The Future is Now! JK—It's Later!
Jumbled Up
by Mark
We’re a month into season two of The Misplay podcast. Given the change in scope and focus of the show, the behind-the-scenes process has also evolved to accommodate our emphasis on Animal Kingdom. I can’t help but look back to this time last year, when we released a pair of episodes about MMA Gauntlet and Supermarket Game. Those games were designed as a short-form study of two game design approaches: mechanics-first and theme-first. Now, looking at Animal Kingdom today, it seems we’ve once again been caught off guard by the same question, are we working under a mechanics-first or theme-first design framework?
The answer is more complex than the examples Jason and I shared in our game design study last year. Our team has grown, and we are designing collaboratively. From my perspective, one team member is approaching the game through a mechanics-first lens, another wants to center the design around the theme, while yet another is focused on the final physical product and its target audience. All of these components are important, but we’ve often found ourselves grappling with questions like, “How do we want the game to feel?” We even released an entire episode about it, and Jason and I could barely come to a shared understanding of the same terms despite working together on the podcast for about four years. It also occupied what was perhaps an unnecessarily large portion of our last meeting. At this point, if I bring up translation errors about “which feel” we’re discussing or whether it’s a “political game” or a political game, the team might throw me out the airlock.
So, where does that leave Animal Kingdom? If I were to quote Jason, the short answer is that the game is “right where it needs to be right now.” We have a reliable iterative process, we’re conducting focused playtests, and we’re using the feedback to determine what to refine next and where we want to go. Our story is not one of the monolithic game designer who dreamt up their magnum opus and feverishly built it. Collaborative creativity is a messy process. It will take time for our team to develop a shared language, but when we do, when all the jumbled pieces finally fall into place, Animal Kingdom will be something to behold.
Bright Horizons and Fair Winds Ahead!
by Jason
I read Mark’s post before writing mine—as I usually do. At first, it made me really sad. Was he implying we hadn’t learned anything? Was he saying we were miles off course? I found myself questioning a lot. Maybe we should’ve made the Supermarket Game after all!
I often question that first year—or rather, the first season. We’ve been pretty upfront about not really knowing what we’re doing. We’re not here to tell people how to make a board game; we’re showing people how we’re making ours. That’s a distinction we can’t emphasize enough.
As Mark quoted me saying, the game is “right where it needs to be right now.” And I’m excited—so much so that, on this week’s episode, I kept catching myself hyping up a future episode, saying it was going to be really good. I started to feel like I was unintentionally downplaying the current show by focusing on what’s ahead.
Some upcoming shows include:
A discussion on the gaming verbiage we use to communicate ideas within our group.
Gun It game designer Randy O’Connor joining us in March to talk about playtesting.
Looking for fellow CoLab game designers to connect with.
A live show from KublaCon, a local board game convention, in May.
I really want to say, “The world is our oyster,” right now. The reason being is in the first draft of this newsletter I wrote about a half-dozen or more nautical metaphors. Full speed ahead!
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