Transcript Getting Started in Game Design Dr. Lewis Pulsipher Copyright 2008 Lewis Pulsipher Who am I  Designed my own games while a teenager  Began playing.

Getting Started in
Game Design
Dr. Lewis
Pulsipher
Copyright 2008 Lewis Pulsipher
Who am I
 Designed my own games while a teenager
 Began playing commercial wargames in 1963
 Played the original Atari 2600 and have
played some PC games heavily, but rarely
play any video games these days; never
owned a game console
 My favorite game is “the game design game”
November 7, 2015
Who am I
 Designer of six commercially-published board
wargames (most recently November ‘08),
more to come
 Active designer of board and card games
(playtesters solicited!)
 My main job is teaching video game design
and development in college
 My book “Get it Done: Designing Games from
Start to Finish” is in draft, “on hold” at
Cengage (their game design books aren’t
selling well enough!)
November 7, 2015
Reality Check
 Almost no one makes a living designing
games
 Most who do, work for a game company, not
freelance
 You probably could spend the same time as
profitably by picking up bottles and cans for
deposits and recycling!
 Most publishers don’t make a lot, either—and
it’s risky
 Many publishers exist largely to self-publish
their own games
November 7, 2015
Reality Check 2
 So if you design games, do it because you
like to, or because you must, not because you
want to make money
– Alan R. Moon, two German “Games of the Year”,
would have had to get part-time job if not for
Ticket to Ride winning
 Recognize that your “great idea” is probably
not that great, not that original, and not that
interesting to other people
 Finally, it’s extra-hard to get into video game
design
November 7, 2015
OK, How much do you make?
 In my experience, royalties are a percentage
of the publisher’s actual revenue
– 5% is most common, range 4-8%
 Publisher sells to distributor at 40% of list
price or less; distributor sells to retailer for
10% more
 Internet sales are becoming significant—then
publisher makes 100%
 Shipping costs may be subtracted from
revenue
November 7, 2015
Royalty example
 $40 list game, 5% of $16 = 80 cents
 Per 1,000 copies, $800
 $20 game, $400 per thousand
 Wargame typical print run is 2,000
 “Euro” games might go up to 10,000
 Most games sell poorly after first six months,
most are not reprinted
 German “Game of the Year” might sell
250,000 or more, after award
November 7, 2015
What about the biggies?
 In general, the really big companies have
staff to design their games
 Many will not even accept outside
submissions
 Virtually all will require you sign a statement
relieving them of all liabilities
 At least one only works through agents
 In USA, Hasbro owns all the traditional
boardgame publishers such as Milton Bradley,
Parker Brothers, Avalon Hill
November 7, 2015
Do I need an agent?
 Whatever for?
 Yet, I did for my first game back in the 70s,
in England
– Unfamiliarity
– I could meet and talk with him locally (London)
 Shady “agents” and “evaluators” abound
– Don’t ever get an agent who wants a fee “up
front”
– “Evaluators”—who are they, what to they know?
Nothing special—if anything at all.
November 7, 2015
Contracts
 Not enough money to make a lawyer worthwhile
– And how many lawyers have a clue about game contracts?
 Everything is negotiable
– But the ultimate strength in negotiation is the ability to
“walk away” if you don’t like it
– You probably want publication more than the publisher
needs your game
 An advance against royalties is possible but not
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standard
If it isn’t clear, have it changed or deleted
What counts is what’s written, not any oral promises!
Contracts exist to determine what happens when
things are not going well
Obligatory declaration: “I am not a lawyer”
November 7, 2015
What to include in contract:
 Publication: if the game is not published
within X time (12-18 months?), it reverts to
designer
 Reversion: X time after a game is no longer in
print (12-18 months?), rights revert to
designer
 Ancillary/derivatives: who gets what if there
is a computer version, T-shirts, other nongame items
 Author’s right to use the game system to
create other games not destined for same
publisher
 Digital game rights
November 7, 2015
Intellectual Property Rights
 Ideas are not important, and not valued!
– Ideas are a dime a dozen: execution is what counts
 Copyright now inherent
– Forget that “mail to myself” idea
– Registered copyright makes lawsuits much easier to pursue
and more remunerative
 Ideas cannot be protected, only expression of an idea
– George Harrison was successfully sued for the tune of “My
Sweet Love” being derived from “He’s so Fine”
– But this cannot happen in games, because ideas are
specifically not protected by law
– No, I don’t know why
November 7, 2015
Licensed Properties
 Tie-ins with movies, comics, books,
etc.?
– Much too expensive
 Often not even worth the IP owner’s
time to do the processing for a
boardgame—there’s not enough money
to bother with it
 Those who do get licenses have track
records (FantasyFlightGames, e.g.)
November 7, 2015
Designing: Practice and get
others to evaluate
 You’re unlikely to be very good when you start
designing
– John Creasey (The Toff, mysteries) rejected 700+ times;
then published 600+ novels!
– Brandon Sanderson (now finishing Wheel of Time) wrote 12
novels before selling one, doesn’t appear to expect to sell
the others
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So you need to practice!
Diplomacy variants and D&D material in my case
Post such things on your or other Web sites
Analogy:
– Jerry Pournelle (SF writer) says be willing to throw away
your first million words (about ten novels) on the road to
becoming successful SF writer
– Similarly, be willing to make lots of games/mods that don’t
make any money on the way to making (some) money as a
game designer
November 7, 2015
The idea is not the game
 Novices tend to think the idea is the
important thing
– Ideas are “a dime a dozen”. It’s the execution,
the creation of a playable game, that’s important
 The “pyramid” of game design:
– Lots of people get ideas
– Fewer try to go from general idea to a specific
game idea
– Fewer yet try to produce a prototype
– Fewer yet produce a decently playable prototype
– Very few produce a complete game
– And very, very few produce a good complete
game
November 7, 2015
Submitting Games
 Read the publisher’s requirements
– Some require you to sign a form and seal it in an
envelope
– Some won’t accept unsolicited proposals at all—
this is common
 Expect it to take a long time
 Expect to get rejected
– May have nothing to do with how good your game
is
– Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novel rejected many
times!
 Expect publication to take a long time--
publishers schedule 12-18 months ahead
November 7, 2015
Boardgame Developers
Many publishers will assign a developer to
modify your game
You don’t control your own game!
– My experiences –see
http://www.pulsipher.net/gamedesign/deve
lopers.htm
– See also
http://www.pulsipher.net/gamedesign/desi
gningvsdevelopment.htm
– Some publishers are different (e.g. GMT)
November 7, 2015
Two forms of game design
 Video games and non-video games
 Scale is different
– “big time” video games are produced by
dozens of people, cost millions of dollars
– “big time” non-video games produced by a
few people with budgets in the thousands
• Yet a few sell more than a million copies
November 7, 2015
Prototypes—”testing is sovereign”
 To best improve a game, you must have a playable prototype
– Firaxis’ Sid Meier-Civilization series, Pirates
– The sooner Firaxis got a playable version of Civ 4, the more they
could learn
– A playable prototype includes “artwork” or physical components,
and rules or programming
 The rules for a non-video game are the equivalent of the
programming of a video game
– Programming must be precise and is very time consuming (game
engines may help)
– A playable set of rules can be much less precise, relying on the
mind(s) of the designer(s), and notes
 It’s also much easier to change the non-video prototype to test
different approaches
 It’s much easier to produce the physical prototype, than to
create the artwork for a video game
November 7, 2015
Learning to design
 So we can have a playable, testable
non-video game much more quickly
than a computer game of similar scope
or subject
 Consequently, it’s much easier to learn
game design with physical games than
with video games!
– Kevin O’Gorman’s concurrence
November 7, 2015
Art vs. Science
 As in many other creative endeavors, there
are two ways of approach
– These are often called Romantic and Classical, or
Dionysian and Apollonian
 Or: art and science
– Some people design games “from the gut”
– Others like to use system, organization, and
(when possible) calculation
 Mine is the “scientific” approach; and that is
more likely to help new designers
– Game design is 10% art and 90% science
November 7, 2015
Who is the audience?
 A game must have an audience
– What are the game-playing preferences of
that audience
– Short or long?
– Chance or little chance?
– Lots of story or little story?
– “Ruthless” or “nice”?
– Simple or complex?
 There is no “perfect” game
November 7, 2015
Genre
 Video games are more limited by genre
than non-video games
 Most video games and many others fall
into a clear genre category
 Each genre has characteristics that
come to be “expected” by the consumer
 Much easier to market a video game
with a clear genre
November 7, 2015
Constraints
 Limits lead to a conclusion:
– Characteristics of the audience (target
market)
• “People don’t do math any more”
– Genre limitations
– Production-imposed limitations
• “Board cannot be larger than X by Y”
– Self-imposed limitations
• “I want a one-hour trading game”
November 7, 2015
Publisher-imposed limits
 Some are publisher preference, some
are market-dictated
 For example: many publishers want
nothing that requires written records in
a game (FFG Britannia example)
 Another example: consumers strongly
prefer strong graphics, whether in a
video or a non-video game
November 7, 2015
Self-imposed limits
 You have your own preferences
– Don’t design a game you dislike to play yourself
– If you dislike it, why should anyone else like it?
– But don’t design a game “just like you like to play”—it may
already be out there, right?
– “Pro” designers will design games other people like, that
they’re not so thrilled about themselves
 Limits/constraints improve and focus the creative
process
– Great art and music is much more commonly produced in
eras of constraints, rather than eras without constraints
 Example of a limit: I want to produce a two-player
game that lasts no more than 30 minutes
November 7, 2015
Do it!
 Too many people like to think about
designing so much, they never actually
do it
 Until you have a playable prototype,
you have nothing
– (Which is what makes video game design
so difficult)
– It doesn’t have to be beautiful, just usable
November 7, 2015
Design vs. “development”
 “Development” has two meanings
– In video games, it means writing the
software
– In non-video, development (often by a
person other than the designer) sets the
finishing touches on a game, but may
include significant changes
– Development takes longer than design, in
either case
November 7, 2015
The designer’s game vs. the
game that’s published
 Video games are often overseen by the
publisher, who is paying the bills; so it
is modified to suit as it is developed
 Non-video games are often unseen by
the publisher until “done”; some
publishers then modify them, often
heavily
November 7, 2015
Self Publishing
 Do you want to design, or do you want to be
a businessperson?
 But often it’s the only way your game will be
published
 Most self-publishers will lose money, NOT
counting the time they spend!
 Virtually all lose money if you count the time
they put into the business
 See http://www.costik.com/selfpub.html
 Advice on many forums listed in “Resources”
November 7, 2015
Brief “What’s Important” on the
business side of game design
 Most people in the business are honest
and try to do good
– It’s too small a business to get tricky, word
gets around
 It really is a small business, and
mistakes are common
 Barring long apprenticeship and great
good luck, you won’t make a living at it
November 7, 2015
A Summary
 Don't think you're going to make a lot of money. Very likely, you'll
spend a great deal of time for little return. Non-electronic
gaming is "small potatoes", not a big source of money. "How do you
make a small fortune in the game industry? Start with a big fortune."
 Publishers want games, not ideas. Ideas are cheap, a dime a
dozen; recognize that your "great idea" is not that great, not that
original, not that interesting to others. That's reality. (How often do
we get a really extraordinary new idea? D&D, Magic:the Gathering,
maybe Mage Knight?)
 You have to DO something to give yourself some credibility,
before publishers are likely to look at your game. If you're a complete
unknown, why would publishers deal with you?
–
–
–
–
–
Volunteer at cons
Write articles
Make variants/mods and publish them
have a decent Web site
GM at conventions
 Sorry, folks, while you're really important to yourself and your family,
you're nobody to any publisher.
November 7, 2015
Conclusion of Summary

Don't design games for yourself, design for others. They’re the ones
who must enjoy it, your enjoyment in playing is unimportant! But don’t design
something you expect you’ll dislike.
–
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If you're only working on one game, or a few, you're not likely to end up with a good
one, AND you identify yourself as a dilettante, an amateur. Pros are working on many,
many games.
Patience is a virtue. Britannia existed in fully playable form in 1980. It was
first published in 1986. In 2008, one publisher told me, "it's a good thing you're
immortal, because it's going to take a long time" to evaluate and publish one of
my games. I was offered a contract more than a year later.
So if you're the "instant gratification" type, recognize your instant gratification
will be in seeing people play your prototype, not in the published game.
Self-publishing is practical, if you don't mind losing a lot of money.
Moreover, at some point you become a publisher/marketer, not a designer.
What do you want to do?
Playtesting is sovereign. You have to playtest your game until you're sick of
looking at it, until you want to throw the damn thing away. Then maybe you'll
have something. But you have to be willing to change the game again and
again: listen to the playtesters, watch how they react, recognize your game
isn’t perfect and won’t be even when (if) it’s published.
When your game is rejected, there’s a good chance the rejection had nothing to
do with the game’s quality. Be persistent.
November 7, 2015
Resources about the business
 Game Inventor’s Guidebook by Brian
Tinsman
 “All about publishing” thread on
ConsimWorld
 Lots of books about video game
publishing
 Come to my seminar on Saturday at 3
about process of game design
November 7, 2015
Questions?