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Good Day Internet! This week we’re discussing the factors that makes it so difficult to be a full-time tabletop designer. Unless you’re brand new to board game design, chances are you’ve heard the advice: “Don’t quit your day job”and whoever told you that probably mentioned something about there being no money in game design and it requires too much time. But what are the factors contributing to there being “no money” in game design and what other obstacles would you run into if you made the leap into being a full-time game design? We’re going to explore those reasons with some awesome research from Cardboard Edison (side note: if you’re not following/subscribed to Cardboard Edison, you definitely should be. It’s a great resource for any game designer).  http://bit.ly/2dAuhnd Design, Development, and Publish Time If you’re lucky, you can have a game ready to be submitted to a publisher in about 6 months (we’ve seen it done and did it ourselves in about 8 months). From there it will likely take at least a few months (although probably longer) to find a publisher who wants your game and you want to work with. After finding said publisher, the contract needs to be negotiated, drafted and signed, and then the publisher needs time to adapt and develop your game to fit their line. The publisher also needs to figure out how your game will fit their release schedule, which may push back the actual launch date. During any point in this process, the publisher could change their mind and decide not to release your game. In those cases the rights will return to you eventually, but your game will have been in limbo for a while before you can do anything with it. How long it takes for the contract to be signed and the publisher to get your game ready for launch varies, but thanks to the data from Cardboard Edison we know that the majority of contracts state that if a signed game has not been published after a year or longer of signing the contract the rights will revert back to the designer. If we go with the low end and say it usually takes a year from signing a game to getting it published, then you’re looking at approximately 2 years minimum from initially designing a game to making any money, unless you get an advance.  http://bit.ly/2ekZkGr No Advances for New Designers Unfortunately, most publishers don’t offer advances on signing and it is becoming less and less common in contracts (most likely due to the growing number of small publishers). However, if you do find a publisher who offers an advance, it quite often is $1000+. The designers who are getting those big advances usually already have multiple published games, the game is not being crowdfunded, and they aren’t getting their name on the box. That’s not good news if you’re just starting off as a game designer. Obviously, you don’t have published games already as a newbie, so that hurts your chances of getting an advance, but new designers are also more likely to sign with a small publisher who usually use crowdfunding sites to publish their game. Contracts for crowdfunded games also have a much higher chance of providing no advance at all compared to traditionally funded games. This translates to less than 1 in 5 new designers getting a big advance and close to 2 out of 3 new designers getting no advance at all. Let’s pretend though that you do manage to sign with a big publisher that is willing to give you a big advance upfront. That advance will have to cover all your expenses for the past year working on the game, your living expenses for that time, and your living expenses for the next year or so it takes to get it published and a royalty cheque in your hand. Basically, whatever that advance is chances are it isn’t enough to cover 2 years of living expenses.  http://bit.ly/2el1Fkr Small Hobby Equals Low Print Runs and Less Money Our hobby is growing and gaining in popularity, but it’s still a relatively small close knit community. There is also an abundance of new board games coming out thanks to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter that allow for the emergence of many new small publishers. This saturation of the market means lower print runs and lower chances of reprints. On average, a first print run of a game will be about 5,000 copies or less. Since game designers usually get paid a fixed percentage per game sold, lower print runs means less money in the designer’s pocket. Game designer’s royalties are usually somewhere around 5% of either the wholesale or retail value of the game. So for example, if your game retailed at $40 you would make $2 per copy sold, at a 5,000 copy print run you would make $10,000 (not bad, but certainly not a liveable wage for a year). You may think that only making $2 per game is low, but considering all the other costs that the publisher has to worry about (production, warehousing, shipping, distribution, marketing, other costs, and a cut for the publisher and retailer, if there is one) it’s pretty good. However, going back to the $10,000 wage per game (your mileage may vary) that means you’d probably be looking at having 5 of your games published a year to make a decent wage; that’s a lot to ask from a designer new to the hobby. What if their was a way though that you could get a bigger print run and sell more copies of your game? To do that you need to find a big publisher, be patient with them, and give up creative control. This will increase your odds of having a game with an initial print run of 10,000+ although, finding a big publisher is probably the most useful advice. Bigger publishers will have a bigger established audience for their games, which means bigger print runs. Having to be patient with negotiations, and giving up creative control are most likely only related to big print runs due to the fact that big publishers have lots on their plate, know how to tailor a game to their line, and have the development team to do it. Running through the numbers again, if you can find that big publisher and get the big print run, then you’d only need to maybe have 2 designs published a year. The difficult part is how do you network with a large publisher so they give your game a chance because as it turns out that seems to be part of the way pros are able to sign with larger publishers. But even if you did all that, there’s still one last obstacle in your way:  http://bit.ly/2eS5Kf8 Payment Schedule
On top of the little money made per game for designers, there’s also an inconsistent paycheck paid out only a few times a year to deal with. A majority of designers get paid on a quarterly basis, but over another third are paid two times a year or less. Each of those payments is also going to most certainly be a different amount because designers don’t decide how many games they sell in a given time period. Having inconsistent pay spread over that much time is going be tough to manage and live on, even for those who can stick to a strict budget. Despite all these obstacles that lead to so many giving the advice: “Don’t quit your day job”, we do want to say that it is possible to be a full-time designer, even if you’re a new designer. To do that though, you need some combination of an amazing work ethic, talent, be great at making connections, and some luck (savings are also a good idea). If you are planning for whatever reason to be a full-time designer, make sure you set yourself goals and be very stern with yourself. As someone who is doing their best to make game design their full-time work, it is very stressful, and financially draining. We wish you the best of luck on your endeavours and if we missed anything feel free to let us know!
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Good Day Internet! Today we’re going to discuss our experiences as tabletop co-designers and what to look for when choosing a co-designer/partner. Allysha and I have been working on games together for over a year now and we’ve learnt a lot from each other. We balance out each other very well, which has allowed us both to grow as designers. Where I falter, Allysha excels and vice-versa. Considering that we started working together kind of on a whim we’ve been very fortunate that everything has worked out so well. However, we’ve also worked with other designers where the outcome was less than ideal. Putting these experiences together has led to a short list of things you should be looking for/asking about when searching for a co-designer/partner.  http://bit.ly/2cTcxok 1) Determine the Length of the Partnership and Your Role Before you can start discussing the minor details, you need to be upfront with each other about the size of the project you’re undertaking together; is it just for this one game? For a series of games? To start a new company? Each of these requires a different type of commitment, vision, and structure of partnership. Are you comfortable with those commitments, visions, and roles? If the two of you have completely different ideas of what the partnership agreement will look like, then it’s time to reconsider before you even begin. For longer, more ambitious projects, be clear and know beforehand who will take on what role(s) (for instance: design lead, creative lead, lead developer) and who (if anybody) will be taking the lead. If your partner basically wants you to be their employee, or take the back seat, you have to consider if that’s a role you can take on happily. Last year we joined a project where we were told upfront that we would be partners. However, as the projects progressed we ended up being employees - which was not what we wanted. Needless to say, we eventually parted way and are much happier now working together under Dancing Giant Games.  http://bit.ly/2dT689Q 2) Determine Division of Work and Expectations Determining roles is one thing, but sometimes what is expected from those roles can be entirely different for each partner. Be clear with each other before diving into any project what the timeline will be and how the work will be done. Furthermore, discuss what each of you believe should be covered by your roles in the partnership (you may be surprised by what additional work you are asked to do). Understand also that just because there are multiple of you working on the same project doesn’t mean doing half as much work as normal. Much of the work will involve keeping in touch, updating each other, and bouncing ideas off one another (expectations of how frequently this will be done should also be discussed). How difficult that is will most likely increase if you are unable to physically meet in person. In those cases it may be a good idea to set up additional channels of communication like Slack. During and after this discussion, reflect on the timeline and work expectations, and be truthful with yourself on whether you’ll be able to (or if you think your partner will be able to) meet them without stressing yourself or your partner out. Regardless of how good the partnership may be, if one of you can’t keep up with the timeline then there’s no point working together at that time. Until moving to the Toronto area, the expectations of being able to consistently playtest kept us from collaborating. It was simply too costly and too much of a time commitment to always be heading down to the city for playtesting. Now that we’re in the city, we are able to playtest a lot more which in turn means more time playing and assisting with other designers’ games.  http://bit.ly/2dLJUKW 3) Know Each Other's Strengths Knowing and evaluating each of your strengths is one of the final things to consider before saying “YES!” to a co-designer/partnership. In our own opinion, what you should be looking for is not a co-designer/partner who is like-minded, but rather somebody who excels at the skills you lack and who will challenge you to be better. Your goal going into a partnership should be to learn and grow from the experience. If you only look for like-minded people, you won’t learn nearly as much and you may be forced to go contract out the work you’re not very good at (which is not ideal if you’re low on funds to begin with). In our case, I knew I needed Allysha to help me with my games because she basically knew how to do all the things I sucked at. In the beginning of our partnership, Allysha always did the theme work for our games because I basically thought theme, in general, was irrelevant (I never used to pay attention to theme when playing games so I barely paid attention to it when designing). Eventually, having her constantly challenge me to create some sort of theme for our games (instead constantly relying on her to add the theme to a purely mechanical game) got to me. Now before I start any new design (unless I have an off day) I have a theme in mind; which has led to a huge improvement in the quality and joy our games bring. As for what Allysha has learnt from me, she has a deeper appreciation for the mechanics of a game (basically we don’t just design from either theme or mechanics anymore). Challenging one another to improve our skills (and keeping each other accountable) has made us much better designers and strengthened our partnership.  http://bit.ly/2dL0zJg 4) Work with Your Partner, not Against Them
Working with your partner and not against them sounds pretty simple, but remember, we’re suggesting you partner up with someone who is not of the same mind as you: heated discussions and arguments may arise (we’ve had a few of our own). Realize that where you differ on these subjects is where one (or both) of you need to grow. Take the time to have those long discussions and try to truly understand the upside to your partner’s point of view instead of shutting down. If Allysha and I never opened up to the other’s view then we’d both probably still be pretty bad designers. But by taking the time to eventually put the frustration aside and trying something new you’ll probably end up learning something, which is how you grow and get the best experience out of co-designing. We hope you enjoyed our tips on co-designing and partnerships. We’d definitely would love to hear about your experiences (good or bad) involving co-designing and partnerships and what you find works (or doesn’t) for you below. Also, just to be clear, despite bad experiences in the past we are still open to collaborations under the right circumstances. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin Good Day Internet! Today we’re going to discuss how to design your games to be more inclusive and accessible, because gaming is for everyone. Board games are a format that can attract numerous different kinds of people and bring them together in a social context--this is part of the beauty of board games. It is therefore important to make sure that every person who sits down to play your game has the ability to participate, feel included, and not be put down or offended by your game. Many of the ways to do this are relatively simple, yet often overlooked, forgotten, or disregarded. It’s for these reasons, and others, that we decided to write a few general guidelines to ensure your game is more accessible and fun for everyone.  http://bit.ly/2cDk06D Colour Blind Accessibility We’ve spoken briefly on this topic before, but it’s important to reiterate that a couple simple changes can make your game more accessible. When deciding your colour scheme, especially for player pieces and resources, avoid using similar tones along certain colour spectrums. You should also do your best to limit the number of similar tones you use in your game. Use symbols, patterns, shapes, or other non-colour identifiers wherever possible to differentiate various pieces (once again with a focus on player pieces and resources) as not to rely on the colour being the only differentiating factor (Circular Reasoning is a good example of this). Doing so will (hopefully) guarantee that there will be no confusion for colour blind players.  http://bit.ly/2cKUGkw Language Dependency Your ability to lower the language dependency relies a lot on your game’s complexity. If your game allows it, creating a highly visible icon set will decrease your language dependency; using a well-constructed iconography set for your game can increase the age range of potential players, allow for those with lower reading comprehension skills and dyslexia to have an easier time playing/learning, and make it accessible to those with poor vision by removing small text. Furthermore, it can open up more opportunities for your game to be played by players who don’t speak your language without having to translate your rules. Of course, this isn’t a way you would advertise your game, but there are people who, despite language barriers, will want to play your game. If they really want to play it, then chances are they will buy it and try to figure out one way or another how to play. Having an easy to understand iconography set will help to assist in translating your game without actually having to translate your game. Be careful though, bad iconography will decrease the accessibility of your game for everyone (not just the groups listed above). No published games in particular come to mind, but we’ve definitely seen some prototypes with confusing icons that made us feel like we were deciphering a forgotten ancient language.  http://bit.ly/2dbn8f4 Character Diversity and Portrayal This topic is a sore spot for a lot of people and there are a wide range of topics, discussions, and schools of thought regarding these issues. We’re going to do our best to try and stick to the most basic steps you can take to make sure your game appears open and accepting to all people regardless of how you may group them. Before we do though, if your game involves players being a type of animal/focuses around animals (like Zooloretto) or has a strict/rich historical content to it then these guidelines aren’t really going to help you. For the most part, people are highly uneducated on the variations in physical appearance of different species, or sexes, of a particular animal, and historical games cannot change the past...unless they decide to re-imagine/re-write history in some fashion in which case you should definitely try to follow the guidelines below while keeping true to historical contexts.  http://bit.ly/2cHNtyt If your game has characters, playable or not, you should aim to include as much diversity of the human species as possible in a respectful manner. This includes sexes, ethnicities, religions, beliefs, lifestyles, occupations, mental health, disabilities, and anything else you can think of. Additionally, every character should visually have a similar presence about them and appear fit to take on the role/task as defined by your game. No character(s) should appear to be less valuable (either in general terms or in direct relation to their role in the game) than any others as defined by their looks, stylization, abilities, or powers. As an example, Allysha appreciated the job done by the artists behind Dead of Winter for their inclusion of a diverse group of characters and unbiased stylization. It’s definitely not perfect, but it does a pretty good job and is good example of what you should be aiming for. These character guidelines are based around the idea that players want to believe that they could take on a role in your game. Sometimes that means they want to fantasize about who they could be and sometimes they want a character they see as representing the real them within the context of your game. We want you to do your best to avoid limiting the potential of a player identifying a character as themselves, and avoid them thinking that the character that best represents them is useless or portrayed in a bad light. By providing the diversity of characters we mentioned and making every character’s stylization, presence, and competence the same, or at least very similar, creates a smoother transition for a larger number of people of slipping into the game.  http://bit.ly/2cL03jE Final Thoughts
Tabletop gaming is meant to bring people together in a social context without anyone being ostracized. Anything that singles out a person or group of people in a negative connotation doesn’t belong in your game regardless of how it does that (unless following true historical contexts). Of course, there are games whose sole success is based around being “politically incorrect” and undermining people. Games like Cards Against Humanity have created a fad of discriminating, excluding, or finding ways to laugh off saying horrible things in gaming (although similar serious issues were present before Cards Against Humanity). Simply put, it should not be that way if creators wish to have an open and willing community. The above guidelines are little tools to remember when making games so your game can be more inclusive, inviting to all players, and create better gaming experiences. As we said at the beginning, gaming is for everyone and we should be constantly taking steps towards making it so. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin  http://bit.ly/2bR1KFU Good Day Internet! This week we’re going to take a look at places to find external playtesters (based on a comment we received on last week’s blog) and also discuss the topic of paying for playtesting. The paid playtesting portion of this post is inspired by a recent lengthy discussion regarding the Coalition Game Studios’ blind playtesting services on the Card & Board Game Designers Guild Facebook page (which if you haven’t joined--you definitely should). For those of you who don’t know, I recently joined Coalition Game Studios as one of their Consultants--my technical title being “professional developer” (which sounds rather odd and incredibly cool all at the same time). I thought it may be good to try and give some insights from both sides of this topic and then see what the public thinks instead of having my thoughts lost amongst the plethora of Facebook comments. Let’s first start with where to find playtesters. Searching for external playtesters for the first time can be daunting--especially if you don’t know where to look. Luckily, there are plenty of places and resources to find external playtesters: your friendly local game store (FLGS), local designer nights, gaming groups, conventions, and community events are all good places to start. The first place you should check is your FLGS or local board game cafe (if you have one) to see if they do designer nights (we’re fortunate enough to be able to attend the monthly Snakes & Lattes Desinger Nights). If you prefer smaller gaming groups but don’t know of any local ones, you can always search social media sites or check places like meetup.com (where we found Token Resistance) or the boardgamegeek game groups forums. If there’s nothing in your area, don’t be afraid to start something; chances are there is a community in your neighbourhood that would love to participate in a consistent gaming group, designer night, or even a small local convention.  http://bit.ly/2bW2UDk With conventions, this is one place where size doesn’t matter. If you can, making it to conventions that focus specifically on playtesting and prototyping (or have an area for it) is probably best (FEPH at Gen Con, Protospiel, Unpub and Unpub Minis, Metatopia, Spielbany, ProtoTO, are all good examples), but you can always grab playtesters from any convention that has open gaming. Just two weekends ago at FMG CON (which may have had 50 people when I was there) my friend and I were both able to get in playtests with some great feedback on our prototypes. Perhaps none of those options really appeal to you or aren’t available to you. For those of you in this situation there are a few more options that will allow to get your game in front of people without having to leave your home. You could digitally upload your game to sites like Tabletopia or Tabletop Simulator and run scheduled playtests on those platforms. You’ll have to broadcast well to bring in playtesters, but this should help you reach a much larger audience. Print and plays are also an option (check out places like BoardGameGeek’s WIP forum to see some), but that usually requires a comprehensible rulebook. The last option is to pay for playtesting through sites like Coalition Game Studios. However, just like print and plays, these services would require a clear rulebook, so make sure you’ve put in time testing and editing it before paying for these kinds of services. The benefits to paying for playtesting is that you will receive additional analysis and development work beyond what you get from other playtesting methods. Before we get into that though, let’s take a look at the controversy around paying for playtesting. The below list is a few of the most common concerns I’ve heard and seen (primarily from the aforementioned Facebook discussion) regarding paid playtesting:
Let’s take a look at these concerns one by one.  http://bit.ly/2bW0KU1 1) “Why would I pay for Something I Could get Done for Free?” Before joining the Coalition, I felt this way too. As far as I could tell their proposition was to “pay us to play your game so you don’t have to be social and convince strangers to give it a chance”. That’s changed since I’ve actually started working for the Coalition and realizing the extra value that they are adding beyond simply telling you whether or not your game is any good. First though, I want to quickly touch on the experience of those who are in the Coalition for those who may think we’re all just hacks trying to take your money. To join the Coalition I had to submit my “board gaming resume” along with a sample of my written work. The resume was to focus on my experience in playtesting, game design, and design theory among other things (you can see the desired qualifications here). Additionally, I can tell you that I personally was given an introductory case shortly after joining to make sure I was up to their standards. So we’re not just random people who like board games--we are experienced writers with vast knowledge, experience, and passion for testing and developing games. In terms of the extra value added, Coalition Game Studios offers a wide variety of services depending on the client’s wants and needs. Beyond blind logged playtesting and thorough analysis, we also provide collaborative design consulting, where the consultant will actually join you in the creative process to take a more active role in guiding your game to its final iteration. It will allow you to keep in touch with your consultant throughout the progress of your game after receiving all the feedback and reports. Coalition consultants also play your game multiple times to determine its replayability, a trait that is usually difficult to test otherwise because getting someone to play your game over and over again is a hard sell. Basically, we are not only independent playtesters, but game developers.  http://bit.ly/2c8tAAj 2) “Money will Taint the Process” As a consultant for the Coalition Game Studios, I get paid to playtest and develop games. As a happy paid worker I will do my job to the best of my abilities, knowing that it will be reviewed by my boss before being sent out. This means if the game is bad, I will tell you it is bad, and if it is good, I will tell you it is good. Either way, I am happy to tell you these things, along with further analysis and suggestions, in order to improve your game and hope to continue to do business in such a manner. In order for that to happen we as a business must do a great job with honest feedback. If we do anything else, we would no longer exist in the very near future. Furthermore, we are paid to do through analysis and development on games, not to review games. Designers know their own games better than anyone. If we can't engage them with intelligent discourse, they'll be the first to know. They will know whether or not we’ve done our job and they got their money’s worth. This is why having the consultants being paid will ensure the quality of the work instead of taint it.  http://bit.ly/2bRCAfd - "Because it's funny" -- Allysha 3) “Proper Playtesting is the Designer’s Job” First off, the services provided by people like Coalition Game Studios do not replace designers playtesting their own game and by no means are the two mutually exclusive. Coalition simply provides services to assist game designers with their playtesting and game development at various stages. From the earliest stages of a game’s design, we can provide light playtesting and input to get your game on the right track. We can also provide full-fledged game development to games in their later stages (which is not technicaly part of a designer’s job). Coalition Game Studios’ services could be used to help a designer put the final touches on their game before pitching to a publisher or launching their Kickstarter. Those final steps are difficult to do on your own without the proper personnel (ie. a publisher).  http://bit.ly/2cqhpx8 In the future the Coalition is looking to work with publishers and act as a kind of screening process for them. After providing our services to the designer, if we believe the game to be of superior quality and a good fit, we would suggest it to one of our member publishers to potentially sign. This is great for the designer, as they get access to publishers who are looking for their kind of game, and great for the publishers who don’t have to go looking through the hundreds of submissions they get for that one gem. Bottom line, the Coalition Game Studios provide much more than just playtesting and a game designer can’t always be expected to do (or be great at) everything. Especially, if they are restricted by other circumstances beyond their control.
Now that I’ve gone over my perspective as an employee of the Coalition Game Studios, what do you think of what we’re trying to do? Would you pay for playtesting? Is there only certain situations that you would be willing to do such a thing? Do you still think it’s a scam to separate the poor designer and their money? What concerns do you have that haven’t been addressed? Let us know below in the comments. Also, if we’ve peaked your interest and you’d like to have a Coalition Game Studios Consultant take a look at on one of your games, you can receive a $10 discount off your final invoice by entering the promo code “dancinggiant” at checkout courtesy of Mike Mihealsick. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin  http://bit.ly/2bNy8eO Good Day Internet! Recently we’ve reflected on the journey of designing and developing Pulled into Darkness and we realized that a lot (if not all) of the success we’ve been having is directly related to playtester feedback. That may sound obvious, but in our case the feedback implemented didn’t require any refining. The playtesters told us how they’d like to see the game change, we did it, and it worked basically flawlessly. In retrospect though, it wasn’t just a matter of waiting for the right suggestion to come up to fix our game, as we had received feedback on these subjects many times before. We had tried the suggestions, it didn’t work and we moved on. What was new to us was realizing that every time after trying the first few implementations that didn’t work we no longer took the feedback into consideration as much as we should of. Furthermore, although we may have tried a few implementations of the suggestions we received, we stopped working at it relatively quickly and were complacent in the fact that it could not work nor was it a match for the style of game we were making. This was all despite the fact that we continued to get suggestions regarding these same topics over and over again. So this week we’re going to go over these mistakes in the hopes that they will help designers who may have also fallen into this trap. We’ll also give some information on the results of actually properly implementing playtester ideas, and give credit where credit is due; to the playtesters (who after all are usually right). But before we can give praise and reflect more on what we should have done, we’ll need to go over what we did wrong in implementing playtesters’ ideas/feedback in the categories of Special Powers, and Scoring and End Game Trigger for Pulled into Darkness.  http://bit.ly/2bggNsc Special Powers From the game’s inception and earliest playtests, players wanted special powers. Personally, we didn’t think special powers belonged in the game as we designed it with simplicity in mind. However, playtesters consistently asked for space/sci-fi themed special powers so we decided to give it a try. Our first implementation of unique special powers was the use of a separate card to be played on a single spaceship when it was (hopefully) most beneficial to the player. This implementation made the special powers practically useless and a distraction from the game for a few reasons. To start, each unique power was better at different stages of gameplay; for instance “Lasers”, which allowed you to shoot down a spaceship beside you, was usually best at the start of a round; whereas “Worm Hole”, which allowed you to teleport from one space to another, was much better in the middle of a round. For this reason, we weren’t sure when they should be allowed to be played without restricting player agency too much. To try and solve this problem we restricted the special power to a designated captain ship, doing so lead to a larger problem of once the captain ships were removed from the game (which could happen suddenly and unexpectedly) you could no longer use your special power. This only lead to more player frustration and solidified in our minds that special powers didn’t belong in our game. From that point on, when we received feedback regarding adding special powers we usually responded with we tried it and it didn’t work. Months later after consistently receiving feedback that special powers would be a cool addition, we started to question whether or not there was a way to implement them that wouldn’t ruin the game. After a suggestion from Peter Hayward, we decided to give it another try by adding two one-time use cards that could be used in place of a standard command card. These cards allowed a player to move first (instead of simultaneously with everyone else) and knock down any spaceship they ran into, which was a common special power suggestion. The result was the game gained a new level of strategy and more meaningful choices without a finicky system to resolve those new cards.  http://bit.ly/2bfavd0 Scoring and End Game Trigger Originally, Pulled into Darkness ended when there was one player left with multiple spaceships orbiting the black hole (who was declared the winner). Although this model was somewhat focused around player elimination, we thought we were okay because the game was relatively short (about 30 minutes). However, players (particularly those who were game designers) were not so happy with it. They also didn’t like how near the end of the game when there’s less spaceships that the level of excitement drops off dramatically and that the “Down” card (which forced you closer to the black hole and your ultimate doom) was frustrating and unnecessary. Based on feedback, we decided to try scoring to make it a little more interesting for players who only had one spaceship. Once again though, we implemented this idea poorly. Our first implementation included a scoring system where the further away from the black hole your spaceship was the more points you got, but we kept the same end game trigger of there being only one player with multiple spaceships on the board. It was quickly realized that this type of scoring system only made the problem of players not wanting to play their “Down” card more prominent, so we reversed the scoring so that the closer you were to the black hole the more points you got. However, keeping the end game trigger ensured that the game still fell flat. There still wasn’t enough going on at the end of the game so the scoring system seemed arbitrary and just didn’t feel right. So once again, we reverted back to the previous version and each time the scoring suggestion came up we basically shot it down with, “We tried that and it didn’t work”. Just like the special powers suggestion, the scoring suggestion came up many more times and it wasn’t until months later that we decided we were willing to give it another try. I brought the game to Protospiel Michigan where the scoring suggestion came up and once again I told the playtesters it didn’t work out. The next suggestion was to try it with a new end game trigger, which for some reason we never thought of trying. We then played a game where it ended when a majority of the spaceships had been removed from the board and you scored more points the closer you were to the black hole. Doing so made the gameplay a lot better and this was without the one-time use special power cards (which were actually added later). As I playtested it throughout the rest of the weekend, we started to receive comments that people wanted to buy the game without us even having to ask and were told at the Snakes and Lattes Designers Night to look for a publisher. When we did add the one-time use special power cards, it only made the game that much better and increased the number of playtesters who thought the game was publishable.  http://bit.ly/2bCJGlF Conclusion
We’ve previously discussed listening to playtesters and making sure to apply feedback, especially if it keeps coming up. However, we never really discussed in detail the idea that if you apply that feedback and it didn’t work that maybe it wasn’t because it was bad feedback, but that your implementation was poor. Reflecting on our journey with Pulled into Darkness we realized that we failed to implement feedback properly in the above mentioned areas and then didn’t continue to work on figuring out a way that would work. Our thought was that we applied the feedback the way it was presented to us and it didn’t work so we’ve done our job. We wrongly assumed that anyone who was suggesting the same kind of idea after the fact didn’t understand the logistics of applying the feedback or wanted the game to be something that it is not (which sometimes is the case). The work that we should have been doing to make those suggestions work ended up being done by our playtesters (which we’re very grateful for) despite it not being their responsibility. Looking back, we realize that this reflects poorly on us designers and is something we will be aiming to fix to make our games and our game design knowledge even better. Once again, we are very thankful and grateful to the playtesters who initially tried to tell us to try new things and helped us implement those ideas so that we have a game that is publish ready. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin |
Kevin CarmichaelBoard game designer and developer discussing the ins and outs of game design. 
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