The problem with taking several writing classes at once is that they ALL want to teach you how to workshop, even though there’s only so much you can teach about being a critical thinker about a piece of artistic expression. A lot of it is having experience in the field in question. For example, I’m a near-worthless art critic because I don’t have training in artistic aesthetics. I think I can be pretty insightful about writing, but much moreso in science fiction and fantasy stories because I’ve read so many.
Plus, an important part of workshopping is being able to suggest ideas and changes. In art, I probably won’t be able to say “Hey, you should try this” because I haven’t been trained to pick up on different styles in other works that could be applicable. In fiction, I can say “your organization is confusing, try this other way of telling your story” because I have experience with others using different narrative structures.
In many ways, game design is like this. When playtesting, you’d like your testers to have played enough games that they can suggest different mechanics, end conditions, etc. And like other creative fields, nearly everything has been done before in some fashion… the trick is for you to steal borrow an idea from another game and adapt it into other ideas to make something new and interesting (and way better than any game that has used any of the pieces before.)
However, I’m going to make the bold claim here that games are much more likely to be created to be sellable than art or writing or music. There are lots of outlets to reward capital G Good paintings, stories, songs, etc. Of course, there’s also a strong market for lower-case g good paintings/stories/songs that are trying to make a lot of money. Games are in the realm that there aren’t as many outlets to recognize and reward innovative game design, but nearly everyone wants to make a game that will sell. While we may deride it as a game, making the next Monopoly sure would make paying off those student loans easier.
(There are exceptions, though. My friend and fellow designer James Kyle designed a game specifically to be impossible to mass produce. It uses a hand painted glass game board, features a journal into which one of the characters must document the journey, and a number of other components and features designed to make it a game for which only one can exist. It’s a lot of fun too.)
My point is, when I design games, I intend to eventually sell them, and try to trick people into buying a million copies. So my process starts with design a game, playtest with people interested in making it capital G Good, and refine it as much as possible. Then play with others and get their feedback to see if it’s a game that anyone can pick up (and understand the rules for.) So when playtesting, make sure to cover all your ground. You may think it’s a good idea to play your untested prototype with your grandma, but unless grandma happens to have a Boardgamegeek account, you probably want to find some better playtesters.
And be sure you’re playing plenty of other games, not just your own, because you never know where inspiration will strike.
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