Leaving Things Out
“Success comes down to three things: artwork, playtesting and playtesting,” says Smith. “Artwork will get someone to pick it up off the shelf. Whether or not someone comes back to the game again, though, is all about whether the game has been thoroughly tested to get it down to its simplest version.”
Early versions of games, or games by new designers, often have too many features and complexities. What looks great on a whiteboard may lose impact when taking turns and throwing dice. A common response to such flaws is to add special rules, additional options or complicated calculations. “You can get away with that in some video games because you can have the computer do the math for you,” says Smith. “Board games can’t be annoying to play. Just like a good book, it is more about what you leave out than what you put in.”
Pottmeyer cautions that designers can also edit too much. “You can go too far and strip too much out of the game, so it is no longer interesting,” he says.
Prior to building my first physical prototype for Party On!, I tested out the game dynamics by writing a computer program. This simulation wasn’t playable, but I could easily run through each round of play until a winner was produced. By manually manipulating some of the factors and strategies involved, I was able to see if the mechanics led to inevitable conclusions or took too long to resolve. Happy with the variety of winning strategies from the program, I playtested with my two sons using pennies, dimes and quarters as pawns. Several months later, the Studio Cypher braintrust put it through the paces as well.
In that latter session — which also included discussion of their own game-in-progress, a neat sticker-based game situated in public places around local communities — we played Party On! with an unassembled homemade prototype of the game leftover from gifts to family members. Our game lasted about a dozen rounds, but there was a persistent fear that the game could potentially go on forever. Emigh and third Studio Cypher co-founder Nathan Mishler offered some critique, which included adding a means of increasing the pawn swapping as the game progressed. That suggestion turned into an explicit variation that was included in the final first edition rules. The design of the original board also was problematic, so that too was changed to be less structured, with some key reference information (the roshambo circle) baked into the image.
The design of the Party On! gameboard changed after both playtesting and prototyping.
The Game Crafter community is brimming with active members supporting each other’s efforts. Through interactions in the forum and chat channels, fellow designers bounce ideas off each other and help projects evolve into published games. “When the entire evolution of the game happens in our site,” observes Smith, “those people end up selling lots of copies off the bat just because of the network of people they have met and cultured.”
The need to invest in playtesting may vary. Pottmeyer points to Cheapass Games as a game geyser. Designer James Ernest cranked out a game a month for a decade, leaving little time for thorough playtesting. Smith notes, though, that all of that effort creates cumulative knowledge about what works and what doesn’t.
“For a lot of people coming to our site, they have never had to write rules before,” says Smith . “In board games, rules are everything. It’s a tough thing to get someone to pick up your game and play it when you are not there.”
