RESOURCES, LINKS

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Gary invites us: "If you have an awesome, couldn’t have made it without book, website, or blog post it here for others to enjoy! I want to pick up a few game design books and I’m sure that others will enjoy this as well. "

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Gary adds his links:

Awesome article on creating a game design company and the processes involved [this link received several enthusiastic seconds]
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2428208#2428208

Blog: one of the minds behind Tasty Minstrel
http://michaelmindes.com/

Blog: This particular article was about self-balancing mechanics
http://www.crankcrankrevolution.com/2010/11/art-of-self-balancing-b...

Big list of links
http://beach.silcom.com/~tomjolly/design2.htm

My adds:

Rules of Play by Katie Salen
Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell (and the handy card deck)
Game Design Workshop by Tracey Fullerton
Game Inventor’s Guidebook by Brian Tinsman (this one, unlike the above, is specific to board games and includes info about selling games–be sure it’s the 2008 edition). Nerman comments: "It’s basically a brief overview of the game invention from designing to publishing. There’s a lot of inside information about the industry. He doesn’t get into design principles very deeply; the book’s really not about design. He also discusses the major publishers and talks about how various famous games got that way, which is fun."

MIT’s Gambit has a huge collection of online videos about game design, http://gambit.mit.edu/ a few relate to board games

I’m waiting for a new edition of The Toy and Game Inventor’s Handbook by Levy

I just read Chris Crawford’s game design guide from the early 1980s, and found it fascinating. http://library.vancouver.wsu.edu/art-computer-game-design Many of the ideas and approaches still make sense, and the limitations and challenges are a good measure of how far this industry and the technology have come.

And here’s Crawford's website with lots more: http://www.erasmatazz.com/

Great Courses DVD (24 lectures): Games People Play by Prof. Stevens. As a self-taught game designer, I found this overview of game theory to be invaluable–not too much math, a good introduction to the lingo, enough real-world examples to make it concrete. Though it doesn’t relate to board games directly and is more pointed toward the biz community, it has sparked a number of game ideas (both serious games and fun games). I’ve also had a few “aha” moments–games I’ve played that I now understand much better.

More than 250 pages of history, info on board games and game design from Bruce Whitehall, industry veteran: http://thebiggamehunter.com/

Why Monopoly sucks, a nice piece on this topic by Scott Nicholson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnXloqRfdA

And there's a Jesse Fuchs two-part video on this topic, with a lot of history: http://vimeo.com/23271705

Here’s a nice piece about board game design for video game designers. http://gamasutra.com/blogs/GlenCooney/20120229/163172/Mage_Knight__...

I’ve heard J Schell speak a couple of times, and he’s super impressive. You can check out some of the projects where he learned his stuff—the ETC at Carnegie Mellon (Drew Davidson teaches there). http://www.etc.cmu.edu/site/projects/ Drew also publishes ”well-played” ebooks of game analysis (three of them available to date)—many of them free. (Lulu, I think.)

Nerman adds:

The book Whack On the Side of the Head by Roger von Oeche is pretty good. [There's also a sequel and a handy card deck—good for sparking ideas and getting unstuck.]

The Magic the Gathering website puts up one article on Magic design and one on development every week, and has been doing so for something like 10 years! I have learned so much from those articles. Unfortunately, most of them will be difficult to understand if you don’t play the game.

Here’s an article by one of the Magic: The Gathering big wigs. You’ll understand it better if you play Magic, but I don’t think it’s entirely necessary.
http://wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/184

It references flow and fiero, and the author says his two favourite books on game design are Reality is Broken and Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design.

Liz adds:

I had a couple books throughout my senior thesis that approached game design and theory from unique perspectives, here are some examples:

Mary Flangan’s Critical Play
Any book covering Fluxus Art games is pretty fascinating.

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Going Cardboard: A Board Game Documentary is an indie, Kickstarted film that has just released: http://boardgamedoc.blogspot.com/2012/02/going-cardboard-has-launch... Has anyone seen it?

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Tim Rodrigquez ("Ghost Pirates," "Feed the Birds") has a podcast: it’s at http://www.dicefoodlodging.com and also available on iTunes. Dice, Food, Lodging.

Scott Nicholson has a video board game review show and blog: http://www.boardgameswithscott.com/ Board Games with Scott.

Any other podcasts or shows to recommend?

And, here's a board game camp in England: http://gamecamp.org.uk/ What fun!

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

To keep up on industry news and trends in the game and toy business, here's a helpful newsletter chock full of press releases and links: http://www.thebloomreport.com/frameset_report.html The Bloom Report.

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Boardgames & Baking blog: http://boardgamesandbaking.blogspot.com/search/label/boardgame

Voyta really is a baker, too. The board game section is mainly game play reviews and reports on Kickstarter games—starting 2011.

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Double Exposure's forum has an active board game discussion: Board Game Forum

In related news, Metatopia (Nov 2-4 in 2012) is the game designer's gathering in Morristown NJ, where designers can playtest prototypes and get feedback from professionals.

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Wil Wheaton hosts the Tabletop video show about board gamesm on YouTube.

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Legendary board game designer Reiner Knizia talks about how he made Whoosit? game (Ravensburger) at PRACTICE: GAME DESIGN IN DETAIL (2011) Video There are also other videos from this conference at this link. Nov 9-11, 2012 is the next one (I'm going).

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Board game review by "Josh" at this blog site.

[Lorraine Hopping Egan]

Clive Lovett has started a board game community on G+. It's open to all and you can join here.