Go Forth and Game Interview: Austin of Dr. Wictz

Tom Gurganus of the Go Forth and Game podcast & blog recently interviewed Austin from Dr. Wictz.  In the interview Austin talks about my experience pitching board games to publishers at Origins, how Dr. Wictz was formed, using the Controlling Idea in Design, and other developments (see Index below for more details on topics).

You can download the episode here.

Podcast Episode Index:
(All links below are to related Dr. Wictz blog posts or links  to things outside of the podcast)

00:00:45  Intro

00:04:22  Advice how to make a video for a board game prototype (Part I & Part II)
               
00:06:30  Dr. Wictz origins (formation of Dr. Wictz) story

00:11:00  How to use the Controlling Idea to design board games

00:19:38  How to use Iterative Design to refine a board game design

00:25:55  A little Unpub Network Love

00:30:18  Cattle Car (Active Design)

00:40:51  Hoboken (Active Design)

00:48:27  Pitching Game Designs at Origins Game Fair

00:51:08  Update on Post Position - Now Bookies and Bettors

00:53:25  Aaron & Austin's Origins Game Fair Side Bet

00:55:40  Game Designers of North Carolina

00:56:56  Why Designers Should Get Board Room Ribbon at Origins Game Fair

00:59:52  The New Jersey Syndicate (Upcoming design)

01:03:56  Overtime (Upcoming design)

01:08:57  A Fishing Story

Playtesting the Controlling Idea

A month ago I talked about how the controlling idea helps me better prepare a game for playtesting.  Today, I am going to talk about how the controlling idea helps me use feedback from the playtesting of Underground Street Racing at the UNPUB Mini in Chantilly, Virginia.

For those of you not familiar with my game Underground Street Racing, the original controlling idea was for the players to experience the dynamic, fast, and has twisted turns of fate of snowboard cross, a Winter Olympic event.  I discovered during my iterative design phase that being true to a snowboard cross theme made the game too complicated, and that I could preserve the same experience by resetting the controlling idea and the theme to Underground Street Racing.

Controlling Idea and Playtesting Help Fixed Theme Problems

What playtesting revealed to me is while I had internally altered the controlling idea to be about underground street racing, some of the language I was using in the game was thematically snowboard cross.  In the version of Underground Street Racing that I was playtesting, cars could go too fast and crash.  When a car crashed it also crashed into other cars around it and forces all the crashed cars to stop before accelerating back into the race.

This frustrated my playtesters.  The pointed out that when there is a crash in an unregulated street race, especially if it takes out more than one car, there is no expectation of anyone walking away, let alone continuing the race.  That is when I realized crashes for going too fast was a byproduct of my old controlling idea and theme.  When snowboarding, if you crash, you generally get right back up and keep going.  Even if you crash into a few other people some bumps and bruises may be expected, but injuries are very rare.  

I needed players to stop imagining a horrendous NASCAR style crashes. So I thought back to my controlling idea of car racing and thought to myself what else can happen from going too fast in a car race that results in everyone slowing down, but not in the outright destruction of their car.  That is when I started visualising cars spinning out in NASCAR races and all the nearby cars having to slow down to avoid crashing into it.  So, I changed the terminology so that when a car goes too fast around a turn it loses control and spins-out.  Cars that spin-out, stop, regain control, and then try to get back in the race.  Cars around the car that spins-out also are forced to stop and then try to get back in the race to prevent a crash that would have eliminated them from the race altogether.

Controlling Idea and Playtesting Help Fixed Mechanic Problems

Playtesting also showed me where my game was unsuccessfully meeting the goal of the controlling idea.  I wanted strategic spin-outs throughout the race to be the twisted turns of fate within the race, but in repeated playtesting, each race had only one strategic spin-out close to the end.  I quickly figured out this was due to having five lanes in the game, and it taking a player half the game to get into a position where it was possible for a car to spin-out. And so, five lanes became three to encourage more spin-outs.

Even with the reduction in lanes, I still had a problem with the game not living up to the controlling idea.  The race was not exciting enough.  

Originally when players came around a turn they could speed up or slow down by being above or below the target number with their dice.  If players dice equaled the target number they remained at the same speed.  Maintaining a good line through the turns was the only way to keep control and momentum to the next turn in the race.  Each time a player played dice to move, they lost the dice from their hand unless the dice total equaled the target number, in which case they kept one die to use later in the race.

I thought this setup would result in chaotic and exciting races with cars constantly speeding up and slowing down.  Sadly, in actual game play this led to scripted races where players made sure to always hit the target number with all of their cars to keep as many dice as possible.  Only at the end of the race did players use dice to move into the faster lanes for the win.

I was at a lost at what to do until I received one suggestion that challenged my initial expectations on what was needed to achieve the controlling idea. The suggested change was to reverse the target mechanic, so that players only lose dice when they hit the target number.  That meant speeding up or slowing down allowed players to keep dice in their hand.  This had a massive effects on gameplay.  Cars were now swerving all over the place on the board, and with the reduced amount of lanes it meant that a potential spin-out was on every turn.  Players were not losing as many dice from their dice pool, letting me reduce by half the amount of dice each player needed to play the game.

Initially in my design, without any playtesting, I would not have entertained this idea.  I, incorrectly assumed that players needed the extra incentive to maintain a straight line through the course to better simulate strategic racing.  After I instituted the change and saw how it drastically alter the game for the better, I realized players were already rewarded to maintain a steady course by avoiding a spin-out or stopping during the race.  To create side to side motion created the risk needed to infuse the game with excitement throughout the race, I needed to make it harder to maintain a straight course.  I discovered that this change to the game better adheres to the goals of my controlling idea and is now a fixture of the current version of the game.    

Final Lessons on Controlling Idea and Playtesting 

Having a controlling idea at the onset of playtesting helps to better channel suggestions to make the game stronger.  I was able to take the feedback from the playtesters and discover flaws in my design that did not fit the theme or the desired experience of my current controlling idea and changed them to better fit the game.  

That said, the game still is a work in progress.  I still need to get more playtests of the game to figure out where else I can improve it.  If you wish to play test Underground Street Racing you can find the rules here, the print and play here, and the online feedback forms for the game here. I am grateful to any thoughts or pieces of advice you have.  

Game Design Philosophy: Retrospective

The Game Design Philosophy series charts a systematic method of designing a board game prior to releasing it for play testing.  Each lecture highlights a specific step in the process and explains why the step is important.  To clarify how to execute the steps, I develop the game Underground Street Racing to provide examples throughout the lecture on how to follow the process.  In the last post I release Underground Street Racing as a print and play.  Below is a link to each article in the series with a one sentence summary about its topic.

Articles:

The Controlling Idea 
The importance of developing a controlling idea that you will refer back to help guide your decisions as you develop your game. 

Avoiding the trap of Theme Vs. Mechanics - Most Read

How the controlling idea makes it easier to tweak your theme and mechanics in your board game design.

Translating the Controlling Idea Into Theme and Mechanics

A conceptual breakdown on how to turn your controlling idea into game actions that fit your theme.

Iterative Design

Improving your board game mechanics, theme, and controlling idea by making iterative designs of your board game.

Writing it Down - Has Link to Print and Play of Underground Street Racing

How the processes of writing down the rules of the game reveals potential problems that you can fix before play testing.


Bonus Article:


Playtesting the Controlling Idea


A follow up article to the Game Design Philosophy series that shows how to use the controlling idea to better utilize feedback from playtesting.

Game Design Philosophy: Writing it down

Many times when I ask to see the rules at play testing events I am told that I could, but much of it was thrown out in the first hour of the day.  I have no problem with this, it happens, what I don't understand is when people say 'it's an early design, and so fluid that I have nothing written down.'

People use the hard and fast rule of prototyping know to make it fast, make it cheap, and play it as soon, and as often as you can. When they use it to avoid writing down the rules they are missing an opportunity to vastly improve their game.  

Writing out the rules is not only a roadmap on how to build the game.  Writing out the rules forces you to systematically think through your game and allows you to identify ahead of time potential issues within the game.  How many components do I really need to get? How many maps should I build?  How does the turn order really work? How many terms and conditions need to be defined for new players?  Do I put players into situations that have no clarification, or ways to resolve potential scenarios?

Take Underground Street Racing, up until this point I had most of these ideas racing around in my head.  So I got it onto paper. I learned while writing down the rules how to handle the particulars of movement, crashes, stalls, and particularly endgame. Going through the process I started seeing how the game playes and the various game endings. I noticed that all of the cars could be stuck on the side of the road, and how someone could win from that situation. I realized it would be easy for a player to intentionally create this situation, and it did not reward the style of play I envisioned for the game.  So I rewrote my rules to inform players that its such a letdown when no one finishes the race that nobody actually wins the game.

After settling on my controlling idea, figuring out my xyz, going through the iterative design process, and writing out my rules I have a board game prototype ready for play testing.  In fact, if you want to playtest the game, click here for the rules, click here for the print and play, and click here to leave feedback on the game.  

Even with all of these elements behind me, there is still a long way to go in the development of this game. The path has just begun, not ended. The game will continue to change as people start to play.  

But, in terms of understanding my game design philosophy, this is a conclusion of this lecture series.  I have taught you my critical steps in preparing a board game to be ready for playtesting.

Game Design Philosophy: Iterative Design

Last Game Design Philosophy lecture I used the Controlling idea to craft the XYZ’s of Olympic Snowboard Cross.  Even though I have a core concept, the game is far from ready for prototyping, because I have yet to test the XYZ to make sure the game actually works.  

To put my ideas to the test I use the process of iterative design.  In iterative design new versions of the game are created one after the other. During the iterative design process I take the first stabs at balancing the game, making sure the game is not broken, discovering if the game is fun to play, and making sure the game flows from one moment to the next.  Problems arise and problems are solved with each version of the game.  

To give you a better idea on how the iterative design stage works, I am going to walk you through some of the iterative designs I have gone through with Olympic Snowboard Cross.

In my first iteration of Olympic Snowboard Cross I wanted to hew closely to the original theme. I decided the game should consist of several heats of elimination that lead to the final race to the podium. Each player was to control six racers from a country, and each racer would give a player five dice to make it through 7 jumps in a heat. This meant the more racers you had in a race the more dice you could roll and allocate to your team. The more races you are able to move on to a later heat the better chance you had of getting to the podium.

In this iteration the way to seed heats changed depending on the number of players.  I discovered that the seeding processes lengthened what should be a fast dice game.  Even worse, while I liked the idea of sharing dice among multiple racers, I learned the amount of dice needed was quite large and players had to spend most of their time competing bureaucratic tasks for setup instead of playing the game.

It was time to change the game. To do this I looked to solve the problems of the first iteration, while keeping the aspects I liked. Continuing the irritate process I began working on the second version of the game.

To guide this process I went back to my controlling idea, the experience of Snowboard Cross. What I have discovered is that my Controlling idea itself is too vague. What I care about is not replicating Snowboard Cross, but the racing experience of Snowboard Cross. An experience that dynamic, fast, has twisted turns of fate where first place can fall to last. Where people get too aggressive and wipeout taking others with them.  This narrowing focus of my controlling idea allows me to change the theme of the game to make the experience stronger.

I want to remove the bureaucratic elements of the Olympics, and focus on the race. To that end I changed the theme to underground street racing. Instead of multiple heats, the game will depict one race on one track. Each player will have three racers in the race and will position themselves around turns to come out ahead without crashing.

Having changed the theme and controlling idea I then turned to the mechanics. The main element in this game is throwing dice, and I wanted to strike a balance between the amount of dice needed vs. the number of turns the race contains. Because I liked a player having to split the dice between their racers I need a good amount of dice, but also feel short on dice so they will want to hit the target number and gain some back. After a few iterations I settle on 15 dice and seven turns. Obviously this is more art than science, and a number that will need to be heavily playtested, but I now feel that I’m in the right ballpark.  

This process continues as I get more detailed with the game, the changes will keep coming as problems are solved on how to handle things like movement and crashes. This is the essence of iterative design, nothing is sacred, and all changes are made to serve the Controlling idea, enhance and simplify the X,Y, and Z’s. It is true that all of these issues would have come out during playtesting, but in the last few hours I just saved myself what could be weeks worth of work building, playing, rebuilding, playing and rebuilding again. So now that this is done, there's one last step I need to take before I’m ready to unleash it upon the world. I need to put it on paper.

*Thank you to Michale Karg (@michaelkarg on twitter) for correcting/pointing out that I meant "iterative" and not "irritative" design.

Game Design Philosophy: Translating The Controlling Idea Into Theme and Mechanics

Game Design Philosophy: Translating The Controlling idea into theme and mechanics.

At the base of any game is a simple structure.*

Every turn players do X, so that they can sometimes do Y, which eventually achieves Z (usually winning the game).

examples can be simple.

Chess

X= move a piece

Y= Capture pieces

Z = Capture King

Or more complex with multiple X's and Y's.

Sid Meier's Civilization: the Board Game (2010)

X= Build Technology buildings -OR- Build culture buildings -OR- Raise Armies -OR- Seek gold

Y= Gain technology -OR- Move up the culture track -OR- Attack enemies -OR- Get gold

Z = Get 15 technology -OR- Reach the end of the culture track -OR- Take another persons capital -OR- gain 15 gold

When designing a game it's very important to remember that every time you give players a new X, you have to have a corresponding Y and Z. It's too easy for designers to create many X's and leave out the rest, or design an exiting Y with no way to build to a Z.

I will use this structure as a guidepost to turn the controlling idea of Snowboard cross into something resembling a game.

The X, Y, and Z of Snowboard Cross

This stage is the where the first thoughts start to jell. During this phase I am looking at the controlling idea, theme, mechanics, and seeing how to best to translate it into an X, Y, and Z.

The controlling idea I want to capture the most is the element of risk vs. reward in the jumps. I noticed that when a snowboarder lands a jump poorly they stall, when aggressively they gain speed but become unstable, when they land it perfectly they don't immediately move forward, but gain momentum into the next jump.

X= roll dice

The basic mechanic then is a dice rolling push your luck game, where players use and loose dice to make jumps, but need to last through several jumps.

Y= gain dice

Each jump will have a target number, and players will use the result of a number of dice to make the number. If they choose an amount below, the player will slow, if above they will speed up, but if they have the exact amount they get a die back. To make gaining dice meaningful the player does not start out with enough dice to complete all the jumps.

Z= pull ahead

If a player tries to conserve too many dice they will slow down and their racer will drop out, and if they are too aggressive and go too fast they will crash, potentially taking others out with them. A player will need to use timing and luck to stay in the race.

This is far from over, and next time I’ll go into the refinement of this idea.

*As with any creative formula it can be broken. But to break it you need to understand it, and know how breaking it will benefit what you are trying to achieve.

Game Design Philosophy: Avoiding the trap of Theme Vs. Mechanics

Do I like Ticket to Ride because it is a set collection game with an important timing element to remain efficient? Or do I like it because I am building an epic rail system over the Continental USA? It's both, and I can't see myself doing one without the other. And if one changes, then there is no way you can convince me I am playing the same game.

What we see in a good game is the seamless blending of theme and mechanics. Not all games do this, (Despite all its goodness, Dominion comes to mind) but once again what we are aiming for is a good game. Having a well executed game can be very good, having a controlling idea coming through will make that game even better.

But first we need to clear up the concept of 'Theme Vs. Mechanics.' Like the Yin and Yang symbol one is inexorably tied to the other. One should think about it as 'Theme and Mechanics.'

Theme is what you are doing in a game.

Mechanics is what you do in the game.*

What makes this formula difficult is that people have a tendency to approach it from one side or the other. They come up with a good mechanic or a twist on a current mechanic, but then are left scrambling to find an original theme. Or, like in my case many, (many, many, many) years ago, I came up with a very detailed world for a game, but could never place a mechanic with it (currently on the 5th attempt).

The way out of this trap is having the controlling idea bind the two elements together. The controlling idea is the nub that the designer will keep returning to see if the game they are building matches what they are attempting to create. 

The controlling idea still needs to be translated into theme and mechanics. Put another way, the experience of the Controlling idea needs to carry over, but everything else can change.

For example, the controlling idea for Post Position is for players to have the experience as a day trader on wall street. But look back at my description of the game. Players are members of the mob betting on a horse race. That's a long way away from trading stocks on wall street. But at it's core players are buying and selling (all with a lot of insider information) on items that have an un-programed fluctuating value in a trading floor environment. As long as the game contains those elements (and they still do) then I consider the resulting design to be true to the controlling idea and a success.

At any point during the design process as the theme and mechanics are developing side by side, the easiest way to keep those elements in line and working together is by referring back to the Controlling Idea. Next time we'll look at the translation process of the Controlling Idea into theme and mechanics.

*I am not discounting Abstract games. In an abstract game the theme and mechanics are exactly the same, what I am doing is what I do. I do not have the mindset to pull that off, but I applaud those who do.

Game Design Philosophy: The Controlling Idea

This is a series of articles on the philosophy of board game design, thinking about how to think about game design.

We all want to create good games. No-one goes into designing a game saying they want to create a poor game. A good game is defined as other people wanting to play, numerous times. Following that, we have to ask ourselves the following two questions.

What makes a good game? And how do I make a game good?

To answer that first question, I have spent the last several articles looking at classic games that are good. The elements called out in these articles are what I believe to be elements of good game design. Player choices with strategic impact, players interacting with each other in meaningful and unique ways, and allowing the players to play the game, opposed to the game playing the players. The elements may be simple but this question is more difficult because many times, for the payer the answer is simply, "if it's fun."

The second question is a lot more complicated because the act of creation can travel an infinite number of paths. We know the process of making a game. Build it, play test it, tweak it, then repeat until it is unable to be tweaked. This series of articles focuses on the process of creation that comes before the 'build it' phase of a game. What designers can do to make that first build of the game require fewer subsequent tweaks, and much closer to their vision then jumping right into the building phase.

The first element, the major element, around any board game is the controlling idea. This concept is taken from other forms of experiential mediums (books, movies, plays, video-games, ect). Each medium has it's own emphasis revolving around the controlling idea. For example, in a book there is a central thought that permeates throughout the book. In a piece of art, the artist is conveying something specific to the audience. A board game’s controlling idea is the experience that the designer wishes to impart onto the player.

When I think up a controlling idea, I think about an experience that would be fun if I could participate.  I distill what about that situation I find most enjoyable and work to impart onto the players this experience during gameplay.  This experience is the controlling idea I keep in mind while creating the game because that experience is the nub of my design.  I will repeatedly return to it during the creative process to shape the rest of the game.

When I look for inspiration for a board game, I look at the world around me and find that things that people do not normally get to do, but would be fun if they could. For example, during the Winter Olympics I watched the finals of an event called Snowboard Cross. Six snowboards race a course of jumps and obstacles against each other trying to be in the top three to move onto the next round, and eventually the podium. It's dynamic, fast,  and it has twisted turns of fate where first place can fall to last. Where people get too aggressive and wipeout taking others with them. You have to be good to win, but need to have some luck to come out on top.

Over the rest of this series I'll go into how I take that controlling idea of a Snowboard Cross experience, and move it into a prototype. Next time, the Yin and Yang of Theme and Mechanics.