Game Design, Publishing, and Crowdfunding Q&A
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- čas přidán 23. 08. 2024
- Jamey answers questions from attendees of a game design event, Game Over Saguenay.
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Thank you so much, Jamey. All of your videos and blogs are truly invaluable on my road to self-publishing my first game. I really can’t express enough how much you help the community. The 🐐.
You are an industry leader! Thanks for sharing your insights and knowledge ❤
We are so lucky to have people like you working for our hobby health. Just keep doing what you do, the community deeply aprecciates everything you do!
Thank you! I'm grateful to be a part of this amazing community.
What a great video with so much helpful information, Jamey! I especially like your comments about telling designers how the game made you feel, but not providing solutions. I fully support that and included that in my Game Designer’s Oath (although sometimes I still catch myself doing it as a playtester! But I try to be aware). And I really like the point about being sure to still playtest IRL and not just digitally, to see what parts of the game might be fiddly. Really helpful video, thanks for sharing!
Thanks Pam! There are times when I test a game submission digitally, and while I'm glad for the ease with which it lets me play and understand the game with the designer from anywhere in the world, it always leaves me eager to test the tabletop version of the prototype instead. :)
Hi Jamey,
Thank you for an amazing video and answering the questions. Your generosity in giving back to the community is amazing.
I learn so much from your website about designing and publishing it is truly a great resource for us newbies!
Please keep up the wonderful work.
Thank you so much! I appreciate you following along. :)
Thanks for these questions and answers -- I learned a lot! At 12:30 you mention receiving feedback from playtesters about how a game makes them feel. This stands out to me, because I find the emotional component of experiencing a board game is as important as any other, and doesn't often get discussed.
My friend Jessica recently posted on her blog her own version of a Wheel of Emotions (like you might find in a therapeutic setting), themed around board gaming, as well as a follow up with examples. I could see it being a fascinating tool to add nuance to what playtesters share after playing a game. CZcams isn’t allowing me to post a link to Gameward Bound, A Solo Board Game Blog, but the posts are from within the past few weeks, so they should be easy to find!
Thanks for sharing this, Susannah! I really like hearing how playtesters feel (and players in general) about games, and it's neat that Jessica has a metric for it.
I really appreciate your insight on loss aversion. It's something I'm working on overcoming in a design. Throughout the game, players collect tiles to add to their player mat, and in each round, there's an opportunity to exchange them to free up space and score points. It's so interesting that the majority of players have been opting to hold on to tiles that aren't currently scoring because they are already on their mat. It's been a fun design challenge to overcome.
Thanks Sam! I like that if you're able to strike the right balance, it becomes a great decision for players--it's more a case of "what's the optimal time for me to let go of this tile, and how much utility can I eek out of it in the meantime?"
That’s crazy that you and Jakub have never met in person or even video conferenced!
Lots and lots of emails. :)
Hi Jamey, thanks for the insightful answers. In particular, I was really interested to hear you answer the question of what makes a game unique or stand out to you - flow, balance, easy to get to the table, intuitive. I've been struggling with this idea of uniqueness in my game designs, as it seems the word "unique" can mean so many different things to different people/publishers. What makes something truly unique or special to stand out from the rest of the market of games? It's a great question that I'll continue to think on, but your answer has helped me a lot. Thanks for providing your perspective!
Thanks for your question! Overall, when I think of unique mechanical hooks, I'm talking about gameplay elements I haven't seen in other games (or only in a few games) and that have a pretty big impact on the game. For example, in Expeditions the cards are positioned between the location tiles instead of a card row. It isn't revolutionary, but it's different enough to stand out.
Hi, Jamey! How do you decide when a game is ready to be playtested outside your own personal playtests?
Also, we really enjoyed our first game of Tapestry a couple weeks ago. I appreciated the multiple ways to try to win, and the income mat and various tracks on the board gave me a lot to think about during the game and then afterwards about game design.
Thanks Julie! While I don't have a set formula for that answer, and it may vary for game, it's typically when the game is at the point that it's working well in local playtests and people are having fun with it (including me). At that point I want to reach outside of locals to get the opinions of unguided/blind playtesters to see what I'm missing (which is usually a lot).
I'm so glad you had a good experience with your first game of Tapestry!
This is an awesome video. I was literally planning on emailing you asking if doing something like this would interest you. It's reassuring to hear you don't mind answering questions in comment sections. If you had to choose, would SMG or YT be better for asking a question of you?
Thanks! I'm always happy to answer questions in the comments. Any relevant article or video is great for such questions. :)
I have got into many board games digitally over the last couple of years, as it is much easier to get games in that way for me. I was going to ask if you would ever have a team for making all of your games digitally. I was doing research as I was watching this video (Red Rising piqued my interest) and I did not realize quite how many digital games you have over different studios.
Do you seek companies to make these or do these teams come to you to make digital adaptations? And how much input and control do you guys have?
Related to this, the digital version of Scythe had recently confirmed additional expansions would no longer be coming due to coding limitations from the way it was built. They noted funding being the main issue as they would need to rewrite things to further work on it. Would Stonemaier ever fund a project for that or hire a new team to build Scythe with all of it's content for digital players?
Your videos are always a great insight to how the realm of board games work and it's appreciated the time you put into them!
(Sorry for the long post 😅)
Thanks for your questions! I think I can provide the most detailed answers in this post: stonemaiergames.com/the-current-state-of-digital-versions-of-tabletop-games-2024/
As for Scythe Digital, we actually are providing funding in the form of a significant revenue split of Board Game Arena revenue (the Scythe Digital team has no connection to BGA, so it isn't something we needed to do, but we thought it might help provide more ongoing funding for them). Scythe will be available in beta on BGA soon. As for even more direct funding, it takes a lot of trust, consistency, and ability to meet deadlines with the promise of revenue to cover the expenses for us to justify that approach--even with the developers we trust the most, it's impossible for them to provide any true guarantees, so it's very rare that such funding is justified.
@jameystegmaier Thank you for the response! It's interesting to hear how you guys have to think about digital vs. physical. Letting physical have it's time before moving to digital makes sense. It's nice to see digital being embraced for your games one way or another as I definitely get more time out of digital experiences overall.
I have not actually played anything on BGA yet, but I look forward to checking out Scythe on there. BGA has always seemed intimidating for some reason, but I will need to dip my toes soon.
In the meantime, I am excited to try out Red Rising, which I may have purchased between my first comment and this one... lol
@@Killzone0729 Thanks! BGA was intimidating to me too, but I've come to really appreciate it. And there are also some times that I just want to play a game at my own pace against the AI in a full digital app (I did this recently with Lords of Waterdeep). I hope you enjoy Red Rising!
I like stretch goals, etc, if they serve as ways to keep the price point reasonable for a game that would ship complete at its base level. Playing cards, for example, don't need a linen finish, but boy, do they ever look and feel nice when they have them.
Dual-layer boards are not often needed in games but I'm always excited about the chance to get some. The cottage industry that has cropped up around Terraforming Mars certainly demonstrates there's a market for components that go beyond the box contents (starting with dual-layer boards). Eclipse certainly could have used them, and i even like the after market component trays for Power Grid.
And of course once can't forget the custom meeple. Power Grid resources being one example, but also games like Agricaverna or Le Havre. I seem to recall even... Scythe?... has custom resource pieces?
So yeah, i find lots of room to entice me into an all-in pledge or to chase after stretch goals, provided the base game would ship complete. I think things like solo rules or an extra deck of event cards are pushing the boundaries of that contract.
Thanks for your note! Scythe does indeed have custom wooden shapes for resources (not cubes), and there is an optional add-on for realistic resource tokens.