Home » Forums » Past Protospiel Souths » Designers and Prototypes (PS 2010)

What I'm bringing

I've got one that will definitely be there:

  • 'Go Wild!' is a deck of cards that's an adjunct to playing Go, much like SJG's Knightmare Chess is an adjunct to playing Chess.

And two others that may or may not make it:

  • 'Istanbul' is a building/auction game where you try and expand and maintain your antiquities through the crashing waves of history.
  • 'Prime Movers' is a fast abstract card game.

I've got the initial prototype Go Wild! decks done and printed (via thegamecrafter.com); the others are still much more up-in-the-air.

Relatedly, how many copies of a prototype are people bringing?

PJ

Paul Jimenez from Wayport when it was still around?

  • By Hokemj at 05/07/2010 - 16:23

Yup

Yeah, that's me. More contact should probably go off-forum. There's no obvious 'send a message to another user' functionality here - maybe the admins should look into that? In the meantime, I'm my initials at place dot org, as I've been for almost long enough for that email address to be able to apply for a driver's license.

I've added Private Messaging.

You asked for it, now you have it! =)

If you look at your navigation block in the upper left, you'll notice a "Messages" section. You can use it to send private messages to other users on the site. You should also be able to configure it to send you e-mail notification when you receive a message (so you don't have to keep coming here and checking).

Ta-dah!

I'm enthusiastic...

Thanks for sharing what you plan to bring, Paul. I'm a big fan of Go, so I'm tremendously intrigued by "Go Wild!" I really look forward to seeing it. I'm also curious to examine the quality of gamecrafter.com cards.

I certainly hope that you'll be able to bring your other prototypes too. The way I see it, the worst case scenario is that you don't get to play them. Even if that happens, you'll still have them playtest-ready for future events; all the labor to get them ready will already be done.

Regarding the number of prototypes to bring... That's a really good question. I'd kind of assumed that one prototype per game made a lot of sense. However, I regretted not having extra prototypes to give away when I was at GTS in 2009. I think that (at least) two copies of a prototype you're shopping around is a good idea. That way you can give one away and still test the game with the other copy. Also, the second one acts as a backup if the first one is lost or destroyed.

I look forward to seeing you at Protospiel South 2010!

  • By pspiel at 05/01/2010 - 12:15

Updates

The first set of gamecrafter cards look really nice. One card (out of 128) had a little bit of 'flash' where the cardstock wasn't cut quite all the way through so it had a little tag of paper on it. They arrived just in time for someone to point out to me that there's already a 'Go Wild!' card game (published by WotC several years ago, and having nothing to do with Go), so I'll likely switch the name to 'Go Crazy!' to avoid name conflicts.

And yeah, I'd love to get the other prototypes up to snuff, but there's only so many hours in the day :)

Playable prototypes vs. commercial prototypes...

"I'd love to get the other prototypes up to snuff, but there's only so many hours in the day :)"

What does, "up to snuff," mean to you?

If you're planning on selling the game yourself, and you're done play testing the game, and you need to see how people react to the layout art, and components, then you certainly want a game that looks as much like the retail version as possible.

If you're still play testing the game, you just need a functional prototype. Cardstock, card sleeves, and printouts are just fine for that.

If you're planning to pitch the game to a publisher for sale or licensing... That's tricky. Pretty prototypes sell well, but are likely to be completely re-worked by the publisher. "Ugly" prototypes may be a harder sell, but require less effort.

I suppose what I'm saying is that if the games that aren't up to snuff still need play testing, please don't let their prototype quality stop you from bringing them to play test. I think an event like this is a fairly rare opportunity.

  • By pspiel at 05/13/2010 - 06:33

prototype quality

I just wanted to mention that I'm totally open to playing even very crude prototypes at this conference... the game can be sketched out on a bunch of Post-It Notes as far as I'm concerned. I've always been a proponent of early playtesting on the most rudimentary prototype possible.

  • By jeremy at 05/23/2010 - 07:41

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