Quirkworthy

Guess where I am this weekend.

London is far from my favourite place, but you can’t deny that it has some interesting stuff to see and do. So, this weekend, I’ll be down in the Big Smoke to see the UK’s biggest wargames show.

Having been to Airecon recently, I’ve had some thoughts about conventions, and I’ll probably write something about what a designer can learn from them after I’ve been to Salute. They’re very different beasts, so I’m curious to see how much of my rough ideas will hold true there too. Anyway, that’s for another time.

Just thought I’d mention it in case you were going to be there. If you see me wandering about, do say hi. I’m probably lost.

While I was at AireCon over the weekend (more of that on Thursday), I was reminded of the power of the gesamtkunstwerk idea: every aspect of your project should be thought of as part of the whole. If the designer, artist, and salesman all go their own way, then what you end up with is confusion in the minds of your audience. Every aspect of a project needs to be working towards the same goal.

When someone encounters your game, they’ll quickly form an impression of what its story is: pirates seeking gold in the sun-soaked islands of the Caribbean, grubby adventurers fighting monsters in the darkness, or slick politicians wheeling and dealing in the hushed corridors of power. Think of this as the movie your audience plays in their heads. The artwork is the most immediate spark for this, and it’s important, sure. However, it’s far from alone. Once this initial impressions has been formed, the rest needs to work with it rather than against it. Each part should enhance the image in their heads, sharpening focus, adding background detail, and refining the tale. Layout, font, paper type, language, iconography, and many, many other aspects can influence this movie before you even get to how the game plays (which ideally confirms everything the audience has experienced so far). 

This is how I conceptualise much of what I’m doing, whether it’s art, writing, or games. I’m helping my audience to tell themselves a story, and as humans are largely visual creatures, that’s often in the form of an internal movie as much as an internal monologue.

The first step in doing this well is being very clear in your own mind what story you want to tell. It’s best to write this down, as the tendency is always to drift as the development process goes on. Writing it down gives you a touchstone to return to when that great new idea threatens to take you off somewhere completely different. Now you may find that changing course part way through is your best bet. I’d just suggest that when you do it’s best done as a deliberate thing, not an accident. That’s where the written version helps.

As a side note, if you do change your story part way through development, then your new (and additional) challenge is that you now have what amounts to two similar, but different, stories cohabiting in the same game. You’ll probably need to tweak the work you’ve done prior to your change in order for the whole thing to be cohesive. Not impossible. Not even a bad thing (if deadlines are moved appropriately). Just needs doing deliberately to work well.

There are plenty of examples of this not being done properly. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s played a game that seems to be trying to tell me two different tales at once. Some games have great chunks that feel like they’ve drifted in from an entirely separate project, unrelated to the rest, and this changing course in mid-stream is often the root of the problem. This, plus not being given the necessary time to properly smooth over the joins. Drifting from your aim during development is so easy to do and so gradual, that without a written anchor you can easily run aground. By routinely referring back to your initial statement, you can see when you’re drifting, and make whatever changes you choose consciously rather than by inattention.

Over the years I’ve talked to many people who only had the fuzziest idea of what their game was about. Don’t worry if this is you. It’s sometimes me too. To avoid this, I’d encourage you to define your story clearly and early, and to do this you’ll need to ask yourself questions. Then some more questions. Your answers will turn up way more stuff than you’ll need to include in the final game, but it helps you feel confident and deepens your own understanding. In the future, when talking to potential customers, reviewers, or whoever, you’ll be able to answer anything they ask about the why of your project as well as the what and how. This will give them a positive impression of assuredness and solidity. Your confidence feeds theirs. This is a Good Thing.

I’m feeling grumpy this morning because I’m still not very well. So, today I’m going to complain about a bit of AI: Microsoft’s Copilot.

If you can write and wish to use your own voice to say your own things, then Clippy, and its descendants Copilot et al, are simply insulting, intrusive, focus-breaking roadblocks to getting work done. 

It’s one thing to have AI as an option you can go to if you so choose. It’s quite another to have it constantly shoved in your face, breaking your focus and generally getting in the way. Microsoft have finally convinced me to stop using Word this morning with the constant intrusion of Copilot. This is the spiritual descendant of the utterly detestable Clippy. Think yourself lucky if you never had your day wasted by that condescending piece of crap. 

This morning I tried to turn off Copilot, without any success. The easy instructions don’t work. The help, as ever, is cryptic and entirely unhelpful. The button you’re supposed to be able to disable isn’t where it’s described as being. And yet, even without a button to mark its existence, Copilot remains, dogging everything I type. Another piece of anti-productive dross from Microsoft. 

Well, I’ve had enough. Word is very familiar after more than 30 years of using it almost every day. Now I’m looking for a replacement. They’ve finally driven me away. 

I’ve written a book in Apple’s Pages, so I know that works. Still, I’m not drawn to it. Scrivner is interesting, and is better than Word in some ways, but has multiple issues. LibreOffice is my next best hope, though I’ve half a mind to try writing straight into Affinity. It’s nice that there are options. Plus, I’ve always got writing things longhand to fall back on. That supposedly has advantages in the way your brain responds to writing physically rather than on a keyboard. I don’t know about the neuroscience, though it certainly feels like a different experience. I often write notes longhand, even though I also have many digital ones. Sometimes it’s just easier to think a problem through on paper. 

Of course, this is only my experience. I’m sure Copilot has a purpose outside my use case. For creative work though? Not for me. 

For the last week I’ve been laid up in my sick bed, not posting, among other things.

Yesterday, I managed my first trip outside in a week, which was lovely. Always good to see the sea.

Unfortunately, I’m still not thinking clearly, so today is merely to let you know that the missing posts have been an enforced absence rather than a planned one, and that I hope to be back writing my usual burbles from Monday.

Today’s thought is about a niche within a niche. 

Yesterday, I was talking to a chap who’s designed a game, run a successful kickstarter, and sent all his happy backers a copy of his wares. Now he’s trying to find distribution and it’s harder than expected. In fact, all the steps have been harder, and I was wondering why I hear this lament so often. In fact, it’s almost universal among first time designers. Whether it’s getting your game in front of a publisher, running a successful Kickstarter, getting a game produced, or navigating the nightmare of fulfilment, everyone has a tale of how some Boojum snuck out of the shadows and gave them a fright. It’s just games. Why is it so hard? Why is every step more convoluted than it feels like it should be? It all seemed so easy before they had to do it for real.

This isn’t a new thing. In fact, even with the wealth of info scattered along our glorious information superhighway, people seem routinely surprised. Why is that?

I think it’s mainly because your average gamer doesn’t ponder how the sausage is made very often. It’s no great secret, just not a thing people tend to talk about. Far more engaging to discuss the latest expansion for your best-selling game line, your shiny new idea, or even the line of plushies that go with your cosy offerings. Nobody much wants to hear about how awkward it’s been to fight your way through customs. 

Kickstarter’s made the woes of the professional a bit more public as the much requested transparency tends to devolve into the latest thing that’s gone wrong. Usually in fulfilment. And I’m happy to believe these tales as I’ve seen so many similar myself. The number of moving parts to get all this stuff made in the first place, then shipped across the planet is large, and there are many pinch points at which the best laid plans can go awry.  

None of this is likely to be news to any professionals reading this, and yet the neophytes fall down the same holes again and again. It’s tricky to help too. They don’t know what they don’t know, so often walk into the awkwardness before they realise they could ask for advice to get round it. That’s why I was pleased when this chap reached out yesterday. Hopefully I steered him around at least a few of the bigger pitfalls. 

For anyone else, what’s the solution?

Sadly, there’s no golden¹ bullet. The fix requires time and effort. Here are some things you could try:

Ask for help

• There’s a bunch of online groups and fora that have people in who’ve already gone through whatever problem you’re facing. Find someone with more experience than you and ask for their advice.

Research more

• You can never know too much. For example, if you’re working with shipping companies or factories, be clear about their expectations as well as telling them yours. See what experiences others have had with them. Be aware of the world events that may affect moving things across the globe. Consider the problem from different angles, not just your own.

Pad your estimated timeline

• You always need longer than you think, especially if you’ve not done it before. Do this with both internal and public timelines. 
• Give yourself extra weeks or months to deal with unexpected issues. You can put in a bit of time for things you imagine may go wrong, but it’s the unforeseen problems that can really throw you into a spin. Covid and tariffs are two recent large ones, though they’re only the most dramatic. 
• If you end up not needing the time and deliver early, then you’re far less likely to get complaints than delivering late. 

There’s nothing magical about the physical making and shipping of games. They’re just another of the myriad products produced and moved about the world every day. But because they’re games, people seem to have an expectation that real world logistics will somehow be more fun, or simpler, or follow comprehensible rules. Sadly, none of that is the case. 

So, if you find a struggling designer, trying to get his creation into the market, or simply out of a warehouse in Nanjing, why not reach out a hand and offer some help? We were all there once. 

Notes

1: I’m sure these used to be silver bullets, but that’s inflation for you. 

I was going to talk about defining games today. However, the comments on my last post went off on a fun tangent that I’d like to continue here.

When you get a game, can you, should you, must you, pick and choose the rules you like or add your own house rules? Or, are you only allowed to play it as written?

On the face of it, the obvious answer is that you can do what you like. The Games Police are very lax these days and you can probably get away with anything as long as you keep the curtains drawn. 

Seriously though, there’s a bit to unpack here.

More than once, I’ve been asked at conventions whether it was OK if someone played a game I wrote with house rules. My answer has always been that it’s their game now and they don’t need to ask permission. Whilst my spies areeverywhere, I no longer pay my subscription to orbitaldeathraysareus.com, so there’s not a lot I can do about your transgressions from the One True Way. I am, in fact, more curious about what changes you’ve made and why. I may have missed something important. I may want to adopt the change myself. You never know.

Also at conventions, I’ve been told to my face that I not only didn’t understand what a rule (that I wrote) meant, but that I didn’t understand the intent behind it. A bit hard to know how to deal with that sort of earnest nonsense, but at the end of the day you do you. 

That said, there are two flavours of this situation. Once the game is in your hands you can do what you like with it. Absolutely. However, if a game is played in tournaments, then this won’t work. Everyone can’t bring their own version. There has to be an agreed correct way to play to keep the field level. And this is where the real arguments happen. That’s the context for someone telling me that I didn’t know why I wrote a rule or what it meant. Folk get very invested in tournaments. Now, having noted the existence of tournaments, let’s put them aside for today. 

In your normal gaming group, you should feel free to modify a game as you choose. But there’s a but. Just a little one. I think of it like this. 

Whoever designed the game has played it many, many more times than I have, so I start by assuming that they’ve done something interesting with it. At least, they’ve tried to. Often, especially with more complex games, not everything will be obvious on the first play through, or with that player count, or using that strategy, or in that scenario, or with that faction, or, or, or. So, I’ll wait until I’ve got a firm grasp of what the game as printed was trying to do before I consider changing stuff. Not because the written rules are sacred, but because I may well be doing myself out of something really cool if I change things before I fully understand what I had in the first place. And, importantly, the most interesting designs are sometimes the least obvious precisely because they’re wandering off the beaten path. In other words, I’m interested in uncovering the hidden depths of entertainment that I may miss if I’m too hasty. 

On the other hand, it’s your game now. You bought it, and you’re playing with your friends. If you want to change something to make it fit better with your collective zeitgeist, then go for it. You may not care about missing the intended experience. You don’t have to. 

Personally, I rarely feel moved to change a published game if I don’t think it works as written. I’ve got so many other games I could play instead that something would have to be fixable with very little change, and otherwise compelling. In practice, this is a tiny group (currently containing 1 game, I think). Normally, if it doesn’t work for me, it’ll get traded away. I’d rather be writing my own games than fixing other folk’s stuff.