Tell us about yourself – who are you? What do you do?

My name is Chris Renshall. I am a securities analyst by day, board game social media freak by day, publisher/designer by night and weekends. I read a lot of financial reports and news and look at spreadsheets for my day job.Because of this I have to work really hard to not make all my designs financial game.

I am lucky enough to have a job that allows me to be on social media all day while I get my day job work done at the same time. Because of that I get to spend a lot of time getting to know and chat with the great game people on twitter and I have recently jumped into the learning curve that is BGG.

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

What board games are you playing most right now?

Total designer answer coming up….prototypes. I do have a weekly group that I attend on a semi regular basis. We play a lot of Resistance and Avalon to start the evening when the large group is there. We then break up and I am trying to play as many different games as possible since the number of different games I have played is quite low.

Two games I love right now for Evolution and For Sale.

One fact that we probably don’t know about you:

I am a designer that got into gaming rather than a gamer that wanted to try their hand at design. Aidan, my co-designer, and I bought a football game (American) a couple years ago and it was terrible. We started talking about how we would improve it and then we started to write those ideas down and then we made a prototype and then we played it and it was fun. Then we thought about designing other games at which point we realized that we no idea what games were out there other than Catan. I then jumped into research and playing games. While I don’t get to play games near as much as I would like, there is a lot out there for me to play and learn.

What are you naturally good at that helps you in your work?

Project Management, Idea Generation and a natural desire to break the games I play. making games is a massive project undertaking and having the skills to organize the to do list of making a game makes the process so much easier. I don’t know where it comes from but I can get game ideas from all kinds of places. I wish i had known about game designer earlier in life. Then I could have applied all these idea generation skills earlier and been producing games already, haha. Wanting to break games really cuts down on play testing time when the game is in front of other people because we have already broken the game multiple times before we let people play it.

What are you not naturally good at, that you’ve learned to do well anyway?

Social Media, at least I think I know it well enough to function with competence.

Describe your process (or lack thereof) when making games. How do you reach your final product?

I think I will direct you to this blog post of ours. This is basically our process.

What design-related media do you consume on a regular basis?

Cardboard Edison, Building the Game (vidcast and podcast), Jamie Stegmaier Blog, Ludology Podcast, Talking Tinkerbots Podcast, Meeple Syrup, Funding the Dream Podcast….I know I am leaving some out…

(That’s plenty. Thanks! –A) 

What are some tool/programs/supplies that you wouldn’t work without?

Notebook of some kind always at the ready. My designer box of many things. Google Docs. Dropbox. Access to Twitter and YouTube, really.

 (I’m surprised that he’s the first designer to mention Dropbox. Dropbox is the best! –A)

What’s your playtesting philosophy? How often/early do you playtest?

Test as early as you can and learn how to ruin your game from the start. Test your game as you are forming the idea. Use a lot of thought experiments. I do a lot of pacing when I design games. I play out a mechanic over and over using min/max strategies to think about what would happen with the mechanic. Aidan and I playtest a lot, we don’t get to test as often as we would like in the late stages of testing.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?

Learning the logistics of this industry and trying to cut down on the time sink that is making a game. We could probably fully develop a game or two per month(physical production not included) if we have a network of reliable playtesters and we were able to do this for a living. That may sound lofty (it might not, I don’t know) but we work fast and while it may not be sustainable long term, we have a backlog of ideas that if we could focus on making games full time, we are excited at the possibilities of what we could produce as far as the number and quality of games of concerned.

Getting the people together is difficult because people have lives and we are not in a position to pay people to play our games. But this is all part of the process of becoming a company. The other big obstacle is the amount of stuff we need to learn. We still need to learn a lot about the business side of things. There is a lot to wrap our heads around and that is what I will be spending the next month or two researching.

How do you handle family/work balance?

I am lucky that my wife works later than I do, so I have 2-3 hour windows from when I get home to when she gets home where I can get a lot done in the design/blog/research departments. She is also a late sleeper on the weekends so that means Aidan and I can get together in Saturday mornings to work on what we need to work on. Not to say I have not hit bumps in the road, I am still figuring out all that is required to make the game schedule work with regular life things. It really helps that we don’t have any children (yet) but for now I am able to dedicate a lot of time to this. Hopefully I can make this my full time job before my time availability goes away.

Do you have a second job? If so, what do you do? If not, when/how did you quit your day job?

I work as a securities analyst for a hedge fund. I read a lot of financial reports and work with spreadsheets most of the day. I also read a lot of financial news.

How many hours/week do you generally devote to game design? How many to other business-related activities?

Not enough….20-30 hours per week total. Of that, I probably so 2-3 for game design. The rest is spent on research, writing, getting our name out there. Just a lot of time needs to be spent on getting to know the people, the games and all that is the board game world and making sure they get to know who we are as well.

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

I am not a movie guy, but movies have some great lines in them. Andy Dufrain said “Get busy living or get busy dying.” The movie, About Time, is a great lesson about what we do with the time we have. I don’t think I could pinpoint a moment that would qualify as the best. Just the realization that life, to me, is too short to spend watching loads of TV and doing things that have no tangible outcome.

What one piece of advice would you give aspiring game designers?

If you want to makes games for your friends and family, make you games however you see fit using whatever resources you can find and have fun with it. If you want to have any level of commercial success, designing the games is the furniture of a house you need to build. You need to build a foundation, strong walls, extra rooms for potential growth, quality plumbing and electrical systems that will last a long time. Designing games is the fun stuff at the end after the walls are plumb and leveled and all the bits in the wall are inspected and made from good parts. If you are not prepared to do A LOT of behind the scenes legwork, you will hit “the wall” (see what I did there!). I would not want a new designer to give up because they did not know the amount of work that goes into making this dream a reality.

Who would you like to see answer these questions?

The Talking Tinkerbots Crew and My co-designer Aidan, but I know most if his answers to these questions!

Ryan Laukat is the classic renaissance man. He is the founder and president of Red Raven Games, the designer and illustrator of Empires of the Void, City of Iron, Eight-Minute Empire, Eight-Minute Empire: Legends, The Ancient World, and more.

He pretty much does it all, which is something that few game designers can claim. How does he do it? Read on, dear reader: READ ON!

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

Tell us about yourself – Who are you? What do you do?

I’m a game designer, illustrator, and publisher living in Salt Lake City, Utah with my wife and two kids. I started my own publishing company, Red Raven Games, three years ago.

What tabletop games (including digital board/card games) are you playing most right now?

It seems like for the last 6 months I’ve almost exclusively been playing my next game design, War of the Void. But I did find time to get in a play of Martin Wallace’s Brass, and it’s one of my new favorites.

What are your all-time favorite tabletop games?

I love Race for the Galaxy. It’s been a big influence on me as a designer. I’m also a fan of Twilight Struggle and Tales of the Arabian Nights.

One fact that we probably don’t know about you:

When I was young, I was a boy soprano. I used to get paid to sing for all sorts of commercials. I even sang Mozart’s Queen of the Night as a solo on public television.

What are you naturally good at that helps you in your work?

When I get into a project, I’m an obsessive worker. Some days I don’t take time to eat or get dressed or shower because I’m so focused on getting a project done. I’ll start working as soon as I get up and keep going sometimes until 1 or 2 in the morning.

What are you not naturally good at, that you’ve learned to do well anyway?

I’m not a very organized person. I have a fear of paperwork and anything like it, and I tend not to keep any kind of schedule. I am very good at remembering things though, so I think that helps me get through. I rely on my wife quite a bit as well when it comes to getting the official stuff done.

Describe your process (or lack thereof) when making games. How do you reach your final product?

I come up with all sorts of game ideas all the time. My wife says it’s like a faucet I can’t turn off. Any time an idea pops into my head, I write it down and try to design the whole thing on one piece of paper. The next day I take a look at it to see if it’s worth spending more time on (most ideas get thrown in the trash at this point). If it sounds good, I make a prototype as quickly as possible and play it the same day. If it isn’t terrible, that’s when the iterating starts. I tweak the mechanics again and again until it’s just right. I like to describe it as a journey through the forest. I’ll go up one path, and it’s a dead-end, so I have to go back and try another path. That one’s a dead-end too. In fact, there are so many dead-ends that I’m just about to give up, but I try one more time and I reach a gorgeous waterfall!

And that’s when balance-playtesting starts….

What design-related media do you consume on a regular basis?

I’m a regular listener of the Ludology and Game Design Round Table podcasts. I love listening to people talk about design.

What are some tool/programs/supplies that you wouldn’t work without?

Photoshop is my best friend. I do almost everything on Photoshop, from prototyping to graphic design to painting and illustration. I also use InDesign for rulebooks. Good old sticky-back craft foam is something I couldn’t do without either.

What’s your playtesting philosophy? How often/early do you playtest?

I playtest as often as I can cajole people into doing it. In the early stages of design, I playtest mostly by myself (or sometimes with my wife). Once the game seems pretty solid, I’ll try to get it played at local game gatherings or conventions. Because I’m also the illustrator of my games, I even get a bit of the art done to entice people to play it (which means I’m pretty invested in it at that point). The third phase is when I ask for groups volunteers to print and make a copy of the game themselves and play it without me around. At that point I’m mostly focused on balance. You can see the hundreds of forum posts discussing balance for some of my designs on Boardgamegeek.com.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?

Trying to make game design a career while holding a full-time job. I had to learn patience for this one. And I’ve also had to learn to know when to take a break.

How do you handle life/family/work balance?

Red Raven takes a lot of time (because apart from running the company, I have to design and illustrate all the games). And my family is really important to me. So a lot of the time I’ve had to cut things out of my life like tv, video games, and other entertainment.

Do you have a second job? If so, what do you do? If not, when/how did you quit your day job?

I work for 3 hours a day at Cannonball Musical Instruments, a manufacturer of Trumpets, Saxophones, Clarinets, and Flutes. I’m a musical instrument hand-engraver, and I also playtest trumpets there. I used to work more hours there, but Red Raven has grown a lot this year and needs more time and attention. For about 3 years I worked full time at Cannonball and Red Raven, and it was extremely taxing on my health.

How many hours/week do you generally devote to game design? How many to other business-related activities?

I currently spend about 40 hours a week on game design or illustration. Another 10-20 hours is spent answering emails and stuff like that.

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

I don’t know if this is the best, but I like it: If someone offers you help, take it.

What one piece of advice would you give aspiring game designers?

Design as many games as you can. You get better at it the more you do it!

Who would you like to see answer these questions?

I’d like to see Alf Seegert answer these.

(Alf’s Interview is here)

Below is part 2 of the fantastic conversation we had. Check out part 1 if you haven’t already.

Now, more from Reiner Knizia on playtesting, work habits, and breaking into the industry:

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

What are some tool/programs/supplies that you wouldn’t work without?

It depends on the design. The most valuable resource is my play testers. I wouldn’t call them tools, but they are the most valuable input in this process. There’s a lot of creativity in this group. There are also two programmers in the group, so whenever we do something which is a hybrid game – partially electronic – we would usually have a PC simulation, which is a 1:1 functionality implementation of the target software. Then we would playtest with someone simulating it manually, so we could test the game on the laptop, and fine-tune things. It is really these people who bring the creativity into the process.

Otherwise, in phase one, the answer to this question is essentially nothing, because it’s just discussion with paper and pencil. In phase two, we have a special printer here in the office so we can print on cardboard and print our cards, and we do the graphics on the laptop, but that’s just normal day-to-day stuff. There’s really nothing specific.

What design-related media do you consume on a regular basis?

I don’t.

I go to the different fairs – to the Nuremburg toy fair and the Essin fair and so on – so I get a lot of impressions and a lot of input from these fairs. When important things come up, my group feeds that into me. This may be disappointing to some journalists and press people, but I have learned that the day-to-day…stuff…has no real longevity and often doesn’t have a big impact on me. It costs me more time then gives me value.

I don’t read any newspapers, I don’t watch any news – the news in the U.K. is terrible. It’s all personal disasters but no world politics, and I don’t think it’s much better in America. When I want to read more substantial stuff, I pick the right books, or at good documentaries. I also listen to a lot of books.

I have the more long-term approach: I look at things that have been worked through throughly that can give me a good background rather than the day-to-day stuff, which today is overflowing: it’s very difficult to sort the trivialities from the very good blogs.

What’s your playtesting philosophy? How often/early do you playtest?

We play every day, usually in the evenings, because the playtesters have decent jobs during the day. They’re regular groups who I see once a week, so I have a Tuesday group, a Wednesday group, a Sunday afternoon group, and so on.

One of the core challenges in designing is to not get too close to it and develop a conventional way to play it, but to make the game robust, so when the game is out in the world people can approach it from many different angles and it still works. Therefore, I think it’s important to play it with many different test groups.

I also try to stand back a little bit and see how the game develops: I could influence the game and always pull it in one direction, but that’s very counter-productive. When we test, we need to be very hard on the game, so that it develops this robustness.

There are usually 3-5 games which are very intensively tested, and they come to the table every day. I mentioned sixty drawers, and there are probably at the moment forty games, but not all of them are active. If I can’t play it once a week, the design is paused, because I can kid myself and say “I’m working on all of these”, but I can’t work on all of them, it’s impossible. But as one game is completed, others come in. It’s a natural selection process – the games that seem most promising, with the most potential, of course would be in the foreground, and would be played. This helps me avoid the risk of hanging onto a design I love even though it’s already dead.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?

I think I’ve been lucky. My game design career has gone very smoothly. I have designed games since I was 8-10 years old. I only started marketing and publishing these in my late 20s. I had a very rich source of designs, which I developed just because I loved designing and playing games: the publication was not the important thing to me initially.

I was very lucky when I started to publish – I found two publishers right away, one who wanted to publish one of my designs, and at the same time another who wanted to publish a book of my new designs. I was lucky enough after a few years to win the German Game award for Modern Art, which pushed me forward. I think I haven’t had any obstacles in my way that were overwhelming, because I’ve always seen my game designs as a hobby – I didn’t count them as work. I’ve found plenty of publishers, particularly because I decided early on that I would go worldwide, and not just concentrate on one market.

All the different cultures in the world have always been a fascinating thing for me: you get to know lots of people, and lots of different countries.

In this respect, I think I was very lucky, but I you might also say that the harder I work, the luckier I get. I worked very hard on things, but as I said, it wasn’t work for me. I think if you’re a new designer, it’s a tough world out there. The relationship between the publishers and the designers isn’t as friendly and driven by friendship as it used to be.

It’s tough today, but I also find it exciting to see how the world changes so quickly, because if you want to be innovative, then nothing is worse than a standstill. But if everything changes around you, then it’s easy to pick up new opportunities.

It’s a long process, though – I did my first fifteen years of game design without ever trying to do business, so I had a lot of background. But if you want to start right away, it’s a big challenge.

How do you handle life/family/work balance?

I handle it very simply: I have no kids, and I’m not married. My games are my kids – it’s a bit extreme, but a lot of my time is dedicated to my games. I’ve streamlined my life quite considerably. I don’t have to do the garden – I have a gardener, I have someone who looks after the maintenance of the office, I have my assistant who does much of the operational things, so I think from learning how to organize big businesses, I have organized myself so that I can concentrate on those things that I do best.

I don’t always work, but I get up very early in the morning – 4:00, 5:00 – this gives me a head-start, and that’s when my work is the strongest, and we test in the evenings. Much of the inout into my life comes from the business, but it’s not all design. If you want to be a good designer, you need to understand the production processes, you need to have the connections world-wide to serve and understand all of the markets, so I have a lot of friends all over the world, and I see them a lot because of my business travel. I find that my focus on games makes my life very rich, and it’s very enriching.

How many hours/week do you generally devote to game design? How many to other business-related activities?

That’s a difficult question, because it depends on what I’m doing. The ratio can be, for some weeks, almost 100% on operational things, and on other weeks it would be almost 80% on design. It varies a lot, which is nice and refreshing.

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

That’s a powerful question. I need a good answer for this.  I’ll come back to this question, let’s do the next one first.

What one piece of advice would you give aspiring game designers?

Get a good overview of what’s out there: what games are there, what publishers are there, what the publishers are doing, and then – work with small publishers.

If you want to start with the big publishers, it’s hopeless. Even for the very established authors, it’s very difficult to have a very fruitful relationship, and to get good input and output there. When you work with small publishers, you’re much closer to the business, because there’s a lot to learn, and you will get all of the feedback and all of the input through each stage of the design and production process. It’s a much more personally rewarding situation, and you’re really involved.

You won’t sell your first design to a big publisher – the probability is virtually nil – and even if you are lucky enough to sell it, you’re completely out of the process. You won’t learn anything.

Also, don’t be too worried about getting your design stolen, there are a lot of honest people in the world, and you can trust them.

Who would you like to see answer these questions?

There are two designers I would be very interested in hearing the answers, but you will will not be able to get them. Sid Sackson and Alex Randolph – I knew Alex Randolph very well, so I would know many of his answers. But as for the old masters of game design, they have a lot to teach us, and to get the answers from them, we need to look into their books.

We still have one question open, yes?

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

I’m not sure if I would say that this was the best advice that I’ve ever received, but one of the strongest experiences I have made is if something bad happens to you, have the ambition to say “I will turn this around, I will turn this situation into something that in hindsight will be one of the best things that ever happened to me”. It’s like the frog in the water: when you get thrown in a very hot water, you jump out, and you get to look back and say “now I’m in a better situation”.

It makes you very robust and resilient, because when you go through this a number of times in your life, You learn that yes, you can do this again. It makes you more optimistic, and less fearful of what might happen.

 

Reiner Knizia needs no introduction. As the most prolific game designer in the world today, you’ve almost certainly encountered his games, of which there are many. During our conversation, I was struck with not only how kind and funny he is, but also how much wisdom he’s amassed over the years, wisdom that he was more than willing to share with me.

And now I’m going to share it with you. 

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

Tell us about yourself – Who are you? What do you do?

This is my third life. My first life was at university where I really enjoyed teaching, studying, and researching mathematics. My second life was in banking and I.T., where you work for the big company, get big responsibilities, and also get involved in big politics, which I never enjoyed. My last job was running a big mortgage company here in the U.K., with about 300 people working there.

Then I decided to jump into my third life – it’s been quite a while ago now – to do games. Of course I’ve done games on the side all the time – they’ve always been my love and my hobby – then I got braver and had some successes, and I knew that I wanted to do this. Now I’m a full-time game designer.

What tabletop games (including digital board/card games) are you playing most right now?

Two answers: I’m playing every day, because designing games is essentially experiencing the fun of games, therefore [it’s important to be] playing them. But whenever I have an opportunity to play, I play my new designs. There are sixty drawers in my office, and most of them are filled with new designs, so there are lots of ‘monkeys’, as I call them, who want to be fed. This means that I rarely play other people’s games. I do play them, and my play testers bring new designs they think are remarkable, and we look at them – but that’s not the normal day-to-day business.

One fact that we probably don’t know about you:

I’m a thief. When I fly in airplanes, I steal the cutlery. I have a big collection of cutlery from the different airlines. And I’m running organized crime, because I ask other people to steal for me when they fly on certain planes. I have several hundred collectible pieces now. Of course, now we’ve stolen all of it, because the airlines have run out of cutlery, and they give you plastic instead of the metal ones.

(I want to be part of a Reiner Knizia crime ring! –A)

What are you naturally good at that helps you in your work?

That’s a very difficult question. I think every game designer has his or her own strengths – some people come from the graphics side, some people come from the storytelling side – I think I come from the scientific side. Mathematics help me create models, and my perfectionism helps me really test everything in detail.

But calling it a strength is a dangerous thing, because as soon as you call something a strength, you’re bound to overdo it – and then you turn your strength into a weakness. What I have learned over time is to not rely on one strength, and not to have one fixed methodology when designing games. Designing games is not a science where you have a specific method that you always repeat. As a designer, my ambition is to create something new and innovative every time, and it’s been my experience that I should start with something new and innovative – a new character, a new technology, a new material – because, although there’s no guarantee, that’s my best chance to come up with something innovative at the end, and not trample along the same path all the time.

So, in a way, what I’ve learned is to be wary of my strengths.

What are you not naturally good at, that you’ve learned to do well anyway?

It’s funny – some people criticize my games for being abstract and not very thematic, and I’ve learned to be careful with my models, which in the past usually started from the thematic motivation, so I don’t forget to communicate the theme.

The theme would be there, but I would very much bring it down to its bones – its essentials. I could still see the theme and interpret a lot of the actions, but sometimes the communication process to the publisher and the players causes the theme to be lost, so that players no longer know how to interpret the individual actions. I’m now putting more emphasis on communicating the theme how I see it. That’s a challenge, because I do have a scientific approach: I don’t like to tell a vast story with lots of details, or make players read long, complicated rules. [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=”@andhegames”]I try to make games with very few principles, so they’re natural to play.[/inlinetweet] Once you understand the basic principles, you can almost derive what to do in various situations. But this does mean that the rules are short, and you’ve got to be careful that you don’t lose the theme as you condense the rules.

Do you generally approach a game from a thematic or mechanical angle?

In the early days, I usually started from the theme: I’d have a theme that really fascinated me, and then I’d try to transfer that theme into a game system. Even when people though that the theme is missing, it was the starting point, as we’ve just discussed. But now I try to avoid this – I’m essentially trying to feel uncomfortable in the design process, because as long as I walk along the comfortable path, the innovation is not as strong as when I’m uncomfortable.

I was very uncomfortable when I did The Lord of the Rings, because you want to be true to the story and the spirit of the book, and you know that all of the fans have a certain viewpoint: therefore you must be a hobbit; therefor you cannot compete with each other; therefore you need to cooperate with each other; one thing leads to another, and suddenly you end up having to make a cooperative game that goes through this enormously big book, a game that you can play in an hour. That was an uncomfortable situation in the positive sense: it forced me to think in a new way, and therefore come up with something innovative.

Describe your process (or lack thereof) when making games. How do you reach your final product?

Essentially there are three stages: there is the initial stage where there is nothing material yet: it’s closing your eyes and looking into the new world, and trying to have all the different aspects of the game flow together. This very often would [take place] in discussions. I have a good dozen people who are very experienced players in my core playtesting group; we have a lot of discussions, particularly when a new theme or a new challenge comes on the table. This brings the best out for the design.

We really don’t start implementing things until we have a very clear idea about how the game should look. Of course, in your mind it always works wonderfully well, and then your first prototype shows you reality.

In the second phase, which is a much, much longer phase, you make a prototype, and quite a number of games die after the first prototype. You think something will work, but then you realize that there are certain flaws, so we cut our losses, and that’s fine. The disasters are when you try to push it and push it, and you spend many, many days on the design, and then in the end you have to give up.

Otherwise, it’s just the normal process of selection and finding out what works. Assuming that the idea is feasible, then what follows is a very long play testing process. We play every day, and initially between the play testing sessions there’s a lot of rework, and radical changes from one session to another. This converges more and more into a stable situation, where we then do the fine-tuning, where there’s not much to do in between sessions. We change a few parameters, a few values, and if we don’t have any more ideas on how to change it, and we still believe the game is good, then we enter the third phase.

In the third phase, I leave the game for a month or two, so that I get a bit of a distance to it, and then we play it again once or twice. We just did this last night with a game that we just kind of finished in August. We looked at it, and we saw that it was still absolutely fine. Then we make a very nice prototype with very nice materials, and we have a ruleset which is written for the publisher, not for the public, because the publishers have their own style, and then we present it to the publisher.

. . .

Read part 2 here!

Tell us about yourself – who are you? What do you do?

My name’s Anthony Conta, and I’m the Founder of Urban Island Games, LLC. Urban Island Games is a digital/tabletop game design studio located in New York City that focuses on interactive games – we like games where everyone’s engaged, not just in the world of the games we create, but also in its mechanics, its aesthetic, and its overall experience.

 

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

What tabletop games (including digital) are you playing most right now?

I am IN LOVE with Sentinels of the Multiverse, but I’m obsessed with card games, so stuff like Magic: the Gathering, Legendary, and a lot of other deck building games.

Digitally, I’m playing Binding of Issac, and Smash Brothers just came out (my favorite game series of all time), so I’m kinda preoccupied between those right now.

What are your all-time favorite tabletop games?

In no order: Magic: the Gathering, Sentinels of the Multiverse, The Duke, Legendary.

One fact that we probably don’t know about you:

I proposed to my now fiancee with the first game that we made together – Funemployed. I applied to be her “Husband”, and thankfully, I got the job!

(Major geek cred there – way to go! –A)

What are you naturally good at that helps you in your work?

Putting myself in other peoples’ shoes; it lets me think about the next step ahead in game theory. I’m patient while working on a project, which allows me to give games/projects the time they need for development. I’m also decent at talking to people about what I love, so my passion for gaming shows through in my work and in my discussion of that work.

What are you not naturally good at, that you’ve learned to do well anyway?

I’m a little impulsive sometimes when reacting to news, so I can respond a bit too quickly to something without giving it the full amount of thought it needs. I can go really, really fast, which isn’t always the best. I just need to apply the patience I have for design to responding to emails/news.

Describe your process (or lack thereof) when making games. How do you reach your final product?

I analyze other games that I love, ask myself why they rock, then ask what I dislike. I then wonder why those things are there (is it intentional) and if eliminating/changing them can make the game better. Sometimes, it can, and sometimes, it can’t.

We reach our final product with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots (and lots) of iteration –the best game design comes from iteration. And even after the tons of playtesting we do, we still test – it’s actually something we should probably curtail sooner in the process (but the testing is SO beneficial!).

What design-related media do you consume on a regular basis?

I play games – every type of game I can find. I find that they’re really good inspiration (and I get to call it “research”!).

What are some tool/programs/supplies that you wouldn’t work without?

Paper, my computer, an iPad, a pen, cards, dice.

What’s your playtesting philosophy? How often/early do you playtest?

Do it. Do it some more. Then, when you think your game is good, keep doing it for another year. I like to start the process as soon as I think of a mechanic. The sooner you’re testing, the sooner you can move on to testing more.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?

When to stop playtesting (not sure how to solve that one); how to find an artist that can work faster than one piece of art a month (a huge problem we had for an unannounced game that we didn’t solve), how to fix some of our mechanics (we generally scrap them, but some tweaks have worked, which we solved through iteration).

How do you handle family/work balance?

I work with my fiancee, and it’s something we’re learning to balance as we grow old together.

Do you have a second job? If so, what do you do? If not, when/how did you quit your day job?

Yes; I’m a tutor. I tutor early education chess (3-7 year olds, playing chess – slightly mind blowing) and I tutor academic subjects/standardized tests.

How many hours/week do you generally devote to game design? How many to other business-related activities?

Game design? Not as many as I’d like these days. Between starting a family, my tutoring gigs, and managing Urban Island Games, it’s not as much game design as I used to. I’d say we’re looking at 20+ hours a week on design/management.

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

The concept of reframing one’s perspectives – a changing of lenses, if you will. For example, look at a game you love, and look at an element of it you hate. Why is that element there? Why did the designers put it there? I guarantee that it was (probably) intentional; ask yourself why.

What one piece of advice would you give aspiring game designers?

Playtest. But that should be apparent from reading this article. The real piece of advice I’d give is that you should really consider different perspectives. It’ll improve your design, let you think about other people’s reactions/actions to your product (in and outside of the game), and you may find more balance in life. Think outside of yourself and reframe your perspective, if only for a few minutes.

Who would you like to see answer these questions?

More designers (not just game designers).

Kim Vandenbroucke is the creator of The Game Aisle, and a self-proclaimed Brainy Chick – a title that may be an understatement. Kim is an intelligent person who doesn’t just think – she acts on those thoughts, and the result is a flurry of activity that makes the world a better place. She blogs, reviews games, is active on social media, finds time to do brainstorming/consulting work at Brainy Chick Inc., and – oh, yeah – makes lots of great games. She’s worked with organizations like Mattel, Hasbro, Winning Moves, and Cranium, and she’s designed a wide variety of games, among them Scattergories Categories, Cheese Louise, and Marco’s Polos.

Wow.

Basically, she gets stuff done, faster and better than most of us could dream.

Here’s how she does it:

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

 

Tell us about yourself – who are you? What do you do?

I’m Kim Vandenbroucke, a toy and game inventor – as well as an industry blogger – based in Chicago.  And since my name is impossibly long, I’m sometimes better known as just @TheGameAisle.

What board games are you playing most right now?

It’s always changing.  The big ones this past week: Carcassonne, backgammon, and Can’t Stop.

One fact that we probably don’t know about you:

I don’t eat any sea creatures. (It’s a smell/texture thing.)

What are you naturally good at that helps you in your work?

I don’t like to work on one thing for too long.  Some people might say it’s giving up, but I prefer to think of it as more of a positive.  I tend to put things that aren’t working on the backburner and let them simmer instead of polishing them and trying to make them work the way they are.  I’m far more likely to set something aside than try to force a bad design to work.

What are you not naturally good at, that you’ve learned to do well anyway?

Coming up with great game names.

Unless I start with an awesome name and design a game around it, I really have to spend a bit of brainpower and time on coming up with a name that shines.

Describe your process (or lack thereof) when making games. How do you reach your final product?

I only license games so I never have to reach the “final product,” it’s more of a “final prototype.”  I start with an idea (name, theme, game play concept – whatever has attracted my attention) and I do a quick mock-up and play it on my own or with another person.  If I think it has promise it moves to the next step of being refined and polished, if not then it either dies or ends up in the “let it simmer” pile and I may revisit it when I have an idea of how to fix it.

What design-related media do you consume on a regular basis?

I’m a huge consumer of media – it’s probably one of my biggest downfalls.  I look at everything from high-end packaging design websites to industry newsletters to viral pet videos.  I guess I feel that you never know what is going to inspire you so I try to look at a huge variety of stuff.

What are some tool/programs/supplies that you wouldn’t work without?

Programs: Adobe Illustrator and Alias Sketchbook Pro

Tools: Wacom Cintiq, X-Acto knife (I hate scissors)

Supplies: Post-it Notes

(Yeah, once you’ve used X-acto, there’s no going back -A)

What’s your playtesting philosophy? How often/early do you playtest?

I playtest as soon as possible, and I’ll be honest, I’ve made some shoddy looking prototypes.  I’ll take whatever scraps I can find to make the first one, as there’s no sense in wasting time or money on something that might not work they way I thought it would.  After that it’s “playtest as needed” and some need a lot more love and finesse than others.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?

Self-editing I think is the biggest obstacle.  There are times I think something is too simple or silly to show to a client and then I see what’s new in their line and I think, “wow, my silly little game was way more fun!”  Still working on overcoming this one.

How do you handle life or family/work balance?

My work schedule is very flexible most of the year, but pre-ChiTAG or New York Toy Fair it’s all-consuming.  I think it’s key to make time for the things that are important, and to plan the rest of the fun around my busy times of year.  Also the weekends don’t mean that much to me – I’m happy taking a Tuesday off if that makes more sense than not working on a Sunday.

Do you have a second job? If so, what do you do? If not, when/how did you quit your day job?

I sort of have a second job.  I do development projects within the toy/game business and I also do brainstorming work outside of the toy/game world.  My first job out of college was at a toy/game invention firm and I just continued on my own when they went out of business, so I never really had a “day job” to quit.

How many hours/week do you generally devote to game design? How many to other business-related activities?

This changes week to week so there’s really no answer.

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

I’m drawing a blank here, but one piece of business advice I do take to heart is “presentation is everything.”   No one wants to see a prototype with ketchup on it or read rules that look like they’ve been run over by a truck.

What one piece of advice would you give aspiring game designers?

Have a backup.  If that’s regular freelance work, a part time job, or a sugar daddy – whatever it is, just make sure you have enough money to keep the power on and ramen in the pantry.  It’s really hard to come up with creative ideas and take bold chances when you’re worried about money.

Who would you like to see answer these questions?

Sid Sackson – but since that would take a séance, I think it’s probably not going to happen.

(I’ll have to get out my ouija board. -A)

Jamey Stegmaier has blown my mind more times than I can count – even with my socks off. His incredibly helpful, detailed, step-by-step guide to being a Kickstarter god(my hyperbole, not his) is must-reading for anyone interested in the business of game design. Jamey doesn’t just run hugely successful Kickstarters, write one of the most useful blogs on the internet, write books, and run an amazing business  – he also designs games, such as Viticulture and Euphoria. He told me how he does it:

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

Tell us about yourself – who are you? What do you do?

I’m Jamey Stegmaier, president of Stonemaier Games in St. Louis, Missouri. I’m a game designer, publisher, and author.

What board games (including digital) are you playing most right now?

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of Kickstarted games, so I’ve been trying to play them all the first time–I haven’t been getting many repeat plays of games. The most recent published game I played was a Japanese game called Owacon that was pretty awesome.

One fact that we probably don’t know about you:

Unless you have really good sources, you don’t know that I’m having leftover Thai food for dinner tonight after going out to eat for lunch today. I love leftovers, and I also love curry.

What are you naturally good at that helps you in your work?

Most of my skills come as a result of practice and experiences…I’m not sure if I’m innately good at any of them. Okay, here’s one: Empathy. I think I naturally have a high level of empathy. I still expect a lot from people – especially if I’m paying them – but I empathize a lot with people, and I think it leads to very strong relationships with customers.

What are you not naturally good at, that you’ve learned to do well anyway?

I’m not good at mastering (or even getting to an intermediate level) of certain types of software that would be incredibly helpful to know, like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I use InDesign and I’m comfortable with it because I’ve used it so often for the last few years, but I wish I could master it. Perhaps I’m too old to learn such things (that sounds like a lame excuse, doesn’t it?)

Describe your process (or lack thereof) when making games. How do you reach your final product?

I brainstorm – mostly by myself on paper but also with my business partner – essentially writing the construct of a game over and over until I think I have something viable and interesting. Then I type out the rules. Next I make a prototype and test it once, either by myself or with other people (it depends on the game). Usually that weeds out a lot of games – dozens of games have reached that step but not proceeded. If I think it’s worth pursuing, it’s a lot of playtesting and revising, playtesting and revising, until the game is fun. Then it’s more playtesting and revising (in my group and with blind playtesters) until the game is balanced.

What design-related media do you consume on a regular basis?

I read hundreds of game-related blogs, listen to dozens of game-related podcasts, and watch dozens of game-related YouTube channels. I couldn’t even begin to list them here, but the ones I generally recommend to people because they aggregate tons of blogs are Cardboard Edison and Today in Board Games.

What are some tool/programs/supplies that you wouldn’t work without?

Pencil and paper, Excel, InDesign, Google Docs, and Trello. There’s a more extensive list here.

What’s your playtesting philosophy? How often/early do you playtest?

If I can, I try to playtest solo before subjecting other people to a game. Sometimes it’s not possible, like in a large-group social game. After a decent solo playthrough, I try to play with my business partner a few times to see if the idea is viable. Then I launch into full playtest mode with friends and locals until the game is fun, then I turn to blind playtesters around the world. My philosophy is to playtest early and often, as a game will never play on the table the same way it does in my head.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?

The biggest obstacle I continue to face is time. Time is such a limited resource. As Stonemaier has grown, I’ve tried to delegate when possible, and I’ve learned to balance my time better and say no to certain things that aren’t a good use of my time. But I definitely still have a long way to go.

How do you handle family/work balance?

Mostly by not having a family! I’m single. I’ve dated on and off the last couple of years, but my primary focus has been on Stonemaier.

Do you have a second job? If so, what do you do? If not, when/how did you quit your day job?

I did have a full-time day job up until about a year ago (December 2013), but at that point I was working two full-time jobs (that job – director of operations at a nonprofit – and Stonemaier). There’s a full post about the process of quitting here, but basically after the Euphoria Kickstarter, which raised over $300k, I went down to 4 days a week at my day job, then I told my boss I was moving on in November. I stayed on for another month to help with the transition, and that was it! I made sure I had plenty of money in the bank (personal savings) so I had a buffer to survive on for a while in case Stonemaier didn’t work out.

How many hours/week do you generally devote to game design? How many to other business-related activities?

I work 70-80 hours a week. I would say that I spend about 10 hours on game design unless I’m fully immersed in a project, then it’s more like 30. The rest of the time is spent on other business-related activities.

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

When in doubt, say thank you. (Basically, if you wonder if you should thank someone for something, just thank them. It can’t hurt to thank them, but it can hurt to not thank them.)

What one piece of advice would you give aspiring game designers?

I really should have a stock answer for this, should I? 🙂 But I don’t…I’ll have to think about it for a minute.

Okay, I would recommend that aspiring game designers play a wide variety of games. Play the games you know you’ll enjoy, and also play games in other categories that you know less about. I’ve learned so much from playing non-Euro games even though I’m a Euro gamer at heart.

Who would you like to see answer these questions?

Ryan Laukat of Red Raven Games. I’m impressed with the rate at which he releases his designs.

(Here’s Ryan’s Interview!)

Gil Hova is the head of Formal Ferret Games, the designer of such titles as Bad Medicine, Battle Merchants, and Prolix, and an incredibly nice guy – which I can tell even though I only know him through the internets. We’ll get to game design (Gil was incredibly generous with information), but first things first: He’s the proud owner of two adorable fuzzy ferrets, and he sent me a picture:

Awwwww. Just look at them. I just wanna pet them and hold their little tiny paws and let them sleep on my chest…erm… back to game design. I apologize, for a moment I was contemplating converting this website into a ferret fan site.

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

 

Tell us about yourself – who are you? What do you do?

I’m a game designer living in Jersey City, New Jersey (just across the water from New York City) with my girlfriend Carrie and two cuddly ferrets. I’m in a transitionary period right now; I’ll be leaving my computer programming job at the end of November in order to do freelance work. I can’t get away with doing game design full-time yet, but my goal is to have a more flexible schedule so I can devote more time to designing, publishing, and coding games.

What board games are you playing most right now?

My favorite kinds of board games are heavy strategy Euros, so right now, games like Global Mogul and Kohle & Kolonie are getting lots of play. I just got my copy of Panamax, and I’ve played someone else’s copy of the game twice, but not my own yet. Looking forward to it!

But the games I’ve played most frequently in the last few weeks have been, of course, my own prototypes. I’m lucky enough to be able to test about once a week. It’s improved my designs considerably from when I was only able to test once a month.

One fact that we probably don’t know about you:

I used to work in film as a sound editor. My big claim to fame was working on the first two Pokemon movies. My name is in the credits and everything!  (This makes Gil one of the coolest guys on the planet, in my book. -A) 

I used to enjoy film back them, but I’ve never been into seeing movies ever since I got back into games. I guess I’d rather have control over my own story’s outcome.

What are you naturally good at that helps you in your work?

I’ve played games my whole life, and I’ve always been fascinated by their underlying systems. So I’ve developed a really quick, intuitive understanding of game systems and how they work.

One thing I’m naturally good at that has hindered my work: I like writing, drama, and a well-crafted story, and I majored in creative writing at school. But game design is not storytelling. You are not creating a narrative with your game; you’re giving players an opportunity to create their own narrative. As Eric Zimmerman so aptly puts it, games are not stories, they’re grammar.

What are you not naturally good at, that you’ve learned to do well anyway?

People. It’s a common gamer thing. I was very poorly socialized as a kid, so I had to learn how to talk to people in my late teens and twenties. Games helped me tremendously by imposing structure over a social endeavor.

I used to be a tremendous introvert, and in some ways, I still am. But people tell me that I come alive when I’m around games; my eyes just light up and I can’t contain my enthusiasm. I become strangely extroverted.

Describe your process (or lack thereof) when making games. How do you reach your final product?

The most important part of game design is playtesting. Constant, relentless, iterative playtesting. Every single part of the game has to be battle-tested, every part has to justify its existence. If some element of the game doesn’t contribute somehow to meaningful player choice or the overall player experience, it’s out.

That results in some harsh playtester feedback and difficult decisions, but it’s part of the territory. This is not an activity for the thin-skinned. And it’s worth it when I come out with a game that’s robust, resilient, and tremendously fun to play in any group.

What design-related media do you consume on a regular basis?

• I love the board game design community on Twitter, and I’m usually talking there at @gilhova. I read blog posts by folks like Daniel Solis, Kevin Nunn, and now you! (Didn’t I tell you he was nice? Thank you, Gil! -A)

• I love BoardGameGeek, and even though I don’t post there as much as I used to, I still stay on top of what people are talking about.

• I haven’t posted on /r/tabletopgamedesign (Reddit) in a while, but I’d like to start doing that again soon.

• I would love to listen to some more podcasts as well; I like what I’ve heard from Ludology, Cardboard Jungle, and On Board Games. (I was lucky enough to guest on Ludology once, and it was a blast!)

What are some tool/programs/supplies that you wouldn’t work without?

This is going to be a little techie, but: my favorite Secret Board Game Design Tool is FileMaker Pro. It’s a simple relational database program that has better graphic design features (like rotating text fields) than Microsoft Access.

Relational databases are awesome to do early-stage game design in. You can use table relationships to hold values or images across many cards in just one field. Change that one field, and you change it everywhere in the game. Much easier than doing it piecemeal. And I finally got around to getting the Adobe creative suite, so once I have numbers solidified, I can export my data as a CSV into InDesign, and that’s a very straightforward path to work in.

I’m going to start working in the digital space in December, so I’m very excited about picking up the Unity platform. I’m already pretty comfortable in C#, so it’s going to be a fun transition.

Finally: Google Docs is amazing for early-stage rulebooks. It’s so incredible to get instant feedback from my peers every time I have something for review.

What’s your playtesting philosophy? How often/early do you playtest?

Like I said before: playtesting must be constant, relentless, and iterative. I am not a fan of refining the idea or components to a game before the first playtest.

I like to bring a plain-looking prototype to the table early on, because I have no idea where the game is going to go. Game design is not a field for auteurs; it’s something where you have to study how people are reacting to the game, and if it is achieving the feelings you want. You’re not telling a story; you’re giving people the tools with which to tell their own stories. That’s a lot harder, and requires a lot more flexibility on the designer’s end.

There’s a well-meaning initiative called National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon) that challenges people to “make” a game in one month. And that would be fine, except that the way they frame it, they want you to write the rules, make the components, and then play it once, and then you’re “done”.

Except you’re not done, not even close. This is as close to game design as selecting a font is to writing a novel. The difficult grind of making a game is not coming up with the initial idea, it’s the constant, relentless, and iterative playtesting. All the interesting stuff happens after that first playtest!

I know some people who do NaGaDeMon to get unblocked on their early-stage ideas, and that’s the only real good use for it. But personally, I’ve never felt crunched for ideas; it’s always the iterations that are difficult for me.

So I would hesitate to recommend NaGaDeMon to new game designers. It teaches you to sweat over things like card layout and rulebook formatting before the first playtest, and that is awful game design technique.

As a result, I’ve done is set up my own challenge in response. It’s called 4P, and it happens every January. Its challenge is different: you must playtest the same game idea four times in one month, incorporating the last playtest’s feedback into the next test. It’s a crazy pace for people who have things like full-time jobs and families (i.e. many game designers), but it will teach you good game design habits, and it will also hopefully get you to meet other game designers in your area. It’s amazing how much you will improve as a designer by giving other designers feedback.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?

I am an awful artist. I can barely draw a stick figure. My layout skills have improved to the point that I can present information somewhat painlessly, but I’m certainly not good at it yet.

Do you have a second job? If so, what do you do? If not, when/how did you quit your day job?

In a month, I will be between jobs. I’m not doing games full-time, but I’m working to maybe make that possible one day. In the meantime, I can at least arrange my life so my time is more flexible, and I’m able to do things like attend conventions as a vendor and run Kickstarter campaigns without worrying about vacation days, missing work deadlines, and having to choose between emergency off-hours support and time-sensitive game design work.

How do you handle family/life/work balance?

That’s so tricky! I’ve effectively been working two jobs for some time now. I’m hoping that my new life will promote a little more balance, but November alone will be insane for me, as I prep my party game Bad Medicine for a February Kickstarter launch with weekly playtesting and graphic design, harden my strategy game with more playtesting, prepare a game design seminar for Metatopia in New Jersey, run a Battle Merchants play-to-win tournament for BGG.CON in Dallas, and hold demos for Battle Merchants at game stores in Connecticut and Washington, DC.

Carrie has been amazingly supportive through all this. Her father and uncle both write professionally, so she understands the need to devote time to the creative drive. I am endlessly thankful that she’s a part of my life.

How many hours/week do you generally devote to game design? How many to other business-related activities?

I’m usually doing more business-ish things like self-promotion about 5-10 hours a week. I get maybe 2-5 hours a week of actual game design in, and then I spend about 5-10 hours a week playtesting.

Board games are finally getting to a point that video games and RPGs hit a few years ago, where it’s no longer an insane risk to self-publish. It’s still an enormous amount of work, yes, and it still takes a remarkable amount of time, money, and effort. But it’s no longer unreasonable. Just as an indie video game designer can release her game on Steam, and an indie RPG designer can release his game via PDF, an indie board game designer (which, to me, means a designer who self-publishes) can release her game using services like Kickstarter, Panda, Amazon Multichannel Fulfillment, and Impressions. It’s still a huge amount of work, money, and risk, but it’s no longer an insanely huge amount of work, money, and risk. The barriers have dropped enough so that it’s realistic for a designer, with considerable effort, to release his own professional-looking game.

I’m not a fan of paranormal romance personally, but there’s something Amanda Hocking once wrote on her blog that really stuck with me. She’s one of the first writers to really take off on the Kindle, so she was an example of a new kind of artistic entrepreneur: self-published, self-marketed, self-made. But she also wrote this:

I don’t think people really grasp how much work I do. I think there is this very big misconception that I was like, “Hey, paranormal is pretty hot right now,” and then I spent a weekend smashing out some words, threw it up online, and woke up the next day with a million dollars in my bank account.

 

This is literally years of work you’re seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn’t writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me.

 

As I enter the world of the self-publisher, I really see what she means. I spend a lot of time doing game design work that is not game design. It’s promotion, or research, or business planning. It’s all necessary, and I can see why someone like Jamey Stegmeier (who’s as similar a success story to Hocking as they come) works 10-hour days, even though he only releases about one game a year.

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

One of the things about not being well-socialized is that I never really had a role model to look up to. But one thing I figured out:  I don’t have to do what society expects of me.

I don’t mean basic things, like “don’t kill other people” or “wear pants when you go out in public.” That stuff, I have to do, no matter what. I mean more subtle things, like “if you don’t go to your senior prom, you will regret it for the rest of your life,” or “you will not be taken seriously as an adult if you don’t drink alcohol,” or “your life doesn’t have any meaning unless you have kids.” There are things about myself that I’m more secure and happy about now that I’ve accepted them as part of my nature, even if they’re different from everyone else.

I wish someone had given me that advice, and that I didn’t have to figure it out for myself. And it seems silly putting it into words. It’s not really advice per se; it’s more of a feeling that I had to live through in order to grok it. But once I did, I got a lot happier in life, I felt more in touch with myself, and I’m doing things I never would have been able to had I not been listening to my true nature.

What one piece of advice would you give aspiring game designers?

• Ideas are overrated. Don’t get attached to them. People don’t play ideas, they play games. Turn your idea into a game, get it onto the table, watch it crash and burn (which it will; that’s the nature of most early-stage games), then fix it and get it back on the table.

• Give yourself license to suck. Your early prototypes are going to be awful. Find early-stage playtesters (probably other designers) who don’t mind playing broken games, and keep hammering on that prototype. Question everything about the game, even that clever mechanism you built the game around. Especially the clever mechanism you built the game around.

• Forget about built-in talent. Everybody is awful at anything they try the first time, and game design is no exception. The more time you spend being awful at game design, the sooner you will find yourself no longer being awful.

• Make sure your skin is thick. Not so thick that you disregard playtest feedback, but enough so that you don’t treat your games like darlings that are to be cuddled and protected. Because after they go through the cauldron of playtester feedback, they will be rejected by publishers, ignored by con attendees, complained about within internet forums, and posted onto trade and auction GeekLists. That applies to all games, good and bad. So don’t think the harshness ever stops!

• Finally: playtest other people’s designs. It’s the best game design education you can have, because you will get to see what makes other games fail. That will teach you how to spot failures in your game more quickly.

I guess that was four pieces of advice.

(Five, by my count. 😉 Good stuff, isn’t it? –A)

Who would you like to see answer these questions?

I already called out Jamey Stegmeier. He’s been a huge inspiration for me, so I’d love to see him be a part of this!

(Jamey’s Interview is here! -A)

I met Matt Leacock at the Cocktail Party known as Twitter. He’s the designer of some of the best co-op games in the world, including Pandemic, Forbidden Island, and Forbidden Desert – all fantastic games that should be a part of any game collection. I wanted to know how he got so much done, and what techniques, abilities, and tools contributed to his success.

Here’s what he told me.

This post has affiliate links, which directly support Andhegames.com at no extra cost to you. If you have any questions about anything recommended, let me know. – Andrew

 

Tell us about yourself – who are you? What do you do?

I’m a game designer living in Sunnyvale, California.

If you could bring one board game to a desert island with you, which would it be (assuming that you had people/monkeys/loneliness-induced-hallucinations to play it with)?

I get one pass per interview, right? Pass. I can’t single out one and whatever it was would get ruined from being overplayed I think.

What is been most instrumental to your success?

The really great network support I have in the board game community—publishers and players.

One fact that we probably don’t know about you:

One of my molars came in backwards. True story!

What are you naturally good at that helps you in your work?

Simplifying things.

What are you not naturally good at, that you’ve learned to do well anyway?

I was a terrible, terrible rule writer when I stared. I’m much better now, but still lean heavily on others on the final edit.

Describe your process (or lack thereof) when making games. How do you reach your final product?

Sketch, goof off, do stupid stuff. Wait six months. Sketch, design, test, refine. Prototype, test, refine. Write, test, listen, observe, refine. And then you’re about 80% done with only 80% more to go.

What design-related media do you consume on a regular basis?

Less these days. I used to consume it by the truckload on subjects ranging from print design, visual interface design, and user-experience design. These days I’m usually too busy making stuff.

What are some tool/programs/supplies that you wouldn’t work without?

Adobe Illustrator, Sococo (my virtual office), and Google Drive.

What’s your playtesting philosophy? How often/early do you playtest?

I start simply with just myself, trying to find the core engine of the game. I gradually extend the circle out to include friends and family, then friends of friends, then strangers. All the while, the fidelity of the prototype increases as opportunities for change decrease as I narrow down on the final design. I often ship games out and ask testers to video record their sessions so I can analyze them later as a fly on the wall.

What are some of the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in your work, and how have you overcome them?

Breaking into the business was tricky at first. I tried to sell my first games in the year 2000. I broke into the hobby with Pandemic in 2008. Like writing or poetry, I think, perhaps, you need to make a lot of bad games before you can make a great one.

How do you handle family/work/life balance?

I work from home and have been enjoying the fact that this makes for a flexible schedule. I’m able to bring the kids in for doctor appointments and be around for home repairs while my spouse works out of her office.

Do you have a second job? If so, what do you do? If not, when/how did you quit your day job?

I started designing games full time in July 2014. Prior to that I was the Chief Designer at Sococo and specialized in user experiences for community and communications software.

How many hours/week do you generally devote to game design? How many to other business-related activities?

Probably about 80% design, 20% overhead. I’m guessing I’m working about 30-35 hours per week on games.

What’s the best advice about life that you’ve ever received?

My mom always told me to do what I love, and that the money will follow. That worked for me—but I also think there’s a good degree of luck involved.

What one piece of advice would you give aspiring game designers?

Show your work to as many other people as you can. Listen and observe them as they play and don’t interrupt them.

Who would you like to see answer these questions?

I’d love to hear more about how Reiner Knizia approaches the above.

(Here’s the interview with Mr. Knizia!  -A)