Gen Con Playtests 2018

Posted on by PJ Parent

Just a quick post to tell everyone about our playtests at Gen Con this year.  We’ll be at the First Exposure Playtest Hall  (I know not the best website….) also have a look at the Gen Con Page

Our tentative times right now are –

Thu 2PM-4PM: Road Rage 4 players (general) a tile placement racing game
Fri 4PM-6PM: Road Rage 4 players (general) a tile placement racing game
Fri 8PM-10PM: Date Night 6 players (3 couples) a couples party game
Sat 8PM-10PM: Date Night 6 players (3 couples) a couples party game

We’re getting the games and all our marketing material ready right now – any suggestions?

 

Promotion

Posted on by PJ Parent

One of the takeaways from our first Gen Con was – finish the thing. But with that very powerful order they added the advice that our first thing should be an easier and more simple thing to manufacture.  We’re doing that.  We’re starting with Fight Card! (which has only cards, a box and rules – which may be printed on cards).  It’s a simple to manufacture game, but there are lots of parts to finishing the thing.  One part of finishing the thing is building an audience.

This is the hard part for us.  The hard part of self-promotion.  The hard part of building an audience.  The game idea and the prototype came easy (reality it was bouncing around my head for over a year and then months in development and way to much playtesting but we’ll call it easy).  The hours and hours of playtesting and developing other decks to flesh out the game where also fairly easy.  Easy in the sense that we could do it in isolation all on our own.  The hard part is the part that requires promoting ourselves to other people.  It requires that we convince and sell other people on ourselves and our game – make them interested in the game we’re making and in us as people.  That’s a much harder thing.

For the first thing (probably many things) that we finish; we’re trying to keep everything simple.  Simple to manufacture and simple to explain to gamers and non-gamers.  We’re going to try to do the promotion with a level of simplicity as well.  We’re not sure how that will work or how long we’ll be able to stick with it but we’ll try.  So how are we hoping to pull this off?  No idea.  For me – I’d like to sit down and play the game with everyone.  Have a conversation.  How long will it take us to travel to enough conventions to build an audience big enough to get the game made?   If you could only do one thing – what simple thing would you do to promote yourself that doesn’t fall too far into the sales pitch?  Or should I just ask – when can we meet for a game?

PS – we’ll be at Gen Con this year and would love to meet and sit down for a game or two.

PJ

Testing/Prototyping Course Part 5 Principles

Posted on by PJ Parent

First go check out part four or start at part one

There was a lot of material in the course and I won’t go over all of it but I will end with a few of the prototyping principles we talked about:

1.       Embrace the beginners mind – make sure people who have never seen the game (or any game) can pick it up and use it quickly

2.       Don’t fall in love with your first ideas – be willing to change everything and anything

3.       Expose your work early – seek criticism and improve based on comments (repeat)

4.       Learn faster by failing early and often (and cheaply)

Are you playtesting something right now?

Do you have a printable/downloadable version of your game?

As always – let me know

PJ

Testing/Prototyping Course Part 4 Feedback

Posted on by PJ Parent

First go check out part three or start at part one

The fun part of the course for me was delivering the prototype and getting feedback.  Giving and receiving criticism are difficult to do.  For me though the material of the course was easy as I wasn’t invested in in like I might be if this is my game design.  The two feedback mechanisms that were discussed:

Ritual Dissent –                  you present your prototype in a few minutes (5 in our case) and then you turn your back to the group as they work with it and only give negative feedback.  You write notes like crazy but don’t turn around or interact with the reviewers. (and yes I think this is a card title in several Cthulhu games)

Unknown Name –            this method was the opposite – you present your prototype and they give only positive feedback as you all interact with it and ask questions.  This was easier in that you can interact with the people directly.  (and yes I know I had one job of getting the name ….and I failed – we’ll use Ritual Consent…… or maybe not!)

Both of these could be helpful for developers and testing.  The important takeaway for me was that most people don’t want to give negative feedback to your face. Having some way they can give negative feedback anonymously or without seeing the impact of each negative comment might allow for more negative comments – which might make for a better game.  The other part was that the feedback is organised.  It’s done in all positive and all negative groups and not just a huge dump of both.  This might help provide some of both – so you don’t walk away thinking it’s all bad (or all good).

The Bamboozle Brothers have written a great article about feedback –

 https://inspirationtopublication.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/step-12-honest-feedback-honestly/

Has anyone done a form for feedback?

Let me know
Comment on this and then go read Part 5

PJ

Testing/Prototyping Course Part 3 Levels of Prototypes

Posted on by PJ Parent

First go check out part two or start at part one

They covered levels of prototypes specific to industry design – think solutions to problems, but for game design I think the first two are what designers use with themselves or their design team.  The third level is what we would view as a prototype and the fourth is more what I think about when you are looking to provide a demo to a company when you want to sell your game to them.

We’re going to post some of our early creations when we start the design process.  Do others do this?  Do people worry about others stealing their ideas?  Or borrowing the best parts of them?

Let me know
Comment on this and then go read Part 4

PJ

Testing/Prototyping Course Part 2 Test Cards

Posted on by PJ Parent

First start at part one

We talked about test cards – cards that spell out what you are testing and how it will show as a success or not –

We believe that….

To verify that we will do ……

We will measure……

We are right if ……..

These could be useful in the game deign – for example –

We believe that this game does a really good job of letting players experience the buildup (hoarding) of cash in banking and real estate

To verify that we will keep track of the amount of cash they collect and keep at the end of the game

We will measure how much cash they spend vs. how much they keep

We are right if they have saved up the most (and brag about it).

This idea can help clarify if the game is doing what you want it to do or what you think it does.

 

As a designer, do you check to see what the game does?

Do you check to see how well it does that?

Comment on this and then go read part three

PJ

Testing/Prototyping Course Part 1 Early Description Not Matching the Final Product?

Posted on by PJ Parent

In my day job I get to go on training – when a course came up on testing and prototyping I signed up.  There was lots of great material.  I’ve broken it into different parts but the first:

Does the description of the early product (possibly in a blog post) create an expectation that’s met by your playtest prototype?  For games – you want to change the game as you develop it – because of that your initial description might no longer fit.  Do you go back and change your original description?  Do you leave it and risk the issue of someone buying the game based not on what it is but on how it was originally described?  Has this happened to anyone? (If so let us know in the comments below)  What do people think?  I’m tempted to leave the initial description but to add a note to it to say the game has changed/evolved and it’s now more like (whatever it’s now like …..)

What do you guys think – is it a nonissue?

Link to Part 2: here

PJ

Books About Game Design

Posted on by PJ Parent

I’m sure practice and physical application (making stuff) is the best way to learn game design but reading about it can certainly help.  There are multiple learning styles and I think I benefit from using all of them but this post is just on books.  I’m starting out in game design so as I read more I’ll come back and update this.  Now obviously I’m only posting this because I really just want to know what you’re reading.  

Yes my focus when I started to think of this was books on game design but I will mention that I read Jamey Stegmaier’s book A Crowdfunder’s Strategy Guide: Build a Better Business by Building Community and thought it was a great resource for crowdfunding with a lot of information on the table top gaming industry. (go read his blog too – but this post is still about books!).

I read a lot – it takes an hour to get to my day job on the bus so I have time to read.  Adding game design books to my pile is easy to do.  Good or bad, well written or not I can at least start reading them.  If you have less time to read or are trying to get a degree (like HK) and have a huge list of stuff you have to read then you might want to be more selective.

I started my search with the following list – http://www.leagueofgamemakers.com/a-game-designers-library-14-books-you-should-read/  I would also look through all the comments.

So far I’ve read – Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success by Aaron Dignan – not specifically about game design but rather about bringing games behavior into your daily life.  It actually has tons of game ideas and we all really want more game in our lives.

I read The Game Inventor’s Guidebook by Brian Tinsman which gives great history and oversite of the industry but I did find it a bit dated.

The next book on game design I read will be The Kobold’s Guide to Board Game Design and I’ll let you know when I update this post…..

Books are expensive so to help with that I buy from www.abebooks.com where I can get many of these titles for less than $20 shipped to my door.  Fair warning – when you find a huge pile of really cheap books with free shipping – now you have to read them.

The next book I buy will be Reality is Broken but what other suggestions do you have?

So what are you reading?