by Adam Porter
Our regular meet-up was brief last evening, with only two of us in attendance. Alas life got in the way and prevented most of our regulars, so Rob and I were left to chat about the group and muse on our future plans for it – and play a couple of rounds of a game or two.Playtest UK has a decent number of groups around the country at this point: London, Cambridge, Newcastle, Brighton, Cardiff, Leeds, Enfield, Bath. I’m sure some groups are more active than others. The playtest sessions are generally arranged through the Meetup website – in Cardiff we have tended more towards using Facebook to arrange meetups (something we did before we were associated with Playtest UK and hence we have carried on with) but the Meetup site seems to be thriving with members around the country, many of whom I recognise from UK Games Expo and other playtesting sessions I have attended. It seems a shame not to be a more visible part of this community. Rob and I discussed utilising the Playtest Meetup site more – so I’m encouraging all members of our group to utilise that facility and I will post a link to this blog on that site from here-on too.
We want UK designers to use our group as a resource – we can offer willing, enthusiastic, critical analysis of your prototypes at whatever stage. We are not experts, or even published designers, but we have a broad gaming experience, a wide vocabulary of gaming mechanisms, and a good understanding of the industry. For the group to thrive, however, we do need people to use it!
We discussed critical analysis, the role it plays in creative endeavours, and its general palatability. Both Rob and I have experience in theatre and have seen both sides of this. An amateur actor will often look for praise, rather than critical analysis. You might offer them a “Well done!” regardless of the quality of their performance. The classic phrases an amateur actor learns to dread are the guarded “The audience seemed to really have a good time” or “However did you learn all those lines?” both of which mean “You were shit”. An aspiring professional might seek more critical feedback “but what did you really think?” This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are ready to hear the answer. A true professional will gratefully receive ALL feedback and quietly pick-and-choose which responses are helpful and which can be reasonably ignored – ideally without allowing any of it to bruise their ego. (Perhaps some egos need a bit of bruising, but that’s a topic for another day). So where does that leave us with game design? I think it’s a tricky balance – we don’t want to be hard-nosed, or unwelcoming, or cynical, but we want to be rigorous, intelligent, and constructive.
At this point in time, Kickstarter is a major force in board-game publishing. Some of the projects that I have backed, or played after publication, have evidently never experienced that rigorous, critical analysis that can only be gained by putting the game in front of seasoned game-players (and ideally designers). Crowdfunding patrons take a much greater gamble when they back a project than the traditional boardgame purchaser. Yes, a great many bad boardgames have been put out by established publishers, but generally speaking the safety net of an established, rigorous (there’s that word again) process of development and testing – a process which has itself been rigorously tested – tends to produce a more stable, high-quality product. Kickstarter (or self-publication) is an attractive prospect when the established publishers appear to be ignoring your brilliant new design and passing you by, but I personally don’t want the mass of boardgames to be rough-around-the-edges crowdfunded projects. I want a polished product. By all means Kickstart, but be a professional. Utilise groups like Playtest UK. And gleefully accept the feedback that comes your way – good or bad.
You can probably tell that I am cynical about Kickstarter and self-publication (although I haven’t written it off entirely – I have had some good experiences!) So this leaves us with only one other route: approaching publishers and asking them to develop and produce our work. I am constantly surprised by how many publishers are open to this. I tend to receive polite, grateful, inquisitive emails from the majority of the publishers that I speculatively contact. I have yet to have a game published, but it does not seem impossible. In fact, quite the opposite: it seems probable that I will eventually get there. The degree of difficulty I have faced in achieving this goal seems absolutely proportionate to the financial risk taken by the publisher, and the improbability that my games are something special. Obviously I think that they are, but the tiny number of truly special games which are produced each year suggests otherwise. It isn’t going to be easy getting your game published, but neither should it be.
Now, I am fortunate enough to be able to invest time and money into an annual trip to Essen Spiel, the biggest boardgame trade-show in the world. This is where I meet publishers. Rob, with baby and half-constructed house to take care of, does not have this luxury. So where does he go? How do you get your foot in the door with publishers if you cannot fly across the world to game conventions? I don’t know the answer to this, but I suspect that the doors are not as firmly closed as we imagine. My friendly responses from emailing publishers suggest to me that many would still be open to looking at prototypes if you posted them out. Video, audio, digital photography and Skype are all tools which allow you to form a connection with someone thousands of miles away. Local conventions are going to provide fewer opportunities, I suspect, at least in the UK. The UK Games Expo is growing, and there are a good number of publishers there with decision-makers in attendance, but not in anything like the quantity that you will find at Essen. I’m sure there are meetings to be had at the Expo regardless.
This week I managed to complete construction of my prototypes for Essen – some 28 of them (five games with multiple copies). I really hope some publishers take copies away – there will be little room in my suitcase to bring them back home packed around all my new purchases. Completing construction feels like a huge weight off my shoulders. Game-construction is hard work!
I demonstrated a few changes to my trick-taking game, Animal Olympics. This one has been knocking around for over a year now but has never quite reached a point where I’m happy with it. It’s a hangover from last year when I was obsessing over a perceived lack of “progression” in my city-building game, City Rollers. I wondered what “progression” would look like in a straight-up trick-taking card-game – i.e. how could one round of trick-taking alter the game in such a way that the next round is directly affected. This immediately introduced all sorts of runaway-leader problems which I countered with clunky, inelegant catch-up mechanics. The result was a chaotic luck-based game. I have come some distance with the game since then, and I still think it has promise. Unfortunately, we couldn’t play the latest incarnation since there were only two of us.
Rob showed off a new prototype – I’m going to describe it as a cross between the Zen aesthetic of Tokaido, the pond-life theme of Haru Ichiban, the card-play of Smash Up, and the predictions of Camel Up or Divinare. If that sounds like fun, I’m sure you’d love this game. Although it’s just the seed of an idea, I thought it had loads of promise – another gem from Rob, which will be fun to watch develop.