Yekrats.com: Scotto’s Seafud Shanty

I got back from Protospiel last night (http://protospiel.org, the annual game designer convention in Ann Arbor, Michigan) and I had a great time. I learned a few things, met some great people, and tested the heck out of my game “Golden Spike”.

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I found the following video about the Inform programming language, and it made me want to get back into programming IF again. The “natural language” thing I could probably do without (and I can imaging things getting needlessly complicated by making the interface “natural”) but the IDE seemed to be brilliant. I wish TADS had debugging tools like the transcript control and Skein!

Inform 7 screencast

I found this really good (long!) article about Magic: the Gathering by someone who has thought a lot more about M:tG strategy than I ever have. The principles he talks about carry over into other deck-construction games as well.

What I Know About Magic: The Gathering

I just found this good article, Why Programmers Should Learn Go. I’d actually take it a step further, however, and say that anyone that uses patterns of organization would benefit from learning the game.

A couple-few years ago I played it somewhat often online. Within a few weeks of doing it, I noticed that my mind was sharper at seeing patterns of organization. Certain poorly arranged elements bothered me more, like a bad web page or a messy room.

Hi folks,

I’m having a good time at Protospiel, a convention in Michigan for game designers. This convention always gets me vibrating with good energy about game design, and this time is no exception. This year is at a slightly swankier convention room, however ironically, fewer people were registered this year with a few of the regulars missing this year.

Today was a very good presentation by Alex Yeager of Mayfair Games who talked about the fine art of submitting games to publishers. (What is looked for and what is an instant reject.) I realized I should be much more aggressive in pushing my games into the hands of publishers.

Yesterday, I tested my Gladiator Dice game with some recent tweaks. It is a gladatorial combat game, which primarily uses dice. It went VERY well and my players (and a couple of observers) were very excited about it. They made some good suggestions and played it twice. In my previous attempt to playtest the game, defense was way too powerful. In this iteration, the offense is slightly too powerful. (There was a possibility to chain up a devastating attack. I wanted it to be possible, but it seemed like it was still too common.) I think with another minor tweak the game should be just about right.

Today, we tested a new version of my “robots controlling the Chinese restaurant” game, and it went very well as well. I had simplified the rules, which shortened it somewhat. Previously, four players could play three rounds in about an hour. Now, it was done in about 45 minutes, and the players thought the game would be more satisfying with 4 rounds instead of just three. They liked it so much that they wanted to play it again, and gave me plenty of new fodder to work on it.

As always, I’ve played some very interesting games that quite appealed to me, but unfortunately I can’t discuss them in a public forum like this. One of my favorite was one that was literally dreamed up the day before, but the games have varied widely in development and polish, but all have come out better games because of it.

I’ll be happy to come home tomorrow, however. I love these games and the company, but the 13-hour days are quite taxing.