Self-publishing vs. licensing: the pros and cons of signing over the rights to your game to a larger company (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u6K5aRvLyU

How many pre-launch followers should you have before starting a crowdfunding campaign? A Bluesky board game designers discussion:

https://bsky.app/profile/jameswallis.bsky.social/post/3mzobw5i6l22i

If you could send one game back 100 years to dramatically accelerate board game design, what would it be? A Bluesky game designers discussion:

https://bsky.app/profile/dxdydz.northsky.social/post/3mzp7k3wo2s2d

Alternatives to victory points: racing games, tug-of-war mechanics, sole survivor, and more (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4YbSh5Fx_E

How some kinds of components can be essential to gameplay in certain designs—and what that means for the designers and publishers working with them:

https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2026/11/03/material-matters-when-components-become-mechanisms-topic-discussion/

How “doing the opposite” can be a creative tactic to spark game design ideas:

https://www.mojo-nation.com/think-the-opposite-mojo-nations-deej-johnson-explores-the-creative-power-of-doing-things-differently/

Considering some ways the psychological phenomenon of loss aversion is relevant to game design (audio):

https://genesisoflegend.podbean.com/e/episode-393-loss-aversion-and-player-psychology/

Magic: The Gathering’s head designer explains why he doesn’t think Magic will run out of design space and lays out a process for building out a complex game’s mechanics (audio):

https://share.transistor.fm/s/7f69f937

A look at board game publishers’ position in the industry: how they’re set up, the types of workers they rely on, the financial math they need to make work, and more:

https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2026/10/27/small-world-the-business-behind-the-board-game-boom-topic-discussion/

The latest installment in our series on board game publishing contracts is out now! We've been running these reports for more than 10 years, and this new report focuses on how the process of signing a game has changed over the years:

https://cardboardedison.com/reports

This site lets board game designers set up feedback forms and solicit responses from playtesters:

https://meepleloop.com/

How to make your crowdfunding campaign page easy for potential backers to understand—plus a free graphic design template you can modify for your own use:

https://updates.kickstarter.com/design-for-the-scroll-how-to-make-your-kickstarter-page-easy-to-understand/

How to make the most of board game conventions as a designer (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wN6TuAwqYc

How board games can be designed—and how rulebooks can be written—to help new players understand the game:

https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2026/10/20/teaching-matters-designing-games-for-the-first-play-topic-discussion/

The math behind expected values and high-variance strategies, and the game design decisions that determine whether players are rewarded for steady progress or taking big swings:

https://gametek.substack.com/p/horse-race

Three publishers discuss how they find and serve customers, manage overhead, plan for growth, and more (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic3YQ75mRWs

It may not be that the game is unfun—here are some common reasons a publisher might reject a game they’re pitched:

https://www.dmrcreativegroup.com/post/overused-ideas-overlooked-reasons-pitches-get-rejected

A deep dive into magnetism and the many ways magnets are used in games (audio):

https://thespiel.net/node/1415

(heard while prototyping our own magnetic game, Mini Discus!)

5 questions to ask after each playtest:

https://pamwallsgamedesign.substack.com/p/5-questions-to-ask-each-playtest

Complexity in board games: what it adds and what it costs:

https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2026/10/13/costly-complexity-the-limits-of-complexity-in-board-games-topic-discussion/