I think often about an older post I wrote called ‘getting out of the game room‘, and the value that comes along with doing so for a tabletop game, in order to gather experiences from the real world to draw on. A frequent travel stop for Andrea and I (owing…
Tag: board game design
The Big Move
On the first of the year, Andrea and I are packing up for a year abroad — we’re going to check out a few places we’ve enjoyed visiting and see what it’s like to ‘live there’ for a bit (6 weeks in most places). I’ll still be working on game…
PX 4: Neuroscience and the Thinky Bits
This is part four in a multi-part essay covering board game “Player Experience” or “PX” The earlier posts aren’t prerequisites for this one, but I recommend checking them out anyway 🙂 This week, we’re going to tackle brain chemistry, neurotransmitter hormones, and some of the deeper psychological aspects of what’s going on…
Player Experience is Other People
This is the third topic in a multi-part essay covering board game “Player Experience” or “PX” You don’t have to read the others first, but it does reference several concepts from before, so I highly recommend it. [pullquote] “L’expérience, c’est les autres” — with apologies to Sartre[/pullquote]When designing a game, there is one major factor…
PX #2: The Familiarity Spectrum
This is an installment in a multi-part essay covering board game “Player Experience” or “PX” I highly recommend you start at the beginning, but it’s certainly not required 🙂 The experience a Player has with your game is going to vary based on a lot of factors. Imagine someone brand new…
Player Experience (PX) Series #1: A Primer on User Experience and Interface Design
This is an installment in a multi-part essay covering board game “Player Experience” or “PX” feel free to start at the beginning, or just jump right in! To begin our exploration of Player Experience (PX), I feel it’s important to take a step back, and understand some underlying concepts. Luckily, there have…
Designing the Player Experience (PX)
When designing, it’s easy to get hung up on the details in front of us — the mechanics, the theme, the components. But ultimately, the point of designing games is for others to play them. And why do they play them? In my view, it’s to facilitate a rich human-human interaction,…
Designing from First Principles
I’ve written before about different tools for running play-tests, ideating on designs, and interpreting feedback, but none of those have ever really covered how to develop a framework around implementing that feedback. After I sent my proto off for publisher review, I started mentally projecting myself into a future where I…