The White Box Essays
Mar. 4th, 2024 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yhlee posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
making_games[repost from 2022 from my DW]
A couple days I finished reading Jeremy Holcomb's The White Box Essays, which I own both in hardcopy (came with the White Box by same, i.e. a bundle with some basic board game components to get you started) and in Kindle ebook. Bang for buck this is one of the best overviews of board game design and production I've ever seen, and an excellent starting point for a budding game designer. ETA: I should clarify that I do think a grasp of game design theory is important (it can be "intuitive" or "instinctive" and doesn't have to be analytical or explicit) BUT honestly playing lots of games and actually designing games is also very key if you want to make headway in this field even as a hobby.
It's not as theory-driven or thorough as some of the other textbooks now extant; Salen & Zimmerman's seminal Rules of Play is better as a crushingly thorough deep drive into theory, Brathwaite & Schreiber's Challenges for Game Designers has a ton of great exercises (technically written for video game designers, but most of the challenges are pen-and-paper and would apply to board game design as well), Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses is a very different approach to theory, Tracy Fullerton's Game Design Workshop attempts to be an entire textbook with exercises, and that's only the ones I'm personally familiar with. Most of those texts are also more expensive (some considerably so), and honestly IMO with (board) game design one of the important things is to get started as cheaply as you can.
- Ch 1 asks you to figure out what your motivation is for game design, because what makes sense financially in terms of production is heavily dependent on what your goal is. For example, self-publishing and # of games produced depend very much on whether you're trying to make a profit or not.
- Ch 2 is about why you don't need to protect your ideas, and a very very very basic discussion of copyright vs. patent vs. trademark and when you might need to consult a lawyer about these three things.
- Ch 3 warns you away, as a beginning designer, from a few categories of games: cooperative (at least until you understand how they work, as they're apparently harder to design), highly asymmetric games (ditto), variants on existing games (you learn less and there's less profit opportunity), collectible games (VERY expensive, as in ~a million dollars to produce, VERY hard to break into as a designer), licensed games (very hard to break into unless you already have a name as a designer UNLESS you luck out and manage to license a small-but-growing property on the cheap, etc.).
- Ch 4 discusses the "story vs. mechanics" debate.
- Ch 5 is a great discussion on the advantages/disadvantages of randomness in games. Randomness isn't all bad! Rather, it's a tool with certain costs, and you should use it knowingly. I honestly haven't seen as clear a breakdown of this elsewhere; Lewis Pulsipher discusses randomness somewhat in his Game Design but I think this book's discussion is a better starting point.
- Ch 6 is another great discussion, this time on writing rules effectively. Of special value is the section on implicit vs. explicit rules.
- Ch 7 is on game components, from how they can be leveraged to help teach the rules of your game (e.g. if you have people characters in your game, try to represent them with something like meeples that "look" like people, yellow chips for "gold," etc.) to how they suggest strategy. There's also some suggestions for using the specific components that come with the physical White Box, if you bought that.
- Ch 8 is on game balance and different approaches to it - really interesting, goes over a variety of options.
- Ch 9 is on the big-picture question of fun vs. work/effort (including learning your game in the first place) - if a part of your game requires a lot of fiddly rules and takes 30 minutes to set up, how much fun does it deliver - if it's not that fun, maybe consider cutting it? Whereas if you have a small rule that generates lots of fun, keep it! Fun is what keeps people coming back for more.
- Ch 10 is on playtesting and how to find playtesters. Because my experience has mostly been with relatively small games, I've generally bullied my family into playtesting my tiny micro-TTRPGs. Winterstrike I got playtested by asking friends (THANK YOU).
- Ch 11 is titled "How to more than double your game's sales" - and it's about accessibility and diverse representation. :D
- Ch 12 is on the nitty gritty of self-publishing, including things that will drive up costs. There's an overview of component types from "simple" to "complex" to "very complex." Playing cards are simple; hell, I basically made "custom" playing cards for my Deuce of Gears Oracle and that was astonishingly doable (not for a game purpose, but just in terms of manufacturing). Custom minis? Very complex. There's also a discussion of print run sizes and breaking points, and a general recommendation for self-publishers to stick to small runs and reprint as needed rather than the horror story we all know (or anyway, anyone who's been around games self-publishing long enough knows) of people with boxes of unsold games filling their garage/basement/house. Also a discussion of the production timeline.
This chapter singlehandedly convinced me I never want to be responsible for anything more complicated than a deck of "custom" playing cards. :p But it's interesting to be informed.
- Ch 13 discusses crowdfunding models, plus crowdfunding advantages/disadvantages. Anyone who's watched e.g. games on Kickstarter AT ALL has seen some of this play out - one of my life goals, in fact, is never ever to create a Kickstarted project. I'm happy to back Kickstarters, but damn sure I never want to run one.
Incidentally, the White Box was a Kickstarted project, and the author runs you through some guidance on how to do it yourself in terms of timeline, etc.
- Ch 14 is also something I never want to deal with, but which is important: game box design and the practical considerations that go into it - not just fitting everything into the damn box (hell, I can't figure out how to fit everything back into the Gloomhaven box!) but what should go on the box design-wise (e.g. name, art, etc.), what information should go on the front vs. the side vs. the back, etc., what information should be omitted completely. Also some explanation of what box sizes mean from the retailer/customer's viewpoint - e.g. people expect a big box to have a lot of stuff and to cost more, and a small box to cost a lot less; retailers don't like carrying too many small boxes because of "shrinkage" (theft).
- Ch 15 is on "the lies game boxes tell," like game length, and proposes alternate information, like "complexity."
- Ch 16 is nitty-gritty on "What you need to put on your box if you self-publish," like UPCs (Universal Product Codes), Not For Children marks, country of origin labeling, etc. - some of this stuff is required for regulatory reasons to sell in certain markets.
- Ch 17 is on practical ways to promote your game at conventions without going in the red. (Hint: probably don't start by trying to buy a booth at GenCon.) Also some pragmatic tips on closing sales and doing demos.
- Ch 18, for those who are trying to sell their games to a publisher, is on sell sheets and what they should/shouldn't include.
- Ch 19 is guidance on things NOT to say if you want to pitch your game to a publisher
- Ch 20 is on networking at conventions.
- Ch 21 discusses ways to get your game into the marketplace, whether that means selling directly, putting your game up on Amazon, or getting into distribution.
This also sounds like a massive PITA and I don't want to ever deal with creating a physical boardgame myself. :p I've toyed with designing a basic deckbuilder for my own enlightenment and I'm at PRINT AND PLAY PRINT AND PLAY PRINT AND PLAY. Even then, it would undoubtedly be a vanity project because I'd need to pay AT LEAST for a designer to deal with designing the card template, which means I'd be creating this at a loss as an educational hobby. :p
- Ch 22 is something I haven't seen before, which is on contracts, including a basic breakdown of the White Box contract!
- Ch 23 is an essay by Erin Hawley on physical accessibility barriers in games that she's experienced as a disabled gamer and workarounds for them. Hell, I have some of these problems myself - every time I play the regular version of Ticket to Ride, I have trouble reading routes at the far end away from me so I often don't even try to build railroads there, etc.
- Ch 24 is an essay by Jeff Tidball on three-act structure as a tool for analyzing gameplay phase transitions. Very cool, although probably (as he notes) not a tool for the actual initial design.
- Ch 25 is an essay by Jay Little on game economics and ways in which they can be funky (e.g. the player who doesn't play to win).
A couple days I finished reading Jeremy Holcomb's The White Box Essays, which I own both in hardcopy (came with the White Box by same, i.e. a bundle with some basic board game components to get you started) and in Kindle ebook. Bang for buck this is one of the best overviews of board game design and production I've ever seen, and an excellent starting point for a budding game designer. ETA: I should clarify that I do think a grasp of game design theory is important (it can be "intuitive" or "instinctive" and doesn't have to be analytical or explicit) BUT honestly playing lots of games and actually designing games is also very key if you want to make headway in this field even as a hobby.
It's not as theory-driven or thorough as some of the other textbooks now extant; Salen & Zimmerman's seminal Rules of Play is better as a crushingly thorough deep drive into theory, Brathwaite & Schreiber's Challenges for Game Designers has a ton of great exercises (technically written for video game designers, but most of the challenges are pen-and-paper and would apply to board game design as well), Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses is a very different approach to theory, Tracy Fullerton's Game Design Workshop attempts to be an entire textbook with exercises, and that's only the ones I'm personally familiar with. Most of those texts are also more expensive (some considerably so), and honestly IMO with (board) game design one of the important things is to get started as cheaply as you can.
- Ch 1 asks you to figure out what your motivation is for game design, because what makes sense financially in terms of production is heavily dependent on what your goal is. For example, self-publishing and # of games produced depend very much on whether you're trying to make a profit or not.
- Ch 2 is about why you don't need to protect your ideas, and a very very very basic discussion of copyright vs. patent vs. trademark and when you might need to consult a lawyer about these three things.
- Ch 3 warns you away, as a beginning designer, from a few categories of games: cooperative (at least until you understand how they work, as they're apparently harder to design), highly asymmetric games (ditto), variants on existing games (you learn less and there's less profit opportunity), collectible games (VERY expensive, as in ~a million dollars to produce, VERY hard to break into as a designer), licensed games (very hard to break into unless you already have a name as a designer UNLESS you luck out and manage to license a small-but-growing property on the cheap, etc.).
- Ch 4 discusses the "story vs. mechanics" debate.
- Ch 5 is a great discussion on the advantages/disadvantages of randomness in games. Randomness isn't all bad! Rather, it's a tool with certain costs, and you should use it knowingly. I honestly haven't seen as clear a breakdown of this elsewhere; Lewis Pulsipher discusses randomness somewhat in his Game Design but I think this book's discussion is a better starting point.
- Ch 6 is another great discussion, this time on writing rules effectively. Of special value is the section on implicit vs. explicit rules.
- Ch 7 is on game components, from how they can be leveraged to help teach the rules of your game (e.g. if you have people characters in your game, try to represent them with something like meeples that "look" like people, yellow chips for "gold," etc.) to how they suggest strategy. There's also some suggestions for using the specific components that come with the physical White Box, if you bought that.
- Ch 8 is on game balance and different approaches to it - really interesting, goes over a variety of options.
- Ch 9 is on the big-picture question of fun vs. work/effort (including learning your game in the first place) - if a part of your game requires a lot of fiddly rules and takes 30 minutes to set up, how much fun does it deliver - if it's not that fun, maybe consider cutting it? Whereas if you have a small rule that generates lots of fun, keep it! Fun is what keeps people coming back for more.
- Ch 10 is on playtesting and how to find playtesters. Because my experience has mostly been with relatively small games, I've generally bullied my family into playtesting my tiny micro-TTRPGs. Winterstrike I got playtested by asking friends (THANK YOU).
- Ch 11 is titled "How to more than double your game's sales" - and it's about accessibility and diverse representation. :D
- Ch 12 is on the nitty gritty of self-publishing, including things that will drive up costs. There's an overview of component types from "simple" to "complex" to "very complex." Playing cards are simple; hell, I basically made "custom" playing cards for my Deuce of Gears Oracle and that was astonishingly doable (not for a game purpose, but just in terms of manufacturing). Custom minis? Very complex. There's also a discussion of print run sizes and breaking points, and a general recommendation for self-publishers to stick to small runs and reprint as needed rather than the horror story we all know (or anyway, anyone who's been around games self-publishing long enough knows) of people with boxes of unsold games filling their garage/basement/house. Also a discussion of the production timeline.
This chapter singlehandedly convinced me I never want to be responsible for anything more complicated than a deck of "custom" playing cards. :p But it's interesting to be informed.
- Ch 13 discusses crowdfunding models, plus crowdfunding advantages/disadvantages. Anyone who's watched e.g. games on Kickstarter AT ALL has seen some of this play out - one of my life goals, in fact, is never ever to create a Kickstarted project. I'm happy to back Kickstarters, but damn sure I never want to run one.
Incidentally, the White Box was a Kickstarted project, and the author runs you through some guidance on how to do it yourself in terms of timeline, etc.
- Ch 14 is also something I never want to deal with, but which is important: game box design and the practical considerations that go into it - not just fitting everything into the damn box (hell, I can't figure out how to fit everything back into the Gloomhaven box!) but what should go on the box design-wise (e.g. name, art, etc.), what information should go on the front vs. the side vs. the back, etc., what information should be omitted completely. Also some explanation of what box sizes mean from the retailer/customer's viewpoint - e.g. people expect a big box to have a lot of stuff and to cost more, and a small box to cost a lot less; retailers don't like carrying too many small boxes because of "shrinkage" (theft).
- Ch 15 is on "the lies game boxes tell," like game length, and proposes alternate information, like "complexity."
- Ch 16 is nitty-gritty on "What you need to put on your box if you self-publish," like UPCs (Universal Product Codes), Not For Children marks, country of origin labeling, etc. - some of this stuff is required for regulatory reasons to sell in certain markets.
- Ch 17 is on practical ways to promote your game at conventions without going in the red. (Hint: probably don't start by trying to buy a booth at GenCon.) Also some pragmatic tips on closing sales and doing demos.
- Ch 18, for those who are trying to sell their games to a publisher, is on sell sheets and what they should/shouldn't include.
- Ch 19 is guidance on things NOT to say if you want to pitch your game to a publisher
- Ch 20 is on networking at conventions.
- Ch 21 discusses ways to get your game into the marketplace, whether that means selling directly, putting your game up on Amazon, or getting into distribution.
This also sounds like a massive PITA and I don't want to ever deal with creating a physical boardgame myself. :p I've toyed with designing a basic deckbuilder for my own enlightenment and I'm at PRINT AND PLAY PRINT AND PLAY PRINT AND PLAY. Even then, it would undoubtedly be a vanity project because I'd need to pay AT LEAST for a designer to deal with designing the card template, which means I'd be creating this at a loss as an educational hobby. :p
- Ch 22 is something I haven't seen before, which is on contracts, including a basic breakdown of the White Box contract!
- Ch 23 is an essay by Erin Hawley on physical accessibility barriers in games that she's experienced as a disabled gamer and workarounds for them. Hell, I have some of these problems myself - every time I play the regular version of Ticket to Ride, I have trouble reading routes at the far end away from me so I often don't even try to build railroads there, etc.
- Ch 24 is an essay by Jeff Tidball on three-act structure as a tool for analyzing gameplay phase transitions. Very cool, although probably (as he notes) not a tool for the actual initial design.
- Ch 25 is an essay by Jay Little on game economics and ways in which they can be funky (e.g. the player who doesn't play to win).
