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The origins of my games (Andrea Meyer)
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Just like Marcel and Friedemann (thanks for the idea) I thought I'd share the background of the games I made so far. Many of my games demand overview and an ability to set priorities. I rather offer players a wide variety of choices and ask them to orientate within this choice themselves. This often gives players the feeling that they "are played" by my games which I believe is not true. My game systems are just not as hierarchical as those by other designers. I rather prefer complex game systems that in a way reflect reality. Personally, I sometimes think what makes the difference is that I approach games with a "female" style, stressing the importance of networks, whereas a lot of male authors prefer a hierarchic style of "if - then - else". Looking forward to your comments.
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Posted On: 2007-02-16 02:40:12
Edited On: 2007-10-21 18:55:10
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My first game published. I had been working on the prototype for a while when in 1998 it struck me that having two friends who are game designers (Friedemann Friese and Wolfgang Panning) and being an educationalist myself seems to be the perfect basis for a game designer seminar. So, we organised a workshop and one of the results was Stimmvieh. I had brought my "raw" version to the workshop. The theme had already been clear - collecting votes and donations - and I also knew that I wanted to have a mechanism that gave the person(s) with the highest number of votes and advantage as to the donations (i.e. victory points). However, the complete finetuning happened in the workshop with various playtests.
Afterwards, having nothing better to do - and not feeling like completing my thesis for the diploma grade  -, I decided to self-publish the game well in advance before the German federal elections in September 1998, first showing it at the Spielewahnsinn in Herne in May 1998. By October, when the fair in Essen came up, the first 200 copies were nearly sold out. All in all, I printed 500 copies of the game, which are sold out. |
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4 Comments []
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Posted On: 2007-02-15 08:02:20
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2.
Hossa! [Average Rating:6.44 Unranked]
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The relative success of Stimmvieh had struck me like lightning. It was a great feeling to stand in Essen and selling your own games, especially with my friends from Bremen and Druebberholz supporting me.
In the spring of 2000 - I had moved to Berlin in the meantime - I shared an apartment with a roommate. Every morning the kitchen radio was switched on, playing the same songs over and over again. One morning, I found myself sitting on the commuter train repeating chorus words from two different songs in my head. Being as analytic as I am, I soon found out that it's basically always the same words that occur in choruses.
Back home, I checked my CD collection and soon had a prototype with 60 different words often occuring in song titles. I took the prototype to Druebberholz and people loved the game, singing the whole weekend. In the coming weeks I finetuned the game, and my computer ran through a large database of songtitles counting the frequency of certain words. Hence, this first version of Hossa! contained roughly 750 different words, none of which occurs less than 50 times in published song titles.
By the way, the title "Hossa!" is a creation by my ex-girlfriend. It is a quote from a German popsong from the 70s and has no other meaning beside that.
The first edition of Hossa! came in a folded cardboard box with a violet banderole. The 500 copies were sold out in 2003.
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Posted On: 2007-02-15 08:02:20
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Having little time due to my strenuous job at a federal ministry and having heard "complaints" that Hossa! did not contain enough words to survive on only naming and singing shanties, I decided to publish a do-it-yourself add-on for Hossa.
This sold-out game consists of 2x six sheets (labels and cardboard) with 9 cards each with German and English keywords from shanties. The do-it-yourself part was sticking labels onto the cardboard and then cutting out the cards.
Btw, I now sell the pdf-files through my website. |
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Posted On: 2007-02-15 08:02:20
Edited on: 2008-05-30 05:25:26
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In the meantime, I continued working in the federal environmental ministry. My job as a personal assistant was to "precheck" all files for my boss, a parliamentary state secretary, and decide whether the files were important enough for her to see. One night, around 10 pm, while sitting at my desk doing so, I mused about how I had to open 100 files to find the 2 that were really important. Soon I was thinking about stack management - and the first idea for Ad Acta was born.
It took me roughly two years to actually finalize the game. One reason was that I was stuck with an actual "file cart" carrying the files around. It took me some time to realize that this could be a virtual move in the game, having players take turns in being the "messenger boy". I presented the game to some companies, who all liked it, but who said at the same time: "If you want to see it published, do it yourself. That is a theme nobody but you will touch."
Well, so I did, and 450 of the first 500 copies were sold out at the Essen games fair in 2002. I reprinted another 1,000 copies, of which I have a remainder of about 200 left - a great success for a small company. |
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2 Comments []
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Posted On: 2007-02-15 08:02:20
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In the same year, a friend from Druebberholz told me that they had played a whole game of Hossa! only singing workers' songs - mainly from the GDR, but also from the worker's movement in Western Germany.
So I decided to have another add-on for Hossa, another 56 cards with German only keywords from workers' songs. Of course the cardboard used was red  . Again, the do-it-yourself part was sticking labels onto the cardboard and then cutting out the cards.
Btw, I now sell the pdf-files through my website. |
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2 Comments []
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Posted On: 2007-02-15 08:02:20
Edited on: 2008-05-30 05:25:41
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Around 1997 Friedemann had visited me so as to invent a game together on that very day. We discussed what kind of games we like and agreed that we both wanted to make a deduction game. And after a few hours we had such a game. We worked a while on that game and sent it to a company.
Years later Friedemann got back the prototype and a message that they didn´t want to publish it. I bet they had just tidied their shelves, but who cares?
Friedemann told me that this game is much better if you are not allowed to take notes. We tested it again and set it in the game scene where players having illegal workers try to tell off others' illegal workers (or have them work for themselves illegally).
The game is all about intuition, bluff, and too much information - and I like it a lot. I had this funny discussion with a guy at the stand in Essen, who playtested the game and told me, halfway through the game: "Now, this is pure luck, isn't it?" I said "No, it's intuition!" He looked at me and said: "Well, that's what I said: Pure luck".
Talking of male and female attitudes here, anybody? |
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Posted On: 2007-02-15 12:26:39
You don't have any lying around in a closet somewhere that you'd like to get rid off do you?
great to hear you guys would like to play this. I might scan and upload the cards at some point (and will post this here, then). Dunno for sure when that will be, though.
Andrea