Do You Have Beer Goggles For Your Own Games?

Are you missing the flaws in your own games?

We all love what we create. If your kids are young enough, you love everything they create. Of course, you know that your child’s crayon scribbles will not be mistaken for Van Gogh or Da Vinci. Jackson Pollock? Maybe. Are we blind to the flaws in our own game designs? Even the most cynical people like their own designs and believe they have a winning product.

Check Your Vision For Beer Tinting Issues

You have tested your game with your friends and family, and they loved it. You have even been adventurous and tested the game with groups of people that you don’t know, and they loved it. The problem is that you are influencing the evaluation yourself. Most people do not want to be confrontational, so they will sugar coat anything they say. If the game was an unplayable suckfest, then they will tell you it needs some work. If the game was just bad, they will tell you it wasn’t too bad. If the game was good, they will tell you that it is great. How do you get around this problem?

You need to test the game with large numbers of people. Go to conventions, get to know people and ask them to play your prototype. As the number of respondents gets larger, the accuracy of the response will also increase. Provide the players with the ability to review the game via Board Game Geek. When people can respond without being face to face with you, then you will get more genuine responses. In the future, if you ask somebody to play another prototype and they run away in fear, then you know issues.

Game Publishers Will Not Look At My Designs – My Only Option Is To Self Publish

There are major difficulties in getting publishers to look at game designs. The larger publishers often require a recommendation from a trusted source to look at a game. The smaller publishers are often 1-3 people trying to put a game or two together for publication, and do not have the time to look at your designs. Even if the smaller publisher had the time to look at your games, then they may not have the capital to bring the game to market. You do what any entrepeneur does… You decide it is time to make your own board game.

Don’t be discouraged about self publishing. While Tasty Minstrel Games is not a vanity press. Of our two launch games; Terra Prime is designed by my best friend Seth Jaffee and Homesteaders is developed by him. So while I am confident that I did not have beer goggles on when deciding to publish the games, I do worry that I am too close to the designs to be completely free of the taint.

I will let the marketplace determine the quality of the games.