Cardboard Edison’s Favorite Tips & Resources – November 2012
/Here’s our regular roundup of the most valuable tips and resources for board game designers that we’ve found over the past month.
This month’s list features advice for the design process, playtesting, game design theory, publishing and more. Enjoy!
- “I advise new game designers not to play a lot of games, but to design a lot of games. If all you ever do is see what other people have wound up with, you can never really understand what they started with and how they got there.” – James Ernest (@cheapassjames)
- “Focus. The designer should pick a goal they want to accomplish. Everything in the game should focus towards that point. It’s easier to do one or two things incredibly well than fifty things.” – Grant Rodiek (@HerrohGrant)
- “Theme matters but is mutable. Don’t let your mechanics suffer for your theme. Iterate toward symbiosis.” – Jay Treat (@jtreat3)
- “Your game begins as a rough rock. Submerge it in playtesting. It will be smoothed into its final shape.” – Daniel Solis (@DanielSolis)
- “If you test with only gamers, don’t expect it to ever go to mass market – expect it to be beloved by gamers, and that’s where you’re going to sell it. So you have to figure out ahead of time who the market is that you’re aiming for, and that’s where you test it.” – Dominic Crapuchettes (@DCrapuchettes) of North Star Games (@NorthStarGames)