/pic482348.jpg)
• Dan Misener at Gizmodo explains "How Kickstarter Hides Its Failures from the Internet". The short answer: Commands to search engines not to catalog pages for failed projects. As Misener notes, based on the advice of an expert, "if you're going to use a crowdfunding service like Kickstarter, it's important to figure out what's worked for others in the past, but also to figure out what hasn't worked for others in the past. If you hide failure, it's hard to learn from others' mistakes."
Anyone want to take a crack at calculating whether board and card game projects on KS beat the 44% success rate mentioned in that Gizmodo article?
/pic199316.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic1260580.jpg)
Better prepare a price list, Timothée, in case someone wants to throw a huge project your way...
• Riffing on an article I linked to in March 2012, designer Jeffrey D. Allers writes about how to design game endings in his Berlin Game Design blog. An excerpt:
Quote:
[W]hen we test prototypes, if the thing works but still isn't great, it's usually the end of the game that needs work. It drags, it's the same-ole same-ole, or there's a convoluted scoring system created in the name of balance that makes the final math exercise anti-climactic. There have been times when we've intentionally tried to create a scoring system that avoids "adding up victory points."
Designing a satisfying end to ones game really is the hardest thing to get right. If a designer is looking to separate his or her work from the increased competition, this seems like one of the best ways in which to do so.
One thing I've noticed after describing many, many games over the years is that all competitive games can be divvied into three categories:Designing a satisfying end to ones game really is the hardest thing to get right. If a designer is looking to separate his or her work from the increased competition, this seems like one of the best ways in which to do so.
-----• Whoever has the most victory points wins.
-----• Whoever is first to some goal wins.
-----• The last player standing wins.
Since I prefer to launch a game description with the goal of the game in order to let people have that in mind for everything that follows, I always find myself leading with one of these three statements. (In the first category, you can replace "victory points" with "money" or some other countable unit, while in the second the goal can be either a physical location or a VP/money/unit total. And just as some players and designers contend that every game is an auction game in disguise, the third category above could be recast as either of the first two categories.)
When Jeff talks about "a convoluted scoring system", he's talking only of the first category since the other two are immediately recognizable: Am I the only one still in the game? Did I reach the finish line first? Bam, I win! Resolving the first category, on the other hand, can be as simple as looking at a score track or counting money or as laborious as the 7 Wonders and Agricola tally charts I mentioned in my original post.
Any other victory conditions I missed for competitive games?
/pic1327331.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic1215601.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic1326136.jpg)
/pic1324609.jpg)
/pic1207030.jpg)
