Last week, I went to Tabletop Network and BGGcon. The entire week was very positive and I feel I emerged a better designer.
The overall impression I came away with was how important player psychology is to rules/mechanism design. Sometimes the only compelling reason to change a rule is because players will be happier with it, even if it has no impact or negative impact on the overall system. I have seen this idea before, but last week really drove home how prevalent it was. Which also adds a new layer to focus on when playtesting.
I was further surprised by how many "playtests" were conducted that consisted of rules explanations and component discussion only. When you have access to designers who can see mostly how the game would play from the explanation or who you want to critique the aesthetics/UI, it makes sense to spend more time on feedback than actual gameplay. It also helps to be bad at absorbing rules, because you (I) can stand in for less experience gamers.
Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of discussion about how to improve theme integration and UI. Everyone seems to come at the problem from a different angle depending on their background and academic inclination, but only one panel danced close to visual design theory. The panel was about tempo, so I won't complain that the focus was too narrow, since I'm just happy someone was talking about rhythm at all. I think game design should be like liberal arts: the more different areas/perspectives you learn about, the stronger a designer you will be. Hopefully, design theory one day becomes a more common perspective.
I'm not sure what to do about new designers (myself included) who have good themes/concepts for a game and then pick the easiest to design (read: well trod) mechanisms as the vehicle for the game. Obviously, many new designers don't know how uninspired their gameplay is, because they haven't done the research. I'm always torn between telling them to toss the mechanism or giving them feedback to make the existing game as strong as possible in the view that this game design will likely just be a stepping stone to better future designs. I have discovered that while I might get artistically indignant ("Your game needs cool art!"), I will never be the type of playtester who leaves a new designer in tears.
On the flip side, having had a couple of my games get unsympathetically dismantled before, I would rather have my games taken apart by a designer than have them say "It's fine." My most useful playtests this week were with designers who have worked in the same genre and had strong opinions about what my game could be.
Maybe it was Gil Hova's panel about integrating theme, but a common refrain last week was a designer asking for help retheming their game. Obviously, publishers do this often and thus have some skill in it. But I did see a space for designers who are really good at theme to help other designers who haven't attracted publishers yet. Improv theatre and scene design may give me a leg up in this arena.
That's it for TTN and BGG!
The overall impression I came away with was how important player psychology is to rules/mechanism design. Sometimes the only compelling reason to change a rule is because players will be happier with it, even if it has no impact or negative impact on the overall system. I have seen this idea before, but last week really drove home how prevalent it was. Which also adds a new layer to focus on when playtesting.
I was further surprised by how many "playtests" were conducted that consisted of rules explanations and component discussion only. When you have access to designers who can see mostly how the game would play from the explanation or who you want to critique the aesthetics/UI, it makes sense to spend more time on feedback than actual gameplay. It also helps to be bad at absorbing rules, because you (I) can stand in for less experience gamers.
Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of discussion about how to improve theme integration and UI. Everyone seems to come at the problem from a different angle depending on their background and academic inclination, but only one panel danced close to visual design theory. The panel was about tempo, so I won't complain that the focus was too narrow, since I'm just happy someone was talking about rhythm at all. I think game design should be like liberal arts: the more different areas/perspectives you learn about, the stronger a designer you will be. Hopefully, design theory one day becomes a more common perspective.
I'm not sure what to do about new designers (myself included) who have good themes/concepts for a game and then pick the easiest to design (read: well trod) mechanisms as the vehicle for the game. Obviously, many new designers don't know how uninspired their gameplay is, because they haven't done the research. I'm always torn between telling them to toss the mechanism or giving them feedback to make the existing game as strong as possible in the view that this game design will likely just be a stepping stone to better future designs. I have discovered that while I might get artistically indignant ("Your game needs cool art!"), I will never be the type of playtester who leaves a new designer in tears.
On the flip side, having had a couple of my games get unsympathetically dismantled before, I would rather have my games taken apart by a designer than have them say "It's fine." My most useful playtests this week were with designers who have worked in the same genre and had strong opinions about what my game could be.
Maybe it was Gil Hova's panel about integrating theme, but a common refrain last week was a designer asking for help retheming their game. Obviously, publishers do this often and thus have some skill in it. But I did see a space for designers who are really good at theme to help other designers who haven't attracted publishers yet. Improv theatre and scene design may give me a leg up in this arena.
That's it for TTN and BGG!
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