Brandon the Game Dev

For the first time since the beginning of the year, I took real time off. Completely away from my day job and my business, I found myself reflecting on the winding journey I’ve taken over the last couple of years to get here. I drove all the way from Chattanooga to the Outer Banks and back and the 20+ hours of driving really set my head straight again. I realized that in my push to create Highways & Byways, I’ve neglected six very powerful background skills that make game developers great. Game development is about more than just game development, folks.

I’m going to cover each of these six skills while providing examples that will update you on my progress on Highways & Byways this week. The Dev Diary is about more than simple updates – it’s about sharing what I’ve learned through my personal experiences with you.

Skill 1: Strong Goal Setting

If you ask any self-improvement guru or successful businessperson, they’ll all preach the importance of setting clear goals. After all, if you’re not 100% sure about what you want to accomplish, how will you know when you’ve done it? How will you know if you’ve done a good job?

Be extremely clear about your goals. Write them down. Speak about them often. Your broad goals should determine everything else you do. The bulk of your time should be spent working toward your most important goals.

Here’s the goals I’ve set for my company, Pangea Games. I split them into “Guiding Lights” and “Goals.” The Guiding Lights will not change. The Goals might, depending on how well they serve the Guiding Lights.

Guiding Lights:

1. Make great games.
2. Help game developers unlock their creativity.

Goals:

1. Develop Highways & Byways. (Goal for Guiding Light 1)
2. Create and curate great blog posts. (Goal for Guiding Light 2)
3. Create and curate great social media content. (Goal for Guiding Light 2)
4. Create an inner circle of devs. (Goal for Guiding Light 2)

Skill 2: Time Management

Somewhere along the line, when I was developing War Co., I stopped using my calendar as effectively as I did in college. I was making to-do lists for things I needed to accomplish in the day, but I wasn’t estimating their time. I also wasn’t sorting them by importance. That means I often spent my days accomplishing the wrong things and running out of time! Yikes!

With my aching head soothed by the break I gave myself going to the Outer Banks, I was able to look at my Google Calendar and cringe. I spent a few minutes resetting my calendar around the goals I’ve set. Now I’ve got it to where game development gets first priority and the most time, blog writing gets second priority and the second-most time, and everything else gets done when I have time.

If you struggle with time management in your game development projects, here’s what I suggest:

1. Get a Google Calendar. Use it to track your time for a week or two, even if you don’t use it for scheduling. It’s an eye-opening experience if you’ve never done anything like it.
2. Update your calendar to block off specific time periods for your most important tasks. Refer to your goals.
3. Schedule your highest priority tasks to the available times of day you feel most energetic.
4. If you run out of time to do low priority tasks, you’ve got three broad options: get someone else to do them, do them better, or just straight-up quit doing them.

Skill 3: Process Improvement

When you find yourself doing an ongoing process, take a few minutes every week or two to ask yourself whether you’re doing it right. With an ongoing process, you want to ask yourself two questions:

1. Does this serve my goals? If the answer is no, chuck it. If the answer is yes, read on.
2. Am I doing it effectively and efficiently? Is the process affecting your progress toward goals in a desirable way that’s worth the time you’re spending on it? If no, look for ways to improve it and if you can’t, scrap your process. If yes, read on.

A lot of you know me through social media, which I use a lot. Truth is, some of my techniques for running social media haven’t been super efficient. I spent about an hour this week looking at Excel sheets of my tweets and Instagram posts. I figured out what people like to see and I’m going to give them more of it.

Skill 4: Introspection

Game development is hard. It’s really, really hard. You have to make sure you want to do it if you plan on putting the hours, months, and years into game development it takes to master it. Ask yourself these two questions and don’t stop until you get an answer:

1. Why do I want to make games?
2. Do I really like making games? Do I like making games enough to push through the immense struggles of game development?

If you get a vague answer for question 1 or a negative answer for 2, you should quit. I’m serious. If you’re not into game development, you should quit. It’s a hard job and it’ll make you miserable if you don’t have the passion.

I’ve found that after years of putting up with crap (from others, but mostly from myself) during the development of War Co., I really do love what I do.

If game development is something you really like, there’s another question you should answer as well. What makes a great game? I’ve written a whole page about it. It’s for my eyes only, but there’s a thirst for it, I’m happy to share it with all of you as well!

Skill 5: Continual Improvement

Just about the biggest indicator of long-term success in game developers – and entrepreneurs at large – is the ability to learn from your mistakes. If you’ve been creating for more than few months, you’ve probably done some things wrong. Write down what you’ve done wrong and be brutally honest. Honest assessment of your weaknesses is critical to growth because it can lead you to ways to improve your work. Assess your failures, come up with ways to fix them, and then continually try those ways out. Keep what works, drop what doesn’t.

What does this look like for me? Well, I spent half an hour writing an autopsy for War Co. Yes. I declared my beloved baby project dead* and I wrote down everything I did wrong. I ended up with a list of 35 ways to improve. Some of them hurt my heart when I look at them. But hey, I have a list of 35 mistakes I won’t repeat in Highways & Byways.

* You can still buy it, though 😉

Skill 6: Ongoing Training

The first five skills are ones you can do alone. This sixth one isn’t. Seek out books, blogs, and podcasts about board games and board game design. Take classes if you can. Commit to ongoing training. You’ll never be perfect – the True North is far, far from us mere mortals. Drop the ego and learn. It’ll make you strong.

This week, I read the Kobold Guide to Board Game Design. It’s a good read, and $20 very well spent. I also set up a Feedly feed for board game development blogs. That way I can keep my development sauce spicy.

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More Highways & Byways Game Progress

Over the last week, I spent three days vacationing and three days honing the skills I’ve listed above. I’ve spent the seventh day play testing the second draft of Highways & Byways with my brother. My current focus is working on the experimental “traffic” mechanic, which keeps the game from feeling like multiplayer solitaire. I haven’t got enough data yet to tell whether this is a good idea or bad idea yet. I’ll keep you posted.

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Key Takeaways for Game Devs

• A lot of the skills you need to succeed as a game dev are general life skills, not technical skills.
• Set clear goals. The way you spend your time and every action you perform should link back to your goals.
• Manage your time well. There’s only so many hours in a day, and Google Calendar and help you squeeze every minute of them.
• Evaluate your processes from time to time. Make sure they’re efficient in serving your goals.
• Ask yourself the hard questions. Do you really want to be a game developer? Do you want it bad enough to push through the hard stuff? What does a good game look like to you?
• If you’re in it for the long haul, analyze your failures. Look for ways to improve.
• Keep your skills sharp by playing games and reading books and blogs.

I’m trying something different on the Dev Diary. Updates 1, 2, and 3 told you about Highways & Byways as a project. Important context information, yes, but that’s not what I set out to do with this series.

This is a teaching blog. I’m going to be using Highways & Byways as an example. I’ll be explaining my development processes for this game so that you can learn from them.

My hope with the Dev Diary series is that by being really direct and transparent about my own development experiences, you’ll see how I respond to real problems. I’ll be highlighting specific takeaways and also putting them at the bottom of the page. We’re in this together, game devs.

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Development of Highways & Byways is continuing at a pleasantly brisk pace. I’ve created a usable board and I’m already on the second version of the game. I have a “core engine” in place that makes Highways & Byways playable, even though it’s deeply flawed – as all games are when you first start them.

When it comes to game development, you don’t want to get attached to your ideas early on. Your priority is simple: make a playable game as early as you can. Don’t focus on making your game good or pretty at first. Just get it playable. Perfect the core engine – the bare minimum mix of mechanics it takes for your game to qualify as a game.

What does the core engine look like with Highways & Byways? Well, since it’s a map-based game, the core engine consists of two parts. One, having a board where all the roads connect to at least one other road. Two, players must have cards that tell them where to go. All the others are rules or constraints, including the specifics of how those “destination cards” are drawn.

I tested this core engine in Tabletop Simulator until I could move my piece around the board without a hassle. I used a rudimentary card drafting mechanic to decide the destinations. My brother and I ended up liking the drafting mechanic. Version 1 (codename: State Route 1) is complete.

I go through game versions rapidly and I have a goal for each one. My goal for State Route 1 was simple – get the core engine to work. My goal for State Route 2 is to test a handful of mechanics. Specifically, I’m playing around with early game card drafting, early game “mulligans” which let you toss out roads you don’t want to travel, and a traffic/road closure mechanic.

I set up State Route 2 in Tabletop Simulator and played a little bit. I’m still gathering data, so I don’t have much to say about the results yet. However, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to track data, preferably in Excel, on how each test goes. Get a few tests in before you iterate to the next version.

Every week, I set priorities. This is very important. Set priorities for your game as a project and outline what you want to accomplish in the next week. Keep track of what you have and haven’t done. My upcoming priorities are very simple:

1. Take a three-day break. I have not taken a day off since January 2. No matter how much you love your project, don’t burn yourself out on it.
2. Play test State Route 2. Gather data.

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Key Takeaways for Game Devs

• Don’t fall in love with your ideas. You’ll have to throw out lots and lots of them to make a good game.
• Prioritize the “core engine” of your game first – the bare minimum mix of mechanics you need for your game to function, even if it functions poorly.
• Go through game versions rapidly and have a goal for each one.
• Track your testing results, preferably in Excel.
• Pick priorities for the coming week, and keep track of what you have and haven’t done.
• Take regular breaks to recharge. It takes a long time to make a game.

Last week, I filled up a map of the United States with byways and breakpoints. They are the red and blue lines and dots you see below. This week, I’ve connected the dots with highways which are white and outlined in black. The highways exist so that players can move around the board between byways. Though they do not follow true paths of the United States’ multiple highway systems in shape, they do approximately reflect the distances that must be traveled between different points. In short: I have completed the first draft of the board.

Naturally, this game is nowhere remotely close to completion. This map is based on what really exists in the United States, but it doesn’t reflect what plays well on a board. Also, the game doesn’t have a defined win condition yet. Some game designers – and I count myself among them – consider to be win conditions pretty important to games.

I’ve pushed a rough version of the game out to Tabletop Simulator for my use only. I’ve created a playtesting log and I’ve done 11 tests so far. These tests can all be classified as “movement tests.” Basically, I’m drawing random cards that reflect byways that must be traveled and measuring how many “dots” I have to go over to travel the full set of roads I’ve drawn.

If you want to learn more about record-keeping and playtesting, I’ve got a great article for you to check out. I take my own advice, and this is what my playtesting log looks like.

I’m going to continue to do more movement tests to get a feel for what win condition(s) will work in this game. I have a mental image of how I want the game to feel, but I don’t know specifically what tactics I’ll be using to get there. It’s like trying to drive to Dallas from Nashville, but not having a map. You have to rely on your understanding of where things are located and follow the signs and the advice of others.

In the coming week, I hope to accomplish the following goals:

• Create a rudimentary win condition to test
• Experiment with a card drafting mechanic
• Push version 1, edit 2 to Tabletop Simulator (version codename: State Route 1, Edit 2)
• Playtest some more