and want to know if it has been done before."  Essentially, they don't want to waste their time developing a game that is too similar to something that is already out there, and want to add something new and original to the market.

Totally understandable.

But pointless.

Shia has the idea.  Sorry, I don't know who made this image,
but Google tells me it is labelled for reuse.
Weird how hard it is to source things sometimes.

These threads usually result in a few similar seeming games (there really is nothing new), to which the original poster responds by saying one or more of:

• "I've never heard of them" -- indicating a lack of familiarity with the hobby as a whole; this isn't necessarily a problem as everyone starts somewhere, and you don't need to know everything about games to be able to create a good game (thankfully).
• "No, those games are different to my idea because..." -- indicating that the poster didn't do a good job of explaining his idea; and this is probably largely because it is just an idea and not developed into anything tangible. The ensuing discussion is sometimes interesting.
• "Oh well, back to the drawing board" -- suggesting that this person will never finish a game, as he is too worried about doing something unique to actually get anywhere.

Game design is a skill that can be learned and developed, like any creative skill.  I am still new and inexperienced, but over the last couple of years of projects of varying sizes, including many failures and blind alleys, I have got better at it.  Getting better at game design includes being able to find different angles to take and options to explore.  I am not saying that I am a very innovative designer, but I am finding that just getting on with designs I often find at least something in each design that makes it stand out from otherwise similar games.

Which brings me to the advice that most of these threads end up with: it doesn't matter if your idea is not the most original in the world, or even if it has been done a hundred times already.  If you are asking the question, then clearly the idea is one which interests you, so just run with it and see where it takes you.  If you end up with a decent game, chances are it will be sufficiently different to other games on the market to justify its place in the world, and if it sucks and you abandon it, you should have learnt a heap along the way.  Plus, by the time you are moving on you will probably be getting more ideas to try out.

Just do it!  Somebody should make that into their company motto.