After a long pause due to a global pandemic we are coming back to the best days in gaming and presenting our two work in progress games: Date Night & Prepper Z.
Please come join us in the playtest hall and give us your feedback on our updated versions of these games.
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?
I was recently invited to review a kickstarter page for a project that’s releasing soon. I checked out the page and then went back to comment on it and look at some other comments. The biggest issue in the comments was about the different pledge levels. The options where to pledge at $5 and then $65 and that was it. I understand you don’t want too many options – but people felt that this was too limited. Other people commented that there should be something in between so that you don’t have to go as high as the top level. I this case the top level was for the base game – what if it can’t be made for less? What do you offer people at a lower amount that makes sense?
On the one hand I love customisation and lots of options but on the other I understand that each of those has to be manufactured and shipped individually to the backer. How do you balance these?
One time at brunch the waitress asked my son how he wanted his eggs and with great enthusiasm and excitement he declared he would really like them cooked. He had a low level of expectation when it came to customisation or options.
What’s an acceptable level of customisation – If I offer a base game and then an upgraded version is that sufficient or should I offer all the options in between?
What are your expectations as far as option go? What do you think are the public’s expectations? Should the company have something between $5 and $65 to offer?
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
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
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
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
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
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
We have been steadily working away behind the scenes here. Since it is all behind the scenes it is not something we can readily show to you.
Work continues on the 5th deck for !FightCard and I hope to have a draft of that ready for Monday or Tuesday.
Take care everyone!
HK out
