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  • Pini!

Designing differently


It's been a year since I wrote here, so I owe you a good one! I just came back from Essen Spiel and I must say it was a very positive experience. Even better than past years. I volunteered in a booth and had good meetings with many people. Some I knew prior and some I met for the first time. It's always nice to see those people that I meet once a year both friends and colleagues. It feels just as good when creating new ones.

 

This Essen was also a weird one because of the composition of companies that arrived. Many American companies either didn't show up or reduced presence by sharing a booth or having their games presented and sold by other companies. On the other hand you had some great presence from raising companies from the far east Japan, China, Indonesia and more.

When you look at their games, they look different. When you play their games, they play different. They are awesome. It doesn't matter if you like a specific game or not, a diverse field of ideas is what always drove any type of art forward. This is not to say they don't have games are heavily influenced by American and European designs, because they do, but many of their games are not. Some of their games just feel like they came from other branches of thought.

This makes me think about Reiner Knizia, who said he never plays anyone else's games. This is not out of some sort of egotistic thought, but rather out of the fact that designing and playtesting as many games as he does just takes 100% of his time. I appreciate Knizia's games, and although I'm yet to find one that I thoroughly enjoyed, I learned a lot from the ones I played. You feel the fact that he's an island of design. Any time I consider bidding or tile laying in a design of mine, I look at his games. He revisited his own ideas so many times, you can be sure they are well honed.

Many games don't stand on their own, but rather stand on the shoulders of their older ancestors. You can't look at Teotihuacan without looking at Tzolkin and seeing the tethers that bind them together. Same goes for Caverna and Agricola, or the beer derivative named Brew Crafters. So many more examples come to mind. Is that the way to go? I think so. I think that sparks of genius that start a new branch like Codenames come only once in a while. We need games to play in between these sparks of genius. We need these sparks of genius improved and worked and honed. The first might be the best, but might also be just the start of many good things.

What will my games look like if I don't play games for say... a year? Will that make me able to hone my own thoughts better rather than borrowing solutions from other games or bring forward that spark of genius that starts a new branch? It might.

What if I only play games from Japan for a year? Will I start making games that feel from another branch of thought? Maybe I will create a Euro-Japan hybrid like when Euro and American styles collided.

I know I cannot be an island of my own ideas, because that's not who I am. It's possible I'm like that because of the fact that I play tens of new games each year and read even more rulebooks and watch even more runthrough/gameplay videos.

Whichever way you choose, find your way and design games.

Pini!

In the picture: An Island. Not seen are 8-10 game designers working hard. The exact number is unclear and dwindling as we left them without much food.

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