With speakers like Lillian Lee, creator and founder of Say What!, Erica Tham, CEO of Ace Edventure Studio, Goh Choon Ean, creator and game designer of Kaki Lima, Michael Ng, professional Illustrator and Co-Founder of OicFinland and Leos Ng, professional game artist and illustrator, each speaking to their own professional experiences, it was an eye-opening and detailed look at what goes into game design and the preparations needed when one wants to hire an artist for a project just to name two of many interesting points made.

With a gripped crowd and passionate speakers, time flew by and by the end there were many a question that the crowd wanted to ask our speakers but unfortunately, we had to move on to the free roaming period and even though people got a chance to speak one on one with the speaker of their choice, there was only so much time for each person and thus questions were left unanswered. But our moderator Colin Lim picked up on this and gathered enthusiastic questions and responses and due to popular demand, we have picked the more popular ones to be answered here.

P.S. Thank you for turning up to NDC if you did come and if any of this interests you, we hope to see you at the SG Card and Board Game Show Case Volume 2! 

Related Article: 5 Weekend destinations to play Board Game in Finland comfortably!

Questions

1. How do I go about networking or finding board game publishers to publish my game?

Lilian: I would suggest joining a local/overseas games meet up. Just remember to go into it with an open mind, be nice and meet more people. Additionally, it would also be good to attend SG Card and Board Game events, ha.

Leos: I would suggest direct emails to publishers, bringing your games to game meetups and if you are confident in your designs, approach game designers during game launch events. Also, if it’s within your budget, get a booth during events (major ones are like Dragoncon in the USA, Doujima, locally) for people to try. Bigger events might even have publishers walking around.

It’s also very important to generate some hype for your game as it will help publishers take more notice of you.

2. What is the board game design process like?

Lilian: Firstly, start with an idea, then check whether there are similar games already out there. Secondly, do up a working prototype to prepare for the playtesting phase. Thirdly, keep reworking the game and work with the ideas of your fellow designers and illustrators till the game is done...Phew!.

 Erica: Sometimes we start with a theme or a game mechanic. But with educational games, we sometimes begin with a topic we want to teach first. Particularly if it’s boring! There’s no hard and fast rule to this. But for some people, starting with a mechanic makes the game design tighter and more inflow.

Then, as Lilian says, move on to prototyping. We test the games like crazy (test it till you can be sick of the game sometimes! 😱).

The playtesting phase is where you will probably get many valuable insights to polish the game until it shines like a diamond.

If you can invest a bit of money in your education, (and I highly encourage it) there’s a course on Udemy about creating the card and board games. For a deal, just look out for the sales.

3. What is the process of coming up with an idea for a game and the actual process of creating it?

Colin: Most of the time, I get inspiration for game ideas/mechanics from a gaming experience I had or an idea I have developed or events which I feel would be a good theme for a game. The idea will be constantly buzzing in my head and when it bugs me enough, I will write it down (interestingly enough, a lot of ideas come to me when I am having a shower!) as it means there is an interest in further developing it. Then I pen it down and build a game structure around it. 

4. How do you actually decide the theme that will match the mechanics of a game?

Erica: Brainstorm and trial and error. I guess at the end of the day, it also boils down to your target audience and the experience you want them to have when they play your game. For example, if you want them to feel fear and be frightened while playing your game then you want to pick a theme that can convey that experience.

5. Where do you go to get your board games produced? 

Colin: It depends on the scale of your game. Currently the games I have produced just needed local publishers on a print on demand level as small print runs.

As for printing up a demo/mockup for the initial marketing of your game, you can use local printers for them. Larger scale printings would require you to turn to China as their factories are well equipped to manufacture them. 

6. What’s the most challenging aspect of creating board games?

Lilian: It has got to be the subjective matter of making something that you hope people will be excited and want to play and of course, production. If you are producing your game in China, make sure you or someone there can speak Chinese very well so you can communicate clearly what you want. It would be even better if you can plant yourself in the factory for a bit and sit beside them during the process.

Erica: Testing and refining. Because at the ideation level you are working with yourself. But at the testing level, you are working with others. Their opinions will show you the holes and loose ends in your mechanics and design. At this time, you have to set aside your ego and be able to let go of ideas in your games for the overall good. If you can do that, you give your game the greatest ability to be the best version of itself.

7. Do you choose your playtesters when you do playtest before producing a game and how do you carry those sessions out?  

Lilian: I try to choose my target playtesters carefully and get them to be as honest as possible without any hidden agendas. 

Erica: Yes, we firstly pick people who we think our target audience is. Also, you also want to choose people who will give you honest feedback that is as detailed as possible, not just answers like, "I don’t like.", for example.

We also generally set criterias we are testing for during each session. If we are just testing the reaction and the mechanics, we normally teach people how to play the game. But if we are testing to see if our rules are written clearly, we get people to figure out the game on their own. 

8. @Lilian, what can a game designer do if he/she does not know much about art styles or isn’t sure what's the best art style for the game should be?

Lilian: 1. Read and expose yourself to more design products/ideas/exhibition. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

2. Befriend good designers who have great tastes and who can be honest with you.

3. Showcase your designs to those who have a lot of experience in the game design industry along with quality designs of their own.

4. Be open with comments/criticism. Do not get defensive over criticism. 

9.@Michael, what can the game designer do if the illustrator doesn’t agree with the style of art that has been chosen?

Michael: 1. If it is a collab and not full fees - you can choose or suggest suitable styles that you like or you can compromise a little bit or you can drop the collab altogether.

Do remember you are working as a team and your input should be considered too. If the other side is too iron-handed in their handling of your suggestions then you should leave if you feel the compromise to your vision is too great. 

2. If it is a full fee job - you can ask the illustrator to do the job to the best of his/her availability or just ask the artist if there is another illustrator that may be more suited to the project.

10. Where can I playtest my games in Finland?

Colin: The playtesting phase depends on which stage you are at. For your initial playtesting all the way to almost the final stage, it is always better to keep playtesting the game on your own, or amongst close friends and fellow game designers. 

When you are ready for public playtesting (meaning you are there to watch a broader section of players interact with your game), drop by board game meetups (Finland Board Games Meetup and Finland International Board  Games Meetup) but it is always better to private message the organiser to seek permission first.

At the same time, the Finland Game Makers on Facebook can also be a good source to find game designers who can give you more insights into your game.

Lastly and importantly, do treasure your playtesters’ time and do not take them for granted. Their valuable feedback will more than likely provide you with new perspectives and improvements.

E: [email protected]

Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.

Related: Local Designer Series: Christina Ng and Yeo Keng Leong, Designers of Three Kingdom Redux

1. So although it is not done yet, what can you tell us about your new game in the works, Race for the Chinese Zodiac?

It is a racing game based on the Chinese myth about the Great Race that formed the Chinese Zodiac. The story goes that the Jade Emperor summoned all the animals to a race to decide the order of a 12-year cycle for mankind to keep time and the top 12 finishers would be immortalised by having their species named after a year in the Zodiac.

We designed this game with the wife's in-laws in mind as they were unable to playtest or try our first game, Three Kingdoms Redux due to the heavy amount of text involved. As a result, only the wife's brother was able to partake in the design process of Three Kingdoms Redux. Thus, we wanted to do a shorter and more text-light board game for our next project so that they can be involved too. We do hope to play the finished published version with them in 2019.

 2. What do you think are the essential prototype pieces and tools a budding game designer needs to have in their home?

We do not feel there is anything in a particular that is essential. For us, imagination, knowledge of probability, prior board gaming experience and concepts of game designs probably comes first.

Tools wise, once you hit upon an idea, then you can decide what kind of game components you will need to make the prototype. Initially, usually cardboard and paper are sufficient.

3. When it comes to game design, do you focus on the game mechanics or the theme first?

We design from the setting/theme up. We first think about the setting we want and then ponder over which or what game mechanics suits the game best that will bring the game's theme to life.

For example, in Three Kingdoms Redux, worker placement represented the many generals of the era and the alliance mechanic, the changing nature of alliances of the era.

As for Race for the Chinese Zodiac, simultaneous card play represented the racers having to make decisions on the go at the same time. And the nature of the different actions which are drawn from the various actions taken by the animals is based on the folktale itself.  

4. Where do you usually find your playtesters and what are the biggest challenges in the playtesting period? 

Playtesters have mostly been our family and close friends. Finding playtesters who are willing to try the same game design repeatedly has always been a big challenge. The Keyword is “repeatedly” as it is only in the later stages that we seek out new playtesters, to get fresh views.

This is because the initial intensive playtesting stage requires the same playtesters to yield the best results. Now for a shorter board game, this issue is not as severe but for a board game as long as our previous game, Three Kingdoms Redux though, it was a major issue but we were fortunate enough to get around that with the support of a few close friends and family member (Wife's brother).

5. How many times do you think a game needs to be playtested or at what point do you think a game is "done"?

There is no definitive answer to this. For us, we set our own expectations in our hearts on how fun and balanced we want the board game to be and just keep playtesting and tweaking it until it passes those expectations. We value quality over quantity.

Given we have day jobs, it means our design process is always a long drawn out process. Thus, why we have been experiencing a four-year long design and development period for just our first two games.

6. What kind of board games do you think the current growing board game market is favouring? 

When a new sector grows and matures, it usually moves towards the masses. It is therefore not surprising to see board games appealing to the mass market. A few examples being shorter game times which accommodates larger player counts, games with nice miniatures and certain settings/themes such as Zombies and Vikings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.

Board gamers have largely been seen as competitive but it is not that board gamers are not a cooperative bunch, it is just that they did not have the games to prove it in the past. That though has changed with the boom in the popularity of cooperative games that pits all the players against the game, hence the players win or lose as a team together.

The cooperative genre also has an audience that took to the genre like wildfire and that is the family market. Before fully cooperative games were common, when a parent played a board game with a child, they often had to handicap themselves so that the child would have a fighting chance at victory but in a game where all the players are working together, that is not so. This is because the kids can be being guided by the parents and thus the game can still be designed to be challenging for adult players. 

Cooperative games though are not solely for families as even hobby gamers have taken to the genre with gusto. This is well proven by the fact that the current most popular game on Board Game Geek is a cooperative game called Pandemic Legacy. 

The general keys to making a successful cooperative game are first, it has to be challenging enough for your target players but yet not so hard that it feels impossible to get through the game. In fact, other than for kids, it is a general consensus that players should lose a lot more than they win as this creates a sense of accomplishment and the challenge is the thing that keeps them coming back for more. 

Secondly, the game rules should be as simple as possible as the competition is provided by the game mechanics. If the rules are hard to follow, then victory or defeat might feel unsatisfactory just because players forgot to apply step 13 of 15 for example.

Thirdly, this is not a  hard or fast rule but the most popular cooperative games do have a very strong theme to the game. The popularity of escape rooms proving that abundantly well as they are basically massive cooperative board games with the various themes you can choose from.

Related: Board Game Mechanics 101: Social Deduction

 Pandemic

The game by Matt Leacock that is said to have set off the cooperative game boom. Released in 2008, it is still extremely popular and as you can guess is the inspiration mechanics wise for Pandemic Leagacy which we have mentioned above. 

In Pandemic, each player plays an expert in a team of disease fighting specialist who are on a mission to save the world and find the cure for 4 new virulent diseases that could spell doom to mankind. 

Gameplay is simply 4 actions, they are travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. Cures are found by submitting 5 cards of the same colour at a research station. 

The main "enemy" of the game comes in the form of epidemic cards, which are mixed into the deck of cards which players will be drawing from to refill their personal hand of cards. Whenever an epidemic card is drawn, a city will get infected and the disease will spread all over the board with an escalating effect. 

Keeping with the difficulty factor of cooperative games, there are several ways to lose and only one way to win. The players lose if the player deck runs out of cards before the players cure all 4 diseases, if the outbreak of diseases chart goes pass 7 or if you wish to place disease cubes on the board but can't. All this hard thematic goodness in 45minutes to an hour.

Matt Leacock also made the game very versatile for all levels of players. This is because the difficulty of the game can be tweaked by varying the number of epidemic cards in the game. This move increasing the game's audience to even new gamers and is definitely a plus for families as you kids grow older, you can add more epidemic cards to make the game more challenging. 

Pandemic is literally the first game most gamers would ask you to try if you have expressed any interest in the cooperative genre. The game is enjoyed by the newest of gamers to veterans of the hobby and thus why if you are looking to design a cooperative game, this is an awfully good game to start with.  

Time Stories 

Taking a page from Pandemic and another from the popularity of escape rooms around the world, Time Stories focuses on providing a cooperative experience with an extremely immersive story to go with it.   

In Time Stories, the players play temporal agents or in layman terms, Time Police, who go back in time to solve crimes. You do this by inhabiting the body of people in that period.

Players spend "time" to interact with the world. This is done by picking up a card from a specific deck and reading it to the group. Events vary from you just picking up items, getting into fights or having to solve puzzles. Attribute tests from characters or events in the game are done via rolling custom dice and are affected by items or the statistics of the chosen character the player has chosen to inhabit. 

To get an immersive story, they have tailored the game to have standalone mission expansions with set answers. This reduces the replayability significantly but allows for a more detailed and cohesive story.  

No one knew how the market would react to having a board game you really could only play once but the gamble paid off though and the game was the talk of the board gaming world in 2015 and is currently the 35th most popular game on Board Game Geek. 

Time Stories was unique in how different it was to the traditional cooperative game and shows there is always space to innovate in a design space. You just have to give your idea a try!

Pandemic Legacy

And now that you have read on what is the basics of the cooperative genre and how it can be innovated. Then you can take what is the core of the genre and then add another element to the game. In this case the legacy mechanic.

The legacy mechanic is a system board game designer Rob Daviau created with his game called Risk Legacy. Its premise is that every game counts and what happens in one game is carried over to the next game in a permanent way. Such as entire parts of the board destroyed and marked with stickers for example. 

As the state of the board or characters are changed permanently, there is, even more, gravitas to every decision. Mix this with the solid mechanics of Pandemic and now you have created not just a story but something akin to an Oscar winning epic movie series for the players. A combo that is so successful that it has catapulted the game to become the number 1 ranked game in just about a year from its release.  

Do note though that Legacy games are one of the hardest to design for due to the massive playtesting that is needed to fix any bugs or dead ends that might occur from the player's various decisions in the game. 

In conclusion, the cooperative genre has several pluses going for it. There are firstly way less cooperative games out there than compared to its competitive counterpart and the market for the genre seems to be growing very strongly. Also, the family market has always been a staple of board gaming and like I said before, they do take to cooperative games most well. So put your mind to it and make the world a better place by getting people to work together. 

E: [email protected]

Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.

Welcome class, take your seats and get ready to delve into what could be the base mechanic for your future million dollar award winning board game.

Today we will be focusing on what is arguably the most popular mechanic in the board gaming world today, worker placement.

It is the board game mechanic of taking a marker and placing it on a spot on the board and doing what the space allows a player to do. For example, movement, collecting resources, buying new items, etc. And with some small tweaks to worker placement can come a plethora of game types.

We will be using 3 modern designer board games to show you some of the more popular ways worker placement is being used in today's modern game designs. 

STONE AGE

To give a sense of urgency, give each action on the board a limit. Such as the number of players who can use the spot. A good example of this is Stone Age, where there are only 7 spots to be used per round in each of the resource collection actions. This gives the players the decision on whether to go for the short-term gain or risk losing the chance to use the action completely.

Related: Local Designer Series: Christina Ng and Yeo Keng Leong, Designers of Three Kingdom Redux

Manhatten Project: Energy Empire 

If not, how about encouraging a calmer but more brain-burning game, that focuses more on resource collection. You can do this by allowing others to use the same spot as a previous player but it will cost them more resources in the game to use the spot again.

Manhatten Project: Energy Empire is a good example of this as you have to pay one more worker than the previous player to use the same action on the board. 

Kingsburg

Another way to do worker placement is to incorporate it with another mechanic. In Kingsburg, you first roll your dice, which are your "workers" and then place them on spots that match the numerical value of the characters you wish to influence. This mix of luck and strategy keeps the game unpredictable yet tactical. 

Kingsburg also shows that the worker can be anything in the game, not just a meeple or token.

Worker placement is so popular as it allows players to keep track of actions used during the game, while easily relaying information at a glance. If you are designing your first game, this is definitely a good first mechanic to look at. Give it a go towards designing your dream game. I am happy to be of service and if you have any questions feel free to send them to me in the comments or at [email protected]. 

E: [email protected]

Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.