Who can be a game designer? - "Meet The Hosts" week on Lost In The Shuffle

0:00 today we're going to discuss whether board games can be a doorway into game design or whether that path is going to leave you lost in the shule today we are joined For the First Time by my rotating co-host IRC hello everybody IRC is a member of one of my local game groups and also a budding game designer and so I thought what a better person to have joined me on some of these episodes to lend a unique perspective than Bob who wasn't available but I was my second choice always a happy come in second the first thing I like to do with a brand new co-host for the first time is to ask you what is the game that made you the board game that you came across that made you go oh and introduced you into the hobby gotcha yeah the the Eternal question for everybody like a lot of people you know I played a lot of games Growing Up played a lot of d and d uh back in the day and then you know in my teens I got into Magic the Gathering um all these types of standard hobby ones and then I kind of fell out of it and adopted video games really that became kind of my my source of that play for a while but then about 15 years ago a buddy of mine introduced me he was a gamer and he introduced me to pandemic and I had never seen a Cooperative board game before oh and this solved a lot of the issues of why I stopped playing board games you know we'd get together with buddies and playing risk and somebody leaves upset oh okay or

1:31 something you know and so there was just like oh there's this great new thing and that just exposed me to how much board games had changed in the you know 20 or so years that I hadn't really looked at them oh yeah so yeah pandemic and then that led me to you know Katan I mean kind of the standard protocol of getting back into the game you know the pathway of seeing what's new what's this and then I got into game design hold on hold on was game design something that was always rattle around in there or was there something about the modern games that sparked something a new within you yeah it was it was the modern Games first I had the thought that everyone has when I tell them I'm into game design they're like wait you can do that and it's like well somebody has to design them it was kind of this oh my gosh this is something a person can do and that's the part that really appealed to me it takes this huge realm of interest and knowledge really to do board game design it's so different in that Medium from say writing a book or a movie where you say here's the experience you're going to have it's prescribed go enjoy it some people have a Clear Vision when they start off but not always and it kind of forms organically as as you shape it so I think getting it in front of a bunch of people of varying game playing type preferences is important right because you're going to see where it lands you know does this hit with the family crowd is this only for the really heavy Gamers is there a bridge between that a really easy way to fail with any creative Endeavor is to try to make it everything to everyone correct yeah correct yeah ultimately you have to think about what you're creating as a product because it needs to have somebody who wants to buy it there's 3 to 5,000 games that come

3:03 out a year now mhm you can't all be for everybody you hosted for a while a regular prototype session in town at the local game store didn't you yeah yeah did you find that there's a lot more people locally interested in game design than you first thought yeah and there's a whole spectrum of that right so there's the folks it's like oh I've always thought about creating a game we like I've always liked this game but this aspect so I've always wanted to change this game and then those folks who like I have this original idea I've always wanted to flush out the other big part of it was getting feedback from other game designers and I just want to be clear when I say game designer that is somebody who is into game design you don't have to be published you don't have to have signed it you don't have to be in the BGG top 100 if you have designed a game even if it's just a little thing to play with your kid you're a game designer right that is just it a person who hikes is a hiker a person who game designs is a game designer so having other people who are into game design regardless of their level of experience is just really valuable feedback because again they're kind of looking at the skeleton and of course we can't go talking about game design without actually mentioning the first game that you have published that you designed which you didn't you had no idea I was going to do this but there you go with this little game Rocket roll which to me reminded me as a cross between Splendor and this game I love called Las Vegas because you have the dice placement with also kind of the gem and set collection going on in there yeah yeah was it an experience that got you excited to do more of this or was it just more of kind of a learning exercise both both both really yeah absolutely or game designland podcast you know I was listening to an interview and and they

4:34 was talking somebody and just said you know his 12 points on being a game designer the first one was work on lots of stuff have lots of projects going on and then point number seven was finish one all the way which seems very contrary but it it's true it's like take one all the way through and get that experience of what it means you know and there's lots of routes with publishing but I wanted to see what it felt like and get that experience of self-publishing so this was one where I decided like okay I have this idea let's let's take it all the way through and then we had the local convention here in October it was like the time I was like that's a good time for me to you know get a vendor table uh get it everything together you kind of a deadline and that is super essential in board game design so by the sound of it then you have several different ideas in various stages of development did you choose to print this one because it was your favorite on your list or because it was one okay I know I can get this one done by this deadline which will get me over that hurdle of actually making something that that was it the second one yeah Absol it was it was it was a simpler game that I knew I could I could get it all you know I I have more complicated games that I'm working on but I also listened to several other people who' gone down this path before and they're like look if your Opus Magnum is your first one there's so much on the line and part of what's Happening simultaneously is this learning curve what to do and what not to do as a board game designer whether it's publisher or publish self publishing or whatever several people i' listened to said gave the advice of like you don't start with your heart's p passion don't start with that one like always keep working on that but if you can tackle something lighter you know and get your feet wet

6:06 and get all that experience you know and and have those stumbling blocks on something that doesn't mean as much to you Stakes are a little bit lower Stakes are a little bit lower right I think that's really good advice that also is not immediately obvious because I think at least with myself some potential designers think oh my gosh if I don't hit it out of the park with my first design everyone's going to immediately think oh this guy's not a good designer and they're going to immediately make that first impression exactly everybody wants to be in the top 100 on BGG with their first game so I think that mindset actually might help some people because to get over that stigma of oh my gosh if my first one isn't fantastic everyone's going to just ignore everything else I do yeah not necessarily that way no not not necessarily that way at all and and you know everybody had to start somewhere so that is IRC IRC it's nice to have everybody meet you I am looking forward to having some fun and also possibly making your life miserable in some of the videos that we have coming up oh fantastic I'm looking forward to it as well Jazz me too I'm also looking forward to see if you have a game suggestion for us as a game night pick to cap off this episode as a matter of fact I do well that's convenient enough isn't it and we will be right back with ir's game night pick speaking to making games do you have a game to share with us that was made by someone yes yes I I I have a very small collection of games made by no one that's actually it's it's a very small portion of my collection yeah as a

7:38 matter of fact I do have a pick um this is a game lunar Rush the reason I bought this game initially was because I actually got to meet the designer at the very first Proto Spiel event that I went to oh okay um so uh Skippy is his is his nickname stepen Skippy Brown great guy also turns out he's the head of Lockheed Martin's navigational Design Systems so excuse me yeah I would imagine to be the head of locked Martin's navigation systems Department you would have to be able to see systems and things that no one else sees yeah and I just really enjoyed it because it's this wonderful tight game you're basically trying to get to the moon and bring back resources okay right but there's different channels and you get locked in and so there's just a lot of good decision making while also keeping a very tight game and a few new mechanisms that I'd not seen before uh one of which particularly I appreciated was that in determining turn order there's an auction but what you are bidding is your victory points oh neat I love games where for everything that you want to achieve you have to consider sacrificing something yes and this is the ultimate sacrifice not like I'm giving up some silver or some gold I'm exchanging victory points to go first oh I love it and so it's there's this balance and and it escalates as the game goes on so um that excites me I'll tell you why I'll show you why that excites me all right I'm especially glad to hear that you enjoy it and what about because I actually have a copy of it myself still in shrink just got it recently oh fantastic I'm glad to see

9:09 someone else with it in their collection because uh yeah again great person great designer great company great game just kind of flew under the radar for a lot of pieces I really think it did yeah so hopefully I mean here's a a double pick for lunar Rush twinsies yeah twinsies we are game pick twinsies and we'll also be back with another episode real soon in the meantime thanks for joining us