[#004] Shelved games, planning for 2023, and more

Welcome to your weekly dose of board game design!

Personally, I really enjoyed Club Stay In. I know the bartender, I get table service or sofa service or recliner service, I have complete volume control over the evening's entertainment (Sam Ryder's concert on the BBC), and I had the best seat in the house for a spectacular fireworks show broadcast from London. Getting home wasn't a problem (this was the dealbreaker - seems Birmingham forgot that some people might be going out and staying out past midnight when setting their bus / train schedules)

Whether you're the sort that makes New Year's Resolutions or gave up on them years ago, now is a great time to reflect a bit on the previous year, consider what worked and what didn't in your game journey, and to set some SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). So what are yours? Reply and let me know.

Personally, one of my biggest priorities over the last couple of months has been my health and losing weight. Under the wisdom of that classic saying 'what gets measured gets managed', I picked up a large wall poster to replace something more handmade:

This is where I'll be writing my weight and what active thing I did that day (gym, yoga, walk, tennis, whatever).

For me, printing stuff out and literally attaching it to the wall near where you work / make games is a great way to remind you of what's important. Maybe it is / will be for you as well =)

Something I learned about game design this week

Shelved games can and should come back out once in awhile. Whether you literally take a physical prototype out of wherever you stashed it or open up the rules / design files, it's a good time to take a fresh look at anything you shelved months or years ago. As shiny as new ideas and concepts can feel, it's incredibly rewarding to see a shelved game get new life.

Shelved games often have parts you can break out and use elsewhere - themes, mechanics, systems, phase / turn structures, etc. Borrow from yourself wherever you can.

Over in Virtual Playtesting, we do a special (free) event wherein designers bring a game that's broken, shelved, unfinished, and ask their fellow designers for creative feedback / brainstorming. It's called Take Two Tuesday, and it's the second Tuesday of each month (meaning the next one's January 10th). It's not a normal playtest, but come to the Monday and Thursday events for those. If you have a game where you're ready to dig in, join us in Discord. 

This week's tip

With the new year and all, I thought I'd talk a little about planning processes and looking ahead. On one level, some of your game design plans might be defined by the opportunities to playtest, meet publishers, catch up with friends, and connect with new people. For 2023, my schedule looks like this:

• February 1-5: Nuremberg (the biggest toy / mass market game convention in the world)

• February 13: a professional games conference held in Birmingham, England)

• March 9-12: Airecon 2023 (one of the biggest opportunities to play in northern England)

• June 2-4: UK Games Expo in Birmingham (biggest in the country)

• June 27-29: Play Creators Festival / Mojo Pitch in London, England (mass-market toys and games conference)

• October 5-8: Essen Spiel in Essen, Germany (the biggest hobby game convention in the world)

Your list will look very different based on where you live, your ability to travel, your budget for events, and perhaps whether you'll have enough games to justify going. I wouldn't worry about Nuremberg or Mojo Pitch if you aren't making mass-market games, for example. 

The goal here isn't to go to the most or the biggest conventions, but to know which conferences / conventions offer the best opportunities for you. Planning ahead means booking flights / train rides / bus tickets earlier, getting the hotel of your choice instead of just whatever's left, and being as prepared for the event as you can be. You might find the publisher you most want to pitch has more opportunities to chat / talk shop at a smaller convention.

How to plan ahead well?

For most of these conventions where my plan is to pitch publishers, that means:

• researching who's going ahead of time (which companies are publishers worth reaching out to, and which ones are just there to sell their own games?)

• practicing the game's pitch

• reaching out with sell sheets and videos (which naturally need to show the current version)

• having physical prototypes (of the current version) ready to show

• actually getting there, navigating the hall, finding the right booth and right person

• remember to be excited when showing your game, pitching them in a way that's honest and resonates with them.

Oh man, that sounds like a lot of work...

Well, yeah, it is... and I'm sorry to say, little of this is the 'fun' sort of work we can think of as game design. If you're pitching, this is the choice you make. If you're self-publishing, there's a different set of skills and work that need doing, and I don't think either path is 'easier'.

One thing I can help with during a paid consultation is identifying and planning for the opportunities near you, or perhaps listening to your pitch and refining it.

What I’ve been working on last week

• Iterated on some mass-market game ideas

• Playtested How Does Your Garden Grow? and Smite

• Completely revamped Smite for a first playtest of this revamped version (think 'dudes on a map' meets deck building meets auction.)

• Make first versions of a couple of games I'm working on with co-designers

• Wrote a review of an excellent book at https://www.entrogames.com/2022/12/book-review-everybody-wins-four-decades-of-the-greatest-board-games-ever-made/ 

• Unshelved Re-gift and am reworking the rules.

What's coming up this week

• Playtest Smite and Re-gift!

• Continue preparing for Nuremberg

• Iterate on a few other games

ICYMI

A shoutout to Emily Willix at Small Furry Games for creating a Game Crafter shop page template. Download the Photoshop / .png templates and Google Docs to help your page come together quickly and easily, or just see how a pro does it. Totally free.

I wrote a blog post reviewing Everybody Wins, a book covering the Spiel des Jahres winners over the past 40 years. Go read the review - TL;DR it's a great book.

In case you've been living under a rock, Marvel Snap has picked up a lot of accolades for a lot of exceptional reasons. You need to play this free game. It has a masterclass of a tutorial, assumes no previous knowledge of superheroes (while rewarding those that have 'the knowledge'), an amazingly deep game, and a core loop that's usually measured in seconds.

Random picture of the week

Another thrift-store find - while it's from the early 80's and would feel pretty dated, I can easily see a group of players still enjoying the experience, complaining about getting older, remember how things were...  Not every player wants a brain-burny experience, after all.

Got a question about game design you'd like answered? Find an amazing new resource that would help fellow game designers? Reply to this email and share =)

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!