Produce / Consume

As I'm sure most of you are aware, the title is a reference to Race for the Galaxy, one of my favourite games and one which I've played exactly 150 times according to BoardGameGeek.

There's a sliding scale of producery-consumerness (a technical term, check out the Big Five personality traits) on which, I'm assuming, most people sit slightly nearer the Consumer end than the Producer end. Some people are happiest reading a great book, or watching a great film or shopping for new clothes. Some people however are happiest when making things, whether knitting cardigans for babies (thanks Mum!), writing novels or painting.

It turns out I'm definitely towards the producer end of that scale. By day I'm a computer programmer, and I love that I can type words and bend a computer to my will, creating programs and apps that are useful, interesting, attractive or just fun. By night, I'm just as bad. Historically it's been writing (bits of!) computer games, painting miniatures, designing worlds and stories as a DM and obviously designing board games.

It struck me this week that probably the bit I enjoy most about game designing is actually the graphic design. Working with a very limited set of artistic skills to make prototypes or hand-made games that are attractive, or at least functionally well designed. Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy trying to wrestle in my head with the game design to design something that's fun to play and there's something zen-like about cranking out well-made hand-made games, each one lovingly hand-crafted but done well. And the end result is satisfying too, when you hear from a gamer who has played one of your games and really enjoys it. I'm not a great game designer, so it's rare enough that I hear from a gamer who loves one of my games, but when it does it brings a smile to my face every time - I've brought pleasure to another human being, often someone I've never met (and probably never will). That's pretty cool.

Why this philosophical train of thought? I've been agonising over whether or not to do a hand-made run of Zombology for a couple of months now, after bravely/foolishly committing to doing it at the beginning of the year. The concerns that have given me most trouble are not having enough time to get to the conventions I need to attend to drum up sales and whether there's still a market for hand-made games now that everyone can make a professional run of a game they've thought of through KickStarter.

I've asked the question in a couple of places and the advice seems to be that I should embrace KickStarter and do what I plan through there. Assuming I was successful on KickStarter, most or all of the games would be pre-sold so convention attendance would be less critical, so that could be a plus point to going that way. Anyway, Im not leaning toward KickStarter, despite my earlier antipathy towards it. I'm flighty like that.

In other news, I've got some feedback from a couple of playtest groups. Both of them only played it three player (the weakest I think). The other Playtest UK group played it a couple of times, and didn't seem overly enamoured. In the second game they tried changing a couple of rules. They did however provide really good feedback which I need to go through and learn from. The other group had played it before (about a year ago) and really liked this new version, playing it eight times (though still only three player). They suggested a rules clarification that I'll have to make shortly.

This week is mostly about trains. I hope to make some good progress on the Zombology art upgrades on my way to and from my quarterly hospital visit to Sheffield on Wednesday.

Playtesting Questions

It was Newcastle Playtest again on Tuesday, and now Christmas is out of the way it was better attended than it had been for several weeks. We started off with a couple of quick games of Zombology which led to a really useful discussion about ways to improve it. After that I rather selfishly grabbed Paul and Alex and we played Codename: Vacuum too while the other table played a couple of games of Paul von Scott's The Thing with the Ring and then Dan's Samizdat. I'd made some changes to Vacuum since Paul had last played it, changes that were specifically triggered by Paul's last set of feedback so I wanted to see what he made of those changes. All that got me thinking about how as a designer to get the best of out a playtesting session.

A playtest session of a game that's in development serves many purposes:

• To allow you to try out ideas and see which ones work well and which don't
• To check whether it's worth continuing with the design
• To find broken mechanisms or combinations
• To see how the game works with different play styles, numbers of players and levels of experience
• To gather feedback from other people
• To test how the market might respond to your game
• To find flaws in the rulebook (for blind playtesting)

Depending upon how mature the game you are testing is, the relative importance of those questions varies - finding flaws in the rulebook is very important near the end of the process, but less so at the beginning when you are just testing out a rough idea. Some of these questions you are the best person to answer, but usually it's the opinions of the playtesters that you are trying to gather. Your playtesters are a small sample of the game-playing market that you are exposing your game to in order to try to predict whether your game will be successful or not and to work out what changes are required to make it more successful.

In order to be successful, your game needs to be:

• Enticing
• Enjoyable
• Engaging

Enticing means that your potential customers want to play as soon as they hear about it, and after playing want to play again and again and again, despite the endless stream of shiny new games pouring onto the shelves. Enticing is a mixture of theme, attractive artwork, affordable price point and interesting mechanisms, but also replayability, fun and a lack of frustration. A game that no-one can quite conjure up the enthusiasm to play or that only ever gets played once is never going to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Like successful YouTube videos, successful games have to go viral: someone buys them, plays them with lots of people who also buy them and play them with lots of people...

Enjoyable means that it's got to be fun for its target market. The market is flooded with tens of thousands of games and hundreds more go up on KickStarter every year. A really successful game has to compete in that crowded market, and win. I own 70-odd games, but only a few of them I've played hundreds of times. Those happen to be really successful games, not just with me and my friends but in the market in general. Because they are fun. Different groups will have different ideas of what makes a game fun, but if no group likes your game then it's going to tank.

An engaging game is one that draws you in and keeps you involved throughout. If you look round the table during a game and everyone is either playing games on their phone or staring morosely into their pint that's not engaging. One that keeps your attention throughout is. If you have little downtime between your turns or the ability to get involved on other player's turns then you're more engaged. If the game isn't so random that you can plan ahead for your next move or if the theme and events keep you excited then you're engaged. You're not going to rush out and buy a game if it lasted four hours, and you spent 3 hours and 45 minutes of that playing Angry Birds and praying that the game would just end.

Playtesting is your chance to see how your game performs against these yardsticks, get the opinion of people who aren't so close to the game and have the critical distance required to be objective about it and to work out what you need to do to make it perform better.

A while ago I heard that Tom Lehmann (designer of Race for the Galaxy) likes to ask two questions during playtests: 'Is there a game in here, and have I found it'. Those questions get to the nub of designing games: Is this going to be a worthwhile addition to the legion of available games - is there any point continuing working on this idea - and how close is it to being finished.

Dan, my Newcastle Playtest co-host has his own favourite questions: 'What did you like about the game, and what did you not like'. These allow you to quickly zoom in on which parts of the game are coming along nicely (and should be emulated/left alone) and which parts are potentially putting off gamers (and should be removed/re-designed).

Back when I ran Reiver Games I used to ask my playtesters after they had played one of my prototypes whether they would buy it and how much would they pay for it (useful market research when you're a newbie publisher).

Now I tend to ask my playtesters to provide some critical feedback via email after they've played my games - the slight disconnect of providing the feedback via email makes it easier for them to be critical without worrying so much about upsetting me and, with my particularly pants memory, having the feedback in electronic form means it's easier for me to revisit it and remember it later.

What are your favourite playtesting questions, and how do they help you assess the game?

A Breath of Fresh Air

This week has been a busy one. It started in Bristol, leaving my parents' house before 8am on Monday, then a five hour car journey to York where we spent a few days staying with my friend Paul and his family. I was primary carer for The Daughter while The Wife attended a conference for work (it's alright, everyone survived!). Then finally back to Newcastle in time for a work team building event on Thursday (I found out that I'm good at archery, but rubbish with a shotgun - so stick with someone else come the zombie apocalypse). To round it off, Saturday we had four friends and their four kids under five round for dinner and Christmas homebrew bottling - a busy and slightly chaotic day!

It was nice to get out and about, to see my family and The Wife's family in Bristol and then Paul and his family in York (for the second time in just under a month). The team building day was fun, the homebrew bottling is always a fun day if very busy - I'm looking forward to a quieter week next week though.

As I mentioned last week, I've recently introduced some changes that speed up the game (particularly for two or three player games), and the first feedback wasn't great. Dave and Chief, my two main playtesters who play most weeks on a lunchtime, were both not fans of the shorter game, feeling that it was too short to really get into the strategies available.

On Tuesday, after a few games of X-Wing Miniatures, Paul and I sat down to a game of Vacuum. It was the first time Paul and I had played since July last year. I'm not sure if Paul had played in between (he has had a copy since April, and several people from his Games Night mentioned it, but I don't know if Paul played with them or not). We played the new faster rules, and after the game, Paul admitted that he too did not like the shorter game - he would have liked a chance to get more done during the game. Paul's not a Race for the Galaxy fan, and he saw a number of parallels between Vacuum and Race. He had a number of criticisms, things about Vacuum that he prefers games not to have. He didn't like that the game could end with so little warning, and that he didn't know how long he had left before the end.

Despite the fact that I'd been up since 4:45am that morning, and the game of Vacuum didn't finish until about 11:30pm, we spent the next hour or so chatting about ideas of things we could change to improve the game/make it more to Paul's tastes. I was almost asleep on my feet (well I suppose on my bum is more accurate!), but we discussed a whole range of ideas from fixing the game length to making the victory conditions a random selection that are revealed as the game goes on. It was a very useful conversation. The next morning while I took The Daughter for a walk to get her to take a nap my mind was buzzing with ideas either discussed or triggered by the previous evening's conversation.

Upon my return to work I discussed a few of the ideas with Chief and Dave, and I think I'll try out the fixed number of turns shortly. I've also got some feedback from the Newcastle Playtest session I attended a few weeks ago. Both playtesters have sent detailed feedback emails that I need to go through a few times to really take on board, but interestingly, both of them mentioned that the game felt very abstract, with little tie-in to the theme. We played the basic game that night, and I think the advanced game is a bit more themed, but it's certainly something I need to be aware of, since I've been aiming for a tightly themed gaming experience with Vacuum. The fixed number of turns could be implemented with a turn track that counts in years, which might help tie things together.

In other news, we're probably going to make the Newcastle Playtest sessions a bi-monthly thing, with meetups on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month, so hopefully I'll get another chance to get some feedback shortly...

Finally, I gave my copy of Vacuum to Paul this week (I didn't have time to make a new one for him as well as update the rules), so my goals for this week are buy more ink for my printer and then to make a new copy in time for Thursday playtesting and to try out the turn track at the same time...

The (Erroneous?) Need for Speed

Some of my favourite games are quick ones. I've played well over 200 games of Carcassonne & Magic: The Gathering, over 100 games of Race for the Galaxy and getting on for a hundred games of 7 Wonders. What do they have in common apart from being great games? Speed. They can be played quickly enough that you could play several games back-to-back. And in the days before The Daughter, The Wife and I would frequently play these games over and over.

One of my stated goals for Codename: Vacuum is to make it quick to play, so that if I ever get it to the point where it's a great game, people will be inclined to play it over and over. Over the last few months, even playing with Dave and Chief (who've both played over 40 games of Vacuum) the play time was around 25 minutes per player (50 minutes for a two-player game, 1:15 for a three-player game). Not only did I struggle to juggle my hours at work to fit these games in, in my mind this was failing to hit the sweet spot. I can play a two-player game of Race for the Galaxy in 20 minutes. I can play a three-player game of 7 Wonders in less than half an hour - these games benefit from simultaneous player actions, and as a result can be very fast with experienced players who don't suffer from analysis paralysis. That is hitting the sweet spot in my personal opinion. So over the last couple of months I've been trying to tweak the rules to Vacuum to pep it up a bit and decrease the play time.

The August version of Vacuum was finished in time for the inaugural Newcastle Playtest session at the beginning of the month, and since then I've been crafting the re-written rules ready to give my friend Paul in York an updated version of Vacuum, replacing the version I gave him back in April. Paul was up in Newcastle a few weeks ago to visit us and meet The Daughter, and during the visit I asked about their experiences with Vacuum. Apparently it had been played a number of times, but one of the major criticisms was that at around 45 minutes per player (!) it felt too long for what it was. No doubt! Clearly it needs knocking up a notch.

Well, we're in York for a few days this week for The Wife's work, so we're staying with Paul and his family, experiencing the wonders of his Games Night (which I used to attend twice a week regularly back when we lived in York). I've done the new rules, and though I didn't have time to make a new copy of the game, I can give him my copy, complete with new rulebook, and then I'll make myself a replacement on my return (once the pressure's off!).

I've now played the August version three times, once with two new players at the Playtest meetup (the impromptu second one, I missed the inaugural one), once with Dave a couple of weeks ago and once with Chief last week. The first of those games (with the simple rules) lasted about 45 minutes - 15 minutes per player. The second lasted 34 (17 minutes per player) and the third only 20 minutes (10 minutes per player). Awesome!

Or is it?

After I played with Dave a couple of weeks ago he expressed concern that the game was too short now. It felt less epic to him and he missed the chance to fully explore his chosen strategy (which is inevitably raining plasma doom on my inocuous backward empire with a wave upon wave of overly aggressive Armadas). His fear was the shorter game would strip several strategies of their usefulness, since you wouldn't have time in the game to get them started before the game's swift conclusion.

This week I played with Chief. He won. For the first time in approximately forty games. Dave and I were beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. Was he intentionally taking it easy on us? Did he have a phobia of winning games? (what's that even called?) Had he been lobotomised as a child, and had the winning parts of his brain removed? It turns out none of these. He won. He beat me at a game I'd designed. And he did it in 20 minutes. Schooled.

Dave's thoughts on his epic victory, after finally crushing the designer at his own game? He felt the game was too short!

I'd really enjoyed the game. We'd been flying through it. Each player's turn regularly taking a handful of seconds. Almost no downtime. It felt like playing Race for the Galaxy against The Wife or 7 Wonders with Terry and Andrew. Blisteringly fast. On top of that, Chief had chosen the Exploration strategy (which can be quite slow) and had got as far as Proxima Centauri, which is quite an achievement as it's particularly hard to reach and requires a real concerted effort to get there. "Ha!", I thought, "See Dave, even in twenty minutes, Chief managed to reach Proxima, the shorter game isn't too short."

Then Chief pissed on my chips and agreed with Dave that the game was too short. He enjoys the chance to explore a wealth of strategies and diversify your deck - possible in the longer game, but not in the new shorter version.

So here's a question. I've reduced the game length to my 'ideal' length. I enjoyed the feel of it the three times I've played it. But the two guys who've played it more than anyone else, who play it week in, week out at work, both don't like the changes. Do I cave in and extend the game again, to increase the epic feel, and the wealth of strategies you can explore in a single game? Or do I stick to my guns and ride with the shorter game, possibly admitting that the only two people who will regularly play the game with me might not be the target audience for the game?

I'm going to have to play the shorter rules a few more times, with Dave and Chief if they're up for it to see if they come round to the shorter game, but also with more people, to see if Dave and Chief are in the majority or the minority...

In other news, the second Newcastle Playtest Meetup is this Tuesday in The Bridge Hotel again. I'll not be there, but don't let that put you off!

A Matter of Taste

Some people like a fine red wine (we'll call them 'wrong uns'), some prefer a warm, ruby ale ('ladies and gentlemen of taste and distinction'). Like everything in life, games are a matter of taste.

Some people like wargames with a rulebook as thick as a grown man's waist, some people like miniature games where the painting is as much part of the game as the combat. Some people like 'Ameritrash' games where the fun comes from beating your opponents to pulp through the medium of your own bodyweight in dice and some people (we'll call them LaGoTaD) like euro-games, where pushing an array of coloured cubes around more efficiently than your opponents is considered a good time.

As a designer, I tend to design games that are the sorts of games I like to play: fairly short euro-games with an occasional dice-fest thrown in for good measure. I thought it might be interesting to discuss my favourite games, what about them I like and how that affects my design.

My Favourite Games

• Carcassonne:
  Carcassonne was one of my first euro-games and is still one of my favourites. It's fairly quick (~30 mins), the card draw brings randomness so each game is slightly different and there is direct player interaction through trapping meeples and stealing cities and farms from your opponents. A good euro-game sells tens of thousands of copies. Carcassonne has sold millions. It's easy to see why. Weaknesses? Not much, though I suppose there aren't many strategies available.
• Race for the Galaxy:
  With a cool space theme and quick play time, Race has been a staple of my gaming for years. It's fairly complex to learn (thanks to the pictography) and there's not a huge amount of interaction between players, but there are many strategies available and the simultaneous player actions mean you can play pretty quickly if you know what you're doing.
  
• 7 Wonders:
  Another quick game with simultaneous player actions. There's a little trading between players, and the end of age scraps but it's mostly do you own thing again. Several strategies available, but you have to play the cards you're dealt so there's some randomness there and some interaction as you choose which cards to pass on.
  
• Thunderstone:
  I was really not excited by Dominion, I found it bland and featureless, but Thunderstone really grabbed me because of the theme and the tighter theme integration. And that's despite a significantly longer play-time. Thunderstone is the only deck-building game in my top five, and doesn't have any simultaneity, which probably contributes to the longer play time. As with many deck-building games, the selection of types of cards has a big effect on the game - it can make it great or painful.
  
• Puerto Rico:
  A classic euro-game. Very little downtime between turns (as everybody gets to act on everyone's turn) and an interesting role-selection mechanism. The longer play time means this doesn't get to the table as often as the others.
  

My Most Played Games (excluding ones I published!)

The games I've played the most is a similar list, but with a couple of notable differences:

1. Magic: The Gathering is an incredibly addictive card game. Again it has fairly quick game play (~20 mins) and a wealth of strategies (mainly because the manufacturer bring out new cards continuously with new rules). It's got a fun theme and the game is all about direct player interaction - to win you have to crush all your opponents into a fine dust.
2. Carcassonne
3. Race for the Galaxy
4. 7 Wonders
5. Hive: A very simple (in terms of rules) but engaging 2-player strategy game that feels a little like very quick chess. Terry and I could play this in around 10 minutes, so it was a common filler while waiting for others to arrive at games night when I lived down south.

As you can see there's a few things that tie my lists together: fast play time, multiple paths to victory and some player interaction. How does the current early incarnation of Codename: Vacuum measure up?

Codename: Vacuum

Codename: Vacuum is a deck building card game (similar to Thunderstone) with a tableau element (similar to Race for the Galaxy) and a space theme (again, RftG. I'm aiming to get the play time down to around 30-45 mins for players who know the rules, which has similarities with most of the games on my lists but without simultaneous player actions that might be tricky. So far no-one but me has played it more than once, so every game is a learning game and it's hard to tell how well I'm getting on towards that target. Vacuum has 11 scoring conditions available per game, of which only 1 per player plus 1 are scored in any game. The players choose which conditions will score - so this can vary from game to game (and in fact there are fifteen in total of which only ten are available in any game). So once I've balanced the scoring conditions, multiple paths to victory should be assured. Finally, there is direct player interaction (if you so choose), you can waltz over to your opponent's territories with an armada and capture them. Player interaction often slows things down though as one player stops to think how to respond to an unexpected assault from an opponent. I need to balance my desire for player interaction with my desire for short play time. On that note, I'm trying to think of ways to make the trade actions more interactive between players, but all my ideas so far would slow things down a lot :(.

It's getting to the table a lot now, at least two or three times a week, so hopefully it'll really start to take shape over the next couple of months.