Page: News.News201405110825PM - Last Modified : Mon, 12 May 14 - 1571 Visits

I recently wrote 3 threads about theme vs Mechanics, video vs board games and single vs multiplayer games. This made me realise a few things which will change what will be my design priorities. Here are the links

Reconsidering Board Game Design 1/3: Theme VS Mechanic

Reconsidering Board Game Design 2/3: Board VS Video games

Reconsidering Board Game Design 3/3: Single VS Multi Player

Now here are a rough ideas of the impact of those thread's discussion:

• Mechanic-less games are ignored: Games that has little or no good mechanic idea will simply be set aside. The reason is because it's simply a waste of time to try finding mechanics for a theme. I might simply wait to sumble upon the right mechanic. Anyway, it's not like if I was lacking of game ideas.
• Focus more on Board Game Essential ideas: I am considering designing a framework to make video board games, but there are some board game ideas that cannot be made as a video game. Maybe it could be a good idea to focus on those ideas, since they are more likely to be loved as a board game.
• Reconsider Single Player games: Even if a niche, I am considering to design more single player games. There are in fact many ideas that could be converted as a single player game and they might even work better than as a multiplayer game. There seems to be various advantage regarding balance and play time that could make such games less restrictive to design.

So this is what should guide me in my future design. I won't really change my previous priorities, still focussing on short games since I am very busy. This is also why I changed who my game ideas are listed in the board game section by using various top 10 lists.

I am also working with another librarian on a board game design encyclopedia website. It is still a work in progress, not sure if it would really work. I will keep you informed when the website opens.

That is all for now.