Day 3: Game Designer Panel

Today I had the privilege of listening to a panel with game designers Greg Bush and Phil Chase. They gave us a brief background on their experiences growing up with gaming and their transition into designing games. We also got lots of information and pointers on game design. They said the easiest was to start a game is to decide on a theme and then figure out what mechanics would best fit with that theme or create your own mechanics to compliment it. As for picking a theme, they said it's best to stick with what you know and what you enjoy; a well done game can be about pretty much anything. One suggestion they had was forming a game around a historical event or era if you happen to be a history buff. They also said that it's perfectly acceptable to mix and match mechanics from other games that you enjoyed if you can mix them in an original way.

When it came to the actual design process they said that it's perfectly normal to go through several versions as changes are made to the game. However each step of change(s) should be small so that when the gameplay experience changes drastically from one version to another you can pinpoint the source of the change and decide from their how you want to continue. Part of how the speakers specifically liked to keep track of each version of development was through spreadsheets that everyone on the development team has access to. On that note, it's important to keep components of past games even as you develop new versions in case you want to go back and start from a previous point or reincorporate something from a past version. All in all, I really enjoyed the panel far more than I thought I would and they mentioned some games that they thought were particularly well made so now I have some new games to try out.

On an additional note, I also got to try out the game Killer Bunnies which is a hand management/dice rolling game. The person teaching me wouldn't tell me all the rules before we started, he insisted that I learn as I played and made mistakes which is a pretty frustrating way to learn anything. Aside from initial difficulties early on in the game I actually enjoyed it. It's very much a game that centers on sabotaging other players so it I think it definitely makes a difference in how your social experience in the game pans out depending on if you play with people who are very competitive or vindictive.