December 2022 - Reflections
Hello, twists and turns! I'm writing this right as the last day of the year begins, which means it's a time for reflection on what's past and on what might be coming ahead.
In game design terms, this year was a year for "behind-the-scenes" work. I basically did not release any new games this year as I focused on playtesting and refining Spectres of Brocken, and a bunch of other games which are still in draft form.
The last new game I released on my itch.io page was Data & Dragons on 30 December 2021 (if you haven't heard of it, it's a game that's meant to be played using an Excel spreadsheet, and was released as an Excel spreadsheet), then it was the updated preview PDF for Spectres of Brocken in anticipation of the Kickstarter, and a page for my manifesto for Manifesto Jam 2022 back in May. Compared to 8 games in 2021, and about 14+ in 2020, it's a dramatic reduction.
I found this Tweet from the start of this year which laid out my plans for the year, such as they were:
So how did I go? I ended up doing the Kickstarter for Spectres of Brocken, and got the preview PDF to a solid place before the Kickstarter so I'm counting that. I did a bunch of playtesting for BLADEbreaker, Infinite Seas Under The Same Stars, and one playtest each of Grave Lines and Four Swords, so I did make some progress on those, though I didn't "release" any updates to those games. All in all, pretty slow progress on the called shots haha.
Even though it looks like I didn't do much game design work this year, I actually feel really good about what I've accomplished. Spectres of Brocken is looking great, and I'm really happy with how all the playtesting and development has gone this year. The adjustments to the phase set-ups, Blood system, extra scene prompts and World Tendencies have brought the game to a really good place.
I'm also really pleased about the progress on BLADEbreaker and Infinite Seas Under The Same Stars playtests, though I do need to carve out some time to put together more cohesive rules documents and materials for both.
This year has been about gaining experience in a different mode of production - iterating on older and larger projects. It's a very different pace from where I was at in 2020 and 2021, and it's funny how I didn't realize how much I didn't "do" (release new games) this year until sitting down to write this. I've seen the sentiment among some game makers on social media about feeling the pressure to "keep up the pace" with regular releases, and I'm not quite sure how to feel about that.
On the one hand, I do sometimes wish I could do more, and I understand that for people who are doing this full-time, having a regular pace of releases is important. On the other hand, I think of myself as being in this for the long haul, and the time I'm spending "not releasing" right now is being spent on learning other ways and parts of making games, and it's something I'm still finding fulfilling. Maybe part of it is I am enjoying the process of playing/playtesting/making Spectres of Brocken so much haha. People have been talking about their favourite games they've played this year, and my honest answer is Spectres. I'm so lucky to have a game that I love playing and tinkering with, and I've been really enjoying that process this year.
I also feel like I've been making a lot of strides in other areas related to gamemaking this year, which have also been fulfilling in their own way. For one, I've started this newsletter and have started doing a little bit more writing about games and making games which has been fun, if a bit tough to figure out what's actually worth saying sometimes.
I started teaching game design this year, which has been an incredible experience. I'm learning what I really care about in games and figuring out how to communicate that as I try to translate my experiences making games so far to helping my students. It's also been really eye-opening learning different perspectives on games from my students and colleagues, and I realize how narrow my view has been of what games and games culture currently are.
One thing that connects the above two experiences this year is learning to break down my own assumptions about what other people might think and know about games. I realized I hold a lot of assumptions about what games and game design ideas and principles other people might share, and it's been good practice to articulate what I actually think and feel about them as I try to establish common ground from which to talk from.
I'm also really happy with how Playtest Zero has grown this year, adding a Thursday/Friday session set up to be convenient for the US West Coast time zone in addition to our regular Tuesday sessions. We've had some issues, for sure, but overall I'm really proud of making it another year and I've learned so much from the many great playtests, discussions and hangouts we've had. The Playtest Zero regulars have been a constant source of inspiration, support and camaraderie, and I'm so glad to have such great designers as my peers and friends.
We're actually going to be doing a Showcase Zero event for Playtest Zero in mid-January to highlight some of the cool games that we've playtested this year. I'm still working the details of how that will be broadcast and shared, but as soon as that's clearer I'll be shouting out the details all over Twitter, Cohost, Discord and Tumblr, so keep an eye out for that!
I'll take that as a nice segue to what's in store for 2023. First up, I'll have another newsletter going out in early January also about my favourite games, stories and experiences of 2023. I'm saying this here so I'm on the hook to actually finish up that post.
In terms of games, there's obviously Spectres of Brocken that I need to finish up, which I'm hoping will still meet my planned delivery date of May for the digital version. There's been a slight hiccup with the writing on my part as I had a bout of COVID in early December and then had to deal with some house moving just this past week, but I think there should still be enough contingency in my schedule to make the planned completion dates.
For other games, I'm aiming to put out a full Playtest Packet for BLADEbreaker in early 2023 and kick off some longer form playtests for that. I'm also hoping to release some version of Aaron Lim's Infinite Seas Under The Same Stars (I have some Ideas about the future of that game that I'm still mulling over) in 2023. I'm also pretty much done with the updated tables for Ithaca in the Cards, but I'm still hoping to work on the Lonesome Winds solo rules for the game to then release a proper "Second Expedition".
There's been a lot of buzz around Dungeon23. the daily writing exercise put forward by Sean McCoy of writing one room of a megadungeon or similar section of a larger fictional space for the whole of 2023. I'm planning to take part in this as well, though instead of a classic dungeon, I'm planning to use this exercise to flesh out the locations, lore, and loot on Legrane's Lost Island, an adventure setting (I guess?) that I've been toying with for a long while. The basic conceit is that it's a way to play a Battle Royale style game like PUBG or Fortnite (you might notice the map above is based on PUBG's Erangel map), where you get dropped into a place with minimal resources and have to scavenge for them and survive a rapidly closing in storm or hazard while other hostile teams are also trying to do the same thing. I've run some variation of this "adventure" several times before with friends, using Index Card RPG and Dungeon Whatever as the "game system", and I've always wanted to put all my notes together into something that others could use, so Dungeon23 seems like a good motivation to flesh that all out and finally finish the project.
So that's it for 2022, and here's looking ahead to 2023. I hope you've had a decent year, and regardless I hope that 2023 will be kind and magnificent to all of you.
Liminal regards,
Aaron