Dr. Reiner Knizia, one of the best known and most successful boardgame designers, was one of the Guests of Honor at Origins this year. I showed up to one of his panels, entitled “Creation of a Successful Game”, a few minutes late due to late night D&D the evening before. When I arrived, he had […]
An Unusual Source for RPGs and Game Design
Here’s an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while, and is worth revisiting as you plan your next campaign or sit down to design the next great game. Our biggest source of traffic is, of course, Google. Thanks to all the tracking software whojidgts, we have a comprehensive log of the search terms used […]
Precariously Balancing on the Edge of Game Design
Inspired by the discussion in one of my recent posts, I was surprised to hear that there are advocates AGAINST balance. The discussion was about RPGs, which have their own caveats as far as game design goes (which are crucial to the argument about why some feel it’s not important), but let’s start by talking […]
Catch-Up Mechanics and that Damn Blue Shell
I think we can all agree that it sucks to be losing. In most games, it’s inevitable that someone will be losing. However, good games will try to convince every player that he has a chance of winning up to the very end (while still rewarding those who did well throughout the course of the […]
The Teardown
Let’s start with an analogy. Let’s say you’ve just written a short story for class in college. You hand it in to your professor, and get a B. There are plenty of editor’s marks on it: spelling, grammar, some minor organizational stuff. Then there are the overall comments, like “doesn’t flow well” or “theme isn’t […]
Design a Bad Game Exercise
(This is a guest article by Stephen Glenn, designer of You Must Be An Idiot! and the Spiel Des Jahres nominated Balloon Cup. Stephen was responding to Jacob’s article about game design exercises, and gave us his own.) I have had game design ideas wake me up in the middle of the night. I’m constantly […]
Game Design Exercises
(This is a guest article by Jacob Davenport, designer of Covert Action and owner of Play Again Games. You can read more of his excellent articles about games and game design at his site.) Every designer has to design in his or her own way. For me, game designs don’t spring from nothing, I have […]
Game Doctors: Tales of the Arabian Nights
A friend and member of my design group Jacob started a series of articles under the heading of “Game Doctors” to try and fix published games under our watchful eye. There are a few games that we’ve started playing quite often, but being the perfectionist game designers we are, have made a few changes. So […]
The Perfect Game
I was talking to a fellow designer a few weeks back, and we were discussing the designing a game for a specific audience. While we both agreed that it’s very important when marketing to someone, he didn’t think it was as important when designing. I felt that in any kind of creative design, it’s important […]
What… is your quest?
When it gets right down to it, there are three main reasons I design games: I look at a design and say “I can do that better.” I have not yet achieved all of my “Holy Grails” of game design. My brain won’t let me stop. It’s the second that I’m mostly concerned with today. […]
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