Do you have a board game idea, but can't get it out of your head? Use my 4 I's Framework, and you'll get your game to the table and quickly discover if it will be the next Cards Against Humanity (hint: good!) or the next Trump: The Game (hint: not so good!). Have you made a game, but it's just sitting in a closet somewhere? Dust off that box and let The Board Game Designer's Guide get you unstuck and finish your game for good! Is your game done but you don't know what to do next? In section 6, I'll walk you through all the options available, so that you can finally figure out which one is right for you, and grow a huge legion of fans all proclaiming "Whoever invented this game is a friggin' genius!" Don't let your board game idea sit on a shelf or in your head. There are thousands of people out there who want to play it. You need to share your amazing game with the world! And now you finally can ...

Making a great board game and pitching it to publishers are two completely different things. If you’ve got a game that you want to share with the world but don’t know what to do next, this book will help you navigate through exactly what steps to take. You’ll discover: How to find the right publisher Exactly what publishers are looking for How to create a sell sheet that will actually sell your game How to negotiate the best deal and get paid more for your game What to look out for in contracts to make sure you don’t get exploited You’ll learn from Joe’s experiences as a full-time board game designer and instructor, along with tips and stories from a dozen other published designers, plus the exact things that publishers want. Direct from 16 established publishers.

Winner of the 2012 Origins Award Pull up a chair and see how the world's top game designers roll. You want your games to be many things: Creative. Innovative. Playable. Fun. If you're a designer, add "published" to that list. The "Kobold Guide to Board Game Design" gives you an insider's view on how to make a game that people will want to play again and again. Author Mike Selinker (Betrayal at House on the Hill) has invited some of the world's most talented and experienced game designers to share their secrets on game conception, design, development, and presentation. In these pages, you'll learn about storyboarding, balancing, prototyping, and playtesting from the best in the business.

Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible. Written by one of the world's top game designers, The Art of Game Design presents 100+ sets of questions, or different lenses, for viewing a game’s design, encompassing diverse fields such as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, puzzle design, and anthropology. This Second Edition of a Game Developer Front Line Award winner: Describes the deepest and most fundamental principles of game design Demonstrates how tactics used in board, card, and athletic games also work in top-quality video games Contains valuable insight from Jesse Schell, the former chair of the International Game Developers Association and award-winning designer of Disney online games The Art of Game Design, Second Edition gives readers useful perspectives on how to make better game designs faster. It provides practical instruction on creating world-class games that will be played again and again.

Take your games to the next level with advice from more than 100 of the best board game designers in the world. Game design is hard. We all need sound advice to guide our work and help us become better at the craft. In this book, you'll find incredible wisdom and insight from the top designers in the industry today. You will learn: The advice Rob Daviau would give his younger self.How Matt Leacock gets into the zone and flow of design.Lessons Jamey Stegmaier learned from his biggest failure.Donald X. Vaccarino's advice on pitching a game to a publisher.The behavior that has helped Ryan Laukat's designs dramatically improve. What Bruno Cathala would tell you after a discouraging playtest.And much more!

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.