My friend Eric tweeted an expression a few weeks back that has been on my mind recently. I’m not sure where it came from, or I’d source it: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Frequently, I’m reluctant to bring in…
Tag: board games
One Step to the Epiphany
During a quarterly goals check-in with Andrea, I talked over the status of several Flightless projects, and she asked a question I didn’t have a ready answer for. “Who exactly are your customers for each of these?” I had a vague idea who I was designing for in each case,…
After A Publisher Comes Knocking
As a first-time designer, one of the big questions I’ve always had is what the publishing process looks like once a design is picked up by a publisher. This summer, I got my first glance into that world. This year’s Protospiel event in Ann Arbor was a pretty big success…
Get Out of the Game Room!
There’s an aphorism in the ‘startup’ world, where I spend most of my non-gaming time. “Get out of the office!” The point is that if you get bogged down in what you think is cool, you won’t actually build something that’s useful to others. I think the same concept applies…
Playtesting Tips Round Two — Lessons from Protospiel 2015
Not long ago, I wrote a post with some baseline strategies for running a successful playtesting session. I just got back from Protospiel 2015 in Chelsea Michigan (full conference write-up to come soon!) and had a few new observations for this helping to tune this process.
Facebook Stole My Money
I’m taking a quick hiatus from my philosophy of positivity to share my observations around a distinctly non-positive experience I had recently. I ran a “Boosted Post” from my Flightless.co Facebook business page, as a little experiment. I had new content, I’m working to build my audience as I gear up for…
Theme-first Board Game Design is Awesome
I know some in the board game design community consider it sacrilege, but I’m definitely a theme-first designer. I make heavy use of my Catch Sheet day to day, while sitting in meetings, walking around, or wasting time reading articles online. Usually several times a week, I’ll be struck by an interesting economic…
Valour: The Game
When we left off last week, I had the first physical prototype of my board game in-hand. Not knowing any better, I thought I might be near the end of the road. Now, after countless hours of play testing and revising, I know two things: a) I was WAY off the…
Valour: The Process
After seeing Barbarians and being inspired to design a game in the theme. (See part one of the series), what happened next was… really nothing. I was deep in another project, and spending a vast amount of my free time doing triathlon things. So the project lived dormant in the catch sheet, waiting…
Valour: The Backstory
With all the posting I’ve done about Protospiel, board game testing, and marketing, it dawned on me last week that I have yet to actually put out a canonical post on the game I’m designing and developing. Whoops! Then I started writing it, and it got a little long, (which is…