39: Co-Design, Pitching, and Elegant Mechanics with David Gordon

 I chat with designer David Gordon (Floristry, Finspan, Making Monsters) about co-designing, filtering feedback, pitching to publishers, and crafting tense, elegant mechanics like Floristry’s Dutch auction. We also dive into his process, inspiration, and lessons from working with top publishers like Stonemaier Games. 

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:36:16
Speaker 1
What are the most important skills that you that I have found helpful for me is the ability to have a filter during feedback and during the debrief process. So during feedback I'll collect all the notes and then I'll enter the notes into my Google block and think about them. But filtering, knowing which what I'm trying to understand, what the problem is that the feedback is, is, is pointing to, because it's not always what the feedback person, what the person said in their feedback, but it might be a symptom of another issue.

00:00:36:18 - 00:01:06:07
Speaker 1
So really diagnosing what the issue is and then being able to know that you don't have to implement every suggestion that you had in the feedback and knowing how to prioritize feedback, knowing which things you'll put a pin in and watch out for later which things to ignore because of whatever reason and which things are important enough to put into the next playtest.

00:01:06:07 - 00:01:58:06
Speaker 1
And that's that's the core discussion of every debrief after a play test. I play games. All my life I played sports and youth sports and and chess and all the the old games risk and all of those things went with Monopoly, with my family. And through high school I continued to play games. In college, we played a lot of like diplomacy and a game, other board games that were modern at the time, access and allies and things like that.

00:01:58:08 - 00:02:32:04
Speaker 1
But I didn't really play modern board games until much later. I played Catan a few times and I played Dominion, but I really wasn't a modern board game player. I was not aware of most games, like I really had just played those two and maybe one other, but I like games and one vacation. And the end of 2018 I suggested to my kids that maybe we not be in our phones the whole week and we maybe make a board game together.

00:02:32:04 - 00:03:14:08
Speaker 1
And so we spent the week working on maps and charts and testing and and then he went back to school. My son went back to school and I kept designing. So I have been pretty much thinking about game design full time since then. Since 2019. I was really fortunate to meet Jill Hobart in in the spring of 2019 and he invited me to their New York City play test group, where designers play test to each other's games and that was very eye opening and indicative of what the industry is, which is very open arms and welcoming.

00:03:14:10 - 00:03:42:00
Speaker 1
And I learned an absolute ton from that group with it, which meant twice a week in a pre pandemic and then moved online and we were meeting four or five times a week. And so I guess I came at this a little bit different than a lot of other designers, which is as opposed to being a modern board game enthusiast and wanting to come up with one, I kind of had the idea to come up with a game and then I learned about modern 14.

00:03:42:02 - 00:03:50:12
Speaker 2
What were your first attempts like? Did you start with like with heavier games or.

00:03:50:14 - 00:04:12:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, well now that I think of it, when I was in like middle school and high school, I used to make well, I played a lot of like status pro baseball, which is I guess a board game, but it is basically a simulation of baseball. And you would have these cars every year and that would come out on the players.

00:04:12:20 - 00:04:38:07
Speaker 1
And I made my own version of that for basketball. So I kind of had this idea of making my own games was would be interesting. When I started the first game that I made with with my son was, I guess you would call it a medium way. Eero The first time I went to the New York City Play Test group, I brought the game.

00:04:38:07 - 00:05:08:02
Speaker 1
I was very nervous. I had playtest at the time with family and friends and I even had gone to a game store and played it with with gamers there. But when I brought it to the design group, they had a lot of terms and vocabulary that I was unaware of things like agency or displays or rivers. So in my game, you would draw a card and that's the card you had.

00:05:08:04 - 00:05:24:14
Speaker 1
And they they suggested ten was actually one of them. Ten. It ended up being one of my co designers and a lot of things. He was one of the people who was there that first day, and one of them suggested maybe instead of having drawing from the top of the deck that you display three cards and pick one.

00:05:24:16 - 00:05:49:00
Speaker 1
And that was kind of a light bulb moment when I thought, you know what? There's there's a lot more interesting things that can happen in terms of player choice. So that was my first game. I put that on the shelf for a few years and I brought it back and tried to redo it and then I put it on the shelf again for another year or two.

00:05:49:02 - 00:06:12:07
Speaker 1
And then last year I tried it out again and I thought about making the card version of it a much simpler, streamlined version. And I started working on that with my son again, and I think it's pretty good. I'm not quite sure it's ready to pitch yet, but it's you never know that first game may end up being the first game I worked on and something that ends up getting published ten years later.

00:06:12:09 - 00:06:15:07
Speaker 1
As you know, after the hundredth game I've worked on.

00:06:15:09 - 00:06:22:19
Speaker 2
What does Pitch really mean to you? How do you how do you decide a game is pitch ready and what is your pitching process like?

00:06:22:21 - 00:07:11:02
Speaker 1
Sure. Well, it's not there's no quick answer for what pitch ready it means. I think it's a combination of your feel and your experience with the responses of protesters. When protesters are saying they want to buy it or they immediately want to play it again, those are signals and it's kind of an accumulation of those those things. And also having an idea of which publisher might be a good fit for it and sometimes you'll be pitching a game and you'll have another game that's not quite you think might not be ready, but often publishers are open to and willing to look at something that's not completely done and give you some feedback.

00:07:11:02 - 00:07:36:05
Speaker 1
And that's really very useful too. So having, having your concepts on hand, you want to be very careful with that because you don't want to waste the time of the publisher who's setting time aside to work to look at possible games. They could work with. So I would definitely want to make sure I have at least one or two that I'm that I think would be a good fit.

00:07:36:07 - 00:08:00:10
Speaker 1
But they're very the publishers are very generous and they often will be willing to look at things really quickly and give you some feedback. And in the beginning I did almost exclusively conventions. I would go I went to Pax Unplugged was really the first convention I went to where I was trying to show some games. I had about four or five games that I had sell sheets for.

00:08:00:12 - 00:08:26:11
Speaker 1
If you want to do some homework, you want to make good sales sheets, you want to have other people look at them, get feedback on them. You want to at this point, probably you want to have a short video a minute or two that gives a quick overview of how of some highlights and you want to look at which publishers make those kinds of games.

00:08:26:13 - 00:08:51:10
Speaker 1
It's a little tricky because so you want to make a game that fits perfectly in a publisher's catalog but doesn't fit too perfectly because if it's too perfect, then it will be something that might cannibalize something else in their line. So they are looking for something that will grow or expand their their line, but not be too far out of line.

00:08:51:12 - 00:09:13:00
Speaker 1
And that's a very, very nebulous and difficult thing to put your finger on. So you have to just try hard to have an idea. And if you can talk to a publisher about what they have and explain why you're showing something, I think they'll they appreciate that effort. And if it happens, it's not a good fit. They'll just tell you.

00:09:13:00 - 00:09:42:10
Speaker 1
And they might even tell you which publisher they think would be a good fit for it, which has happened several times. But at that first convention at Pax Unplugged, I made a Google sheet of all 350 companies that were going to be there and went to all of their websites ruled out the ones that were like dice companies or game stores or manufacturers think, you know, people, companies that were not publishers.

00:09:42:12 - 00:10:23:10
Speaker 1
And then I had a list of like 50 or 60 publishers went to their websites and kind of just felt like with thought about which of my games might be a fit, which ones might not be. There are a couple tools that are available. Cardboard Edison has the compendium, yeah, which is a great database. And for publishers and Chris Bock has the table top dossier that is very helpful for I also a database I think I had that time I was using the Cardboard Edison compendium and kind of comparing and I made the sheet and then I just went around all the booths.

00:10:23:12 - 00:10:40:08
Speaker 1
I tried to email in advance, but I went around to the booth and I asked, Who here is? Who would I speak to if I wanted to show someone making? And a lot of times they would give me a card. They direct me to a website, what have you, and but a lot of times there was someone, What do you have?

00:10:40:10 - 00:11:08:10
Speaker 1
I'm the one. And so I would show them. And things have changed a little bit since 2019 at conventions, but a convention like PAX or Origins or some of these ones that aren't as crowded as Gen Con and you never know, you might get a chance to pitch on the spot or when one publisher actually Kurt Culbert, Kurt from Kurt's work in Dagger, asked me to just give me an elevator pitch right then and there.

00:11:08:10 - 00:11:25:23
Speaker 1
And I did. And he said, This sounds interesting. Can you meet me tonight at like 11:00? Yeah. And so I went and met him at 11 p.m. and showed him and his team this game, and they were really helpful in their feedback. So that was a great early experience.

00:11:26:00 - 00:12:00:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah, that's that. That's something I haven't done as much because typically when I've pitched, it's almost always been to publishers. I've already know in some way. And like it's really interesting for me. And also now I'm, I'm looking for to, to refine my pitching process because I've gotten to a place where I think I've got like seven or eight pitch ready games and just making sure everything meetings are like how to find those publishers and how to reach out.

00:12:00:00 - 00:12:05:22
Speaker 2
And, you know, having the sell sheet, the video, the rules ready and so on.

00:12:05:24 - 00:12:36:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, we'll be going to conventions is a great way to get to know the publishers. A lot of designers, especially if they're just starting, don't know anyone and maybe you're in a location where you can't get to a convention. So it's very hard. But a lot of publishers will have portals on their website where you can apply. That's why the the databases that I talked about earlier are so useful because a lot of them will do remote pitches.

00:12:36:07 - 00:13:04:24
Speaker 1
Yeah, depending on the weight of your game. Another great resource is the Mojo Pitch project. If you're making very light masks or mass or very light hobby games, the Mojo Pitch Project is an excellent opportunity to get scheduled pitches with many, many different publishers and do it remotely. Or you can go to the UK and do it in person.

00:13:04:24 - 00:13:33:13
Speaker 1
But that that's a very good one. And also a lot of these conventions now, especially through and pub and other organizations have have the speed pitching opportunities. Those are really useful, especially if you're going to be able to go to a convention. I don't know if there are any that are doing them online anymore, but there were there were a lot of those that were online during the shutdown in the years after.

00:13:33:15 - 00:13:58:09
Speaker 2
Let's talk about the process of game designer like the creative process. And one thing that really stood out to me in Floristry is that you took something that at least I haven't seen in bird games, but it was an existing kind of game mechanic, which is the Dutch auction. And could you tell me a bit about how that came about and how you refined it and so on?

00:13:58:11 - 00:14:33:04
Speaker 1
Sure. So the Dutch auction is not something I invented. The flower floral and stores floral companies around the world go to this little town outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands called Asmir. It's the Ellesmere Floral Market, and they run a Dutch auction for large, large groups of flowers, large bins of flowers. And that that's where the concept of a clock counting down and the price going down came from.

00:14:33:06 - 00:15:08:11
Speaker 1
Actually, I believe that Tunisia had a game a while ago that had a Dutch auction maybe 15, 20 years ago, and it had a big like thing that you pressed in the middle. I never have played it, but I watched videos on it before while we were working on Wall Street and they all play. I actually did a reboot, I believe in that game last year, which I have not yet had a chance to play either, so I didn't invent it, but I think it's I don't know of anybody who invents a brand new mechanism.

00:15:08:13 - 00:15:40:24
Speaker 1
I just a couple of times it's happened, so that would be great if I could do that. But I'm really just kind of looking to put a twist on on an existing idea. And maybe the combination is something that's new and interesting. So really distilling the the Dutch auction down to the core essence of what I thought was interesting, which is the the cat and mouse game or the game of chicken who can last the longest before you press.

00:15:41:01 - 00:16:08:09
Speaker 1
And we really wanted to isolate that and make that the core of the experience for Floristry. I had been thinking about how to implement a Dutch auction for years. I actually went through a phase in 2022 or 21 when I was making a different auction game every month, and it's kind of an exercise that I like to run through, which is to find a mechanism and just do a different game based on that.

00:16:08:09 - 00:16:45:18
Speaker 1
Around that, I do several of them in a row, so I and I did three, three or four auction games and I couldn't figure out how to get a Dutch auction to do any of them. And then Tim and I were in a car Avenue convention and we like to design games and talk about design while we're driving to and from conventions, which, you know, it's actually a really great fertile moment when you're driving because you have no other distractions and you really just are there, you know, looking to fill the space, the time with.

00:16:45:20 - 00:17:16:03
Speaker 1
So we started talking about it. Tim had thought had had recently been trying to think of a to play our game and because a friend of his Greg who owns some boardgame cafes in New York said that there was a demand for to play our games in his cafes and there were just a few that were out there, but nothing like it weren't very many that were really accessible and were still fresh and exciting.

00:17:16:08 - 00:17:32:04
Speaker 1
So we started to talk about the Dutch auction in that context with that audience. And I think understanding what your audience is can be very helpful in shaping the design. Yeah, these are very long answers. You

00:17:32:06 - 00:18:06:14
Speaker 2
This is great. I'm enjoying every, every moment. And the answer no, I, I love that it's an underutilized mechanic. You know, it's, it's one that I hadn't seen up until this point. And I love how you implemented it with the app. And there's so much tension in it, Right. It's just by itself just the it's it's raising the stakes because of the time and because of and also it feels very clean with the taking three tiles and the other players still getting the one free one.

00:18:06:14 - 00:18:12:16
Speaker 2
So it's I was immediately sold on it.

00:18:12:18 - 00:18:38:02
Speaker 1
Well thank you. Yeah I mean we tried many, many different routes. We tried all sorts of different I if there was a period of time when I tried to make it into a four player game because I really was convinced that the two player market was too small for this, but it just never worked as well. At three and four players, first of all, you'd have to have seven tiles on display and then the first player, the winner of the auction, would take three.

00:18:38:02 - 00:19:00:19
Speaker 1
And then do you have to do it? You are six tiles and you do a draft the second, third and fourth. And is that clockwise or do you do it in the reverse order that you dropped? I think it was very complicated. And then it's also really hard to know, keep up with what everybody else is doing on their player board.

00:19:00:21 - 00:19:32:14
Speaker 1
Now I think an implementation could be done with Floristry for three or four players and that would be to have a phone in between each player and I'm not sure yet how that would work, but it strikes me that that's possible, that you can make a three or four player version. I'd have to figure out how the the displays work of the tiles, but I think there's a path for that because you really only want to be looking at one other player in terms of what tiles they could use.

00:19:32:16 - 00:19:58:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, you may. Yeah. Yeah. But that it's the main point there that I was trying to make starting to make was that everything else except the Dutch auction, we wanted to make that as streamlined, as simple as possible because we wanted the experience and the tension, as you mentioned, of the game of chicken to be the, the, the star of the experience.

00:19:58:03 - 00:20:21:13
Speaker 1
So certainly placing the tiles is a bit of a puzzle. And and you have this limited space and that has some end. But it's very it's very simple and the scoring is very simple and and it's ten rounds and it's 30 coins like there's not a lot of other moving parts, which I think is was key to hitting the audience.

00:20:21:15 - 00:20:51:15
Speaker 2
Yeah yeah. I, I feel like myself included and a lot of people because I started around the time when when you did I got back into word games through save and I think it was it was 2018 or 2017 and then I feel like I at first really wanted to play more complex games, but more and more I keep just really enjoying simpler, elegant and in my my game design as well.

00:20:51:15 - 00:21:15:21
Speaker 2
I look for those always simplifying or starting with one mechanic and getting really clean. And yeah, I really liked that in Floristry and I think you made the right call of just like polishing it and not having anything else take away from that hook you have.

00:21:15:21 - 00:21:18:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.

00:21:18:07 - 00:21:36:11
Speaker 2
Yeah. Can we talk about your finished with fin span and I'm working with Stoneware because I know so many designers. That's like their dream publisher is Stone Meyer, because they have, you know, a great reputation for deserved.

00:21:36:13 - 00:22:02:21
Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's so many positives at Stone Meyer when you're looking at it from a designer perspective and from a player player perspective, you know that the there's the know the components are going to be fantastic. The quality of the printing and the production, that's all going to be fantastic. And there's a wide audience of some of our fans.

00:22:02:23 - 00:22:36:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, I think I certainly it was a dream to work with somewhere up until I started working on Vince Van and then my experience working on it confirmed all of the expectations. And Jamie is extraordinary to work with a very, very smart designer and obviously has not just a knack, but he has a good knack for understanding marketing.

00:22:36:19 - 00:22:56:02
Speaker 1
But it's a ton of work, you know, it's just like a saying, show me somebody who has a good knack for something and I'll tell you how much work they put in to develop the knack. But yeah, he has pretty a magical kind of touch.

00:22:56:04 - 00:23:02:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, definitely. And how did. How did you pitch fin spend?

00:23:02:06 - 00:23:36:07
Speaker 1
So Vince Van started before I came out of the project. So they already had the idea of fish as the third, third edition in this series in the Span series. They had You were diving when I came on, but they had been stuck on some. They had been kind of stuck in the design and I was fortunate to have seen some of the cards Jamie was asking, you know, saying he was stuck with these cards.

00:23:36:09 - 00:23:56:03
Speaker 1
And I had a bunch of ideas and I had a bunch of ideas immediately of mechanisms we could put into the game. And so I, I asked him if I could send him some thoughts, and he said sure. So I sent them and he said, these are really interesting. Would you be willing interested in joining us for joining the team for A to discuss them?

00:23:56:03 - 00:24:36:12
Speaker 1
And I was like, Absolutely. And so we met and I was kind of consulting. I guess at a certain point he gave me the title of semantic consultant because some of my ideas were What if the eggs hatched? Or What if what if we didn't have food? What if we, you know, some of these questions about, you know, streamlining things, but making adding things that felt like they would to me felt like they would fit with the the the theme and so after a few months of that, Jamie invited me to be the one of the designers.

00:24:36:12 - 00:25:12:19
Speaker 1
And I said yes immediately. And, and he brought on Michael at the same time. Michael had been working on a similar game. That was, I think he called it Cat Span, but it was designed for a family weight and it had all, all icons. And I had already been in the in the consulting phase. I had already been playing with the idea of limiting the types of actions to just a few so that we could say, okay, there are these six actions in the game.

00:25:12:21 - 00:25:40:09
Speaker 1
And I was leaning towards having like just an icon and then I variations of those actions because in a way wingspan only has a limited number of actions also. But they each each card is a variation of it. So this was just to kind of just streamline it further because the goal of when fin span was to make something that was slightly lighter for a lighter audience to have easier onboarding.

00:25:40:11 - 00:26:01:09
Speaker 1
And so Michael had had this idea for icons. We were like, Let's just get rid of all the work. We're just going to do icons and we'll only have like 6 to 10 of these icons and those will be your things. You have cards of eggs you have hatching, you have a few other things and we'll just build everything with that.

00:26:01:11 - 00:26:08:06
Speaker 1
So that was pretty much how I got onto the project and some of the early thoughts that Yeah.

00:26:08:08 - 00:26:24:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. And you mentioned being a more like a being a thematic consultant. Seems like you're are you do you see yourself as a thematic designer?

00:26:24:16 - 00:26:49:01
Speaker 1
Probably not. I mean, I think I think I don't think I would put a label on myself. I definitely am cognizant of theme while we're designing. But to me, I, you know, of the I, I really always want to try to have the mechanism feel like the setting that it's in, feel like it makes sense with the setting.

00:26:49:01 - 00:27:09:02
Speaker 1
So I'm always striving for that, but I don't always just come up with a theme. I think when you say thematic designers, you're thinking about somebody who comes up with a theme first and then builds a game around it. I mean, I would say I do that maybe a third of the time and a third of the time I'm coming up with a mechanism and figuring out a theme that goes around it.

00:27:09:04 - 00:27:15:03
Speaker 1
And the other third of the time where I'm kind of given, you know, it's a product.

00:27:15:09 - 00:27:52:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, I tend to prioritize mechanics a lot more, and I'm okay with abstracting a lot of things if it's if it makes for what I consider a more fun game. But I think a big part of like whether whether theme guides you is also like, maybe where are you taking inspiration from? Is it mostly word games or like other games and game mechanics, or do you look for it in other areas?

00:27:52:11 - 00:28:40:09
Speaker 1
The inspiration from everything from television shows, from movies, from books, from life. I think you want to be looking at everything. A friend of mine named Ellie Dix is a great designer in the UK, and she has a whole presentation that she does on where you get inspiration, getting ideas and the takeaway from that presentation is that you can find ideas everywhere and you just you, you can pick a word in the dictionary and say what what mechanism would this word do?

00:28:40:11 - 00:29:12:03
Speaker 1
She she wants explain that she told the story that she was hearing someone talk about their civ game and she was immediately started thinking about, that's interesting. What ideas? How would a civ game work? And she started working on a game and then she realized that they meant Civ Civs civilization game. What she was thinking about was CEV Civ and so she is thinking about games where you would filter one thing and it would go through and then filter again.

00:29:12:03 - 00:29:39:10
Speaker 1
And she had this whole thing and she actually made a game based on a civ. So this idea that a word is you think of a word, what mechanism would, would what would a mechanism for that look like in a game I think is a great inspirational resource. But I think, you know, movies, TV, all those. I made more than one clone game because of clone shows I've seen on TV.

00:29:39:10 - 00:29:41:14
Speaker 1
And it's like that.

00:29:41:16 - 00:29:50:01
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never would have thought of that sort of. Yeah, yeah.

00:29:50:03 - 00:29:52:13
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:29:52:15 - 00:30:24:04
Speaker 2
It's I find it also like, I found like I participated twice in the global game time where it's also just a single word and which, you know, everybody that, that, that partakes in it is just has to make a game on the word. And I find that like just having any restriction is makes it so much easier even if that restriction is, you know, a word or a theme or a mechanic.

00:30:24:06 - 00:31:10:15
Speaker 1
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, restraints are really, really useful when you're trying to create the in music. You talk about a blues, the blues, which is all almost all improvization, but it's based on the same 12 chord, 12 bar chord progression, which only has three chords and variations on that. So you're limited in this structure that repeats over and over and over, and that kind of gives you the basis in the foundation to have a lot of freedom and creativity around it.

00:31:10:17 - 00:31:25:24
Speaker 1
So that limited structure can be very helpful. Or I mean, even if you think about just coming up with a word, right, that's giving you a limitation and a limitation can be very helpful.

00:31:26:01 - 00:31:52:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. do you have in getting ready and in listening to your other interviews, you've talked about co-design a lot. Can you talk about your experience with, you know, co-designing a game versus being a sole designer?

00:31:52:07 - 00:32:28:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, I started Co-Designing with Jonathan Gilmore Long, who had looked at one of my games and funnily enough, it was a game called Clone City, which was inspired by Multiplicity. Originally the movie with I Can't Remember Michael Keaton. Anyway, he was he loved the game and he wanted to take it back and then he ended up not being in that position a month later.

00:32:28:07 - 00:32:50:05
Speaker 1
So that was my first opportunity to have something signed and it was gone. But several months later I was finding that I was having some trouble getting from having lots of pitch meetings and people getting it and saying they were interested in things but not signing them. So I contacted, reached out to John and asked him if he would.

00:32:50:07 - 00:33:34:00
Speaker 1
I'd be willing to do some some consulting with me and help me push my my games a little further and across the finish line. And so we met once or twice. And then he said he really liked my games and wanted to wondered if I'd be interested in co-designing something. And I had never considered that. And I said, Yeah, I mean, it would be an honor to work with you and so we started working on something and actually the first game we worked on was a game called Grape Grapes, and it was a a deck builder that I had kind of come up with on a drive up to the country with my son.

00:33:34:02 - 00:33:57:02
Speaker 1
We just came up with this game and it had all different kinds of grapes, champagne grapes and great, great screen grapes, all these different grapes. And you were you would have a choice to eat the grapes for points or sell the grapes on the market to get better grapes into your dad. That was the basic idea. He loved that idea.

00:33:57:02 - 00:34:21:13
Speaker 1
We we played a ton like 50, 60 times people. And then we were pitching it and it just wasn't resonating with publishers. And a lot of the feedback was on the theme. I couldn't see how grapes would be a big hit, and one of our play testers said they just didn't resonate with the they didn't feel the grape theme was great.

00:34:21:15 - 00:34:57:05
Speaker 1
We tried potatoes as like really as potatoes. Okay. Anyway, John and I at certain points decided, you know what, let's talk about what would be a more fun theme. And we ended up making it Monsters. And so you're making monsters. And in fact, that's how the game that is coming to Kickstarter called Making Monsters got signed. It's a time very quickly after we changed the theme, people really enjoyed the interacting with these monsters and getting more monsters and completing them.

00:34:57:12 - 00:35:21:08
Speaker 1
We changed it from a deck builder to a bag builder and we made it more of a push your luck experience. So the game evolved considerably after we changed the theme, and it strikes me that maybe I'll go back and look at that great, great original idea, because I do think there was something interesting there about the choice of eating them or trading them in.

00:35:21:08 - 00:35:24:04
Speaker 1
So maybe they'll be a different game someday.

00:35:24:05 - 00:35:32:14
Speaker 2
Yeah, definitely. And it's great. It's great to build upon something that you've already explored, but explore it in a different direction.

00:35:32:16 - 00:36:09:10
Speaker 1
Right? So working with John was briefly a fruitful learning experience. We ended up working. We've worked on 20 or 30 games since then and I learned from him every single time we met. Around the very same around the same time. I Tam approached me to just go design something, or maybe I approached him and I remember and it was a massive game actually.

00:36:09:12 - 00:36:12:23
Speaker 1
And anyway, Sebas not asleep.

00:36:12:24 - 00:36:15:08
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's like Sid Meier's.

00:36:15:10 - 00:36:39:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, and so we worked on that quite intensively for many months and we were actually at a non pub which was the online version of Unplug during the shutdown, and we were protesting it with the publisher and he said, This is great, I would love to have my partner play it with you guys tomorrow. We weren't even pitching it yet.

00:36:39:12 - 00:37:01:16
Speaker 1
We didn't, we never made a sell sheet for it and that we ended up becoming the first game that I signed of my games. So subsequently I've made 30 games with Tam as well and Tam and I have many that are on the market now and I also learned a ton working with TAM every time I meet with them.

00:37:01:18 - 00:37:24:15
Speaker 1
And so I just over time became convinced that Co-Designing was much better for me than designing alone. And now I, I don't ever really do anything that's just me. I always wear. I have a new idea. I will go to Tam and and and talk to him. If somebody comes up to me with an idea, I'm almost always going to work with them.

00:37:24:17 - 00:37:50:18
Speaker 1
If one of my friends comes to me with an idea to and asked to work on the game and I learn so much more. Play testing, play, testing, debriefing, going through feedback and iterating, when I'm working with a co designer that I do by myself. Also, I know some people, publishers, they know other publishers, so together we know a lot more.

00:37:50:20 - 00:38:01:00
Speaker 1
And we also can be in two places the same time. There's just a lot of advantages to having a co designer or in some cases two co designers.

00:38:01:02 - 00:38:23:14
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. And I think there's the accountability as well, you know, knowing that you're going to be meeting, you know, on Tuesday and, you know, getting something actually ready, or at least I find it a lot easier when when there's somebody else who's also going to show up and just also being able to play test somebody who's invested and wants to play test it.

00:38:23:16 - 00:38:32:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, we we know that to play our version of most of our games is great because we play that one out a lot.

00:38:32:03 - 00:38:51:20
Speaker 2
So yeah, you send some pretty big numbers of 30, 30 games with Tam and 30 with John. John Yeah. How many games do you have going on simultaneously? Are they like different stages with different designers?

00:38:51:22 - 00:39:15:17
Speaker 1
Most of them are going to be in different stages Right here on my desk. I have four and I have four more that are kind of just moved. I have a place here where I keep things that are going to go to conventions or I'm pitching and there's about I would say there's about 10 to 15 games in there.

00:39:15:19 - 00:39:43:05
Speaker 1
So the ones that I'm actively playing, testing, I will usually keep on my desk in various states, whether they're just like, right now I'm putting little stickers on making a game that I'm going to play test tonight, or they're in little bags, like there's another one that's going tonight. So yeah, I like to have them all in different states.

00:39:43:05 - 00:40:07:13
Speaker 1
Some of them are in the I've played, tested them and debriefed like these and I'm iterating or I'm iterating them for tabletop simulator and others are have had the tests but I haven't had a debrief yet with the designer. Others are ideas that I've just come up with and I've put in a just a little draft document and we'll think about this morning.

00:40:07:13 - 00:40:35:06
Speaker 1
I woke up often. I'll dream a game and I'll come wake up and I'll have that idea and it needs a little refinement. But this morning I had it and had an idea, so I, I will jot that down today. And then when something gets to the point where I think it can be shown to publishers, it will move into well, at a certain point in the in the end the design will start to make rules will make.

00:40:35:08 - 00:40:51:07
Speaker 1
But when it gets to be the point where it's ready for a publisher, I will, you know, make it a little more polished, make the rules a little more polished, and then I'll go over into that area.

00:40:51:09 - 00:41:03:01
Speaker 2
Yeah, Yeah. And that's awesome. It's awesome that you've you've refined the process a lot and yeah, you've got a system, it sounds like.

00:41:03:03 - 00:41:38:02
Speaker 1
Well, when you're working on more than three or four things at the same time, you really need to have a system. Yeah, you find that Google Docs and Google sheets are really useful I have a Google sheet that I keep for all of my projects. It's called DG Project Summary and there's over 100 115 total projects in here.

00:41:38:04 - 00:41:50:14
Speaker 1
Now I would say half are dead or on the shelf, so it's pretty good.

00:41:50:16 - 00:42:17:02
Speaker 2
That's just because like for me, I'm at around 40 playable prototypes and out of them I think five are published or to be published and five more are signed. So it's like a quarter of What skills do you think are most important as a game designer and what skills have you learned in designing games?

00:42:17:04 - 00:42:57:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, pre prior to when I was younger, I was in a graduate program for music composition and I think that prepared me very well for the feedback part of designing. Obviously creating and crafting music is similar to game design, but I think one of the most important skills that you that I have found helpful for me is the ability to have a filter during feedback and during the debrief process.

00:42:57:06 - 00:43:21:04
Speaker 1
So during feedback I'll collect all the notes and then I'll enter the notes into my Google block and think about them. But filtering, knowing which what I'm trying to understand, what the problem is that the feedback is, is a is pointing to because it's not always what the feedback person, what the person said in their feedback, but it might be a symptom of another issue.

00:43:21:06 - 00:43:50:20
Speaker 1
So really diagnosing what the issue is and then being able to know that you don't have to implement every suggestion that you had in the feedback and knowing how to prioritize feedback, knowing which things you'll put a pin in and watch out for later which things to ignore because of whatever reason and which things are important enough to put into the next playtest.

00:43:50:20 - 00:43:57:23
Speaker 1
And that's that's the core discussion of every debrief after a play test.

00:43:58:00 - 00:44:08:05
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. How often do you play test and what does it what does it play test look like?

00:44:08:07 - 00:44:28:06
Speaker 1
So I in the New York we're back to two days a week in the New York City play Test group, which is a group that's open to anyone who wants to come. If you're a designer, you can bring a game. If you're just want to play test, you can come play test. We meet twice a week and you can find us on the New York City Play Test website.

00:44:28:08 - 00:45:10:07
Speaker 1
We also have a discord group, so I do that most weeks. I will. We'll do that twice a week and then I will design play test virtually with co designers and possibly sometimes other people at least a couple times a week. Then there are play test groups like virtual play testing that I will go to. They have three or four days that they play test a week and I haven't been doing a lot of that lately, but during the pandemic I was doing it three or four times a week with very different play test groups.

00:45:10:09 - 00:45:31:13
Speaker 1
And so I think designer play test groups are really useful and I'll use them like that. But I also think it's useful to go to to play test with your audience. And so I'll go to a game, meet up and play with just gamers or I'll play with my my kids friends who come over to the house when they're here.

00:45:31:13 - 00:45:41:05
Speaker 1
I ask them to play test things, and that's really useful. So play doesn't with as many people as you can without making them annoyed with you.

00:45:41:07 - 00:45:56:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's important. I have a relative that reminds me of one of Davis Stegner is blogs where he talks about like there's the the meta game which is being invited to play again. You know, you're playing two games at once.

00:45:57:01 - 00:45:58:07
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:45:58:09 - 00:46:37:07
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah No that's I absolutely agree with and fuels I feel like I have had kind of a similar experience because I actually graduated the conservatory of classical upright bass and I also find that just the the thought process is very similar in, you know, finding patterns and the pacing is something that I think about a lot in, in game design, which I think is very similar to music.

00:46:37:09 - 00:46:43:15
Speaker 2
And you can just bring other skills into it from everywhere.

00:46:43:17 - 00:46:45:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.

00:46:45:03 - 00:46:58:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. The other thing I agree with is, you know, looking for the problem, not so much the solution, the suggested solution necessarily in choosing what to implement.

00:46:58:16 - 00:46:59:05
Speaker 1
Right.

00:46:59:07 - 00:47:14:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's amazing stuff. What would be your advice to somebody who wants to design a game that they haven't yet?

00:47:14:14 - 00:47:38:14
Speaker 1
And I think the most important thing when you have an idea is to certainly think it through a little bit. But and get it onto paper and move the pieces of paper around as fast as you can, because what you have in your mind is not going to match what you, what what happens when you first playtest it.

00:47:38:16 - 00:48:08:07
Speaker 1
And so I would say don't and don't wait too long. If you have an idea and you want to and you're curious about what will happen and whether it's going to be a good game or not, just just get it to the table and try to play it. Because first of all, it won't be a good game. I don't know that there's ever been a game that was good.

00:48:08:07 - 00:48:44:19
Speaker 1
On its first playtest, and that's okay because your job is to improve it and the design process is play testing, debriefing and iterating. And if you can't do the first step of that, which is play test, you'll never debrief and iterate and it will never that cycle. And you need that cycle to run 20 to 100 times depending on the game and how how quickly it goes and how heavy it is before you're, you're going to have something that that you're proud of.

00:48:44:21 - 00:49:07:09
Speaker 1
So I would say the biggest piece of advice that I have for myself would be to play that playtest that game as soon as possible. And.