March 03, 2014 March 03, 2014/ Cardboard Edison

Cardboard Edison's Favorite Tips & Resources - February 2014

March 01, 2014/ Cardboard Edison

This month’s roundup of useful tips and resources for board game designers features advice for finding your place in the industry, detailed stats behind a Kickstarter campaign, lots of thought-provoking articles about the theory behind board games, and more. Enjoy!

#industry:

“Don’t attend conventions just to sell games. Attend to network and sell yourself. Think long term. Build relationships.”–Ben Pinchback (@pinchback21)

#publishing:

Hard numbers behind a “pay what you want” Kickstarter campaign

#process:

“Designers. Expect rejection. Tempered expectations will induce persistence in seeking publication. Never give up on something you believe in.”–A.J. Porfirio (@VanRyderGames)
Geoff Engelstein (@gengelstein) joins the Game Design Round Table to discuss real-time games, designing with family, learning to play new games, and more

#playtesting:

“For a designer, honest feedback is a beautiful thing. You can’t overreact or underreact. It’s your job to digest and appropriately address.”–Ben Pinchback (@pinchback21)

#theory:

“Remember: simple is not the same as shallow. Complex is not the same as deep.”–Grant Rodiek (@HerrohGrant)
Reverse engineering gaming mechanisms
How your scoring system distributes points, and how it encourages player behavior
Replayability is more than variability
Examining depth and emergent gameplay—finding the ideal ratio of depth to complexity
Underused game formats that lie somewhere between competitive and cooperative

#rules:

Grammatical pitfalls in rulebook writing

February 28, 2014 February 28, 2014/ Cardboard Edison

Increase the utility of your game–the enjoyment players get and the conditions in which it gets to the table:

http://www.gamesprecipice.com/utility/

February 28, 2014 February 28, 2014/ Cardboard Edison

Beyond winning, what reasons might players have for playing?

http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/27816/the-hidden-assumptions-of-gamers

February 28, 2014 February 28, 2014/ Cardboard Edison

Shift designer Samuel Strick discusses designing games backwards, discovering why you love what you love, differentiating the sort of randomness you want, designing two-player games and more:

http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/27921/samuel-strick-on-shifting-provinces-and-the-art-be