Game Designer Wannabe

Yesterday I went to a game day at a friend's house. I had alot of fun, played Alhambra and Betrayal at House on the Hill for the first time. In fact, I played Betrayal three times. I liked them both, especially the latter. Sadly, I never got to be the traitor. Anyways, at some point half the group was nice enough to help me get in a playtest of Television Executive. Things started off roughly, as the numbers spiraled way out of control. I had a multiplication mechanic that had to be discarded because unlike my tests on my computer, people were not able to make that many calculations with such large numbers. There were also some snags during bidding. The important thing is that the theme seemed to generate genuine interest and laughter was to be heard when things like the all-female reality show for seniors was put on the air. After the test we discussed some possible ways to fix stuff. I changed to a much faster bidding mechanic, as there is a large number of auctions during the game. I also have an idea for a new scoring mechanism that will meet the goals I had in using the multiplication mechanic without taxing the players' mental math skills. Yes, the game had lots of problems. But it has proved to me that it deserves further development and I have a good idea about how to change things and proceed from here. For me, it was a very good day.

Oh, and happy birthday to our host yesterday, Don!

I especially love how game markets are now being used to measure non-traditional things. There are game markets for pollution, for events, for movie grosses projections, etc. I just found out that someone added this blog to a place where you buy and sell shares in blogs with fake money. Go buy some of me now! Just register an account and then type "Game Designer Wannabe" in the searchbox on the right and it should be the first result returned.

Before you ask, yes, I did draw those amazingly lifelike smiley faces seen on the templates for the Theme Park game. I traced a poker chip for the outline, then edited it manually and scanned it into my computer to add color. Of course I do not expect that to be the final card design.

I am talented enough to produce the designs seen on the Programmer: Battle for Bandwidth cards seen in the rulebook I posted. However, I prefer not to get bogged down with too much early graphic design as it is quite time consuming and the demands for the templates could easily change as the development process goes through its normal motions. It is painful to have to throw away a few hours’ worth of graphics work because you need to add, delete, or alter a mechanic. In fact, it creates a subliminal internal incentive to NOT make necessary changes to a design. You find yourself trying to find mechanics to fit the art instead of ones that are just fun.

I start with just enough work to make the first few playtests run smoothly. As I begin locking in mechanics and rules, I progessively add polish to a single template card but avoid applying it to the actual playtest cards as long as possible. My main tools for graphic design are Adobe Photoshop and Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8.

I always start with Paint Shop Pro to create the individual elements such as backgrounds or icons, because I find Photoshop to be far too cumbersome for relatively straightforward single-element creation. Then I load those individual elements into Photoshop and layers to position constant pieces of cards or whatever before adding text.

Unfortunately, this means that whenever I do make changes to a large cardset (Programmer had over 100 distinct cards) I am in for a long night. That is why I am eager to test those two programs mentioned earlier. If I can use a database-driven card design process I won’t need to manually apply graphic and layout changes, saving me a non-trivial amount of time and effort with each revision. Programmer’s card templates started as just plain text. At the top of the card it said “Code” or “Event”. If it was an event below that I added the card title. Then came pure text on both Code and Event cards. A Code card might look like:

Code
Move
2
terminals
LEFT

Instead of having the circular arrows seen in the rulebook with the number in the center of them, it would just all be written out.

Even back then I colored the number and the direction either blue or red, depending on whether it was moving the token left or right. This was technically unnecessary extra effort, but I felt it would very much smooth over the playtests because players would instinctively know which direction the token was moving by only having to read the number, which would quicken the speed with which they read through the program, thus speeding up their calculations and reducing analysis paralysis.

Unfortunately, I had to switch to the arrows for the playtest copies early in playtesting because some players were having difficulty with which way “LEFT” and “RIGHT” were when the token was currently at a player across the table from them. The circular arrows aren’t pretty, but they specifically show you which direction the token will move regardless of where it is relative to yourself. I kept the arrows colored for the same reason I colored the words on the previous version.

The key is to make the players aware of the entire game state with as little effort as possible. It also allowed me to ditch the extraneous words from the code cards and represent everything graphically. The only exceptions are the Function() cards and the GOTO cards. However, I gave the GOTO card a distinct graphical symbol, the green pentagon. And since the Function() cards were then the only code cards with pure text, that in and of itself allowed players to identify them quickly.

Physical design and creation of cards is the part of game design that drains all the life out of me. I am continually refining my process to reduce the amount of time spent in these two steps of prototype creation so that my brain has the strength to be creative, which is the important part. I wish I just had people to do the physical design and construction for me so I can focus on mechanics, which is what I find to be the rewarding part of game design.

Theme Park is one of my designs that I've set aside without abandoning. I've run into a wall in the initial design and haven't yet figured out how I want to handle it. I have a few ideas, but none of them seem satisfying. Let's see if talking about it here spurs my creative juices the way it has with Utopia and Television Executive.

In Theme Park, the players are running competing sections of a theme park. The winner becomes the new manager of the entire park. The game components include money, a deck of Building cards, a deck of Visitor cards, and an Entrance Marker. The winner of the game is the first person to simultaneously have five Customers using buildings in their section of the park.

During the game setup, one random player starts with the Entrance Marker. Shuffle each of the decks. Each player begins with 20 dollars (I ignore scale of numbers until late in design, the important thing at this point is the relative difference) and a hand of four cards from the Building deck.

The first phase of each turn is the Visitors phase. Turn over the top two Visitors cards and place them in front of the player with the Entrance Marker. Each player, beginning with the one with the Entrance Marker, may now use any actions marked "Visitor:" on their Buildings, but only once for each Building.

Second is the Research phase. There are no Research phase abilities. Two cards for each player are drawn from the Building deck and placed face-up in the center of the table. Each player, beginning with the player with the Entrance Marker, chooses one Building card to add to his or her hand. Then they do this again, only in reverse order.

Next is the Build phase. Each player, again in order, creates new buildings in their section of the park and use Build phase abilities. Buildings have several features.

At the top of the card is the name. Below that are five numbers. They represent Fun, Dizziness, Capacity, Ticket Price, and Construction Cost, respectively. Fun and Dizziness affect which customers will use that building. Capacity is the number of customers that can simultaneously use that building. Ticket Price is how much money you will receive each time that building is used. Construction Cost is what you must pay to add the building to your section of the park.

Below those numbers is the Building Type. It can be an Attraction or a Utility. Utilities are not used by customers, but they affect your other buildings in a variety of ways. Below the building type are the Sub-categories. They also affect which customers will use that building.

Finally some buildings have a special ability. If there is a phase name with a colon preceding the ability, that ability can only be used during that phase, and only once per turn. If there is no such phase name, the ability is constantly operating.

Shown above are two rides. In addition to rides there are shows, food and beverage stands, bathrooms, and souvenir shops. For Utilities there are ATMs (which increase the Ticket Price on all of your attractions), decorations (which increase the Fun of rides with a theme matching the decoration), and security offices, which keep away vandals (visitor cards that disable rides). These lists are not complete, but they give you an idea of the kinds of buildings in the game.

Next is the Rides phase. In addition to using Rides phase abilities, this is when customers are assigned to Attractions. Customer cards will have both a maximum Dizziness and minimum Fun number. They will never use an Attraction that is beyond those numbers. So a small child customer cannot ride a Roller Coaster, because its Dizziness number is too high, whereas a teenager customer won't ride the Teacups because its Fun number is too low.

They will also have several sets of preferences. A single set of preferences might be "Space Thrill Ride; otherwise, Roller Coaster", or "Bathroom; otherwise, Bench". Which set of preferences on customers will be determined by some randomizing device, and customers will all have different preferences activated by each outcome. (This is where I hit the wall, I can't come up with a satisfying weighted randomization device.) Whichever set of preferences comes up, the customer will first look to find its highest preference (in our example, an Attraction with all of the words Space, Thrill, and Ride in its Sub-categories). It checks the area of the park it is currently in. If it cannot find a matching building, it will look at the next area going clockwise, and so on all the way around. If no area has a building matching its first preference, it will repeat the procedure with its second preference. If neither preference is met, the customer is placed on the bottom of the visitor deck.

Only one customer is examined at a time. First all of the customers at the player with the Entrance Marker's section in the order of his or her choosing, then continuing that way clockwise.

When a customer finds a match, it is placed on top of that Attraction and the owner collects the ticket price from the bank. A customer will not see a building that already has a number of customers on it equaling its capacity. If there is more than one match in the same area of the park, that area's owner chooses which Attraction the customer uses.

Finally there is the Move Phase. The first thing that is checked is whether any player has five customers using his or her buildings, if so, he or she wins. If more than one player meets this and they have the same number of customers, the player with the most money wins. Next all customers are detached from the buildings and moved one player clockwise. The Entrance Marker is also passed clockwise and the next turn begins.

Basically that is it. Most of the game lies in the interactions between the buildings through their abilities and the drafting during the Research phase. As I said, this game is not under active development until I can figure out a good way to randomize the active preference set.

This post is gonna come off as preaching to the choir, but I feel the need to take the pulpit.

Prolific game reviewer Tom Vasel interviews one of the "top" Monopoly players. The very thought of playing that game makes my skin crawl, so I was interested in seeing how someone can continue to play such a flawed game when we have really entered a golden age of board games. I personally believe that Monopoly's single greatest asset is cultural intertia. It is, at least in the United States, one of those games that are just played.

You know the ones. Battleship, Candyland, Risk, Scrabble, Uno, Yahtzee, and Monopoly are passed down from generation to generation as parents assume that what they played as children are what their children should be playing.

Now, I know that just saying "everyone in the country would abandon Monopoly if only they knew about Power Grid" doesn't constitute proof. And I can't prove it. I can, however, show that there are equally plausible explanations for Monopoly's monopoly on America.

A defender, or Moldier (see: a+b), of these games might want to start listing their "virtues". To them I would ask, "so these games are better than [insert Spiel des Jahres winner] because?" And of course I would receive a blank stare. They can talk for hours about why Monopoly is fun but can't begin to argue why it is more fun than, for example, Settlers of Catan.

Why? Because they've never heard of it.

The Moldier could be inclined to counter that capitalism works, and the fact that Monopoly continues to be a household name that sells well after all these years is proof of how good it is. Toys R' Us knows who holds the pursestrings: parents. When it comes time for a birthday, Winter Holiday, or "just because" gift it will be Mommy and Daddy (or not) choosing the gift.

And if that parent wants one less plastic gun around the house, they will be well served by the board games section. Go to your local Toys R Us and take a look at the game shelves. In order to maximize shelf space, as any good retailer does, Geoffrey shows only the thin edge of each game. Game makers know this, so they maximize this space to get the parents' attention.

Now put yourself in the place of this harried parent. There are a multitude of choices, and examining any individual game for more information, say, on the back of the box, is a non-trivial task. You certainly aren't going to compare every single game available. So your eyes automatically gravitate towards the familiar logos and names. You remember playing them as a child, so you toss it in the cart and take off.

Things get worse when you look at the perspective of the retailer. They know that this is exactly how most of their customers act, and will act accordingly. They remove the games that sell only occasionally, as the worst thing possible for a retailer in a Wal-Mart world is inventory that gathers a speck of dust. Now Monopoly sits on the shelves unchallenged.

Of course, everything mentioned here is self-reinforcing, as customers will now be even less aware of alternatives to their "childhood favorites".

There is a trend of foreign companies buying underperforming or outright failing American businesses. Take a look at the Thinkpad. Last year, Chinese computer company Lenovo bought the Thinkpad brand from IBM. They bought more than that, really, but the Thinkpad name was what they were really after. Another Chinese company went after Maytag. These companies weren't interested in American factories, designs, or inventory. They knew that those parts of the American businesses were subpar, because the Chinese were the ones beating them.

However, the Chinese understood that American cultural inertia was powerful enough to defy all reason. They have long since passed us in ability to manufacture low-cost, high-quality consumer products, xenophobic "Buy American" commercials notwithstanding. But they can't succeed in the American marketplace without a name that Americans know, because we are prone to praise the familiar without even trying to justify such an evaluation.

Let's get back to the interview. All the expected notes were hit, but there are two specific quotes I want to draw your attention to. First off:

Tom: Do you think a lot of the reason for the popularity of Monopoly is simply that it's been around so long? With today's shorter attention spans, do you think Monopoly, introduced as a new game, would be successful?

Ken: No. I do not think that is enough to sustain a game for so long. I am sure that the fact that there are generations of adults that introduce it to their children because they have pleasant memories playing is a factor. However, the bottom line is that it is fun to play. People like you and your readers who enjoy gaming love trying new games every year but we are only going to continue to play the ones that are fun.

Well, no surprises here. He first spins the inertia as proof that the game is fun. This without recognizing how few adults still play Monopoly. If all of these parents teaching their children had such pleasant memories of the game, why did they stop playing until it was time to torture their children with it? The next part had me laughing for a good half-minute:

Tom: There are many new board games that have been quite popular lately, commonly known as "German" games. These include games such as Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan. What is your opinion on these?

Ken: I'm sorry but I am not familiar with those types of games.

I was sad that Tom didn't press forward on this point. I understand the need for politeness, but this ignorance, which lies at the heart of the problem, needs to be highlighted. Here is one of the highest-profile Moldiers and he can't defend his game against modern classics. I don't mean to make sport of this fellow, but there couldn't be a clearer signal that this guy is wrong than his inability to respond to that question.

Why do I get overheated about these games? Because they stand in the way of innovation. Part of this is blatant financial self-interest. The more money that is poured into indistinguishable versions of Monopoly (where's the version where you buy different versions of Monopoly instead of properties?), the less that will be available to publishers that might use some of that money to try one of my games out.

But even if I abandoned game design tomorrow (a thought that runs through my mind every night), I would still want to see Monopoly disappear. The massive vacuum left by Monopoly would force the American public to learn games that I enjoy. The next time there is a family get-together or I'm hanging out with friends and I say "How about a game of Ticket to Ride?", I don't want to hear "What's that? Why don't we just play Clue?"

Carpe Delirium attempts to create a heuristic method for evaluating game designs.

Concept

* Originality - It possesses elements that have never, or at least not in this particular combination, been part of a game before.
* Freshness and replayability - It is different each time it is played. Repetition in sequence, progress, and events are avoided.
* Match between system and the theme - The system uses concepts intuitive and familiar to the players through their understanding of the theme.

Rules

* Complexity and target groups - The complexity of the game rules is consistent with the target audience for the game.
* Complexity and influence - The complexity of the game rules is commensurate with the player'’s level of influence over the course of the game.
* Learning - The presentation and order of the rules make the game easy to learn.
* Playing Aids - Summaries of often-used, complex information are provided for players.
* Completeness - Rules cover all possible occurrences in game play. Players can easily find answers to rules questions.

Player Involvement

* Player desire - Players want to play it again.
* Player influence - Players have the opportunity to affect the games progress and direction. They play the game, the game does not play them.
* Tension - There are no long periods of relatively low tension. The game gets to the action relatively quickly.
* Reasonable waiting times - Players are not subjected to long periods of inactivity while they wait their turns. Players act simultaneously or are involved in others' turns.
* Meaningful choices - At any decision point a player has small number of meaningful choices. There should not be one option which is optimal for all decision points.

Balance Issues

* Equal opportunity - The initial state of the game gives every player an equal chance of winning.
* Turn order - Overall the first and last players should have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage over the rest of the field.
* No early elimination - All players are involved in the game until it'’s almost over.
* No runaway leaders - Every player has at least a theoretical and preferably a practical possibility of winning until the very end.
* No "kingmaker effect" - A player who no longer has any hope of winning cannot somehow determine the winner.

Production

* Recognition rather than recall - The game components make the game status visible, minimizing the players'’ memory load. A player should not have to remember information from one part of the game to another.
* Legibility - Text is clearly legible and tokens are clearly distinguishable.
* Uniformity - The title, theme, format, and graphics give a unified impression of the game.
* Component quality - Components are durable, functional, visually and tactilely appealing.

I don't agree with everything said, but I believe that this list is quite useful as a sort of checklist for a designer to go over with each major iteration of a design.

Months after sending OotB the prototype for Programmer: Battle for Bandwidth, I received the following e-mail on September 19th, 2005:

Dear Mr. Keller,

Thank you for contacting Mayfair Games with your design submission. We are always excited to see great new ideas from designers like you.

The game you describe briefly in your note sounds like it might be rather interesting. I would like to know more about it. Can you please send a copy of the rules or a detailed description of the game? A couple graphics that illustrate what the game is like could also be helpful.

Thank you again,

-William Niebling
Director of Submissions

This was great. Two game companies, both of which I considered Tier-1 in terms of market presence, were now interested in my design. However, it was very close to the point where Out of the Box would be evaluating and making their decision on the prototype I sent them. Therefore, I decided to wait to hear from them before sending my rulebook to Mayfair. I would not have to wait long.

So I sent OotB the rulebook. The very next day, June 30, 2005, I received the following e-mail:

Michael

COMPUTER PROGRAMMING is indeed a very original concept. I would like the opportunity to present this to our Product Development team in late September. Please send a working prototype at your earliest convenience to the address below.......express service is not necessary.

Thanks
Mark

I was ecstatic. My first attempt at submitting a game and they were interested enough in the concept and rules to want the actual prototype. I made a final set of tweaks, printed up a brand new copy and cut it as perfectly as possible. Three days later I placed it in a white corrugated cardboard box that I bought from the local hobby shop. I labeled it "'Programmer' Prototype by Michael Keller". I then brought it, a copy of the rules, and printouts of all correspondence to the UPS store near me and had it packed and shipped. I e-mailed Mark back letting him know the prototype was on its way. And so the wait began.

Hot damn! Remember that hypothetical television game that I said I had no intention of making just 7 hours ago? Some mechanics popped into my head that I think could be great. I really wish they hadn't, as I already have my hands full altering Programmer, Black Market, and my space colonization game. I still have Theme Park's rules and half the card designs sitting on the back burner. Still, I don't think it will actually take that long to make this game and the mechanics are exciting enough that I want to try it. Ugh, I should stop trying to make a hundred games when I haven't gotten one published but it is so hard to resist! I better go type up the rules before I fall asleep and forget them.

I had set aside tonight for testing out some new tools I recently heard about that can ease creation of game cards. I want to see if either PagePlus SE or The Card Collector Game Maker could help me manage changes to designs of mine like Programmer or Theme Park. However, I realized that tonight Fox is showing the last four episodes of Arrested Development.

AD is one of my favorite television shows of all time. It easily tops my list of comedies. Sadly, it has never done well in the ratings. There are numerous causes for this, not the least of which being the awful marketing campaign that it has had since its inception.

What does this have to do with game design? Despite some rumors about the show being adopted by various outlets (HBO, Showtime, ABC), this will likely be the end of a show that won unanimous critical acclaim. So what does it take to make a successful television show? Can this process be translated into a game? Would that game be fun?

As I explained in my very first post, this is a mental exercise I go through often. I find it quite entertaining to attempt to translate random things into game mechanics. However, this is something that could actually possibly be turned into a game. Television is something almost everyone is interested in to some extent. It has many variables, sometimes nebulous and shifting, that go into "winning" the ratings game. The existence and placement of any one show affects the success of others. Decisions about difficult choices and interaction between players are at the heart of the mechanics of any good game.

At the moment I have no interest in actually doing this sort of design, but that could easily change if I come up with mechanics that I find interesting and that uniquely fit the theme. I'm going to let these ideas run around in the back of my mind. If anything coalesces, I'll give it a shot.

In the meantime, what do you guys think are the important aspects of television that would need to be represented in a game? Also, what scale of game would be attractive? By this I am asking what the perspective of the players would be. Writers? Actors? Producers? Network executives? Advertising agents?

Tonight I will be setting aside design and be bidding farewell to the Bluths.

As noted in my last post:

This will also be the first full ruleset that I will have posted on this blog, so you guys can get an idea of my work as a game designer wannabe. Note that the rules you will see are no longer the current rules of the game. Major mechanical changes have been made since then. But it was the first game that I thought worthy of submission to publishers, so it is an important sample.

I tried futzing with the layout but it just wouldn't fit in this page, so I made a separate one. Enjoy.

The first company to respond to my initial round of submissions was Out of the Box Publishing. Out of the Box is best known for Apples to Apples.

However, looking at their game catalog I saw that they did make some small and inexpensive light-strategy games, which is what I always intended Programmer: Battle for Bandwidth to be. In addition, none of these games had a theme anywhere close to mine. This is actually a good thing. If my game appealed to exactly the same demographics as their current lineup, it would be pointless for them to publish it; they would be cannibalizing their own customer base.

This is the e-mail I received on July 29th, 2005 from Mark Alan Osterhaus, president of the company:

Michael

Thank you for submitting your COMPUTER PROGRAMMING card game for our consideration. If possible, please email the rules for further consideration.

Mark

I hadn’t at that point thought to start writing a rulebook, so I immediately set upon writing one for Programmer. As I said here, I copied my rulebook’s structure and explanatory methodology from the rulebook for San Juan. The new graphics for the rulebook were created in MS-Paint, as I felt diagrams for a version that was meant to explain the game to a publisher were better off clean and simple and to spend time creating aesthetically pleasing ones in Photoshop were just not worth the effort. When I showed actual cards from the game in the rulebook, I did use the images for the cards from Photoshop because they looked nice and were already done, so the only changes I had to do were to resize them to fit in the rulebook layout.

These graphics were all inserted into a Microsoft Word document. I then converted this to a PDF file so that I did not have to worry about their software compatibility or printer settings affecting their ability to view and print the rulebook as I saw it on my computer, as I referred to locations of graphics with respect to the text and didn’t want the locations to shift. The final product was not pretty in the least, but it was as functional as could be hoped for. I sent the following e-mail to Mark with the rulebook attached:

Thank you for your quick response. My current draft of the rulebook is attached in PDF format. I am not an experienced rulebook-writer, (I usually just teach people verbally how to play this game) so please forgive it's less-than-perfect layout and phrasing. If it is unclear in any way, I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you again!

==========================
Michael R. Keller

Tomorrow I’ll figure out a way to post the rulebook here. This will also be the first full ruleset that I will have posted on this blog, so you guys can get an idea of my work as a game designer wannabe. Note that the rules you will see are no longer the current rules of the game. Major mechanical changes have been made since then. But it was the first game that I thought worthy of submission to publishers, so it is an important sample.

After Programmer: Battle for Bandwidth was finalized (I thought) it was time to begin submitting it to publishers. I looked at several publishers submissions guidelines and followed the instructions. Here are two examples from companies that would later contact me back with continuing the process:

From Out of the Box Publishing:

Congratulations on your new game idea!

Out of the Box Publishing is always looking for new and innovative designs that fit for our growing line of games. If you would like us to consider your game for publication, please observe the following submission guidelines:

1. First, email a basic description and overview of your game idea directly to me (mark@otb-games.com). Make sure that you include the following information:
• Age ranges
• Time needed to learn the game
• Time needed to play the game
• Components
• Brief description of play and winning conditions
• Proposed theme
  
  
2. If we feel that the information that you provided in step 1 appears promising, we will request a copy of the rules, more detailed information or both.
   
   
3. If we are still interested after step #2, we will request a prototype for more extensive playtesting.
   
   
4. Out of the Box Publishing will not consider any product submission requiring a signed non-disclosure agreement .....sorry, there are no exceptions to this rule.

Since we plan on releasing 4-6 new products each year, I would be delighted if your game turned out to be a good addition to our line!

Thank you for your confidence in Out of the Box Publishing.

Mark Alan Osterhaus
President

From Mayfair Games:

For legal reasons, only William Niebling will look at new game submissions. This insures that no employee of Mayfair Games is influenced by your design ideas.

If you would like to have us consider your game, you need to send a memo (like a Resume for your game) to:

William Niebling
Director of Submissions
Mayfair Games, Inc.
P.O. Box 1023
Ann Arbor, MI 48106

or via email to: submissions@mayfairgames.com

This memo should outline the following items:
• Topic nature of the game (ie, a game about ....)
• Who is the expected market for the game (family members between ?-? or males between the ages of ?-?)
• How does your game fit into the style of games which Mayfair currently produces?
• What is the most interesting facet of the game which could be used in an interesting Marketing approach?
• Is there any similar game to your game? Which ones?
• Has the game been published before?
• What other games have you published?

We are not so interested in the game mechanic, as we are why this game will fit Mayfair's line well. Never send us a prototype unless we specifically request it. If an un-solicited prototype is received it will be immediately destroyed, for your protection and ours. We are always working on games of our own and we would like to protect your idea.

I hope that this assists you in your quest to be published as a game designer.

Thank you,

William Niebling,
Director of Submissions P.O. Box 1023
Ann Arbor, MI 48106

On July 27, 2005 I sent the following to OotB:

Ages 12+

Takes about 5 minutes to learn.

A 4-player game takes about 45 minutes.
A 3-player game takes about 30 minutes.
A 5 or 6-player game takes about 1 hour.

The only components are cards, normal size, about 120 of them (exact set of cards is slightly in flux at this point, but it will stay between 100 and 130).

Players take turns building a shared "computer program" using code cards that pass a scoring token among them in different ways. Players also have event cards that can help yourself or hurt opponents. Every round new code cards get added to the existing program, then it is run, scoring points accordingly. The player to first reach a certain number of points wins the game. (3 players = 12 points, 4 players = 9 points, 5 players = 7 points, 6 players = 6 points)

The theme this is built on is that of players taking on the personae of computer programmers (hackers, really) battling each other over a network.

And the following to Mayfair:

• Topic nature of the game (ie, a game about ....) Computers, Programming, Hackers, and the Internet

• Who is the expected market for the game (family members between ?-? or males between the ages of ?-?) Technology-oriented males over the age of 12

• How does your game fit into the style of games which Mayfair currently produces?
It best fits because its theme is one that you haven't addressed in your line of games. Just about every game you make seems to take place in or prior to the Industrial Age. This game's theme appeals to a different segment of the population. In addition, like most of your games, every player's move affects the utility of all of his opponent's cards, so current Mayfair players would appreciate the interaction of the gameplay.

• What is the most interesting facet of the game which could be used in an interesting Marketing approach?
The most interesting facet from a marketing standpoint is the theme, which is relatively unexplored in the current American game market which seems to be oversaturated with fantasy and midieval games. The mechanics of the game also lends itself to being able to learn to play on a computer, making it easier to attract people who don't necessarily go to gaming conventions but still enjoy playing games.

• Is there any similar game to your game? Which ones?
Programmer's Nightmare (http://boardgamegeek.com/game/3564)
Like my game, has players building a program, but that is really where the similarity ends. The mechanics of how it plays out are vastly different.
Input/Output Game (http://boardgamegeek.com/game/13312)
The game description makes it sound like it is about constructing a program, however, I cannot find a detailed gameplay description of this game.

• Has the game been published before?
No.

• What other games have you published?
I was a designer on the upcoming expansions for "Star Trek CCG Second Edition" titled "To Boldly Go" and "Captain's Log". TBG is planned to release around the end of August 2005. The lead designer is Mike Girard (mike.girard@decipher.com).

I would be happy to answer any further questions you might have. Thank you for your time.

What responses did I get? Tune in same bat time, same bat channel!

I spent the weekend attempting to write up a preliminary rulebook for Battle Stations. My efforts did not bear much fruit. I have always found it difficult to write rulebooks. This is despite the ease with which I write rules. I believe I am skilled, relative to my peers, at crafting language that precisely conveys sometimes nuanced and complex ideas.

It is likely my ability to clearly communicate such things, combined with my analytical approach, that has consistently drawn me to administrative and/or judging positions in many aspects of my life, with gaming being no exception. My gaming friends have always called me a rules lawyer, but without the negative connotation that is usually attached to the term. At least, it hasn’t appeared to be in a negative manner; I could just be clueless. I have always been the one turned to for explanations of rules or situations in which rules seem unclear. I am not always right, but I hit the mark more often than luck would dictate and am generally considered reliable.

I also write in non-technical styles quite often. College has certainly demanded of me a nigh-continuous stream of observational, analytical, and argumentative writing. I had been writing strategy articles for a collectible card game company’s website until recently moving into a semi-supervisory position for the other writers. Whenever I feel the need to express myself I will usually write something for my website. This blog began in part because I wanted to write about a new topic in a medium which demanded a structure that I had not previously attempted. This has included my unsuccessful attempts at humorous writing. The point here is that I am not a person wholly unfamiliar with the quill.

And yet I can’t seem to write a good rulebook. It occurs to me that one thing I am not skilled at is constructing a narrative. In high school I challenged myself to attempt to write a (very) short novel, about 100 to 150 pages in length. By the time that I had reached approximately 50 pages I abandoned the project because of its so-far embarrassing output. Reading it, I saw that I had no talent for pacing. My storytelling used a consistent level of detail that was insufficient at some parts while becoming tedious in others. Any individual section was justifiably readable, but as a whole it was a mess.

I think the same skills used in storytelling can apply to writing a good rulebook. Your goal in both is to engage the reader in a way that they can apply what they have read earlier to the current section towards creating an understanding of a larger picture where all the details are meaningful because of their relationships. You need to be able to create contextual meaning in even the most discrete parts. The reader must comprehend why each idea being presented is important.

This admittedly self-serving theory would explain why I can write a rule that is anything but confusing yet when packaging these rules together the reader will invariably end up confused as to how to go about playing the game.

When learning a new game, I have almost never actually read the rulebook. It has always been a person already familiar with the game who walked us through the rules, usually from memory. This has not always been the perfect solution. You would not have believed my reaction when I found out after years of play that the “Tax money goes to Free Parking” rule was not actually part of the official rule set for that plight on true gamers, Monopoly. Still, I have almost always felt comfortable playing a game immediately following one of these personal explanations.

I can remember the day I was first introduced to Magic: The Gathering, which is no small feat considering my shoddy memory and that I must have been in the third grade at most. I asked to see the rulebook and my friend warned me that it would be better for him to just explain it. After I insisted and was handed a tiny booklet with more words than I was comfortable with, I relented and just let him teach me. As an aside, I believe even the rulebook itself suggested that learning directly from it was a poor strategy.

Back then Magic had relatively complex basic rules, as the "Interrupt" card type was still around and it made response resolution far too complex to understand. Those of you who are relative newcomers to it should just take my word for it that timing in the game has improved significantly since then. This and our ages meant that much of what my friend told me was incomplete, if not completely incorrect. Still, he told me enough to be able to play.

More importantly, armed with a limited internal understanding of the flow of the game, I was able to go back and read the rulebook after buying a starter deck of my own. Having a mental framework of the entire game allowed me to process these previously undecipherable rules. Over the years I developed into somewhat of a local expert on the game, and eventually began running unsanctioned tournaments for my friends and myself.

Years later I attempted to learn Star Trek and the first Star Wars CCGs by myself after their respective releases. This wasn’t out of desire, but out of necessity. Since these were new games, no one I knew played them. I didn’t even have access to other players online, as I was unaware of the company’s website for a long time. Therefore, they were a true test of the rules writers’ abilities.

The Star Trek rulebook was successful. I easily learned the key concepts and mechanics and settled into the flow of the game without much difficulty. I liked the game quite a bit and would play it for many years to come. The Star Wars rulebook was a different matter. I did not understand the “flow of the Force” mechanic. After many tries I was able to play mechanically, but the experience was draining and I still did not really grasp the overall flow of the game itself. I immediately quit the game.

When I moved and started high school I met about half a dozen people who played Star Wars at school. Just for something to do, I tried taking up the game again. One of the players re-taught me how to play in such a way that I now “got” the game. While I never became an avid player, I at least enjoyed it enough to play on an almost-daily basis.

This “Tale of Two Games” illustrates the pitfalls that can be had when writing a rulebook. Some might argue that the differing complexity of the games in question might taint this comparison. However, if Star Wars was more complex (which I agree with), it just meant that the rules writers needed to work harder to make sure the players didn’t experience the frustration I had gone through.

I’ve seen some recent CCGs use non-traditional methods for instructing play. One way is to have interactive software that shows a player the different cards in use and then allows them to play. Another way is having a small pack of cards meant to be used to simulate a game, with precise step-by-step instructions on what each player should do. The software method is nice because it allows free play while enforcing rules, whereas the physical card method requires forcing the players to take scripted actions. However, the software method is obviously far more expensive and not something easily applicable to board games.

One board game I’ve learned exclusively through the rulebook is Diplomacy. When I heard that there were only two types of pieces and only one piece could be in a space at a time, I thought to myself, “This will be the easiest game I’ve ever tried.” Boy was I wrong. The Diplomacy rulebook (note that this must have been a relatively recent printing, as I got it sometime during high school) was both good and bad. On one hand, it easily explained the rules for writing orders (even if convoy orders were a bit convoluted) and controlling territory. I understood what I had to do to win and how to go about it. On the other hand, it managed to bewilder me when it came time to resolve orders. There were innumerable rules on how to do this, and they were spread all over the book, with examples placed almost randomly. If this aspect of it was improved (not an easy task), I would hail it as one of the best rulebooks I’ve ever read. As it is, I decry it as one of the worst. I needed to read that sucker so many times that the wear on it would make one believe it was ancient parchment stolen from an insecure museum exhibit.

I recently bought Bang! I had heard a little about the game beforehand in the form of stories about particular sessions with it. However, I did not really know anything about the rules when I purchased it and had to learn it directly from the rulebook. I initially found it a bit unclear when it was explaining suits and “draw!”-ing and the different symbols on the cards. After a re-read and a perusal of the deck I felt comfortable enough to play. I did not like that I had to keep looking at the rulebook to learn what the library cards did. Those explanations should have been on the symbol-explaining reference cards.

When I went to write the rulebook for Programmer: Battle for Bandwidth, I decided to copy the structure of another game that used only cards.

The game in question, San Juan, was one that I had learned through the rulebook. I had purchased it after some of my friends told me to try it in place of Puerto Rico, a game which I am alone on this planet in not being able to stand. The rulebook did the trick; I only needed to read it through once cover-to-cover to be ready to play the game.

So I took the San Juan rulebook, extracted the section headings and methods of explaining cards, and applied them to Programmer, which at the time also only consisted of cards. It wasn’t a great rulebook, but I feel it got the job done. Unfortunately, I never got to do a blind playtest using it, because all of my testers were already familiar with the game. (I’ll post a copy of it here as soon as I have time to format it for this page.) It was this rulebook that I submitted to a publisher, but that’s another story.

 Categories: Battle Stations, Programmer, rulebook

Sitting here waiting for the publisher to reject Battle Stations reminds me of the not-so-long-ago story of my initial attempts at becoming published. At Origins 2005 I had a breakthrough with Programmer: Battle for Bandwidth (wow, I am really bad at naming things), which would be the first game I would ever submit to a publisher. From my convention report:

After the game, I talked to Andy a bit about a problem I'm having with a game I'm designing (or trying to, anyway). In three minutes he came up with a solution to the problem that's stalled me for three or four months now. I was flabbergasted. He's apparently a natural at this. Meanwhile, my game will never be published, no matter how long I try, even with his solution and a few tips on showing it to publishers. It's a shame, too, I like this game so much more than my misguided past attempts at a sci-fi RTS CCG and a sci-fi wargame. This one is exciting mechanically to me. I've never heard of anything like it; Andy said he hadn't either and would like to try it. Yet, even if he helps me perfect it I know I've got no chance: no publisher has ever heard of me, I have no money to invest of my own, and the universe would never be that nice to me to give me a chance to design games for a living.

I obviously have become more delusional since then. Anyway, shortly after Origins I began intensive playtesting of this game. After tweaking some rules and adding/changing/removing some of the cards it seemed to be good and I couldn't identify any specific problems that needed to be addressed. That's when I began the submissions process.

It's funny. Sometime after writing my post about Utopia, wherein I declared that I had no intention to continue working on the save when some unexpected and uncalled-for inspiration took a proverbial crap in my mind, said inspiration snuck into my head to leave its mysterious lumpy brown bag.

I think I have a way to change it such that the balancing of the hidden goal is achieved. This solution will also manage to remove the moving of the pawns around the board in the process. I always felt that part was really tacked on anyway. This solution also creates a disincentive to change existing tiles without the need for an added action costing system. This is actually an impressively elegant solution.

It still remains to be seen if the new version will be in the least bit fun. Still, if I can turn that piece of garbage into something remotely playable, I will be happy to some perceivable measure.

Alright, I’ve decided to turn my attention to one of my dead prototypes. Utopia was my attempt at a completely abstract euro-style game. I had noticed that all of my previous designs were very top-down (start with a theme and try to choose mechanics that represent the theme in a fun way), and I wanted to take a stab at designing a game bottom-up (choose mechanics that seem like they could be fun when used together and paste a theme on after the fact).

One of my favorite mechanics in games are hidden and/or asymmetric goals. I feel that games that employ these have inherently greater replayability, so long as the goals are chosen well.

Take a look at Risk (bad game, but I’m trying to make a point and an example I’m sure everyone will understand is essential). Back before I knew there were good games out there, Risk is something I’d play whenever I felt the need to be massochistic. However, when they released a version of Risk with the “Mission Cards”, the game actually seemed enjoyable again for a short amount of time. These cards presented each player with a hidden new goal in place of the old complete world domination goal.

The goals included controlling of continents, such as Asia or both North America and Australia, controlling of a certain number of territories anywhere, or elimination of another player, identified by color. This had several effects on gameplay. Firstly, the game ended much sooner, as these goals were all obviously much easier to achieve than world domination (because these goals could all be described as subsets of the original goal). Connected to that effect, the age-old strategy of turtling up in Australia until you have the cards to steamroll across the globe no longer worked, because an opponent would likely achieve his or her goal and the game would be over before you finally made your move. Thirdly, you had to be aware of unintended consequences. Actions that would have previously been unambiguously beneficial to you might now be more beneficial to an opponent who is closer to victory. Take the “eliminate a player” goals. By taking one of the territories that you need to accomplish your goal, you might eliminate a player who is a third player’s target, winning the game for that person before you can claim victory.

Although in the end they could not save Risk from its core inadequacies, the Mission Cards were a good idea. Apart from the above mentioned effects, they also introduced a sort of metagame to Risk. Players would attempt to guess which of the mission cards each opponent had received so that they could then gague how close those players were to victory. An opponent believed to be close to victory would need to be slowed down by attacks, even if neither they nor their territories were a target of your Mission Card.

The ways that the Mission Cards changed Risk have always been something I’ve thought about, even before I became a Game Designer Wannabe. I would often wonder how games I played could be changed by creating asymmetric and/or hidden goals.

It is thus that Utopia was born, even if it wasn’t named that yet. I began with a decision that the hidden goals would be color patterns. Players would try to create the pattern on their hidden goal card on a common board. But in what manner would this play out? At first I just thought that players should lay out tiles with colors on them. Players could play two new tiles or change one existing tile on their turn. They would need to create a path around the board that was a repetition of their pattern but could take any sorts of turns on the way.

I created a hexagonal board broken up into smaller hexagons. If you want to visualize it, start with one central hexagon. Then add equal hexagons extending out from the central hexagon’s six sides in straight lines to a distance of three. Connect these outer hexagons with however many more hex’s are needed, then fill it in as needed.

Players would win if their pattern’s path touched three non-consecutive sides of the board, not including the outer corners. The central hex was off limits. Patterns would consist of combinations of four colors (I used red, green, blue, and yellow just because they were convenient). There would be four parts to each pattern, so possible patterns included RGBY, RGGY, BGBR, and YYYY. You get the picture.

I quickly realized that laying entire tiles would make it impossible to change them mid-game. I instead made little discs out of checkers pieces, putting colored stickers on them. Then I made the pattern cards, about 40 of them to start with.

I realized that if players just layed the discs as they wanted, it would be impossible to track each players’ actions, which would remove the guessing aspect from the game. Sure, some geniuses out there could probably memorize who placed what where, but I didn’t want this to be a game that required a masterful memory, just deductive (or is it inductive? I think this might be an inductive game) skills.

So I decided that to lay discs players would have to move pawns representing themselves around the board to where they wanted to lay the disc. Each player would receive two pawns that each started at the center hex and would have five actions to perform a turn. An action would be either moving the pawn one space, “kicking” a pawn in an adjacent space to move it out of the way, or placing/changing a disc.

I toyed with the idea of each player having a “death” color, where if one of their pawns was on a space with that color disc, it would be “destroyed” and that player would have to lose a turn to return their pawn to the center of the board. This quickly got dismissed, as it meant that pattern cards could then only consist of a maximum of three colors, else the pawns would have to commit suicide many times in the course of placing the pattern.

I still wanted to introduce player interaction, especially one that directly rewarded players who figured out their opponent’s pattern. I decided that at the start of your turn, you could choose to guess another player’s pattern. If you were wrong, you lost your turn. If you were right, you got twice as many actions as normal and that player was forced to draw a new pattern card.

Unfortunately, I realized that it would be far too difficult to disguise your patterns unless you wasted many many actions laying down discs that were not part of your intended path but were there simply to obfuscate your actual pattern. So I decided that when you layed a disc, you would lay down four discs, one of each color. One would be on the hex where the pawn was located, and three would be on three non-contiguous hexes surrounding the pawn’s hex. This way, it would not be immediately clear which of the four hex’s affected were part of your pattern’s path, if any.

I needed a title for my internal version notes. I decided that the four colors would represent the four elements (wind, water, earth, fire) and that the board would represent the Earth. The players were elemental agents attempting to change the Earth into their ideal planet, represented by the pattern card. That’s when the name Utopia came to me. It proudly continued my tradition of awful game titles.

So we tested the game. It was . . . not fun. The test lasted all of five, maybe ten minutes before I ended it. And that’s including rule explanations. I had failed to find the correct balance between making it easy and rewarding to discover your opponents’ patterns and making it hard enough to do so that a person could convceivably win before their pattern was guessed correctly even once without spending too much time on moves intended to confuse their opponents. It was now far too difficult, but I was unable to conjure a way to make it easier without overdoing it.

I have set aside this game until such an idea comes to me. In the meantime, it is effectively dead. I don’t plan on dedicating any actual time to it. If there’s a breakthrough idea, it will have to come to be by accident. Or maybe one of you kind readers can come up with a way to fix this.

I am somewhat dissapointed with myself. My first attempt at a bottom-up, abstract game was a complete failure. People talk about American games versus Euro games. I don’t like that distinction. I don’t think that American designers can’t effectively break into Euro designs. Unfortunately, I did nothing to prove that with Utopia, may it rest in peace.