SELF-SABOTAGE and Board Game Design
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- If effort was all it took, we’d all be millionaires. This video is a cautionary tale for board game designers.
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The Adam in Wales: Board Game Designer Journal is available worldwide, via Amazon's print on demand service.
You can also purchase a downloadable PDF of the journal from Drive Thru RPG a the following link: www.drivethrur...
To purchase on Amazon, use the links below.
IF NOT LISTED BELOW, search on your local Amazon for Adam in Wales: Board Game Designer Journal.
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The journal provides a multitude of reflective tools to help you develop as a tabletop game designer. This is not a playtesting journal. That is to say, the journal is not focused on one specific game or project. It is focused on you. You are the project.
The journal is broken down into logs, with prompts to guide your reflections.
You will be guided to reflect on:
- Your own definition of success
- Your gaming preferences and those of the market
- Games you have played and what you learned from them
- The people who support you in game design
- How you support other designers
- Your design ethos
- Your goals and ambitions
The journal contains a selection of tools to help you analyse your prototypes in development.
- The Hook Generator - to help you create concepts which will catch attention
- The DARE Model - to help you prioritise your ideas
- The Ladder Model - to help you determine how engaging your game is
- The Idea : Execution Matrix - to help you determine how likely your game is to achieve commercial success
- Player Journey Maps - to help you identify the pain points in your games
These tools are all based off of models and matrices developed and discussed on the Adam in Wales CZcams Channel. If you would like more information about any of these topics, there is a huge amount of information within that channel.
Great video! Enjoyable story- (your acting background was definitely showing!) throughout the story the red flags 🚩 kept going up -but the designer wasn’t paying attention- I often post to the “get rich quick videos” my favorite quote “if hard work made one wealthy- Coal miners would drive Lamborghinis” - hard work in game design is complex, requires communication, listening, reworking, and lots of patience!
Thanks! Great quote!!
The Gaming Universe is organized into three distinct layers: those, who play games and have fun, those who design games (which is not always so much fun apparently) and those who decide, which game designs are good enough to launch them to the broad market.
Probably the longest intro in the whole history of CZcams 😁
Missing the target is costly, fail fast is the key.
Haha. Yeah, when I was editing I thought “hmmm… this is running a little long…”
...but it was the right length, even so.@@AdaminWales
Dude this is so spot on! I see so many designers getting in way too deep, driven entirely by their own ego. Glad you're saying these things publically!
I really like this story to highlight the common mistakes that many first time designers make. However, I don't think the term self-sabotage applies here though and is more just signs of inexperience and mistakes made.
Yup... pretty spot on. You spying on me? Lol
Haha. I’m sure this doesn’t describe you!!! If it does, well… hopefully there are some tips to work on here :)
@@AdaminWales I didn't fail flat on my face, but I did a lot of those things w my first TTRPG. W my first boardgame, I've found a publisher because yeah, designing isn't businessing and business isn't designing. But I am brimming over with ideas, so I may jump over the Crowdfunding cliff again. Keep coming with the tips!
Oh the sadness of this tale! I've had a measure of success over many years, but this story still rings true for me!
Yes, I’ve met many of these designers over the years - and I’ve never got myself in as deep as the designer in the story - but I’ve certainly made a number of these mistakes!
I hope my project is not failing like you amazingly depicted ^^ haha, such a great video and summary!
Brutal story, but very accurate. Downloaded a pdf copy of your book and am enjoying it, even after just a few pages.
Well done Adam.
Thanks Craig - glad you’re enjoying the journal!
Some excellent advice as always. Can imagine a lot of designer heads quietly nodding in agreement on this one. Noticed the journal is currently unavailable on Amazon as well.
Oh, I’m surprised it’s unavailable. I checked the links in the description this morning and they all still seem to work. There is also the downloadable PDF option on Drive Thru RPG.
lol this is so true… also, Jamey knows how many hours you’ve sunk into it 😂😂
Do you have any thoughts on designing games that include traditionally ‘negative’ emotions (such as stress, thrill-of-danger, fear, sadness) for overall ‘positive’ experiences for players? Also digging into how to build and release tension? I would love to see a video with you discussing those kind of design considerations at some point! 👍
I think it’s a really interesting area Carl, but I don’t think board games do “high emotion” very well. Or perhaps the solution just hasn’t been found yet. They’re just too abstract for the level of immersion needed to genuinely feel afraid, or sad etc. So even if the game pushes a narrative with setting, text, artwork, it rarely evokes the same level of feeling as a film, book or video game. The busywork, or book-keeping, keeps players one step removed. For example the hospital setting and end-of-life story of “Holding On: the troubled life of Billy Kerr” was sad. But the experience of playing was procedural.
However, I do think board games do tension and stress rather better. Push your luck games are full of tension. As are social deduction games. And challenging, punishing strategic games like Agricola can have a lot of stress in them too (trying to feed your workers or taking penalties).
If looking for more intense emotions, I think the game has to get out the way of itself - i.e. more story; fewer mechanisms. But at that point you may as well read a novel or graphic novel for the same effect.
I may be doing a disservice to narrative games here though. I haven’t played all that many. The King’s Dilemma sounds interesting for example. I’m sure pen and paper RPGs can create all the emotions you suggest.
Maybe not fear or sadness, but stress is a pretty well explored concept in board games. Most obvious in games like Texas Hold’Em. But I’ve also experienced intense stress in games like Splendor when I needed some specific token and I had to wait my turn and hope no other player would take it before me.
I think in general, if you want to create stress in your players, they have to be really invested in the outcome of the game and want to win. In Poker that is achieved through external factors like playing for money. In Splendor that is achievied by impeccable balancing and making all the players play with open hands.
If we were all millionaires, a million bucks would be worth squat. ;) Good advise, nonetheless. And nice segue into an ad for your journal.
My story's a bit different; since high school I kinda disliked board & card games, except for rare exceptions like Othello, Spades, & Catan, till one day I saw a video on some older 60's games which sounded fun. I spend more time exploring BGG's list of public domain games or search results for 1930's-1970's games than anything new. The first games I bought, discounting Othello & themed Monopoly games, were "Finance & Fortune" & "Milles Bornes." Is there any hope for someone who prefers classic games to become a designer, beyond some sort of personal goal?
I’ve been playing around with abstract strategy games (like Othello) recently and have found that there’s a nice committed (small) group of publishers who specialise in that area. And trick-taking games (and other abstract card games like shedding games and climbing games) still have a significant market. So it depends what you mean by “classic” games. There are still plenty of dice games and games derived from dominoes being published too.
@@AdaminWales Thank you. :)
I remember watching a video which had a very very similar story and conclusion. Did you make a remake? 😅
Anyway, good story and good videos. 👍
Yes, it’s pretty similar to my “Why Great Games Fail” video isn’t it? The topic is actually a bit different; but they do feel quite similar.
What do you think of making the concept of a game into video game demo first, if the creator has programming experience?
It depends on your goal, I guess. If you want to use the videogame demo to share your prototype digitally with publishers, that could be an effective way of showing it off for some publishers. Others would want a physical prototype regardless.
If you intended to release the game digitally, then it would make sense for the prototype to be digital too.
I could see it working if crowdfunding - the digital demo could show off some of the gameplay to attract backers to purchase the full game (which may be physical or digital).
@@AdaminWales Some board games work better as video games anyway.
Also, what is your opinion on using AI-generated images for concept purposes to get the rough estimation of what art style you want? And then calling an artist after being more or less satisfied with the concept?
@@artman40The board game creator community is divided on use of AI at any stage of the process, and the opponents to its use are very vocal and prominent so it’s hard to know what the overall consensus is. My feeling is that the majority reject its use in a finished commercial product but are accepting of its use in prototyping and developing concepts - so long as artists are employed for the final product. But that is just my reading of the situation - it’s rapidly evolving. And there are certainly people who would disagree with my analysis.
Personally I use AI images when constructing prototypes to playtest and show concepts to publishers - but would not use AI images for a finished product which was to be sold.
I am at the playing with friends stage. But I use AI for artwork and Table Top Simulator so I don't have to actually craft anything.