Take Turns Giving Feedback

Different groups and designers have different norms for handling feedback.  Some designers prefer written notes, while others just want to see and experience their games.

Most groups, however, have some kind of post-play feedback session, where playtesters are asked to verbally share their thoughts with the designer.

If you’re part of one of those groups, I’m here to present the case for why you should adopt a system in which every playtester gets to take a turn giving their feedback.

Online Groups

If your group is online and you do verbal feedback, giving each playtester a turn to speak is basically a requirement.  With the audio-only nature of most online feedback sessions, it’s difficult to tell when someone is actually finished speaking, and it’s impossible to see who might want to jump in and speak next.  Without an order to your feedback, people will get interrupted, they will be talked over, and someone will feel unwelcomed and unvalued. 

Online groups, like Heavyweight Championship Playtesting, build turn-taking into their playtesting guidelines, and the feedback is a lot smoother because of it

Even with the advantage of subtle language cues, there are still several reasons that in-person playtesting groups should try this out as well.

Counterbalancing the “Big” Personalities

Stock photo from Unsplash

In the standard, free-for-all style discussions that most feedback sessions are, the most extroverted personalities will inevitably dominate.  Having people go around the table to take turns will make sure that everyone at the table is being heard.

Perhaps more importantly, this will establish a group culture that everyone at the table is valued, respected, and that their opinion matters.  Groups with these kinds of values inevitably foster a more safe environment where creativity can thrive, people can take risks, and the overall work improves.

You Want Everyone’s Feedback

As a designer, it would be a shame to miss out on some really great feedback just because someone was getting interrupted, or didn’t feel comfortable jumping into a group discussion.  You just had 4 people playtest your game, why would you only want to hear from 75 or 50% of them?  That’s a horrible return on the investment of time that everyone just put into playing your game!

Over the course of many plays, these numbers can add up.  If your environment shuts down a certain type of playtester, but they had actually spotted a fatal flaw in your game, missing out on that information could cost you time, opportunity, and even money.

Order Is Always More Efficient Than Chaos

Stock photo from Unsplash

Warm fuzzy feelings about welcoming people aside, taking turns during feedback will shave time off of your playtesting sessions, ultimately allowing you to test more games.

General feedback discussions, where everyone is just riffing off of each other and breaking down aspects of the game, can take a loooong time, especially when there is disagreement among the players and/or people are throwing ideas around.  

When taking turns though, people don’t usually talk for more than a few minutes each.  People tend not to repeat others so much other than to acknowledge that they agree or disagree with some previous feedback, and then present their own notes.  

Now, there may be times where you’d have to limit one player’s feedback (perhaps they are going into detail about the 5 pages of notes they’ve written out), but for the most part when handled this way, there seems to be a pretty strong incentive to present your feedback fairly quickly in order to give other people the chance to speak.

But I Want To Respond!

Cool! This is another great reason to have a notebook with you during playtests so you can write down your thoughts and get back to them when it’s your turn to give feedback.

Also, after everyone has had a chance to give their initial feedback, there’s no reason that some things can’t be discussed in a more informal way by the entire group afterwards. I’m just saying that it’s important to give everyone that initial chance to get their thoughts out, otherwise you risk shutting them down entirely.

The Designer’s Responsibility

Ultimately, even if a group doesn’t take turns giving feedback across the board, designer run the show during their playtests, and should feel empowered to run their feedback sessions in such a manner if they want to.  

It can say a lot to the players at your table if you being feedback with something like, “it’s really important for me to hear from all of you, so I’d like to take turns giving feedback.”  I know that I would feel really welcomed in an environment like that.

The Oregon Effect: Parallel Thinking in Game Design

Have you ever had an idea for a board game, maybe even one you’ve made a prototype for, and then a few months (or even years) later, you find another game that’s exactly like what you created?  

Congrats, you’ve just fell victim to what I call The Oregon Effect!

The Oregon Effect: “There is always someone else in the world that is working on the exact same idea you are.” 

I started calling this The Oregon Effect because I’m from Rhode Island (on the East Coast of the United States), and in my mind this imaginary adversary lived on the other side of the country.  It was my way of acknowledging the inevitability of parallel thinking, and the need to work faster on my ideas.

Once you encounter evidence of The Oregon Effect in real life, it can be emotionally devastating! I had this happen to me when I was pitching one of my prototypes at PAX Unplugged in 2019. In my game, Hidden Masters, players control secret societies that are manipulating several different nations at war with each other, hoping to push a nation to victory without being too obvious about who they are backing.  On the second day of that convention, I was told by one publisher that I should go check out A War of Whispers, which had just been released.  While my game played very differently from that one, there was no denying that we had near-identical elevator pitches.  I was crushed.  Here I was standing with my cardboard prototype, and there they were with a slick, funded, and produced game. A game that thousands of convention-goers were enjoying!

The name and box art for this game are just perfect.

It probably took me the rest of the weekend to emotionally recover. Mostly, I was mad at myself for not moving faster with my prototype (I had been testing it for the last 2 years).   Once I got over the fact that they basically took the perfect name for that style of game, I was able to refocus.  I played a demo of A War of Whispers and was sure that our games offered unique experiences.  In the vast board game world, there would be room for both.  Maybe my game would require a retheme, but it could definitely get out there. 

A player board for Hidden Masters.

So I kept pitching!  A couple of publishers asked for a copy to review.  Unfortunately, they all ended up passing on it, but it gave me hope that there was at least some interest.

This was the most egregious time that this happened to me, but there are other ways to experience The Oregon Effect.  Sometimes you see someone posting about a game in an online forum, and your heart sinks as you see the similarities start to add up.  Sometimes you go to a playtesting group and someone else has a very similar prototype to the one you brought. 

An early prototype of Hidden Masters from a few years ago.

I try to remember there are both an infinite and finite number of board game ideas.  Maybe there are only so many “big picture” ideas, where games fall into the same category or have the same basic mechanism.  But there are a lot of “little picture” parts to each game that makes it different.  Just look at deckbuilding games.  They’re all basically Dominion, but they are also not Dominion.

For me, the usefulness in thinking about The Oregon Effect is in the motivation.  Maybe I’ll put in an extra hour today so that my “amazing, unique idea” can get out in front of people before someone else does it.   It’s just one more reason to put together a prototype as quickly as possible, to share your ideas with others, and to pitch, pitch, pitch.

Just go!  Someone in Oregon already is.

Giving Good Playtesting Feedback

It’s an unfortunate fact that creators can never truly experience their own works.  Sure, we can read our own writing, listen to our own songs, watch our own films, and even play our own games.  But that experience will always be different, tainted by proximity, self-doubt, emotional resonance, etc.

To find out what it’s like to play their games, designers must turn to playtesters, and as a playtester, the best feedback you can give about a game is to relay your honest, personal experience of playing their game. 

I’m sure Mr. Quackers and I had very different experiences reading this book than Steinbeck did.

Make It About Yourself

But isn’t great feedback about the game?  Well, yes.  Sort of.

I prefer to think of feedback as giving a report on how I felt throughout the game session.  Where was I frustrated, where was I engaged, where did I feel empowered by decisions, and where did I feel bored.  What were my highs and lows, and where was I having fun (or not).  

It’s about moments and mechanics in the game that elicited certain responses in me.  Yes, it’s about the game, but it’s mostly about how I experienced it.  

Remember, designers are primarily trying to create experiences.  By filtering your feedback through yourself, the designer can ascertain if their game is doing what they wanted it to do (regardless of if you enjoyed it or not).

My feedback on this sidewalk from Battle Mountain, NV: I was frustrated and felt like I was wasting my time following this winding path. Eventually I became so frustrated that I abandoned the sidewalk and started walking down the breakdown lane. Was that your intended experience?

This Is Good For You Too

The better you get at identifying how elements of a game are making you feel, the better you’ll be able to implement mechanics into your own designs to elicit the feelings and experiences that you want your players to have.  In essence, you’ll be able to shortcut a lot of the design process and choose the right mechanics for your game (or at least be able to problem-solve these issues more efficiently).  

I also think there’s something to be said for the value of introspection in all aspects of life.  Identifying your feelings and why you’re having them can help you avoid unpleasant situations, make healthy choices, and focus on creating a fulfilling path through life.

Kind, Yet Critical

This style of feedback strikes a good balance between the necessity to be critical about games, while also being kind to the designer and respectful of their feelings.  None of this feedback focuses on what was “wrong” with the game, just in how you experienced parts of it.  Sometimes that experience will be critical: “I didn’t understand how ore connected with the rest of the game.  It never felt like purchasing ore was a valuable option.”  This tells the designer that there is some kind of problem with the ore economy of the game, and from there they can decide if they want to help incentivize the purchase of ore, eliminate it entirely, or some other solution.  But remember, it’s not your job to fix the game for them!

Feedback of this style also puts into context that the intersection between players and games will always be subjective.  It allows for critical feedback within the framework of that subjectivity, and is therefore not an attack on the objective value of the game, or on the value of the designer.  To say that you “were not engaged” during a particular part of the game is not mean or unkind, it is simply how you felt in that moment.

What Should Designers Do With Your Feedback

Whatever they want. Full stop.

Seriously.  Your role as the playtester is to give your honest experience, and their role as the designer is to do whatever they want with their game.  It’s their creative work, not yours.  If they disregard everything you said, that’s 100% their prerogative as the author.  Sometimes people are going to make games you love, and sometimes they’re going to make games you don’t like.  Look at the BGG top 100.  I dislike lots of those games, but that doesn’t make them bad.

Remember that your feedback will be just a small blip in the development cycle of a game.  Don’t get too hung up on it.

Setting Playtesting Goals

We all know we should playtest our games, but not all playtests are created equal.  Playtesting without a plan can push your game forward, but will it?  It seems that the more designers I meet, the more I find that the successful ones approach each playtest with some kind of goal in mind.

I tend to think of playtesting goals in terms of questions that the designer is looking to answer by the end of the playtest.  Those questions might look something like: 

Early Tests

• Is anything about this game fun?

• Is anything about this game new or unique?

• What other games in this genre should I be looking at?

• Is this even a game?

Whatever these questions look like at the time, they are all always trying to answer one ultimate question at this stage: is this idea worth pursuing, or should I spend my energy elsewhere?  

Some goals are easier than others.

Middle Tests

If you’ve decided the core of the game is interesting enough to move forward with, it’s time to answer some different kinds of questions.

• What’s getting in the way of the fun?

• What’s clunky, and what is elegant?

• What should be cut?

• What is and isn’t intuitive?

• Is this game replayable?

The ultimate goal at this stage is to deal with all the big-picture issues, answering the bigger question of, is this game good?  

Sometimes the road is unclear.

Late Tests

If a game is good, it’s time to move on and make it as refined an experience as possible.  Once I have a good game, my questions get a lot more nit-picky:

• Are the strategies more or less balanced?

• Can players understand the game without input from the designer?

• What should and shouldn’t be on the player aid?

• Are there grammatical errors?

• Do these card wordings make sense?

All of these questions are leading to the ultimate question: is this game ready to pitch? 

But goals can take you to places you might not have thought possible.

You Might Have Different Questions.

Mine are just examples. The specific questions are hardly important. What is important, is having them in the first place. Goals push your games forward in this process. Sure, there are times in the short term where you may take the occasional step back - but if you consistently approach playtesting with your goals in mind, your games will move forward in the long term, to pitching, to self-publishing, or whatever your plan might be.

Avoiding the “What if?” Rabbit Hole

When it comes to playtesting feedback, my two least favorite words are, “what” and “if.”  They are usually grouped together and come out sounding something like: 

“What if you could respond to someone’s action?”

“What if you could draw two cards a turn and discard one?”

“What if instead of wizards, the players were more like miniature dinosaurs who specialized in complex dance movements?”

What if you put a giant spoon in the middle of the city?

While it can occasionally be acceptable to offer your ideas to another designer, I’ve seen a few groups where the primary mode of giving feedback is just offering a laundry list of suggestions. I’m here to tell you that this is objectively bad feedback, and here’s why:

You Are Not the Author

I often compare game design groups to writing groups.

Imagine you’re in a writing workshop. You’ve just shared a short story you’re really excited about with a group of your peers. The first thing someone does when you ask for feedback is take the story out of your hands, cross out a few paragraphs, rewrite them, and hand the pages back to you in triumph.

Tell ‘em, Stephanie.

Offering unsolicited advice on how to “fix” someone’s game is downright insulting. It communicates to the designer that their work isn’t important, and it makes the playtest session about you and your brilliance, not about the project in front of you. It doesn’t take into account the person’s design goals, their unique personality, or the subjective process of creation.

Give designers room to breathe, create their own works, play in their own worlds, and put their own fingerprints on their games.

You Aren’t Giving Feedback On the Game You Played

Feedback is communicating how you experienced the game you just played.  What were your highs and lows, where did you have fun, where were you frustrated, etc. It’s about how you interacted with the game in front of you. Lots of times, designers even have specific questions they want answered.

Unfortunately, when you start off your feedback with suggestions or fixes, the discussion around the table inevitably becomes about your suggestion, and not about the game everyone just experienced. Once someone dives down the “what if” rabbit hole, everyone else at the table tends to give their feedback through the lens of how they think that suggestion would work, without ever having actually experienced it. The discussion derails, and the designer leaves with plenty of notes about this new idea, but not much on the game they actually brought to the design meeting.  This is robbing the designer of their playtesting time and is unacceptable.

Suggestions Often Fail to Communicate the Issues

There are no answers this way - only more questions.

Consider the suggestions made above - what statements about the game are they making?

”What if you could respond to someone’s action,” could mean that the playtester thought there was too much downtime on other people’s turns, it could mean they didn’t feel like there was enough agency in the game, it could mean they wanted the opportunity to feel clever by luring someone into an off-turn trap, it could mean they didn’t see enough interaction in the game, etc.

What if we could draw two cards and discard one, could mean they didn’t feel like they had enough choices in the game, it could mean they just like drawing cards (me too!), it could mean they didn’t think there was enough card variety, or that some cards were way more powerful than others, etc.

What if instead of wizards, the players were more like miniature dinosaurs who specialized in complex dance movements, could mean they thought your theme was basic, or that they’re hungry for something that seems different, or that they didn’t understand how the theme and mechanics meshed, etc.

In other words, when someone gives a suggestion, it can be very difficult to pinpoint the issue they’re even trying to address.

As a playtester, it’s far more valuable to give your feedback in terms of the specific issues you had with the game you played, rather than leaving a designer to guess. Sometimes I’ve even directly asked other playtesters, “what problem with the game are you looking to address with this suggestion,” and just as often as not they won’t really know.

So the next time you have a “fix” for someone’s game, perhaps ask yourself why you think that fix is necessary, and then report on those feelings during your feedback. This would leave the designer with room to address your concerns, but also fix those issues with their own solutions.

Exceptions

Look, there’s nothing wrong with offering a suggestion if the designer is cool with it. Some designers welcome suggestions and will even solicit brainstorming sessions. If that’s the vibe for the group, then by all means go with it. What I’m getting at here is 1) make sure a designer is cool with suggestions before you just start throwing them out, and 2) even if they are, it’s still going to be better to talk about the experience of the game first, and then at the end of feedback, check in to see if suggestions are on the table.

Why I Cringe When Players Give Feedback During the Playtest

I recently mentioned in the gear video I posted that one of the items I brought with me on this trip was a notebook, which I primarily use to take notes while playtesting other people’s games.  I do this for a few reasons, but mostly so I never feel compelled to interrupt a playtest to give some kind of feedback on the game - I have it all written down for later.

But some of you might be wondering, “what’s the harm in just giving some feedback while we’re playing?”

Well...

It Ruins the Experience

Designers often talk about wanting to create a certain experience with their games.  As a playtester, the best thing you can do is be honest about how you experienced the game.

Unfortunately, when someone stops the game in the middle of their turn to talk about some kind of feedback, the playtesters at the table are no longer experiencing the game.

 They are experiencing feedback.  

Tugging back and forth between play and feedback can make it very difficult to pinpoint where certain impressions and feelings are coming from.  Was the game long and frustrating because of actual flaws in the game, or was it long and frustrating because players spent half of the game giving feedback about it?

Further exacerbating this problem, is the sheer time that feedback can take up.  Lots of groups impose a time limit on playtesting, and it would be a shame for a designer to only get through 3 rounds of their game because people couldn’t hold their feedback until the end.

In groups without a limit, time is still an important game metric.  Did the game last 90 minutes because there’s a problem with the systems, or did it last that long because one or more playtesters took up game time talking about how much better the game would be if it was about dinosaurs?  Were players bored because the game wasn’t engaging, or were they bored because someone just had to explain why the dice in the game were too random?

“But I Don’t Want to Forget!”

I get it.  You have a thought early on in the game and you’re worried that you’ll forget to mention it during the feedback session at the end of the playtest.  That’s exactly why you need a handy dandy notebook! 

Handy dandy tasty snack!

Writing down how you felt, what you were experiencing, or other thoughts about the game is a great habit to develop.  Not only will it help you remember the parts of the game you want to talk about, but it can also help you identify how your experience changed throughout the course of play.  I will often find myself writing something like, “at first your explanation of X confused me, but by the end of round 3 X was my favorite part of the game,” or “I was really drawn into your pitch when you were talking about Y, but was disappointed when that never seemed like an attractive option.” 

There Are Always Exceptions

Naturally, there are times when it can be constructive to give certain types of feedback during the game.  In particular, if the designer is obviously nervous or new, quickly pointing out something that excites you can be helpful (and welcoming).  Right after the teach, but before starting to play is a good place to briefly say something kind if it looks like it’ll help a designer calm their nerves.   Literally something like: “I’m really excited to try out these multi-use cards,” and then right into the game.

Also, I am in no way implying that you need to play a game all the way through to completion during a playtest.  If anyone at the table feels like it’s time to stop the game and go to feedback, then it’s time to stop the game and go to feedback.  My main point here is that once you go into feedback, the game is over.  

So keep a notebook!  You might surprise yourself with how much smoother playtesting and feedback can be with one!

My Favorite Playtesting Guidelines

I’ve playtested in a variety of in-person and virtual communities over the last few years. These are some of the top playtesting guidelines I’ve gleaned from them, each with a little bit about why they work so well.

1. Give feedback through the lens of your personal experience.

The best playtesters give their feedback in terms of how they felt about the experience - when they were having fun, what the highs and lows were, and where they were frustrated, confused, or otherwise not having a good time. This feedback is best presented through a series of “I” statements. Rather than say a game was boring, it’s better to say something like, “I wasn’t engaged during X.” Making it more about themselves and less about the game allows playtesters to find a professional balance of kind, yet critical.

2. Hold feedback until the end of the playtest.

Bouncing back and forth between playing and evaluating are two very different experiences, and it can be difficult for playtesters to separate how they felt about the game if it’s constantly being interrupted for critique. Best to take notes during the playtest so you can refer back to your thoughts during the feedback session at the end of the playtest.

3. Don’t offer design solutions.

As a playtester, your job is to tell the designer about the experience you had playing their game. It is NOT to design the game for them. “What if”-style solutions often derail feedback sessions, as people end up talking about the new idea, and not the experience that was in front of them. If a designer isn’t soliciting a brainstorm session, this can even be rude and condescending.

4. Take turns giving feedback.

This primarily comes from digital groups where it’s impossible to read body language and all too easy to interrupt someone, but it would make a good addition to in-person playtesting groups as well. Making sure everyone is heard in a group is valuable.

5. Anyone can end the playtest at any time.

Playtesting is a continual act of consent, not a democratic process. If a single person is done with the playtest, then the playtest is over and it’s time to go to feedback. Period.

6. Give more than you get.

You should expect (and be willing) to playtest other people’s games more often than you get your own games played. Remember, if you ask four people to play your 30-minute card game, that’s two hours you’ve taken from the group. Pay that time forward.

7. Designers should have a playtesting goal.

Is this game fun? Does the economy work? Are players incentivized to engage with the elaborate combat mechanics you’re so excited about? Having a question (or several) that you want answered by a playtest can help you push your game forward and avoid stagnation.

8. Have a time limit.

The most efficient playtesting groups have a time limit for their games. Time constraints force people to get things done and impose a sense of urgency on your meetings. In our 2.5-hour meetings, The Boston Game Makers Guild regularly playtests 10+ games. That’s a lot of opportunity to iterate.

9. Designers should feel free to change things on the fly.

If something isn’t working, there’s no sense pressing on with it if you have an immediate fix in mind. Sometimes it can be helpful to have a few ideas you want to try out and just run the beginning of the game a few times while implementing the different versions. The best groups are flexible and open to this kind of on-the-spot creativity.

10. Be a safe space for people and creativity.

Have a Code of Conduct, make it clear who people can report bad actions to, and emphasize that making games is a creative process that isn’t always perfect. The best playtesting groups are open, inclusive, and offer support.

Stop Apologizing For Your Games

I playtest a lot. I genuinely enjoy trying out other people’s designs. I would even go so far as to say that the virtual design groups on this list helped get me through the pre-vaccine times by keeping me occupied, keeping me on a sort of schedule, and giving me something to do. I’ve unfortunately noticed a pattern, and it’s continued as I’ve been visiting local design groups.

On average, at least once a meetup, designers say something like:

I’m sorry this game exists and I’m forcing you to play it.

Usually this is right before diving into the teach and generally takes some form of “I’m sorry I just thought of this yesterday,” or “I’m sorry I’m new at this,” etc.  

I always want to scream at these designers, from the bike paths, from the mountains, from the plains: DON’T APOLOGIZE FOR YOUR GAME!!

I know it can be tough to put yourself and your project out there.  I’ve definitely apologized for presenting my work to people before.  For the first half a year or so of attending my local design group, I would get exceptionally nervous whenever I had to present my game to someone.  I still get some butterflies before I’m about to teach my game to a playtest group with people I’ve never played with before.  But I’ve stopped apologizing for my work.  Let’s talk about why.

Admit it - you have a box like this too!

Work in Progress

Everyone sitting at the table should know your design is a work in progress. If they don’t, I strongly suggest building it into your group’s culture to call this out at the beginning of the meeting. Tim Blank, President of Boston GMG, is phenomenal at establishing a safe and creative space at the beginning of each of our meetings. One of the phrases he uses at the beginning of each meeting is that “the prototypes you play tonight might not even be games yet,” which always struck me as a powerful reminder that we were experimenting with ideas.

Especially when presenting your game to other designers, we fully understand that on any given night, the things we play may be terrible, and that they reflect you taking chances and trying out something new.  The quality of your game requires no apology.

We Want to Play Your Game

Everyone at the table is there willingly.  The purpose of gathering together is to critique the highs and lows, find the fun, and offer up our experiences for the designer to evaluate.  If we didn’t enjoy this process we wouldn’t be at the playtest.  You don’t need to apologize for how we’ve chosen to spend our time.  We do it gladly!

You Deserve to Give Yourself More Credit

Yes, your game might be rough, but you’re bravely putting it out there and looking for ways to make it better.  That’s to be commended.    Embrace that it might not be great now, but through the process of playtesting it will be eventually.  You’re doing the right thing by putting it in front of other people, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re also showing up to playtest other people’s games, which everyone is happy about!

The bottom line is that on the whole, game design communities are supportive and giving.  I’m grateful to every person who brings a game to a playtest night, and I’m grateful for anyone willing to test my games as well.  We are a strong and vibrant community, and we should participate in this community with pride.     

You Are a Game Designer

I’ve met a lot of people in the game design world who express some version of the following sentiment:

“I’m not really a game designer because…”

What comes after is always some form of measuring stick against whoever else they feel is more deserving of the title “game designer.” Maybe they’ve never published a game, or maybe they self-published and they don’t think that really counts, or maybe their one published game didn’t sell well, or maybe they’ve published several games but haven’t really found a way to make a living off of it, etc.

Whatever it is, it’s a standard we hold ourselves to that we would never apply to someone else. We need to stop.

If you design games, then you are a game designer.

Impostor Syndrome

Lots of creative people suffer from Impostor Syndrome (myself included).

Yes, I design games, and by my own definition (and that of Jesse Schell in the first few pages of The Art of Game Design), I can rightfully call myself a game designer.  But it doesn’t always feel that way.

I mean, I have one published game, so that's good, right?  But that game was published by my co-designer’s company, and so that just feels like a vanity project I got to be a part of.  Yes, it’s technically on BGG, and yes, we sold quite a few copies at the one PAXu we brought it to back in 2017.  But it also had a failed kickstarter and we sort of just abandoned it.  I haven’t had a published game since.

It’s me, as a leader card in Crown of Aragon.

And yet, I must remind myself that I continue to work on game design.  That over the last several years I’ve written down and brainstormed dozens of different designs.  That of those designs I’ve prototyped about 10-15 separate games, and that of those games I currently have 3 that I am happy enough with to be pitching them to publishers and submitting them to contests.  For someone who “isn’t really a game designer” I sure have been working a lot on game design.

Remember in-person playtesting? Hidden Masters, summer 2019.

You have been too. I’ve seen you, either in the various discord design groups that have sprung up over the last year, or in person along this crazy bike route.

And then I think about my involvement in the game design community.  I am an active member in the Boston Game Makers Guild.  I helped to found Heavyweight Championship Playtesting.  I regularly attended virtual playtesting sessions throughout the last 15 months.  All of that directly led to me deciding to embark on this bike trip.

Heavyweight Championship Playtesting - an online testing group for longer/heavier games.

And you’re out there too. You’re helping with organization of your local design group. You’re giving your time to playtest other people’s games. You’re writing weekly game design blogs. You’re moderating a discord channel or a facebook group. You’re listening to other designers when they need an ear. You’re involved in the community, and you’re valued for it.

I didn’t set out with the intention of writing about my own game design experiences.  But the process of listing out the things I’ve done has certainly helped alleviate a portion of my impostor syndrome.  If you see any of your experiences echoed in my own, I hope you feel some of that relief too.  

So get prototyping, and get involved!

After all, you’re a game designer.