Post #4 – Why Community is So Important

There’s an expression that says “creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum“. I don’t know who said it and that might not be the exact quote but it puts across the idea I want to discuss today. Last week I wrote about play testing and how important it is and how it takes a group of people to do it correctly. Well, the entire design process also takes many hands and people wearing many hats.

There are millions of ideas for games. I have a file that has over 60 ideas for different games and that doesn’t include any that we’ve actually put into the WIP pile. Ideas are cheap, really easy to come up with. The difficult part is getting a game from idea to something that people can actually play and enjoy.

If you started with an idea, along the way there was one or more designers, probably a developer (Think of a developer as an editor for games), a graphic design artist who did the logo the lettering, etc. and someone who did the artwork. That’s a lot of people, and we haven’t even gotten into the bulk of the community.
I have found the game design community to be very supportive and helpful. It’s rare when I throw a question out onto one of the discord channels I subscribe to that I don’t get an answer or at least headed in the right direction by somebody. We are all trying to accomplish the same thing, design games that people love and hope it’s the next Pandemic, Catan or Ticket to Ride. Even so, there really isn’t an air of competition, more like an air of cooperation and assistance. “A win for one is a win for all” and “a rising tide raises all boats”. Okay, maybe those sayings are alluding to other things but the sentiment still rings true. I’ve been involved in a couple of other creative enterprises and met people online and a few in person and this seems to be the case regardless of what the hobby or activity turns out to be.

As much as I enjoy having people help me solve my problems, I also get a great deal of satisfaction from helping other people solve their problems. A few months back a Game Designer I’ve never met except in Discord made a comment that she was having difficulty coming up with icons for a PNP she was making. I asked her what the game was about and what she was looking for, she gave me her information and in less than an hour I had four icons that were color coordinated but also color blind friendly that at the time more or less fit what she was looking for. For me, I can do things like that in my sleep all day long. As long as I can make pictures with a computer I’m fine, just don’t ask me to draw anything with a pencil. And the sense of satisfaction was nearly the same as if I was designing them for my own game.

There are those few people who don’t seem to understand the concept of community. They’re all about pitching and selling which I understand it’s part of the process but it can put people off really fast if you are overbearing or obnoxious about it. One of the Discord channels I subscribe to is for The Game Crafter, a great place for getting prototypes made and for selling finished games. They have a specific channel for people to promote their projects. Some people will splatter their information on all the other channels as well and after a while everyone gets sick of seeing anything that has to do with that person‘s game. If you’ve done your homework and you’ve developed a good game and you put it on someplace like The Game Crafter store (or Kickstarter), people will go and buy it and if it’s a good game they’ll tell other people about it. All the spam in the world is not going to promote your game sales, actually, it accomplishes exactly the opposite. This is one of the many advantages of developing your “community”.

Gary Vaynerchuk has a book called “Jab, Jab, Jab Right Hook” that discusses this process very well. The book is aimed more at content creators and general marketers but it certainly applies to what we do as Game Designer‘s. He says you give, you give content, you give information, and when you’ve given, and given and given then you go for the promotion and the sale, or, you may get someone to help you with part of your game that you’re finding to be a challenge. If you follow the axiom, “give more than you take“ you’ll probably find the community highly supportive on both the assistance side and the sales side for your game. One caveat, if you are doing any of this with impure motives, like “all I have to do is say nice things and everyone will buy my game” then you are in for a big let down. First of all, most people can smell a con a mile away (no, not GenCon, that’s just their snack bar) and secondly, if you are not motivated by a real desire and passion to design and develop games, you won’t be able to keep up the pretense for long. Game design is a long and winding road (just ask John and Paul) that rarely has a big pot of gold at the end. If you aren’t following a creative passion, burnout will take its toll and you’ll be a victim of SOS (shiny object syndrome… yes, game designers are prone to that but at least it’s all game related… or new minis… or…. or).

So be honest. If game design is a casual hobby that you share with your friends (OL or IRL) and that brings you joy, awesome. No one says you have be the next Jamey Stegmaier (oh, but grant me one wish, oh blue genie!). Just do the things that make you happy. Now, if on the other hand, you really want to make this a paying gig, then you’re going to have to pay some hefty dues. Design a game, get it on the table and fail as fast as you can. This sounds terrible but no one ever put out a prototype that checked all the boxes and didn’t need any polishing. And be ready to chuck the whole thing in the trash when it doesn’t work. I still have the first game I designed, a whole six or seven months ago. It’s part dungeon crawler/RPG, escape room puzzle and SOOOOOO complicated the rule book would probably be thirty or forty pages long. I have all the pieces and the board folded up in my closet. I’m going to go back to it now that I’ve learned a little about game design and see if I can’t chop like 75% of it. And one the of reasons I know I need to do this is looking at other peoples’ games and seeing the critiques. I’d like to say I play a lot of games but I don’t, that’s just how it is.

One last thing, I have to give a huge shoutout to Beth at Weird Giraffe Games (you can find her on their discord channel). I sent her and her partner a demo copy of One Letter Better and she sent back a LOOOOOOOONG feedback report. Way above and beyond the call of duty. There were some great points that we really need to address and some points that needed to be clarified (and may still be rewritten). I can’t tell you how invaluable this sort of feedback is, and from someone who has a lot of experience in the gaming community. You can’t buy that kind of support, and if you did, you would pay a big bunch of bucks. This is how it works, we all help each other and we all win because, let’s face it, there will NEVER be enough games in the world.

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