Game Designer Wannabe

Gaming the Design - Infamy - Designer Response

2012-05-16T06:00:00.000-04:00

Travis Chance has sent a response to my feedback in the Gaming the Design article about his game, Infamy. It is presented unedited below.

After the testing session in which Michael played, many suggestions were proffered to address concerns I had about Infamy. Although the game seemed uniformly enjoyable by those who played during this session, this information had the clockwork in my brain whirring from the moment I left the meetup. The following is a summary of suggested changes and my verdict after some thorough consideration and testing:

1.) Bribing process: I have tried a few iterations of bidding on contacts. The only one of these that seemed to work consistently, as well as offer that risk vs. reward element I was after, was what Michael pointed out as the "Glum Loser Scenario." On the whole, this was a uniquely polarizing element of my game. The two camps of love and hate made it something I had questioned fixing by means of compromise. In prior tests, no-consequence-bidding where players got back what they put in if they lost proved negligent and far less strategic. On the other hand, the Glum Loser approach was punishing to those who committed too much on a single contact, resulting in two people effectively losing--though one would walk away with a contact.

Although this may seem like an easy fix, I was dead against anything that involved even rudimentary book keeping--no rounding up or down, halfsies, or the like. Michael suggested a great solution: for each bid, the player commits a bribe (this would include raising). The player that wins the bid commits all the bribes (spent, as well as the sum bid) and wins the contact; those that do no win only lose the spent bribes, not the sum bid This was just the answer I was seeking.

2.) Passing during the bribing process: This wasn't so much an issue, and, to be honest, was something I rather liked in terms of making bidding more strategic. Michael suggested that players that pass on a given contact can no longer bid on that contact. This expedites the process, simplifying it, as well as adding a different strategic element: get in or get out.

3.) The Saboteur: One particular contact in the game blows up a mission card before it can be attempted. This mission is not replaced until the end of the phase. This served a few purposes, which I likened to one of those suckerfish that cleans a fish tank:

a.) It is a countermeasure to stop a runaway leader that commits all their bribes to garnering resources. This allows other players to minimize options, as well as potentially control either or both of the victory paths in the game as means to catch up.

b.) I have an alternate end game trigger when a mission would be replaced but can't. This is expedited by this contact, and can potentially be used as a means to secure this specific victory path.

c.) It clears away missions that could not be accomplished because of game state (this is unlikely but COULD happen).

d.) Having less missions in a given turn promotes more collisions.

Admittedly, this contact always seemed lackluster in many situations, often a consolation prize of sorts for those who didn't win a bid on a more substantial contact. OR, he was an engine of spite that seemed almost overpowered. Michael suggested that by replacing the mission immediately with the top mission (which is always visible), this offered another strategic angle: get rid of a mission someone else was after to get one for yourself. In short, I agree with this quite handily.

4.) Encouraging Collision: One of my primary goals with this design was player collision. I loved the idea of mercenaries going after the same objective, totally unaware of one another until that moment when they cross paths. While the level of interaction and collision (a term Michael used that is quite perfect really) is considerable, there could be more.

Michael's estimation was that the collision aspect was much more accidental than designed. At the time of testing, my board had 7 sectors, each of which contained 2 locations. There was a harmony to this, a nice overlap and balance that was quite intentional. But, upon closer examination, the collision could be increased while maintaining the majority of the aforementioned balance by reducing the sectors to 4 in total: one for each of the three factions and a single neutral sector.

The new neutral sector would house a location for each of the four resources. And the factions would now have only a single location (none of them henchmen) and a headquarters. I spoke with Michael about this after the session, and he suggested that the missions ONLY take place in these headquarter locations. I felt this was the extreme opposite of the 7 sector layout, where you could often avoid collisions, now they would be entirely inevitable. I wanted most of the missions to function this way, but not in such a narrow, binary fashion. The real fun of Infamy is in not knowing where someone is headed. This suggestion seemed a bit two-dimensional to me, giving players too few in the way of options.

The last suggestion was to not use simultaneous revealing, and do it based on initiative. This would make the game more of a strategic placement game, as well as fix an ongoing issue I have with the ability of one of my resource tokens: arsenal. Applying this edit to the rules would make the arsenal token much more useful and justified in design, as it currently feels a bit like a wash: I shoot you, you shoot me back, now nothing happens. This was something that I knew I didn't want to do before leaving said session. Despite my fiddly Strategy Cards and players sometimes messing up, on the whole this element works and creates an atmosphere of tension and fun that this deployment that would work akin to Cyclades bidding would not.

Sadly, I still have no solution for the arsenal tokens.

5.) Missions: While Infamy is quite easy to learn, one issue I have noticed is that my mission format can cause quite a bit of what I call "scanning paralysis." Technically, each mission is three: one for each faction. With 2-4 of these on the table (dependent on the number of players), the potential for collisions, and trying to ascertain who is eligible for what combination of missions, the amount of bribes each player has... well, things slowed down for enough players that it gave me pause.

The suggested solution was to have three separate mission decks, one for each faction. Mathematically speaking, this should encourage even more of these collisions, as it vastly reduces the number of variable for players to consider. This would also address another issue Michael pointed out: the current mission format would not allow for varied continuous effects on a single mission without some sort of way to track it as you switched factions during a game.

Michael also suggested that the missions be setup so that the level of difficulty was controlled--currently the missions are randomly dealt, sometimes high value/difficult missions coming out on the very first turn. Furthermore, the way status was awarded could also change: rather than have varied values, a player would be awarded an amount of status equal to the level of mission completed.

I left the session entirely convinced I would make these change, thinking them answers to what seemed precarious issues. However, upon actually working through what this would entail, this proved quite the contrary.

The first problem was the idea of levels. The driving idea about altering the format was to simplify the process and have less options out at any given time, but as I made some proxy missions to test this I hit a few walls:

a.) How would I handle the levels for each faction? Let's say there were 3 levels of difficulty per faction. Would you have a deck out for each, totaling 9 decks? This seemed even worse than the prior format, which was far more condensed. Additionally, it would cause even more scanning paralysis as players tried to plan ahead. Someplayers might attempt a mission in a higher level than they were permitted accidentally, causing a game play hiccup that is hard to reverse in a game where simultaneously revealing occurs.

If the levels of difficulty were not separate decks, then they would be within a single deck. This offered a sloppy set of operations at a glance: a level sat out for people to see, then one player moved on to the next level and this card was beside it? Would they have to dig through the deck to look at the card back until they found the appropriate level they were seeking? This seemed messy and counter-intuitive in execution, and when I tested this with two other players they were much more confused than I had expected.

b.) Levels created less interaction. If one player managed to get to level 2 in one faction, and other players had yet to complete a level 1 for that same faction, they had no direct competition until someone in the same faction caught up to them. This was the antithesis of what I wanted Infamy to be. Furthermore, this would sink players into a single faction, as switching over to catch up would be a protracted process with no guarantee of success.

c.) Separate decks created less interaction. The current mission format represented a single event or task that each faction shared. Separate missions did not have this same thematic strength, nor did they guarantee that players would cross paths--unless I severely reduced the variables to make it happen with absolute certainty. In doing this, I would be sacrificing my objective at creating tension based on potential collision, those "OH SH!#" moments where two or more people go after the same mission or different missions in the same place. Quite simply, this element was fun, and not something I wanted to throw by the wayside. That, and I quite strongly felt that the variable missions popping up made the game more interesting, adding to the replay value.

6.) Status: With the idea of levels came the idea of scaling status to be proportionate with them. I intentionally created two separate scoring paths to have some diversity and promote different strategies. Infamy points were always the abstract victory point element; they did nothing but win you the game once you had enough of them. Status, on the other hand, was intended to be a potential victory path, but one that offered pros and cons. In this way, Status was more powerful, therefore, in my eyes, could fluctuate. Most importantly, players would score varying levels in both of these, giving them room to adapt and start tailoring their designs for victory. Variable point values pushed this a step further. This more structured Status scoring made Infamy points feel irrelevant, as though Status suddenly was the ONLY way to win the game. I didn't like this for a number of other reasons:

a.) It detracted from the theme: a player amassing such a reputation that upon victory they assume the role of a fourth faction that rivaled the other three. Why are these factions so complacent with you working with their bitter rivals?

b.) One scoring path made the game feel less strategic. I quite liked that players were working their way up two different paths early on and then would commit to a strategy once they hit a rhythm. The system was forgiving and pliable in this way.

c.) It would half the pros and cons Status currently provided--granted, I could rescale the scoring to accommodate this, but I always wanted 3-4 missions to give you victory in one way or another.

d.) There was no incentive for players to ever switch factions. Why would a player ever want their second mission to be for a different faction for 1 Status when staying loyal would give them double and put them at 50% victory. This would mean that in a 3 player game, each player would more than likely assume the role of one faction and Euro game their way to a relatively non-interactive victory. In a 4 player game, the two players that ended up in the same faction would have a much more difficult time than being a one-man-wolf-pack.

e.) It gave rise to a feeling of mechanical contradiction in terms of retaining Status for more than one faction. I liked that in my current incarnation, players had to consider the pros and cons of switching sides. Maybe they were after Infamy points so they would take an easier path for a mission, switching factions in the process, and foregoing Status advancement. Some players ping ponging between factions was something I very much wanted to happen throughout a game. I couldn't really imagine this happening if the Status scored cumulatively rather than variably.

7.) Factions: Michael made a comment about how the factions alignment was in fact "fake." I think what he meant by this was I had made the conscious decision to make all the Status advantages symmetrical, meaning that the factions had no inherit difference. Beyond the factions having access to 2 of the 4 resources in their home sectors, they seemed identical. But this is something else with which I disagreed. The flavor of the factions, their identities, and the incentive to be in them, was in the missions. The Cartel are ambivalently after money and quick turnaround for profit, using Compound to grease the wheels; the Conglomerate can't rise above their horrid reputation so they drag their rivals into the muck with information, often sending henchmen to do their bidding, and spending their funds without hesitation; the Militia are extremists of the most violent variety, finding a way to make a gun a necessary part of any mission, desperate for recognition and respect, and quick to light the fuse on a home-made explosive.

The incentives to be in a faction are entirely based on two factors: game state and mission availability/benefit. If two other players are in two of the factions, the last guy in will inevitably join the third to steer clear of competition. If the payout is juicy enough for one faction over the others, it could entice even a Status hungry player to jump ship. This paradigm offers a massive amount of replayability. These elements make Infamy different than the usual fare of FFG-centric games, not predetermined notions that motivate decisions before the game even starts. In doing this, I also have avoided balance issues.

I have in fact tested faction-specific Status advantages, and it proved more complicated and imbalanced than I wanted. Even when I found what seemed to be a balance within this concept, players would not even bother to see what advantages they had, whereas before they were very aware of their pros and cons (because other players shared them).

This is the part where I thank Michael for allowing me to participate in this series, for his tremendous insight, and for offering genuine solutions. It is a rare and wonderful knack in a world where most people just point a stick at what's wrong without offering any notion of an alternative.

Would you like to have your game featured in a future Gaming the Design column? Let me know at gdw@gamedesignerwannabe.com

Gaming the Design - Infamy

2012-05-15T06:00:00.000-04:00

Infamy is a game in early design by Travis Chance that centers around an order-fulfillment system (get goods X, Y, and Z and be the first to bring them to the specified location). It does so with a theme that crosses Total Recall with the three-gang system of Grand Theft Auto 2. Player interaction is brought about through both a race to fill the orders (complete the missions) as well as a Pirate's Cove-style simultaneous location selection where overlapping choices are resolved in a priority/bidding system. Accomplishing these missions will gain you special abilities as well as scoring in two parallel point tracks (Infamy and Status). The first player to reach the specified level of either one wins.

One of those point tracks, Status, deserves some examination. The designer had laid that out as three axes leading out from a center (representing the game's three factions) with markers for each level. A player's marker indicated both his or her current Status level as well as with which faction that player was currently aligned.

This layout gave a misleading impression. It made it seem like choosing to support one faction moved you away from others. In reality, anytime you completed a mission for a faction, you immediately switch to that faction without losing any levels. This meant that the factions were almost meaningless in practice. The only thing one cared about in mission selection was which mission you could accomplish, regardless of faction. Factions became irrelevant to your strategy.

To be fair, the designer had a goal of not wanting to penalize players for switching factions, as had been true in previous versions. It is true that players will object to mechanics that penalize them for adapting to the situation. If players were hurt for taking advantage of an opportunity in another faction, they might instead spend a turn or two gathering resources and waiting for an achievable mission in their current faction. This would slow the game down unnecessarily.

As a remedy, I proposed shifting to a bonus-for-loyalty system instead of a penalty-for-switching. When accomplishing a faction's mission, instead of gaining generic Status points, the player would receive tokens specific to that faction. Each token would be worth an increasing number of Status points if within the same faction, but all faction tokens would add up to your overall score. For example, if you had . . .

4x Corporation tokens (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 Status)
2x Rebel tokens (1 + 2 = 3 Status)
1x Mafia token (1 Status)

Then that would total 14 Status. A player would then be incentivized to be loyal to a faction, but could still work for other factions for a lesser reward. You avoid the psychological effect of penalties while still reaping the thematic and strategic benefits of incentivizing loyalty.

The game is divided into rounds. Each round has the following phases:

Bidding for five randomly chosen contact cards
Simultaneous-Action-Selection of missions or resource gathering
Simultaneous-Location-Selection of missions
Resolve Missions
Simultaneous-Location-Selection of resource gathering
Resolve resource gathering

The bidding system has some quirks. First, you are bidding on contacts that act somewhat like the specialists in Planet Steam. The differences are that you are bidding on a specific one (in their randomly determined initiative order) at a time and that players may win the bid for more than one. Also, you are not bidding with a resource used elsewhere. You are bidding with a fixed number of "bid" tokens that you get back every other round (which means every 10 items). This is coupled with each auction being a "Glum Losers" auction (where all bids, including losing ones, are paid).

This is a dangerous combination. While a Glum Losers auction is both extremely interesting and meets the designer's goal of eliminating frivolous bids, it is an auction type for which most people are unprepared and that severely punishes those unfamiliar with its results. A famous example of this is a professor who auctions a $20 bill to his students through this auction type where individual bids eventually go well beyond the value of the prize. While this seems impossible, it is the predictable result of rational people trapped by this insidious action type.

You can skip this part if you are already familiar with the story of how this happens. Michael bids $10 for the $20 bill, hoping to gain a $10 profit. Jeff then bids $19, knowing he will reap $1 profit by winning and assuming that no one will bother bidding more when they cannot net gain anything by doing so. However, Michael is already in the trap. Because of the Glum Loser rules, by losing the auction, he will end up down $10. Michael increases his bid to $20, because this will mean that instead of losing money, he breaks even. Jeff is now in the trap as well. His now-losing bid of $19 means that is is perfectly rational for him to bid $21 for the $20 bill. While that would mean he has a net loss of $1, that is $18 better than losing his previous $19 bid and getting nothing in return. Both players are now in a cycle where it is perfectly rational for each to come over the top as while both players are now guaranteed to lose money, neither wants to be the one to lose more money by bidding less.

The danger of the Glum Losers auction is even worse when you take into account the way bidding resources work (fixed number per player, regenerated every 2 rounds). If two or more players get caught in the Glum Loser trap early, they will all end up with nearly nothing to bid with for up to nine more auctions.

The designer felt that previous tests with this system had gone well. I felt that he was discounting the danger of a new player digging themselves into a deep hole right at the start of the game. Such an experience might turn that player off the game for good. I personally like alternate auction formats (the keep-goin'-round-forever bidding of Power Grid is the low point of one of my favorite games) but am acutely aware of how important first impressions are to a game.

The prediction of doom bore out. In the third auction two of the four players got into a bidding war and were essentially eliminated from bidding for the rest of that round and all of the next one. I was able to manipulate that into winning five of the ten auctions between the first two rounds and the opponent who had not been caught claiming three of them. These won auctions gave a massive lead in resources that could be used to complete missions.

The designer did not want to switch to normal bidding, because that would go against his goal of eliminating frivolous bidding. I suggested a switch to the Penny-Auction model. In this model, losing bids are returned, but merely placing a bid incurs a nonredeemable cost. This auction type ensured that:

Frivolous bids were still eliminated, because merely placing them had a cost.
Players were encouraged to bid their maximum value for the item immediately, as having to increase the bid after being overbid meant spending yet more just to bid a second time.
Since losing bids (minus the per-bid-cost) were returned, the rationality trap of Glum Losers would disappear.
Even if a player fell into a bidding war, he or she would lose at most half of his or her money instead of all of it. Only the price-per-bid was lost, the losing bid itself would be returned.

Another goal of the designer was to have a high rate of collision between players during the mission/gathering resources phases. One method of doing this was by hoping players would simultaneously select identical locations in an attempt to both get the resource (or mission) provided by (or completed at) that location. Two things got in the way of this goal.

The initial obstacle was that the selection of location was broken into three pieces. First, players simultaneously selected whether they wanted to accomplish missions or gather resources. Then, only players who selected missions would then simultaneously select locations and then resolve conflicts. Finally, only players who selected gathering would simultaneously select locations. This meant that you would only potentially be in conflict with about half of your opponents (on average).

The other obstacle to the goal was the sheer number of locations. The game started with 14 locations with the possibility of more being built. This meant that even if you were potentially in conflict with other players, it would still be relatively unlikely for you to collide with one of them.

Collisions are resolved by which player had won the auction for the highest-initiative item. However, the player who would lose that comparison may discard an ammo item to try to win the location. The other player may then do the same to cancel it out. Since effectively losing a round's action by failing to win a collision was damaging, players would be incentivized to go back and forth with this.

The problem with this resolution system was that since resources were public, both players could see who would win the conflict by how much ammo each side would have. Therefore, the player who could not guarantee victory should logically not fight at all, since that would just make them lose ammo without gaining anything. An argument was made that a player might do so anyway out of spite, but this is clearly not designed to be a take-that game. It is designed to be strategic, so it should be judged on the soundness of its mechanics subjected to strategy-focused players.

There is another argument for spending ammo when losing, but it was a marginal case that would happen in the rare event that a collision occurred during mission resolution with an ammo-requiring mission on the table that referenced that conflict's location.

Thus the location collision mechanism was both rare and, even when it did happen, strategically uninteresting.

I proposed an alternative system where, instead of simultaneous-action-selection, players would select a location in initiative order. You could only select a location already occupied if you spent an ammo to kick that player out. A player who was kicked out could then either choose a new unoccupied spot, or take an occupied spot (including his or her former one) by spending an ammo himself or herself. The benefits of this change would be:

The value of ammo is identical to the old system.
The value of initiative is identical to the old system.
Collisions are no longer random but through tactical decision making.
Collisions will be exactly as frequent as players want them to be.
Even if you have enough ammo to win back a spot, it might be advantageous to switch to an empty spot instead of fighting back because you no longer lose a full round's action by forfeiting.
Because of the previous point, it is tempting to initiate a fight even if you have less ammo, because the other player might not fight back.

While I liked this suggestion, I realized that the designer might not want to ditch the simultaneous-action-selection. So I suggest that, no matter what, the total number of locations had to be reduced to increase the frequency of collisions.

The designer's other collision mechanism was that each mission card had three missions, one for each faction. This meant that players could be going for two different parts of the same mission card, but whoever had higher initiative would get to do that third of the mission card and the other two thirds would be unavailable.

While this is a good way to accomplish the collision goal, it has the downside of making mission cards full of 15 pieces of information: Status reward, Infamy reward, special effect, and faction icon / location / required goods / faction reward for each of the three factions. Multiply this by three mission cards and there was so much information available that players were overwhelmed.

I ended up suggesting that the designer only have one mission per card to deal with the information overload. However, this would go against the designer's collision goal, so this suggestion was a failure. I still don't know how to square this circle of information overload versus encouraging collisions.

The takeaways from this game are:

If players don't like a penalty, a good alternative is to reward the opposite behavior.
Odd auction types make a game interesting, but they also risk players not understanding the subtle strategic differences between auction types.
If you want players to interact, try to maximize their ability to choose to do so. On the flip side, minimize their chances to avoid interaction.
Think about how a perfectly rational player will approach a mechanic.
For playtesters: point out every problem you see, but when making a suggestion to fix it, keep the designer's own goals in mind. Help him or her make the game he or she wants to make.

That'll wrap up this edition of Gaming the Design. Do you have any questions about this game? Post them in the comments and the designer or I will attempt to answer them. The designer has already sent a response, but I'll put that in a separate post tomorrow as this is a tad long already.

Would you like to have your game featured in a future Gaming the Design column? Let me know at gdw@gamedesignerwannabe.com

Gaming the Design: Sword Merchants

2012-05-01T08:06:00.000-04:00

Gil Hova's Sword Merchants is an economic game where players compete to make the most money by selling weapons of different types and levels to type-specific spaces on the board. Players must balance several different tracks of advancement without losing ground in the sales race, which creates a nice tension on each turn and leaves space for long-term strategy. More information about it can be found on the designer's blog under its former name, Pax Robotica. I have played this game a couple of times over the years and was asked to take a look at the latest incarnation.

The game allows players to create different levels of each weapon type by collecting technology cards for that weapon type. A new addition to the game was the introduction of tiles that a player obtains for having the most technology cards of a given weapon type above a certain amount, working much like the Longest Road and Largest Army from The Settlers of Catan. In addition to being worth points at the end of the game, these tiles also grant a special ability.

During a player's turn, he or she may perform of the following actions:

Take a weapon technology card
Take a special effect Kingdom card
Build up to three weapons
Sell one weapon

The weapon tiles' special abilities each allow you to take a single additional action for the cost of $2 if your first action was the one specific to the tile. For example, if you have acquired the sword tile, and your first action was to build weapons, you may pay $2 to take a second action. In fact, the sword tile itself was the first problem I spotted.

A key element of the game is that the spaces to which weapons are sold are type-specific. In addition, not all spaces are available at the start of the game. The game is divided into three battlefields, and each battlefield begins with only one pair of spaces available. Additional pairs of spaces only become available when that pair is filled. Because of this, not every weapon type will have a space available to which it can be sold.

Because of this scarcity of target spaces, it is important that you don't waste money building weapons that you cannot sell on your next turn. Money is very tight in this game, so having an unsellable weapon will likely lead to a wasted turn or turns. Fortunately, when building weapons, you can see what weapons other players have previously built and are ready to sell. You can use this information to ensure that the weapon you build will have a space available on your next turn.

The sword tile breaks this important tempo mechanism. With it, a player can build and sell a weapon in the same turn. This will allow the player to sell to spaces that an opponent was counting on having. The other tiles aren't nearly as valuable as the sword tile, as taking a second action after taking a tech or Kingdom card doesn't break the tempo of build-wait-sell. The tile that lets you take an action after selling also isn't as good because selling, then building still leaves a waiting period after building.

To prove that this was as imbalanced as I suspected, we switched the randomly-assigned starting techs so that I was the one who started with the lead in sword tech. We also set a goal of my needing to win by $20 to prove that it was broken.

Profits from sales of weapons have a base value of $2 or $3. Using the sword tile to take an extra action costs $2; it would seem that the cost would make it not worth doing, as you are cancelling out your own profit. However, another mechanic in the game is that you are selling to factions on each battlefield. Selling to a faction gives you a bonus chip for the opposing faction, but only if you were the first to ever sell in that specific space.

Bonus chips add $1 to the profit for each weapon sold to the indicated faction. This encourages two things: selling to the faction for which you have the most bonus chips and selling to newly-available spaces which still have a bonus chip.

The strategy, then, is to use the sword tile to sell almost exclusively to tiles with bonus chips that accept weapons your opponents have built. You give up the effect of concentrating sales to a single faction, but you will collect so many chips that you will sell as high to any faction as someone specializing in it.

Employing this strategy has two effects. First, you deprive opponents of the opportunity to collect chips and force them to sell to lesser spaces (if they can sell at all). Second, instead of breaking even after the cost of using the tile's ability, you will net $5+ on each sale.

During the game, I spotted a Kingdom card which had good synergy with my chosen strategy. It said that, for the rest of the game, anytime I built multiple weapons, if one of them was a level 1 (smallest), I could sell it immediately. This meant that on my turn I would build a level 1 and a level 5 weapon. The Kingdom card would let me sell the level 1 and I would pay $2 to the sword tile to sell the level 5. I was gobbling up two spaces per turn, usually with bonus chips. The two effects thus reinforced each other and gave me a margin of victory of $72, easily clearing the goal set.

My first suggestion to the designer was to increase the activation cost of the sword tile to $3. He also felt that the Kingdom card should be given an activation cost. Since then, I've crunched the numbers and doing both of these would have only cost me about $30 from my final score, still leaving a sizeable margin. I was wrong about these changes. They are not enough.

The real answer is that these effects cannot exist at all. They break a fundamental focal point of the game's strategy: ensuring that you can sell a weapon the turn after you build it. If your opponent has one or both of these cards, there is no way to play around it. From the moment your opponent takes one of these cards, the rest of your game will be treading water and waiting for him or her to just trigger the game end. Perhaps the Kingdom card could survive if it was a one-shot effect and didn't last the entire game, but then it would have little point and would not be taken often. My advice at this point is to just think of completely different effects to replace them.

There was another rule that I warned would be a problem but didn't have the opportunity to prove. Three times during the game battles occur and some spaces on the board will clear. It is in a player's interest to be the first to take a turn on the newly-open board because that will give you the most flexibility. Gil had a rule that the player who triggered the battles would be the last to go after the board had been cleared. This will disincentivize players from being the one to trigger. The game will last longer as each player waits for another to be the one. This is a mistake I have made in my own designs.

Unfortunately, my sword-tile/kingdom-card strategy overshadowed this effect. I gained so much by selling as quickly as I can that it was worth it to go last. In fact, since I could build and sell after an opponent built but before they could sell, it actually didn't matter to me if I was last to act post-battles.

I still believe that this rule will slow the game down by at least one round per phase of the game and increase total playing time by about 12 minutes. I will advise the designer to watch carefully for players intentionally avoiding being the one to trigger in future playtests.

Today's two key takeaways:

Don't allow players to circumvent your game's strategic focal point.
Don't incentivize players to delay the game.

Do you have any questions about this game? I haven't given a full overview of everything and concentrated on the elements related to the issues I was able to spot, so feel free to ask for more details if you wish in the comments section. If the designer wishes to comment, I will append it to the end of this article.

Would you like to have your game featured in a future Gaming the Design column? Let me know at gdw@gamedesignerwannabe.com

Response from the designer:

Thanks for the writeup. I had the same thought this morning about the forge/sell tempo: The Kingdom Card that allows you to sell a Level 1 weapon on the same round that you should forge it should go. I'm probably going to replace it with a Kingdom Card that gives you a discount for forging Level 1 weapons (assuming it's not too powerful early in the game).

I'm going to keep an eye on the Longsword power at $3. It still might be too powerful at that cost, and at $4, it might become too weak.

I still disagree with you about the turn sequence, though. I haven't seen turtling become a significant enough problem with the game for the extra-turn rule to prove its worth. Players have so little direct control over that, I don't think it's worth keeping. I know it's powerful to be the first to start a round, but I'm not convinced that it significantly delays the game.

Gaming the Design

2012-04-30T06:00:00.000-04:00

Update: A friend suggested a rewording of this post for tone.

Tomorrow I will post the first of a new series of articles where I will dissect the math of other designers' prototypes (or even published games). I will do this with an eye towards promoting understanding of how mechanics interact with regard to determining winning strategies.

Why am I doing this? First, there is the selfish desire to expand my audience beyond those interested in my own attempts to have a game published. Second, I believe that designers can and should help each other make their games better. In my time spent with the NYC Board Game Designers Playtest Group (as well as a couple of times attending Spielbany), I have received great help with aspects of my designs at which I am unskilled. As an example, Dan Cassar was the one who came up with this board layout (vastly improving on the original).

In return, I have helped other designers with the aspects of game design at which I am strongest: the understanding and manipulation of incentives on player behavior and spotting mathematical weak points that lead to strategic imbalances. It was always gratifying to break a game and be thanked for doing so, and to be asked to play the next version to see if the problem was fixed.

I hope that this new series will help other designers to spot similar patterns in their own games. If you are interested in having your game featured, please email me at gdw@gamedesignerwannabe.com

Help Needed

2012-04-17T16:43:00.001-04:00

Would you like to take part in a survey? I would ask that you keep the questions confidential until the results are announced. If you'd like to help out, please email vhg@visiblehandgames.com

Thanks much.

P2012-1 Progress

2012-04-16T06:00:00.000-04:00

I held a playtest day on Saturday, which included two tests of P2012-1, with changes since my previous test as well as a big change between the first and second tests of the day.

In particular, Gil Hova made a suggestion which I (as he even predicted) despised the very thought of. However, he justified it with an argument too powerful to ignore.

The game includes a positional control mechanic, as you can infer from the picture. One of the things players could do to break through an enemy's lines was to capture an enemy's piece or pieces and replace them with your own under certain conditions. This was a central aspect of the game as I had originally conceived it. This mechanics is pulled in combinations from Go, Othello, and Hex.

Gil's objection was that to be on the receiving end of a capture, even if it required skill to execute, was a negative play experience. He didn't like the feeling of not only having an opponent advance, but to have himself be set back. He suggested that capture should be changed to allowing you to share a space with another player.

My knee-jerk reaction was that sharing was anathema to a game about positional control. However, I realized that a non-trivial portion of the hobby game market is attracted to Eurogames for, among other reasons, their lack of take-that mechanics.

I decided to give it a shot and we played with that rule in the second test. The change worked far better than I could have expected. Capturing switched from an offensive mechanic for devastating an opponent to a defensive mechanic that allowed you to escape tight spots. It was still extremely valuable to pursue as it could lead to big points, but no longer did the person on the receiving end feel bad as a result. The other two testers still liked the idea of replacing an opponent's piece instead of sharing, but I no longer think it is necessary for the game.

Unpub Mini Summary - Part 2

2012-04-12T06:00:00.000-04:00

I interviewed John Moller, the man responsible for the Unpubs, while I was there on Saturday. The video is below. Also, here are some photos of the Unpub.

Update: Here is another summary of the event.

At the event, feedback forms were distributed to all playtesters after each game. If you are curious, you can check out the feedback received for Municipality. I was quite pleased with the results. Most of the players had positive feedback.

In addition to the forms, I made sure (as I always do) to verbally ask the players about the game. This managed to get more negative feedback out of them. By "negative", I mean that the players identified weak points in the game. In particular, one of the three tests of the day managed to finally convince me to change something I had foolishly thought was core to Municipality. So, yes, I am eliminating the split between adjacency and connectedness. From now on, the only thing that will matter to a building is what buildings are adjacent to it. I will adjust the effect numbers so that the overall levels seen will remain about the same, but players will no longer have to trace routes on roads across tiles to determine the value of buildings. Consequently, they also won't have to worry about orientation of the tile when placing the building. Dan Cassar was right: the influence-trading part of the game is strong enough that it doesn't need a highly complex city-building game on the front end. This change will require more testing, but I am not short on time. I have plenty of other things to take care of in parallel, like hiring an artist.

Unpub Mini Summary

2012-04-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

I'll have more about the Unpub Mini I attended on Saturday, but here are some quick things:

The event was well organized. Thank you, John.
I managed to get three (!) playtests in a single day, which is the most I've ever done.
Dan Cassar convinced me to make a change no one else who had suggested it had managed to do. He did it by saying "This part is really interesting, but it's enough for its own game. This part is an interesting game by itself and that part is an interesting game by itself. But they're smooshed together and it's too much."
Thank you, Dan. That wording finally broke through my mental block on the game and made me realize that it will be okay to simplify the one half so it doesn't distract from the other half.
The city of Philadelphia attempts to kill visitors with the most uneven sidewalks ever designed. They're not even worn down or damaged. They're designed to be the opposite of the word "flat". I can only assume that they intend on looting the corpses of visitors who perish after falling.
I'm planning my summer convention schedule. The ones I'm currently looking at are: Origins (maybe), another Unpub Mini (June 23), Dexcon (July 4), Gencon (Aug 16), Metatopia (Nov 9), and BGGCon (Nov 14).
I'm looking to add more conventions between June and November. If you know of a convention where I would find an audience for my games, please let me know. Especially valuable are conventions which are driving distance from New York City and where a vendor table is not hideously expensive. Thanks in advance.

Unpub Mini - 4/7

2012-04-02T08:42:00.000-04:00

I will be at Unpub Mini in Philadelphia this Saturday to test Munucipality. Come check it out.

A New Game

2012-03-26T06:00:00.000-04:00

Here is a photo of my newest game design from a playtest of it last Thursday. For now I'll refer to this game as P2012-1.

Bag of Bits

2012-03-12T10:36:00.000-04:00

Some random stuff:

I wrote a review of Star Trek: Fleet Captains.
This article about designer-publisher relations is spot on. I don't know if the author and I are speaking about the same company, but while many publishers have rejected my games, there is one who did so in such an unprofessional manner (including some behavior described in the article). Under no circumstances whatsoever would I ever consider submitting to or working with that company again. One might respond, "You have no right to expect anything from them." However, if I go through the proper steps in submitting to a publisher who agrees to look at my game, I expect at least an acknowledgment email after that publisher has sat on my prototype for six months.
Visible Hand Games needs to hire a web designer. I need a simple CSS site design suitable for showcasing a small number (currently four) of game designs. Please contact mkeller@visiblehandgames.com (Subject: VHG Website) if you are interested.
Why do I need a web designer? Because I'm getting ready to launch a Kickstarter project for either Municipality or a game I have not yet discussed. I'll know which one by the end of the month, so I need to create the supporting infrastructure now.

This Post Also Needs a Title

2012-03-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in one of my Dreamation posts, I feel that the last of the gameplay tweaks for Titans of Industry is complete and I am ready to move forward with getting a publishing deal for the game. There is, unfortunately, one little hitch that has nothing to do with the game proper. I need a new name for the game. I won't go into the whole story here (if you ever meet me at a convention, feel free to ask), but I have resigned myself to finding a new name after calling it Titans of Industry for four years.

Unfortunately, coming up with creative names isn't exactly in my wheelhouse. So I am going to turn for a second time to crowdsourcing. If you can up with with an original, gripping title for a heavy economic eurogame where players build various production facilities to compete for domination in different sectors of the economy, then please email me at vhg@visiblehandgames.com. If I pick your entry (and you were the first to submit it), I will give you the choice of either a copy of the actual game when it is released (current guess: sometime next year) or, if you don't want to wait that long, I will send you a (nice) prototype copy by the end of this year. This contest will have no particular end date. It will end as soon as I see one that I feel is right.

Dreamation 2012 - Sunday

2012-02-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

I capped a successful convention off with another test of Municipality on Sunday morning.

There were two people pre-registered. One of them didn't show up, but two others joined. The two alternates were both people who had played Municipality at previous conventions. It is always gratifying to have people actively want to play my games a second (and for one of these players, a third) time. It shows that I've created a positive experience for them, one good enough to be worth repeating in an environment where there are plenty of alternative games available.

This is a good reminder of what my ultimate goal is as a game designer: to create something that people will enjoy and share with others long after I've stopped working on it. If I can make a game that even a few hundred people are still playing a couple of years after it is printed, then I will feel like these past seven years was worth it.

I also played so I could test if a specific strategy was viable. I wanted to see if someone could focus on campaign manager to almost the complete exclusion of everything else. It turns out that this strategy is extremely tough to pull off and requires that everything goes just right, but is a genuine strategic choice. I was happy to be able to pull off a solid victory with this when two of the three players had played before, one of whom had bested me in a heads-up match, and even the new player is generally quite excellent (read: unbeatable) at eurogames.

The only issue that came up during the game was that the player card was not perfectly clear on one of the roles. Two players mistakenly thought that, when controlling the Zoning Board, if they chose to take one permit and play one, then the one they played could not be the one they just took.

Other than that, the players were fully positive in their evalutation of the game, a marked difference from its reception on Friday. It seems that Municipality is strongly appealing to some players and a total misfire with others. I think that that is okay. People who love a game will purchase it. They will evangelize it. People who only kinda-sorta like a game won't bash it, but they also won't buy it. I would rather have strong feelings in both directions than a lukewarm positive review from everyone.

One of the players even told a passerby who asked about the game as we were playing that it was an "excellent game".

I felt very proud at that moment.

Dreamation 2012 - Saturday

2012-02-26T06:00:00.000-05:00

I started off with a game of Evo with Bill Murdoch (an old friend originally from the Spielbany playtests) and a couple other people. I was new to the game but managed to come in second place, losing by only two points. I ended the day with a 5-player game of Navegador and placed second in that as well. In between, I managed to spend some time talking shop with Steve Buonocore and Zev, who also frequent the Jersey conventions. But before all that was a playtest for Titans of Industry.

There were four people signed up for the game. Two of them failed to show up, but two alternates took their place. In fact, three of the four players had played in the Municipality playtest the previous day. This included the person who hated Municipality, so I braced myself for some harsh criticism against Titans.

The game went smoothly. I was happy to see many advancements being purchased again. I have full confidence that I now have the right mix. The only weird thing was they managed to buy 12 real estate by the end of the second age. That normally doesn't happen until near the end of the third age. As a result, they managed to be the first group ever to trigger the end game using the alternate rule: if all 16 real estate spaces are build, the game ends immediately. I was astonished that they managed to do this, but I was happy to see that it did not adversely affect the game. The final scoring still played out relatively normally.

Every single player gave unqualified positive feedback, including the tough critic of the table. One later told me that, out of the four new games he had learned at the convention, Titans of Industry was his favorite.

This is it. The game is done. I know I've said that before, but now I can feel it in my bones. This is going to be a great game for fans of economic games.

Or not. There's one tiny hiccup that has nothing to do with the gameplay. I hinted at it in a post a couple of weeks ago. I haven't figured out how to resolve this problem yet. Over the next week I'll mull my options and post my decision here.

Dreamation 2012 - Friday

2012-02-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

What a great way to start a convention. Shortly after arriving I found out that four people had pre-registered for the Titans of Industry playtest. Unfortunately, one had to bow out over concerns about another event starting before we would finish, but I jumped in and we still had a fun four-player game.

I went for a real estate / university strategy (which proved successful). The players enjoyed the game and four different level three advancements were purchased, not including the ones I bought. I am confident I have found the right mix and will send this version to a publisher (barring some catastrophe in the next playtest tomorrow).

After a break for dinner, it was time for a Municipality playtest. Again, three people had pre-registered and one more signed up at the convention. Vinny (the con organizer) had told me earlier that every single one of my slots had pre-registrations. This is very cool news. I'm happy if I get people for two of my four sessions at these things. I think my persistence in running playtests at the Jersey conventions is paying off. If I end up having to Kickstarter one of these two games later this year, then I know I will have some nonzero network of people who have played the game to hopefully start spreading the word.

The Municipality test itself was a mixed bag. One of the players didn't realize that this was a prototype beforehand and prefers not to play prototypes. I told her that I would understand if she dropped to play something else, but she pressed on. Unfortunately, she also doesn't enjoy bidding games, and the two-way bidding is the core of the interaction in Municipality. The other players had generally positive feelings and said they liked it enough to want to play again. There were some aspects for which they suggested changes. Unfortunately, all of their suggestions have been tried in previous versions of the game, so I didn't hear anything I think will improve it at this point. So I ended up with one like, two positive but unsure, and one didn't like. I'll pocket that as positive on balance.

Update: I forgot to mention that one of the Titans playtesters was about 12 or 13 years old. After the game, I asked him what he thought and he responded "It has an interesting market dynamic." Priceless.

Dreamation 2012 - Preview

2012-02-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

I'll be running playtests this weekend at the Dreamation convention in Morristown, NJ. Here are my scheduled events. If you'd like to try the games at a non-scheduled time, just email me at mkeller@visiblehandgames.com

Friday (2/24)

1:00 pm - Titans of Industry - B424
8:00 pm - Municipality - B478

Saturday (2/25)

1:00 pm - Titans of Industry - B586

Sunday (2/26)

10:00 am - Municipality - B705

Yes, I've seen it . . .

2012-02-04T19:48:00.000-05:00

. . . and I have the most massive stress headache as a result.

NYC BGD Meeting - January 2012, Part 2

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

I ran a test of Titans of Industry at this meeting. Specifically, I ran a modified, "Learning" version of the game. The differences for this version:

Remove a "Recyling Farm" card from the Progress deck.
Advancements are removed from the game.
Titan cards referencing Advancements are removed from the game.
Building Real Estate immediately scores you market share equal to the number of demand icons on that Real Estate card.
Locked (striped) secondary markets can only receive their default good.

The first two changes had learn-the-game reasons behind them. The next two changes are to deal with the effects of removing Advancements from the game. The last isn't actually a change in the rules, but is just an effect of Advancement-removal. I listed it because it is important to draw attention to it as a "change" from the normal game. Let's examine these individually.

1. Remove a "Recyling Farm" card from the Progress deck.

This speeds the game up. The main goal of a learning version of a game is to present the game's ideas and mechanics to a player in an easily digestible form that prepares them to play the real game. By removing one of the Recycling cards from the Progress deck, Ages not only end faster, but they are guaranteed to end at some point. This guarantee breaks the game for an experienced player, as knowing when an Age will end allows a player to abuse the Age-end sequence. However, since this is a learning game, I am less concerned with presenting a fully balanced experience. I am just trying to get players to the point where they can play the balanced, real game.

2. Advancements are removed from the game.

The 80/20 rule of learning a game is that a 20% increase in rules makes it 80% harder to learn the game. I just pulled that out of my . . . it's a fake rule. But it sounds right. For the learning version of a game, you need to introduce players to both the core mechanics and to the flow of play. In Titans of Industry, Advancements are not the core of the game (buying and selling in competitive markets). Advancements don't affect the flow of play (build facilities, then real estate, then the Age ends). Advancements are there to offer long-term strategic options as a counterweight to an otherwise highly tactically-oriented game. They are the perfect choice to remove from the learning game.

I could have also removed the Titan cards. However, players only actively engage with Titan cards at 3 points during the game (at the end of each Age). Removing them would not have noticeably decreased the up-front rules burden of the learning version.

Removing Advancements reduces the number of available actions on a player's turn from five to four. According to my totally-made-up rule, this 20% decrease should make the game 80% easier to learn.

3. Titan cards referencing Advancements are removed from the game.

This was a required change once Advancements were excised. Only two of the Titan cards are removed, so it is not a major change to the variety.

4. Building Real Estate immediately scores you market share equal to the number of demand icons on that Real Estate card.

A level one advancement scores a player points at the end of each age for each piece of Real Estate owned by that player.Without that advancement, one of the incentives to build Real Estate is removed. This will reduce the speed at which is it built, which will slow down the game. It is important for a learning game to be fast. That is why change #1 was implemented. Giving players immediate points for building Real Estate puts a little weight back onto the correct side of the scale.

Why not do the same in the normal version of the game? It is because I want a Real Estate strategy to be a conscious strategic choice by a player, not something you can casually do once or twice a game to grab spare points. In the learning game, it is less important to force long-term choices on players because they do not yet have the foundation in the game's mechanics necessary to make those meaningful choices.

5. Locked (striped) secondary markets can only receive their default good.

This wasn't actually a rules change. The locked secondary markets are unlocked by a level two advancement. Without the Advancements, that meant that these were permanently locked.

I think I made the wrong decision on this one. Instead of allowing them to be permanently locked, I should have made them completely unlocked. This would shift the game's balance, making Factories and Oil Wells less valuable because other goods can compete with them with no trouble at all. However, I forgot that learning games aren't about balance. They are about letting players discover the game's central mechanics and flow of play.

The core of this game is players competing in markets. By not allowing this competition between goods at all, I shielded players from competition. It may be somewhat frustrating to have too much competition, but even worse is being bored by having none at all.

By this point I'm sure I've enraged some people through my cavalier attitude towards balance in the learning version of this game. Part of me does feel that any version of the game should stand on its own. However, I feel that if there was a simpler, balanced version of the game that is perfectly suited to repeated plays on its own, then there would be no reason at all to have an "advanced" version of the game. Might as well just release the basic version and hold everything else back for an expansion.

I don't want to make that simple game. My goal isn't to have people play that simple game. My goal is to have people play the full game. The learning version is merely a tool to get them there. Like a rulebook or video, this is about education. That is why I'm not fretting what would happen if experienced players sat down to this version.

At some point I'll have a follow-up post looking at how other games have approached this issue. For now, please let me know how misguided I am about this in the comments.

NYC BGD Meeting - January 2012, Part 1

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday was the monthly meeting of the NYC Board Game Designers group. I playtested three games for other designers and watched the "beginner" version of Titans of Industry with four players.

The three games I tested were a storytelling-themed game, Gil Hova's Sword Merchants (née Pax Robotica), and Mark Salzwedel's Monorails of Mars.

The first game, about storytelling and lying, seemed to be relatively early in development. Very quickly I found holes in the incentive system that strongly discouraged both lying and calling someone out on a lie. These two activities were really the only fun thing about a game. The rest was just an obvious playing of a small number of randomly-drawn cards.

Design Tip*: incentivize the fun parts of your game.

Following that, I moderated the Titans of Industry playtest. There are some interesting issues to discuss in designing beginner's versions of an advanced game. I will give them the treatment the deserve in my next post.

Next, I played Gil's game. At this point, it's an action-selection/economic-engine game with too few actions and an economic curve that feels choked off. The highlight (for me, probably not for Gil) was when I forced him to change the rules mid-game by creating a way to abuse the special cards and get six consecutive actions in a game where it is incredibly important that you only get to do one thing at a time.

Last up was Mark's train game. Unfortunately, I don't think I was very useful in this test. I played the game fine. I even won. But I don't feel like my feedback helped much. The only thing I spotted was that his version of the steam-engine-level mechanic was much too expensive to justify purchasing the fourth (and final) level. The issue with me is that I'm just not able to engage well with train games, including the Railroad Tycoon-type games, to which this seemed to belong. It is odd, because my preferred game profile (heavy/economic/stock) would suggest train games are right up my alley. Somehow, they never clicked with me.

After the test, a handful of us went out to get some dinner and talk shop. I enjoy socializing with other designers. I feel camaraderie with the others yet unpublished and am reminded success is possible with the ones who have a box with their name on it.

*Design Tips are furnished with the caveat of eight years of design failure and zero published games.

My green rails won the day.

Titans of Industry v31

2012-01-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I ran my first playtest of 2012. This also marked the resumption of testing after the predictable holiday unavailability of my testers. It felt good to get Titans of Industry back on the table.

The results of this test were a little odd. In the first age, the very first three cards drawn from the Progress deck were all the city cards. The second age also saw an improbably early draw. This meant that the game, overall, was about 5 or 6 turns shorter than normal distribution would have made it.

Normally this would not be a problem. However, my main testing focus at the moment is balancing Age 3 advancements and Titan cards. Both of these are late-game or end-game mechanics. If the game is shortened from 25 rounds to 19, players will not have time to use these effectively.

The players were still positive about the experience and liked the tension of the unpredictable end of the age, but I didn't get to see anyone try to abuse the Advertising advancement. My notes are below.

Off-Topic: Better Secret Santa

2011-12-01T00:20:00.001-05:00

My extremely large family has done Secret Santa for many years to avoid bankrupting everyone at the holidays. After the first time we did this, I realized that some of us (myself included) were assigned to buy gifts for people for whom we didn't have any ideas.

To fix that problem, I created a tool that my family has used ever since that lets everyone designate who they'd be able to buy the best gift for, then assigns Secret Santas in a way that maximizes those selections. It has made Christmas quite a bit less stressful for all of us.

This year, I decided to share this tool with everyone and have launched Better Secret Santa. Please try it out for your Secret Santa group. It is absolutely free. Happy holidays!

Metatopia 2011 - Saturday, Part 3

2011-11-17T00:14:00.000-05:00

My original schedule for Saturday was attending seminars from 10am until 2pm, then an hour for lunch, a playtest of Titans of Industry at 3pm, an hour to relax, and finally another playtest of Titans of Industry at 7pm.

However, because of my (great!) publisher meeting at 1pm, I forfeited both the third seminar as well as my lunchbreak. The first playtest ran a little long (as the city progress cards kept not coming up), which shortened my break to the point where it didn't make sense to leave, so I ended up being in that room almost continuously from 1pm until 10pm.

As an aside, thanks to Dan Cassar for grabbing a component I had forgotten and Mark Salzwedel for grabbing me a snack.

By the end of the second playtest, I was dead tired but still hungry enough to need to go out. I'm sadly starting to feel my age. Despite the physical toll of that day, I couldn't have ended it happier. Not only was I riding the high of the meeting, but the feedback I received was both positive and useful. My notes are below.

Metatopia 2011 - Saturday, Part 2

2011-11-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

After the second seminar of the day, I rushed to grab my Municipality prototype and get back to the main game room. A publisher's representatives had made an appointment with me to check out Municipality at 1:00pm after seeing the reactions of the playtesters from the previous evening. After a few minutes of submission-form-filling and a rules explanation, we started playing.

We didn't get through the entire game, as we had waited a bit for two of the players to arrive and bumped up against the 3:00 events, but they did manage to see a significant enough chunk of the gameplay to understand it and see what I feel are the game's strengths. When we decided to adjourn to speak about the game, all three players were positive about the game, two of them especially so. Most of their suggested changes were related to making the board clearer, ie. adding labels in places.

The one real rules change they wanted was not allowing players to double their taxes when they are already at zero approval. I don't think it is a problem to allow it, but I also don't feel terribly strongly about that rule either, so I was prefectly happy to make that change. Other than that, they said that they were stretching to find things to change about the game.

My full notes from the test are below (they're a bit sparse because I was also playing). However, since the convention, the publisher has expressed a desire to take a fuller look at Municipality. The publisher hasn't actually asked me to send the prototype over yet, but I assume that things will move forward once the Essen/Metatopia/BGG.con stretch of time is over.

Up next: the toughest part of the convention - 6 more hours of playtesting without a break.

Metatopia 2011 - Saturday, Part 1

2011-11-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

After an excellent Friday, I started off Saturday by attending a couple of panels.

The Nitty-Gritty of Self-Publishing (Brennan Taylor)

This seminar was given by an RPG designer, but some of it was applicable to board game design. My notes are below.

Editing
Never edit your own work. It can't be someone who has been playtesting; it should be a fresh set of eyes.
- Copy Editing (spellcheck, etc.)
- Rules Editing (comprehesibility)
can people follow the flow?
Two purposes: learning the game and reference tool during the game. You need to make rules serve both purposes. This requires someone who knows what they're doing. Should budget to hire someone to do that.
Editors have three things: by word, by page, or by project. For every 100 pages, price for editing will go up by about 33%. $1,000 dollars is an expected price range. Try to make friends with people and get "the friend rate".

Art and Layout
Have a vision of final product. Look for artists who fit that vision.
When budgeting for art, you can use stock photography if genre-appropriate to save money.
Color or black & white? Color is much more expensive. If producing only for PDF, go for color.
You can do layout deisgn yourself, but don't do it if you don't know what you're doing. Hiring someone is about the same budget as editing. When getting a friend to do this or art, don't expect it to happen quickly. Always pay friends at least something, it ensures quality.
You can have someone do the design and then you insert the content to save money.

Printing
PDF route
Print on Demand: more expensive per-copy
Short-run: Keep print runs small, unsold inventory ties up capital and gets taxed
Full-offset printing: 500 or more copies because of setup costs
Full-bleed costs more than no bleed.

Markets
If you want to sell through retailers, you need to buy an ISBN. Each costs about $10. Cheaper alternative to UPC code.

The more channels where you can make money, the better.
Retail stores are important in building a community; Bits & Mortal is a way to make electronic resources paired with retail sales to not make retailers the enemy.

Direct Sales: investment, time, and fufillment yourself.
Fufillment services
Retailers: have to go through distributors. Retailers take around 40% of cover price; distributors take another 20%.

Profit and Loss
Need to figure out break-even after up-front and per-copy costs.

The Board & Card Games Roundtable (Stephen Buonocore, Zev Shlasigner, Curt Covert, Justin Brennan)

Zev: hobby market growing; doom and gloom about electronic games not happening
Curt: mobile gaming "is actually a great boon"; is an entry point for dual-sales in either direction; exposes games to more mainstream gamers
Geoff: explosion in volume of games
Stephen: the number of games is so much greater than before; somewhat of a detriment to publishers; market needs to expand to support all the new games
Curt: Online versions of games expanding in US. contract terms are dangerous to publishers.
Curt: social media is affecting publishing by word of mouth about games.
Curt: Retailers are purchasing less copies of most games at launch. They are aware of what games are getting buzz out of conventions. Distributors are the same, keeping low inventories.
Zev: distributors not taking on new companies at the same rate. they're now trying for exclusivity or being a fulfillment service.
Stephen: if you're self-publishing (non-Kickstater), it is very problematic. How do you sell? If direct from website, how to you publicize? It is difficult.
Zev: Probably only 1,000 to 1,500 copies in your run, no more than 2,000.
Stephen: How do you make a small fortune in this industry Start with a large one. Publishers take a large amount of risk.
Curt: There is a game designer inside every game. You can license to publisher or self-publish. If you self-publish, you're going to "eat, sleep, breathe, live that company". If you don't want to do that, find a publisher instead. It is a significant risk. When researching how to publish, advice always heard is:
Step 1: Don't do it.
Stephen: What is your goal? To have your name on a box? To build your own company? To have name on box and make money? (find a publisher). Lots of games don't need to be made. Some are good but just can't be sold in the market.
Zev: Component cost must not exceed level of game.
Zev: Receives 200 submissions a month. Has open submissions policy and will also go after games that get buzz.
Stephen: Doesn't take unsolicited submissions. have to schedule time at a convention. Also goes after games with buzz; but cannot accept email-based submissions.
Curt: Does his own design for all games company has produced. However, can only create one or two new games per year. For company to grow, might have to take some solicited designs.
Q: What is good price in recession?
All: Doesn't matter, if people get excited, they'll pay $100 for it. However, game experience and components have to match price.
Stephen: In hobby-game industry, even Zev does very small print runs. Scale is so different between mass market and hobby. A 5,000 print run is very good. 2,000 is minimum for cost reasons. Even Fantasy Flight is not printing 100,000 copies at a time.
Zev: There is no price point you can't set, but it has to be worth it.
Zev: For Barnes&Noble, publishers have to pay for space, but worth it. Fixture Fee through Publisher Services, Inc. They are different from distributors. They represent to distributors, central point of shipping, handle the sales and orders from distributors.
Curt: Also goes through a consolidator, Impressions. This allows you to tell retailers that you are available through all distributors.
Curt: With first game, printed too many. Had to go door-to-door to retailers. Managed to get Spencers to buy 2,500.
Zev: Large retail buyers don't play games; they hear soem things, but don't really know what the game is like at all when they buy.
Zev: Traditional advertising doesn't really work. Best marketing is to go to every convention. Went to 50-person shows everywhere. Success came partly from being willing to show up in those places. Going to Essen was a gamble. For first hour, no one came to table, but then people started coming and was best show he had. With advertising in magazine, you don't know how effective it was. With face-to-face sales at conventions, you know exactly what ROI was.
Curt: Marketing is changing. Previously was about awareness. Now it is changing to relationship marketing. Being at a show is huge. The people you make contact with there become evangelists if you create a memorable experience. Also, same people will come back at later conventions because you have established a relationship. Using BoardGameGeek contest also got people excited by making them feel part of the specialness of the brand.
Stephen: This is a social industry. The panelists are social people. If you don't like people and associating with them and pressing the flesh, then you are not in the right industry.
Curt: Choose a show based on who you want to be talking to. GenCon is where I live and grow. Toy Fair is for different ideas than that. It is more about networking. ChiTag is a mainstream game show for game enthusiasts. ChiTag is for players but also to find retailers and bigger box retailers.
Justin: First two days are industry-only. Next two are consumer days.
Curt: First two days opportunity to get 10 minutes with large companies like Hasbro. Weekend is like GenCon for mainstream.
Zev: Also has demo program, Z-Force, that has people who go to retailers. Zev can only personally do ones in the region. Other companies do the road trip. People like meeting you at shows. When he went to Australia, people were so happy he came so far that they still talk about it now. Develpoed comraderie. That he actually came down was a big thing.
Curt: You don't have to sell a game, you have to share it and show your passion. Then they sell themselves.
Curt: Another marketing outlet is podcasts and reviewers; will send out review copy in a heartbeat to serious-minded people.
Zev: They have to be established reviewer before you do that. So many reviewers request, half the print run would be going to reviewers if said yes to all of them.
Zev: Going to a show is a marketing expense. Don't expect to make your money back. The main purpose is to generate future sales. Making money is just bonus.
Stephen: Last Essen, did not make money from trip. But had to be there to be somebody. The following year, did make money.
Zev: Eventually you become a destination that people mark down to see at a convention.
Stephen: Essen is definitely worth for everyone to go for fun; but for publishers, it is a lot of work.
Zev: Has types of games he doesn't want to be sent for either personal dislike or for marketing reasons. Ie. trivia, sports simulation, word games (Prolix excepted). Is occassionally willing to take a risk. Some worked, some burned him, but that's okay.
Curt: His company planted a flag around games he liked to make. Now any game that he might publish has to fit his banner of "screw your neighbor"
Stephen: Will print any good game; not restricted.
Zev: When moved from B-Movie to do Ideology, people expected it to be funny even though Zev didn't explicitly brand himself that way.
Stephen: reprint well drying up; moving into new designs
Curt: There's a market for about any game that can be created. There will be some small niche who feel it is the best game ever. Others would rather watch paint dry.
Zev: He doesn't try to make everyone happy with every game. He makes a lot of games so that any person will find some game in his catalog that they will enjoy.
Q: What was biggest mistake in publishing?
Stephen (with smile): No comment.
Curt: Not having distribution for first game. Also came up with watch for life counters. Unfortunately, couldn't sell them because people who were his customers couldn't use it with his games. Ate a lot of money on the watch. Sutakku is also a risk because it doesn't necessarily connect with people who like his backstab games. Aiming at a broader audience.
Zev: Shazaam; thought it was a no-brainer and was definitely going to sell. Instead, heard crickets on it. Still doesn't know why it failed. No game that he took a big chance on until recently, but games like Road Rally didn't sell as well as expected. Should have done a smaller print run. You need to temper your amount of risk. Has some advantage; because he is established he knows he can sell a minimal amount. Eventually also got to a point where he can survive a bombed game or two. This allows him to increase his risk.
Zev: In this industry, initial sales are 60 days, after 90 days it will fall or even freeze. A couple of titles will be evergreen and sell small consistently every month.
Curt: It doesn't matter when people start to like it, as long as bad reputation hasn't been previously established.
Zev: Has not seen movie or other exogenous effect that boosts game sales through related theme.
Justin: Told by Hasbro that if Monopoly was brand new today, it could never sell. But because it has been around so long, it has slowly built itself up. This overcomes all of its negative points.
Zev: Plays Monopoly with house rule: if player was low on money, others would pay him to roll dice and move token for them.
Curt: If a game doesn't move within two months, Walmart will remove it from shelves.
Stephen: Biggest mistake is going legally against Hasbro. Biggest risk taken was to print over 10,000 copies of Survive! It hit retail shelves in February. After 7 months, completely out of stock. Has done tremendous sales, but could have sunk the company. Did a little research with consolidator and distributors on demand, but relied more on buzz on BoardGameGeek. Things like how many have it on "Wants" or "Wishlist" is very indicative of demand.
Curt: Mitigating that, on the Geek, not indicative of sales potential of beer and pretzel games.
Zev: Muchkin and B-Movie sales are much higher than BGG's ratings would indicate.

Metatopia 2011 - Friday

2011-11-05T23:48:00.000-04:00

The first night of the convention went swimmingly.

Normally, when I run playtest sessions at the Jersey conventions, I have to just set up the game and hope enough people who aren't pre-registered for another game during that time slot find the prototype attractive enough to give it a try. This time, when I checked the big board, I saw that all four slots were filled up with pre-registered players. There was even another person penciled in the alternate slot. When I run playtests at home, I almost never get to test with the full number of players because usually one or two people will drop out on the day of the test. To have a guaranteed full complement of players was a pleasant surprise.

The Municipality test itself went well. It took two hours, while the typical game is only 90 minutes. This was because of a combination of AP and the players not recognizing the inflection point where they had to race to campaign. The Tax Assessor and Deputy Mayor roles were far more popular than they have been in any previous test. The players were strongly positive on the game. Their main complaint centered around the randomness of which land spaces became available for purchase, but one of them suggested a clever fix, a variation of which I will implement for the next Municipality test on Sunday.

Towards the end of the test, a couple of people asked me to stop by when it was complete. It turned out that they are from a publisher and, based on the reactions of the people in the test, wanted me to show them the game separately. I gave them my elevator pitch for the game and one remarked, "I love when games do that," referring to the passing of Political Capital back and forth between the players. We scheduled a time for a real run through the next day.

Finally, I arrived (late) for a session of Dan Cassar's new game. It is an early-stage prototype and I think the group as a whole gave him good feedback. Afterwards, Dan and I headed to the hotel bar to talk shop for awhile. We discussed design philosophy, other designers, strategies for dealing with publishers, and how to market your games.

A strong playtest, an idea of what to change for the next one, and being approached by a publisher: not a bad way to start a convention.