Consuming prototypes.

In Episode 105 part of Mike's process is to create small games and prototypes with the purpose of breaking them down into other games like some sort of Cronus of game design. Glenn doesn't really do this, but they chat about it here.
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[@maninalift]

Making focused prototypes when the larger game has too many open questions and is overwhelming is really useful.
I have another approach in this situation or even a situation where I'm more uncertain.
That is to do a "walkthrough" of a game or part of a game. I get out some models or counters and push them about without using rules. The aim is to understand how i would like a scenario to play out and what that implies for the rules. What questions, possibilities and trade offs should be in a player's head in this situation.
Did anyone else do this? Maybe it's just me being too dumb to do this in my head 😊

[@RuleofCarnage]

No, that's another great technique, a couple of weekends ago Mike and I did pretty much exactly that for Pacific Command. Sometimes you need to see the pieces on the table.

[@steeldrac]

I have a question that came to me while listening to the conversation… also thinking in so many amateur game designers work that I look at them and don’t think they’re a viable game, but I guess I don’t feel comfortable telling the person that I think his game is boring or too much or not enough… anyway, how do you guys know when a game is a dead end? Like it’s going nowhere even after putting all the work and the hours. I see people that have an emotional attachment to their ideas even if they don’t work, so do you guys have a procedure to move on?

[@RuleofCarnage]

Honestly, that's a tough question and I think its one that hopefully you get better at quite quickly. As we've said on the channel a few times, its always about showing the game to someone and asking, desperately, "Is there something there?". Because so long as that kernel is there, the development of the actual game is always possible, its the legwork, you just need to make sure that there's a worthwhile destination.
That and the fact that with a few games being worked on at once you can usually tell yourself you're just shifting focus for a little while and then quietly never come back. Like the game design equivalent of a deadbeat dad going out for a packet of smokes and never coming back.

[@StrangerInAStrangeLand1999]

You've only got single channel audio fyi

[@RuleofCarnage]

Yeah, someone else mentioned it. Zoom records in mono and sometimes I forget to fix it.