-
W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
-
• Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater has an interesting column on resource management in game design - that is, the management of resources available to a designer for a particular game. From his point of view, most games are one-shot deals in which a designer has little to no expectation of a sequel or expansion seeing print, so he includes whatever seems best at the time, but as a game succeeds and grows over the years – think Carcassonne, El Grande, Dominion and of course Magic itself – the designer(s) must take a long-term view as to how game mechanisms are used and developed in the game.
• If you're interested in Battleship Galaxies and are headed to Gen Con 2011, you could do worse than to attend an informal game play and Q&A event with the game's designer, Craig Van Ness at the J.W. Marriott in downtown Indianapolis from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, August 4 in Grand Ballroom 2. Says Laura Trani, who represents Hasbro through Hunter Public Relations, "We'll be providing snacks and drinks and doing a giveaway of some Battleship Galaxies copies and some model ships. Anyone who's interested in the game should feel free to stop by."
• Eric Franklin, who demoes games for Asmodee at Gen Con, reminds con attendees to play nice with the volunteers and to be aware of what they can and can't do.
• On Go Forth and Game, Tom Gurganus interviews A.J. Porifino of Van Ryder Games, publisher of the deck-destroying game Organized Chaos.
• In a June 2011 column on Meepletown – late link, I know – Derek Thompson contemplates player-controlled game-end conditions and why they sometimes fail for him. I'm typically a fan of such conditions because they give you one more tool in the game to use to your advantage, assuming you know how to do so, of course.
• On The New Yorker website, Blake Eskin writes about his experience playtesting Starry Heavens, a life-sized board game created by Eric Zimmerman and Nathalie Pozzi with people as the players/pawns that debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to tie into its "Talk To Me" exhibit that opened in late July 2011.
|
|
