The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
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The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
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Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#2Interesting read and approach, though you'd have to be pretty committed to pursue it in the 10 stage.
It's interesting that he talks about software, I've thought a couple of times if it's possible to produce generic board game design software but I'm still not sure.
Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#3At first I was thinking that the methodology described appears to be waterfall approach to innovation with bing bang brainstorming and selection.
All 3 games I have seen are quite innovative pieces which took the author years to implement and perfect. The games are quite impressive, and are equivalent to innovating "chess".
On the other side one can argue, an incremental evolutionary approach to innovative games, or an agile approach would fit the current times, better, due to the rapid rate platforms maturing and disappearing. For example, I could take "chess", or mahjong and create variations to it in quick iterations with a focus on process.
Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#4I assumed this was about video game design, and it took me a minute to catch on that it was board games.
Phase two of this approach, developing 10 prototypes over the course of 6 to 12 months, sounds incredibly labor intensive. Perhaps prototyping board games is easier than prototyping video games. But this seems like it would be a difficult phase to get through, either as a side project, or doing it commercially full time.
Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#5At first I was thinking that the methodology described appears to be waterfall approach to innovation with bing bang brainstorming and selection. All 3 games I have seen are quite innovative pieces which took the author years to implement and perfect. The games are quite impressive, and are equivalent to innovating "chess". On the other side one can argue, an incremental evolutionary approach to innovative games, or…
Man, if only we could come up with a good "fun to play" metric for board games, I'd love to play a board game that were produced by a genetic algorithm.
Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#6At first I was thinking that the methodology described appears to be waterfall approach to innovation with bing bang brainstorming and selection. All 3 games I have seen are quite innovative pieces which took the author years to implement and perfect. The games are quite impressive, and are equivalent to innovating "chess". On the other side one can argue, an incremental evolutionary approach to innovative games, or…
Just because a particular approach can be characterized as waterfall-esque doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, just as a agile approach isn't necessarily good. Part of what makes chess great is the fact that it has remained the same for ages, and evolution has come through the way the game is played and not through the game itself.
Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#7This has some relation to the "Disney Method" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_method) where one delays self-criticism until after one has engineered out the problem, and delays engineering things out until one has dreamed up ideas. Of course the Disney Method is cyclical, and requires returning to the dreaming-up state and on from there.
This also reminds me of how 35mm street/photojournalists work (see, for example, Garry Winogrand, or Josef Koudelka, or Robert Frank). One makes tens of thousands of images, culls them down via work prints to hundreds, then choose a few dozen to print well as the final work. The final images appear inevitable, though it's unclear if there was something magical in the moment of the photography, or the culling process is the secret. See http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/robert-frank/the-... for an example of Robert Frank's contact sheets and how he homed/honed in on an image.
EDIT/ADDITION: A fiction writer I met teaches her students to make three passes at their work. As I recall, she described the first being for ideas, the second for intentions, the third is to make it read as inevitable.
Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#8I assumed this was about video game design, and it took me a minute to catch on that it was board games. Phase two of this approach, developing 10 prototypes over the course of 6 to 12 months, sounds incredibly labor intensive. Perhaps prototyping board games is easier than prototyping video games. But this seems like it would be a difficult phase to get through, either as a side project, or doing it commercially ful…
Most if not all game design methods are universal and not restricted to medium. His first two steps are easy to do in a notebook and the 3rd step is also not difficult to accomplish using Unity, Game Maker, or really any engine like those where pushing out a prototype becomes tedious. However in step 3 where he says "playtest+polish it till I’m sure I can’t improve it" for video games this doesn't mean graphically but mechanically which is very doable.
Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#9At first I was thinking that the methodology described appears to be waterfall approach to innovation with bing bang brainstorming and selection. All 3 games I have seen are quite innovative pieces which took the author years to implement and perfect. The games are quite impressive, and are equivalent to innovating "chess". On the other side one can argue, an incremental evolutionary approach to innovative games, or…
Man, if only we could come up with a good "fun to play" metric for board games, I'd love to play a board game that were produced by a genetic algorithm.
You should probably check out the "Evolutionary Game Design" book, which does exactly that. The resulting game, Yavalath, was actually published and is indeed quite nice.
Re: The 100:10:1 method – the heart of my game design process
#10For the people talking about automated or evolutionary design of board games, this has indeed been tried. The most successful one I know about is Ludi¹) which produced the game Yavalath²), which I think is a pretty darn good game.