Part 1
A board game design process: Learn your stuff
The process of designing a board game is not different from designing any other product. You can approach it as an exercise in problem-solving or as a medium for self-expression and everything in between.
As a hobby, I’ve dabbled a bit in board game design. My first project was an exploration of the design process and how it correlates to boardgames. Since the purpose of the project was about learning rather than developing a great game I’m reluctant to even call mine a decent game but I do believe that the process behind has been quite interesting, enough to merit sharing it. And that’s what I want to do with this series.
I approach boardgames as experiences, so I start by choosing a subject, the idea is to define what the game is going to be about, what the game has to say. So the first thing to do after deciding the subject is understanding it, researching it and breaking it apart in order to see what the key elements of the experience are. These elements are going to be the backbone of the game and they’re going to drive the design of the game forward.
In most boardgame design communities this would be called a Theme driven approach. In most cases theme is just used as a shorthand for aesthetics or story, in my case I do try to focus on theme, on a core idea that drives the whole game forward.
In my case, I wanted to explore the idea of the space Captain. That meant reading, watching and looking at a huge body of work in science fiction in order to see what defined this type of fantasy. This idea of the space Captain covers a pretty broad spectrum of experiences. I identified the main categories: Exploration, leadership, diplomacy, science-technology and strategy. Trying to cover all this ground would be unproductive, and since this is my first game I wanted to keep the scope of the project small. I thought about what would be the simplest category to translate into a board game and in the end I went with big spaceship combat because of the simplicity of the interactions compared to a leadership or diplomacy game, and of course because there’s just much more reference material about combat than any other type of game.
Research resumed on this front, once again looking at the elements of this experience. What I found was that at the most basic level every encounter was dependent on three elements, positioning/movement, attack and defense. Three clear phases that are pretty functional, and provide a great core to expand upon. Still, on their own they lack any sense of character. So it was important to look for the things that were clearly emblematic of the genre. I found the moments of strategic brilliance where a plan came together by an ingenious use of the resources pretty common. In those there was always an element of energy management where power would have to be diverted from one system to another, preferably by shouting at the engineer in charge of the ship (think of poor Geordi LaForge) and of course different systems and technologies involved. Besides that, during research I came across lots of small details that could be referenced or used as inspiration for game mechanics, like asteroids, faster than light travel, drones and other flavour things from the genre. The basics form the core and that’s hugely important, but the details, the little winks and even a few clichés are what finally shape the experience and makes it meaningful and gives the player a strong emotional impact. It’s a bit about aligning the game with the mental model the player has of the genre. Another approach could be about breaking away from what’s expected and bringing a new perspective, but that’s a bit more complicated to pull off.
Another important source of information that has to be reviewed are other games. Exploring rulebooks of games that have approached the same subject or at least something similar enough. For example I looked at the Star Wars: Armada, I tracked down a Leviathan rulebook and looked at some pirate games. Games tells you how other designers approached the same subject and how they translated to their vision of a game. Take note on mechanics, on components, on dynamics on the relationship between players.
We now have seen the movies, read the books and taken notes, downloaded artwork and have lots and lots of data about our subject. The next step is to synthesise it into design guidelines for the game. Synthesis is a fascinating subject and it’s where we make sense of all the information and start to make sense of it in the context of the game. That step is going to be the subject of the next article.
Entries in the series:
· Lesson 1: Learn your stuff (You are here)
· Lesson 2: Synthesizing information
· Lesson 3: Defining the game and its scope
· Lesson 4: A game is a system
