7 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Crowd Funding A Board Game

Seth Jaffee (@sedjtroll) on working with a developer and writing rules

Have auction games fallen out of favor? A Board Game Designers Forum discussion:

http://www.bgdf.com/forum/game-creation/mechanics/auctions

The theme for the March 2015 24-hour contest is “confusion”:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1329667/24-hour-contest-march-2015

Aether Magic designer Matt Worden (@MattWordenGames) on using feedback from playtesters, prototyping, player counts, working with a publisher and more:

http://www.happymittengames.com/54/

“Your first priority is making a great, fun game. Your second priority is to make it functional to test, test, test.”

— Chris Darden (@cbdarden)

Matt Riddle (@mdriddlen) and Ben Pinchback (@pinchback21) join the Building the Game podcast (@PodcastBTG) to offer advice for pitching to a publisher:

http://www.buildingthegamepodcast.com/2015/03/01/episode-144-pinchback-and-riddle/

Cardboard Edison's Favorite Tips & Resources - February 2015

This month’s roundup of useful board game design links features two more infographics from our series on licensing contracts, advice for playtesting brutally, tips from some giants in the industry and lots more.

featured:

• Pros vs. Newbs: Experience Counts When Signing a Game
• The Kickstarter Effect: Signing a Game in the Age of Crowdfunding

theory:

• The Ludology podcast discusses the use of heuristics—mental shortcuts—in board games
• Methods of creating tension
• The Meeple Syrup vidcast discusses scaling games for different player numbers
• Sources of player dissatisfaction—and suggested solutions
• “Focus on 1. Fun, 2. Decisions, 3. Interaction. If they aren’t enjoying themselves, nothing else matters.” - Matthew O’Malley

playtesting:

• How to find—or build—a game design community
• Playtesting brutally: practical advice for putting your game through the wringer
• Lessons learned from Unpub 5: preparation, feedback, teaching, making contacts and more

industry:

• At Unpub 5, Richard Launius and Mike Fitzgerald offered advice on playtesting, the design process, finding a publisher and more (starting at 1:19)

publishing:

• “Know what you’re getting into. Once you get past the thrill of expressing your creativity, you have to deal with setbacks and criticism. Making a game is fun. Publishing it is business.” - Ivan Turner

prototyping:

• “Make your prototypes look as finished as your game is.” - Daniel Solis

process:

• “Not all problems have easy, perfect solutions, and you shouldn’t be afraid to try something unusual when all the solutions are messy anyway.” - Teale Fristoe

Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.

SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole, Richard Durham, Jeff Johnston, Matthew O’Malley, Isaias Vallejo

JUNIOR INVENTORS: Stephen B Davies, Luis Lara, Behrooz Shahriari, Aidan Short, Jay Treat

ASSOCIATES: Robert Booth, Zachery Cook, Doug Levandowski, Nathan Miller, Marcel Perro

APPRENTICE: Gino Brancazio, JR Honeycutt, Brad Price

Tips for writing rules: word choice, rulebook organization, proofreading and more:

http://sedjtroll.blogspot.com/2015/03/tips-for-rules-writing.html

Board Game Design Forum’s Game Design Showdown for March 2015

Create an area-control game played with a partner or team, where partners are not allowed to communicate with each other

Deadline: March 8, 2015

http://www.bgdf.com/node/15839

How players’ associations with certain components can affect their experience of a game:

https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/not-just-bits-and-pieces-culture-praxis-and-aesthetic-in-game-design/

Methods of creating tension:

http://hyperbolegames.com/2015/02/27/great-tension/

After the Kickstarter ends: lessons on communication, manufacturing, fulfillment, shipping and more:

http://theinquisitivemeeple.com/2015/02/27/designing-meeples-after-the-kickstarter-ends/

What makes choices in games meaningful, and how games can use them to their full advantage:

http://ruddygam.es/tabletop-lessons-for-digital-designers-pt-1-meaningful-choices/

“Not all problems have easy, perfect solutions, and you shouldn’t be afraid to try something unusual when all the solutions are messy anyway.”

— Teale Fristoe (@teale)

“Don’t worry about throwing what you feel may be a dumb theme on a game, it may just work better than you think.”

— Jon Gilmour (@jongilmour)

“If you find that the current game is just frustrating, throw it in the pile and start working on something else. It’s okay to make a bad game. It’s not okay to release a bad game.”

— T.C. Petty III (@PuppyShogun)

Ignacy Trzewiczek (@trzewik) on why playtesters are liars, pitching to publishers, making beautiful prototypes and more

Advice for how many different designs you should work on at the same time

The Meeple Syrup vidcast (@MeepleSyrup) discusses print-on-demand and prototyping services such as The Game Crafter and Print & Play Productions