Thought of the Day: It's Not Business, It's Personal...

Yes, I know... if you are a fan of the NBC Show "The Apprentice", and who isn't :-), you'll recognize that the title of this post is the exact opposite of what the "world famous" Mr. Donald Trump believes.

In the cut-throat world of big business, the opposite might work. But we strongly believe that in the "Small World" of Board Games, it is indeed more personal than business. This is a world where friends and family play together. A world where when someone has an idea, and they feel comfortable having friends whet it, and critique it, without fear of their idea getting stolen. It's a world where friends go into business together because of a shared passion about a great game that they have been designing together since they were in high school.

Money is an interesting beast, like your teenager, if you don't establish rules then it will test all your boundaries. Both Dave and I recognized that early and talked about money way back in our PocketPC days, when there was not even a shiny penny to be seen anywhere.

Back then we decided that the guiding principle is that "Our friendship is more important than all the money we can make". That principle has made money decisions a lot easier now that we are actually making money.

Our humble suggestion is that you do the same. It is a lot easier to talk rationally about money when there is none. 

Good Luck and Game On!

Thought of the Day: Exceptions Are Against The Rules

Board game design has a very unique problem. You can't tell your users how to play, and you can't be there to show them either.

This means, your game rules have to be as simple as possible. No Exceptions, and I mean no exceptions to the rules, and no exceptions to the no exceptions rule too.

How many rule books have you read and thought this is a complicated game, and then have someone explain the rules and said, "oh, that's not as complex as I thought". Many-a-times this is because of multi-clause rules that add exceptions.

This is a trap that video game makers who moonlight as boardgame makers fall into quite easily. It's because we are used to having tutorial modes that handhold the player through the complex rules. No such luxury is available.

So remember, the rule is No Exceptions. And this rule allows for no exceptions

Thought Of The Day: Sometimes it just takes a little time...

Sometimes the thing your design needs is time. Don't be afraid to let your ideas simmer a while. There have been many times when we have struggled with some sort of design problem, some rule that just didn't work or some problem with scoring or some other issue. In some some cases we racked our brains for days talking about the issue without finding a solution. Then, one day some time later a solution seems to materialize out of thin air. Sometimes this has taken days... Sometimes it has taken years... So, if you are stuck on a problem, put it out of your mind and give it some space to solve itself.

Hello World!

Welcome to All A-Board! My name is Dave. My friend Sandeep and I are Boardworks Games. We are a small but growing independent board game company. This blog is where we are going to share our musings about the game industry, various aspects of game design, our experiences with both publishing our own games and with starting a new company, and any other interesting thoughts or ideas that we hope to share with the wider board gaming community. Our experience has always been that collaboration helps everyone take things to a higher level and we hope that by sharing our experiences we can contribute something useful to all our friends out there in the world.

Today, I want to talk a little bit more about our history and how we got to where we are today. Sandeep and I both come from a video game development background. We are both computer programmers. Years ago, while working together we had an idea for a pocket pc game that we wanted to develop. We started working on it together and did so for quite some time. During this time however we were also working our normal jobs as well. For those of you who may not be too acquainted with the video game industry, it often entails pretty brutal "crunch times" as you finalize a project and get it ready to ship. This being the case, we often didn't have much extra time to work on our little side project. Finally, after a couple years of slow plodding progress we had an epiphany. We knew how much work was involved in making a video game and we knew how much time we had for working on our side project, so we decided to scrap it in favor of designing board games.

Within a couple of weeks we had our first playable prototype ready to go. It was exciting and liberating to see how quickly you could take an idea from inception to playable with board games. We are both big gamers. My story is one that is very common. I grew up playing games. That is what my friends and family did. While family time was filled with Rook, Spades, and Liar's Dice. Time hanging out with friends was spent in epic futuristic battles in Warhammer 40k and Battletech or fighting for world domination in Axis & Allies. In 2001, I purchased my first eurogame, Carcassonne. It was an instant classic with my friends and family. From there the boardgame renaissance continued. It truly is a great time to be a board game enthusiast.  But I digress...

The years continued to move on and we continued to make board games. We won a variety of design competitions, made all sorts of different games, learned more about the business, and had a game published. We have had our successes and had our failures. All along the way we have been having fun.

Today, we have taken the plunge and finally formed a company. We want to bring some of the fun of our favorite game designs to a much wider audience. With the advent of Kickstarter, we no longer have to rely on big board game publishers to do that. In soon to be published posts we plan on talking about many of these experiences in much more depth. For now though, thanks for reading and please do come back soon. To hear of our posts you can subscribe here or follow us on Twitter (@boardworksgames). As always, keep in gaming!

Dave.

Next Time: Our Experience with Kickstarter...