I just finished watching the entire thing. It was very interesting seeing all the changes and iterations of the game and how different it ended up being from where he first started.
Last edited Thu May 1, 2008 1:04 am (Total Number of Edits: 1)
I'm pleasantly surprised by how well-spoken Matt is on the subject of game design. He did a great job.
Rules of Play is a little on the academic side, and it has a strong orientation to video games. But it's a great theoretical reference to game design. I'm glad Matt mentioned it.
That was wonderful. I would love to see more scholarly presentations on boardgames. Its refreshing to not see a dumbed-down or marketed-up release. My only nit-pick is that I think that he should replace half of the uses of the word anxiety with frustration.
If they had a couple of presentations like this at a game convention, I would totally skip a couple games to hear the designers talk!
"The next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing." --A. Alvarez
“My opinion is that a game has its own life when published, and is really alive when players want to add their own house rules!” --Bruno Cathala
Fascinating!
For those who are interested in game design and don't have 50 minutes to watch the whole thing, the first 29 minutes are the most useful (although the software talk is only 3 or 4 minutes long, with the rest of it being Q&A, which I also found interesting).
I attended the talk, and it was really illuminating.
I was the one who asked about whether he'd considered using LOTR or Arkham Horror-style character development to make the game seem less like a business meeting.
