Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — game development
FROM THE ARCHIVES: HOW LONG TO PUNISH PLAYERS (by Tom Russell)
I've designed a lot of different games for a lot of a different player counts on a lot of different subjects. At first glance, my wargames look nothing like my train games - to the point where at least one person didn't realize that the same guy had done them, and even suspected the Tom Russell who does train games as being some kind of pseudonym. But there are certain features that all my games have in common, such as my usual obsessions with tempo, momentum, the need to weaken your own position in order to advance it, feedback loops,...
FROM THE ARCHIVES: DESIGNING THE SHOT & SHELL BATTLE SERIES (by Tom Russell)
In 2010, I began designing my first-ever wargame. It was something I did as a lark; as a sailor might say in salty language, "for ships and giggles". I was a Very Serious Eurogame Designer who was going to have a Very Serious, Prestigious, and Profitable Career designing mid-weight Euros. Just to be eclectic though I thought it'd be fun to do a wargame now and then on the side, and perhaps a nerdy train game. Of course, the way things panned out, I couldn't sell the Euros. The wargames sold, as did the nerdy train games, and so here...
FROM THE ARCHIVES: FORGOTTEN RULES (by Tom Russell)
I remember listening to a commentary track that the director Paul Thomas Anderson did about his film Boogie Nights, in which he explained why a scene was cut from the final film. He was watching a cut of the film, and as one scene was wrapping up, he was giddily anticipating the next scene, which was one of his favorites. But when that first scene had ended, it wasn't followed by the scene he was anticipating - it was followed by another scene that he had seemingly forgot was in the film. And I'm paraphrasing here - it's been maybe...
FROM THE ARCHIVES: ONWARDS AND UPWARDS (by Tom Russell)
No matter how much feedback you get from playtesters, it's always going to be a small fraction of the feedback you'll get from players once a game has been released. And that is as it should be; if games had more testers than purchasers, there's no way it'd be paying our bills! It's common post-release to hear things you didn't hear in testing, and for players to raise questions that you never thought of asking. And sometimes, yes, something gets missed; this is the stuff errata is made of. There are some folks, particularly within the wargames niche, that regard...
DONE (by Tom Russell)
Over the last few years, a few folks have asked me how I knew when I was done with a game. For me, it actually isn't super-complicated, because I generally don't start actively working on a game until I have a very clear idea of what the end product is going to be, and then I just get to it and I just keep at it until the game resembles that idea. I go into it with my parameters already defined: what the game is going to feel like, what tensions are going to be present, what ideas are going...