Kate Otte, designer of First Ascent, talks about improving games through experiential graphic design.
Kate is a professional graphic designer, and we get into how to make games more accessible, understandable, and fun using excellent graphic design techniques.
And be sure to check out Kate’s game, First Ascent, on Kickstarter HERE.
The post Experiential Graphic Design with Kate Otte appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Nick Murray, founder of Bitewing Games, discusses how you can evaluate your game and ideas using SWOT analysis. This is a common technique in the business world to analyze ideas, products, companies, etc., and it can really help with game design as well.
The post (Community Spotlight) Evaluating Your Game with SWOT Analysis with Nick Murray appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Dan Hundycz, founder of DPH Games, discusses layered victory conditions. In his latest game, Usurp the King, there’s a hierarchy of ways to win, and Dan breaks down how it came together.
And be sure to check out Usurp the King on Kickstarter HERE.
The post (Community Spotlight) Layered Victory Conditions with Dan Hundycz appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Justin Gary, designer of Ascension, talks about his personal process for designing and publishing games.
Justin has designed and released a ton of hit games over the years and worked in lots of different segments of the gaming industry, so he has a ton of great tips and advice.
The post How to Design and Publish Games with Justin Gary appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Andrew Lowen, designer of Deliverance, talks about going through the process of deciding between traditional publishing and self-publishing.
We talk about the pros and cons on both sides along with how to make things work if you go the self-publishing route.
And be sure to check out Andrew’s game, Deliverance, on Kickstarter HERE.
The post Why to Self Publish…or Not with Andrew Lowen appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Janice Turner, designer of Assembly, talks about designing puzzle games.
We talk about player experience, designing during nap times, how to make puzzles fun and not tedious, and more!
And be sure to check out Janice’s game, Pilfering Pandas, on Kickstarter HERE.
The post Designing Puzzle Games with Janice Turner appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Ben Downton, designer of Micro Dojo, talks about designing micro-micro games – games so small they can fit in a regular-sized envelope.
We talk about component constraints, focus, player expectations, and more!
And be sure to check out Ben’s game, Micro Dojo, on Kickstarter HERE.
The post Designing Games that Fit in an Envelope with Ben Downton appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Josh Horsley, designer of Castlescape, talks about designing deck-building games that have more going on than just building a deck.
We talk about adding boards and other components, and we get into the benefits and obstacles of creating these kinds of games.
And be sure to check out Josh’s game, Castlescape, on Kickstarter HERE.
The post Deck Building and MORE with Josh Horsley appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
The brand new BGDL community site is now live at www.bgdlplus.com!
The post BGDL+ is live! appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Ami Baio, designer of You Think You Know Me and several other conversation-based games, talks about what all goes into designing and publishing them.
We talk about how to create gaming environments that encourage people to talk, listen, and enjoy chatting with each other.
The post Designing Conversation Games with Ami Baio appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Joe Klipfel, designer of Griphold Tower, discusses what it’s like to take a large, published game and turn it into a microgame. Joe has done this with Set a Watch and Gloomhaven and offers lots of insight on how to break a game down to its essence.
The post [Community Spotlight] Turning Big Games into Microgames with Joe Klipfel appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Marco Pecota, designer of Legions of Steel, discusses the ways he’s engaging with the fans of his game. We talk about building a community, releasing bonus content, reaching out to your fans for feedback, and more.
The post [Community Spotlight] Customer Engagement, Support, and Satisfaction with Marco Pecota appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
About a month ago, I spent several hours doing a self-assessment of my life. I wasn’t sleeping well, which was a huge problem since I already wasn’t sleeping much. Usually, I can overcome a lack in quantity by an increase in quality, but when both of those things are bad, I find myself in a really tough spot.
It felt like I had thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much to do and thiiiiiiiiis much time to do it. Something had to give. Experiencing that for a few days is one thing (the week leading up to a Kickstarter launch for example), but I had been in that situation for months. It wasn’t good for my family, my mind, or my health.
But as I assessed everything, what I realized is that it wasn’t actually a time problem. The time was there. It was an energy and attention problem.
My time wasn’t being well spent. It was like my watch had a hole in it.
The great algorithm gods in the sky must have known my struggle as YouTube started recommending lots of videos related to this issue. Writers, biologists, psychologists, professors, and former Facebook employees were all posting content with a central premise: The current state of social media is a problem.
Platforms that originally functioned to keep people connected have become much better at tearing us apart. Algorithms that used to show us what we cared about most were altered to show us what would keep our attention the longest.
Companies have spent billions of dollars figuring out how to get us to spend as much time scrolling through their news feeds as possible. The more time we spend scrolling, the more money they make, and the less time we spend on things of actual value.
As I took a good, hard look at my time, I realized I was spending a ridiculous amount of it scrolling. I’d sit down for a meal and scroll. I’d push my son on the swing-set and scroll. I’d wait on my wife to get ready for a date and scroll. I’d edit a podcast and scroll. I’d take a “two-minute” break from working on something worthwhile and thirty minutes later realize I had been scrolling the whole time. I’d sit on the toilet and scroll until my legs fell asleep.
This had to stop.
It’s not like scrolling was improving my life in any way, and a strong case could easily be made that it was making things worse.
And even though I wasn’t wasting my time getting caught up on useless political debates or hopping on board the latest outrage train, I was watching them unfold. And I think that’s a lot of us. Several studies have shown that the vast majority of posts on social media platforms come from a very small minority of users. It’s like a car crash on the side of the highway. Most of us have enough sense to drive around it, but we sure spend a lot of time staring at the carnage as we pass by.
And just like rubber-necking slows us down to a crawl on the highway, scrolling through a news feed slows down our productivity to a near standstill.
Upon realizing how much of my attention was being gobbled up in scrolling, I unlocked my phone and started to delete the social media apps from my phone. But as I started the process and watched as the app icons danced around the screen, I hesitated.
I wasn’t sure if I could do it. What were the consequences of deleting these things from my life? Did I actually want to? If I removed the scapegoat of what was wasting my time, was I prepared to place the blame on myself going forward?
I deleted the Twitter app first. It wasn’t a particularly hard decision because I hate Twitter, and I didn’t spend much time on it anyway. But as my finger hovered over Facebook, I paused for a while.
I thought about all the good things about Facebook and specifically about the BGDL Facebook community. It’s basically the only place I post and comment, and it’s full of nearly 9,000 people all trying to accomplish the same thing I am – to design great games people love.
I closed my phone. I needed a plan.
I didn’t need to delete Facebook from my life. I needed to control it and make it work for me.
I jotted down some notes:
-Delete the Facebook app from my phone.
-See what’s happening in the BGDL group 2-3 times a day, but only using my laptop.
-Avoid scrolling the news feed at all costs.
And about a month ago, that’s what I started doing, and life has definitely not gotten worse.
Instead of scrolling, I now spend more time talking to the people I care about most. My productivity has gone way up, and I’m getting more done in less time. My kids don’t have to pull on my shirt to get me to look up from my phone to pay attention to them. I’m more active in the BGDL group because my time is more focused and purposeful. I’m reading more. I’m writing more. I’m getting better sleep.
Will doing something similar work for you? Maybe. I’m not here proclaiming some “right” way to live, and your mileage may vary. But it’s definitely worked for me.
A little over a year ago, I started brainstorming and thinking through what it would look like to create a website where the BGDL community could live. The Facebook group was going strong, but even way back then I was very aware of the limitations and downsides of the platform.
I wanted a site with all the best parts of a Facebook community while getting rid of the worst.
I wanted a place for game designers to hang out that was made for us and by us.
I wanted a platform that was focused on helping designers create great games people love.
I wanted training courses to help people grow as designers.
I wanted forums to ask questions.
I wanted a calendar to organize Kickstarter launches, conventions, and playtest events.
I wanted a job board for freelancers to find opportunities and for publishers to find amazing people to work with.
I wanted a blog where people could post articles and design diaries.
I wanted a way for people to create groups and sub-groups around activities and their designs.
I wanted a way to track game design time.
I wanted a random game idea generator.
I wanted monthly design challenges.
I wanted an incredible mobile experience.
And I wanted a news feed that worked for us, not against us.
No algorithms. No data harvesting and selling it to the highest bidder. No drunk uncles.
And after a year of a tremendous amount of work, BGDL+ is almost here.
Is it the perfect solution? No. But I hope you’ll join me in the search for a platform that provides a better way.
Even with all those features, this is just the ground floor, and I’m super excited for what’s ahead.
Thanks for being an amazing community, and I can’t wait to share BGDL+ with you soon!
The post Why I Deleted Social Media from My Phone appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Martin Wallace, designer of Brass: Birmingham and about 100 other great games, talks about Euro games and his process for designing them.
Martin is one of the greatest designers of all time, and he offers tons of excellent advice based on his 30+ years in the industry.
The post How to Design Euro Games with Martin Wallace appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Joe Slack, designer Relics of Rajavihara, talks about the many different jobs in the board gaming industry and how people have found their way to those jobs.
Joe recently released a book devoted to this topic, so we talk a lot about what he found through his interviews and research.
And you can find Joe’s latest book about jobs in the gaming industry HERE.
The post Getting a Job in the Board Game Industry with Joe Slack appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Nick Metzler, game designer at Spin Master, talks about designing games that create excellent social experiences.
We also dive into chasing dreams, overcoming obstacles, and gamification.
The post How to Design Social Experiences with Nick Metzler appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
BGDL community member Trevor Laforce discusses how to optimize your life to get more designing done in less time.
We talk about habits, time management, and self-management in the context of designing games while also having a job, family, and busy schedule.
And you can find Trevor’s daily planner and more time optimization content on his website here.
The post Optimizing Game Design Time with Trevor Laforce appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Dennis Furia talks about the board game identity pyramid.
The pyramid is an excellent tool and framework to help you break down a game into its main selling points and help you figure out the why, what, and how behind your game.
You can find more about the pyramid HERE.
The post The Board Game Identity Pyramid with Dennis Furia appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
Laura Hoffman, COO of Game on Tabletop, discusses the ins and outs, pros and cons of crowdfunding your game.
Game on Tabletop is a crowdfunding platform specifically for board game campaigns, and Laura has a ton of experience working with creators and project managers.
The post Why You Should Crowdfund Your Game (or Not) with Laura Hoffman appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.
300 years ago, Robert Walpole was made First Lord of the Treasury for the second time. Not a particularly impressive event – if Walpole had not retained that office for 21 years and turned himself into the leading British politician of his time. Thereafter, the office of First Lord of the Treasury customarily was given to the monarch’s representative to parliament – the Prime Minister, as the holder became known. As times changed, so did the office: Today, the prime minister is much more responsible to parliament than to the monarch. Yet the office, unofficial at first, has endured these 300 years and been held by dozens of very different men and women. And thus, this post about Walpole will kick off a new irregular series on the blog – Prime Minister Ratings! I’ll assess Walpole (and, in the future, other prime ministers (or even leaders from other places)) by a very general rating system – and I’ll introduce one board game in which the prime minister or the problems they faced feature – this time, Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games).
First things first: Why did the prime ministry arise with Walpole? After all, before him, there had been strong advisers to the kings of Britain (and England before), but not at all times. There are personal and structural reasons for the change: Personally, Walpole was a politician of force and skill, and his long tenure enabled him to shape the British constitution according to his needs in office. Structurally, the British crown’s powers had been curtailed by the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688/89, so more power rested with parliament, where the monarch now needed a forceful representative. George I, the first Hanoverian king of Britain, was particularly in need of that, as he spoke little English (his native tongue was German) and was often away in his electorate of Hanover. These were the conditions that enabled Walpole to rise so high.
Some caveats ahead: The prime ministers will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as prime minister, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)PMs). And lastly, in the following, “Britain” serves as a shorthand for either Great Britain or United Kingdom of Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland as applicable, and “British” as shorthand for the inhabitants of such.
Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A prime minister can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the prime minister is assessed as follows:
Foreign policy: Did the prime minister increase British influence in the world and the security of the British at home? Did the prime minister wield British power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of British power being great)?
Domestic policy: Did the prime minister increase the liberty of the British to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the prime minister promote domestic security and shape the framework for equality before the law and fair justice dealing with offenses?
Economic policy: Did the prime minister facilitate the prosperity and economic security of the British (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the prime minister’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?
Vision: Did the prime minister have an idea of what Britain and the world (the latter counting for more in times of British influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the prime minister’s policies steer Britain (and, if applicable, the world) in this direction?
Pragmatism: Did the prime minister succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the prime minister manage to gain support from Parliament, the Civil Service, the media, society (the latter two counting for more in more recent years)?
Integrity: Did the prime minister understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the prime minister respect the boundaries of the office?
Robert Walpole (1676—1745) was the son of a Norfolk country squire. When he was only 24, his father died, and Walpole moved quickly to seize the vacant seat in the House of Commons for himself. He enjoyed a steady rise in the ranks of the Whigs, and got his first cabinet appointment as Secretary-at-War in 1708. He spent the next years in government, among the opposition, and even in a Whig faction opposing a Whig government until his appointment as First Lord of the Treasury in April 1721 (following the fall of the Sunderland/Stanhope government over the bursting of the South Sea Bubble).
His primacy in the government was contested in the beginning, but assured no later than 1730, when his last weighty rival (and erstwhile ally, as well as brother-in-law) Charles Townshend left the government. Walpole’s dominance over both Houses of Parliament grew, and he also made himself indispensable to two initially skeptical monarchs (George I, and after his death in 1727, George II). Characterizing himself as “no saint, no Spartan, no reformer”, Walpole aimed to bring “security, stability, and low taxation” by a policy committed to peace. When Walpole’s cabinet colleagues pushed the country into the War of Jenkins’ Ear against Spain (which initially went badly), his authority eroded. He lost his control over parliament and resigned in February 1742. Walpole was made Earl of Orford and died in 1745.
Foreign policy: Walpole, a Whig, adopted the traditional Tory policy of peace with France. He stuck to it for almost the entirety of his tenure as prime minister. His “peace at any price” policy saved British lives and money, most notably when he kept the country neutral during the War of the Polish Succession (which ended in a draw anyway, with the candidate Britain preferred ending up on the throne, but French and Spanish territorial gains). At the end of his tenure, the policy of peaceful isolation could not hold anymore, and war with Spain (and then France) erupted against Walpole’s wishes.
Domestic policy: Walpole’s domestic agenda was limited – which was likely a success in itself in a country which had a recent history of religious strife, revolution, and regicide. He made small improvements for the situation of Protestant dissenters (that is, non-members of the Anglican Church). Most significantly, Britain was much more stable and unified at the end of his long rule than at the beginning, and could thus easily deal with the 1745 Jacobite uprising.
Economic policy: Prosperity was Walpole’s key promise. He restored economic stability after the South Sea Bubble. His policy of peace gave the country a respite from the immense expenses in the wars before and after his tenure. Thus, Walpole reduced overall taxation and cut back on the national debt, which would give Britain more financial flexibility in the future. Not everyone benefitted from Walpole’s economic policy, though: His shift from direct taxation (especially on land) to indirect taxation (especially on consumption) favored rich landowners (like himself) at the expense of the non-propertied classes.
Vision: Walpole declared peace to be his main means to attain “security, stability, and low taxation”. In that, he succeeded, and he did so for a remarkable long time without major adjustments. His vision and the policies he used to achieve it strengthened Britain in the long run.
Pragmatism: Walpole used a variety of means to attract backing for himself and his policies. He was a Whig (and would always rest on his strength among the Whigs), but cooperated with the Tories on several occasions from his early career on. His support for beleaguered men of influence after the South Sea Bubble won him their loyalty for a long time to come. Walpole did not only control the House of Commons, of which he was a member, but also the House of Lords – chiefly through his ecclesiastical appointments, whose beneficiaries would prove thankful to him. Even though the heir to the crown, the future George II, was not a friend of Walpole’s, he did not remove him from office upon his succession: Walpole had gained favor with George’s wife Caroline (unlike most other men of note, who courted George’s mistress, from whom the king would not accept policy suggestions). And when the new king attempted to install Sir Spencer Compton as his new chief minister, Walpole proved indispensable to Compton even in the most basic tasks. Compton’s candidacy floundered, and Walpole remained in charge – for a never-again reached 21 years in total.
Integrity: Walpole lived in an age different from ours. Back then, Members of Parliament and ministers did not receive a salary for their offices, and thus usually saw no problem in using their political career to enrich themselves. That drove Walpole both personally and in the ways he would gain political supporters: “All these men have their price”, he remarked about a group of Members of Parliament. As one of his recent biographers put it: Walpole “operated a species of private interest/public expenditure mini-welfare state for anyone able to elect a Member or persuade one to vote right” (Pearce, p. 383). Even in comparison to the men of his age, Walpole made tremendous use of practices which were based on personal rather than common welfare, and the leading writers of his time lambasted the “Robinocracy” (based on the nickname Robin for Robert) as hopelessly corrupt.
Overall: Walpole was a forceful politician whose control over parliament and (neither weak-willed nor too-trusting) monarchs was extraordinary. His policy of “security, stability, and low taxation” based on peace was mostly successful and held up for a very long time. With 24 out of 30 stars, his rating is what future leaders up here will be measured against.
Full ratings so far:
An excellent overview with portraits of all prime ministers is Leonard, Dick: A History of British Prime Ministers, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2014.
The standard scholarly biography remains Plumb, John Harold: Sir Robert Walpole, 2 volumes, Cresset Press, London 1956/1960.
For a more recent biography, see Pearce, Edward: The Great Man. Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius, and Britain’s First Prime Minister, Pimlico, London 2007.
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