Links: Dealing Death, Designing Responsibly & Dumping Ideas

Each week I receive hundreds of email messages about game announcements, distribution deals, rulebooks being available, and the latest blitz of Kickstarter campaigns — and to make matters worse, I typically send myself a few dozen email messages each week. Why? Because I'm surfing on my phone late at night or in a waiting room and want to forward myself a list of game release dates from a distributor, a game theory article that popped onto my RSS feeder, or (most often) new game listings in the BGG database. I see these things writ small and unusable on my phone, so I forward them to future Eric with the intention that he'll do something with them later.

That guy's a jerk, though, and he never gets through these messages at a decent pace, leaving them to compost in the inbox under yet more messages. In an effort to shovel out that material before it gets too ripe, here's a bunch of quick hits from slow Eric:

• Designer Tom Jolly catalogs different types of puzzle games on League of Gamemakers, pointing out the following about the relation between the two: "Note that in all the games listed so far, the foundation of the game is racing to find a solution to a single puzzle. This is the most common theme in puzzle-games and obviously the easiest to implement. You can take any solitaire puzzle, give a copy to two players, and say GO! Whoever solves it first wins the game!"

• In another article on that site, designer Seth Jaffee, developer for Tasty Minstrel Games whose most recent release is Eminent Domain: Microcosm, contemplates the designer's responsibility for good and bad play experiences. An excerpt:

Quote:

Sometimes, while playing a game, you find yourself in a very bad spot. Perhaps you find yourself bankrupt, dead, or otherwise out of the game altogether. Or worse, you're NOT out of the game, but you cannot make any progress! You sit there helpless watching your friends having a great time. Often the only way to get stuck in that bind is by making a bad play – a mistake, an ill-advised move, or possibly a calculated risk that doesn't pan out. Even if it's rare, whenever this happens, it usually means a miserable experience for the player.

As a designer there's a temptation to accept this dynamic in your own game, and to defend your design choice by saying "yeah, that would suck... don't do that." And to some extent maybe that's ok... The question is, what's that extent? Is it the designer's responsibility to ensure bad play doesn't ruin a player's enjoyment of a game?

Jaffee wants to take on that responsibility: "[O]ver time I've realized that, with such a wide range of players, these poor play situations will come up more often than I might have expected at first. And frankly the thought of any player having a bad experience – even if it's their own fault – is unacceptable to me."

For my part, I'm fine with a player getting tanked through their play behavior. In my first game of Age of Steam, which was possibly my first train game played, I created two networks on opposite ends of the board, so I couldn't deliver goods for enough income to dig me out of the debt hole. No one else had suggested that I create a single network because they either assumed I knew what I was doing or were happy to see me take myself out of the game. I learned and went on to play the game better in future sessions.

Along the same lines, I'm a fan of most Leo Colovini designs, and he often allows players to walk themselves into a corner. I still need to record a video about Hot Tin Roof, so perhaps I can dig into the topic more at that time.

• On Boing Boing, Ferdinando Buscema explains how and why he created a Memento Mori from decks of playing cards.

• On The Washington Post, Ana Swanson highlights "The mathematically proven winning strategy for 14 of the most popular games", with "popular" meaning well-known among the public at large. Don't expect Terra Mystica advice is all I'm saying.

• On his blog, Stinker designer Nick Bentley details his 100:10:1 method for game design. An excerpt:

Quote:

Step 1 – I quickly write 100 short game concepts in a notebook. In less than a week. Even in one day. I don't give much thought to quality; I include whatever comes to mind, even if it's dumb, incomplete or violates physical law (I do include good ideas as well). I keep spitting out ideas especially after I feel "spent".

Step 2 – Based on some selection criteria (which depend on my design goals and which I discuss below), I pick 10 of the 100 concepts and try to turn them into actual games. Just crude working versions. I work on all in parallel. This usually take six months to a year.

Step 3 – I pick the most promising game of the 10 I've developed and playtest+polish it till I'm sure I can't improve it. Then I make a list of its weaknesses and improve it more. Then I'm done.