
Do you remember how excited you felt with that initial idea of: “Hey! I should make my own board game!” What would you say to yourself now that you have gone down the path? Would you caution yourself, give a word of warning, or encourage yourself forward? We here at MakeBoardGame wanted to know, and we are sure that you do too. So we asked game designers from all over the place one simple question: What’s one thing you wish you had known before starting as a game designer? We gathered all types of advice from those who are fresh in game design to those who have some published games under their belt. This is exactly the type of information we here at MakeBoardGame hope to continue to offer in our journey to be the BEST resource for game design and publication! We hope this advice helps you!
On Being Passionate about Game Design
Daniel Fremgen (Dobey Games) Maker of Bear Trap!, Dustbowl, and More
Advice on Playtesting
Matt Leacock Maker of Pandemic, Forbidden Island, & More
I’ve found it’s much more important to observe playtesters carefully – looking for what confuses them, what terms they use to describe things, when they appear to be engaged (leaning forward) or not (checking their phone) and whether they appear to be having a good time – as opposed to asking players “what do you think?” at the end of a session. Self-report is notoriously inaccurate and asking players (who are not game designers themselves) what they’d change, doesn’t generally yield fruitful results. Your time is better spent on careful observation.
Jamey Stegmaier (Stonemaier Games) Maker of Scythe, Viticulture & More
The #1 thing I wish I’d known before designing my first game for publication is the importance of blind playtesting. I was familiar with the concept of having complete strangers learn and play a game in my absence, but I just didn’t realize the potential impact it can have on the design and the rules. While it’s helpful for me to playtest our games with friends and colleagues, the feedback is never quite as blunt and honest as when I send the game to a playtester hundreds of miles away for them to say whatever they want. And without me there to clarify and remind them about rules, all of the inadequacies in the rules quickly rise to the surface. I’m fortunate that people volunteered to blind playtest Viticulture during the original Kickstarter campaign, and ever since then it has become a huge part of my game design process.
Keng Leong Yeo (Starting Player) Maker of Three Kingdoms Redux
As we progressed to first impressions playtesting, we receive much more varied opinions. We quickly realized that we can’t please everyone. Indeed, some of the opinions were at complete odds with one another. We just had to make the decisions based on our judgment of what is best for the game and go with it.
Nonetheless, we thank all playtesters who gave up their precious time and for their opinions. All of them, whether implemented or not, are important to us.
Lesson learnt: We cannot please everyone
Words about the Process
Gil Hova (Formal Ferret Games) Maker of Battle Merchants, Wordsy & More

Kelly Adams Maker of Chibi Quest!
I think learning how to take criticism is important and knowing when to refactor ideas when they are not working.
Johannes Maker of Habeamus
You will not be able to play games like other people any more.
Instead of just playing the game you’ll look at all aspects of the game. How is the box made, what stock did they use, how does the cover art align with the theme and the contents, how many cards are there, how are the rules written, how does this rule interact with this rule, what card could you add or delete to make it even better, what are flaws, is there downtime for players, could you improve on that, OMG they have custom-made dice that are great, how much did it cost to produce those wooden figures…
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I tremendously enjoy thinking about game mechanics while playing other games. But it does change the way you play games.
J. Alex Kevern Maker of World’s Fair 1893, Gold West & More

Michael Aldridge (Infinite Dreams Gaming) Maker of Warehouse 13

Corey Young Maker of Gravwell
Players prefer decisions over random stuff. Also, publishers prefer new ways of playing over familiar stuff with a new skin.
Grant Rodiek (Hyperbole Games) Maker of Farmageddon, Druids & More
Be sure that what you’re making is actually good enough. Is it going to be unique and special? Is it something the market needs? Also, is it something YOU LOVE? Really understand a design before you dive in. Don’t just make something “just because” and don’t accept “good enough.” Make something great that you love from day one.
Sen-Foong Lim (Bamboozle Brothers) Maker of Belfort, Train of Thought & More

Thoughts on Prototypes
Adam Rehberg (Adam’s Apple Games) Maker of Brewin’ USA
Prototypes don’t need to look good, but they probably should if you want more people to agree to play them.
Playtest with a lot of different groups. Playing with the same group can become rote and leave you trying add more depth and flavor than you need to get them engaged. This leads to over-complicating things that should have been left simpler and more new player friendly.
Definitely bookmarking this one. Great tips all around!
Glad that you found it helpful! I’m grateful for all the game designers who were willing to take the time to contribute.
What game is at the top of the page?
Looks like Game of Thrones. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103343/game-thrones-board-game-second-edition
yup it’s game of thrones!
I’m a hobby game designer and I’m yet to have anything published. Given that I started designing games when I was about five years old, clearly there are things I wish I knew then that I know now… More seriously though, the big thing I see new designers miss over and over is learning how to fail fast. Make a quick mockup with just enough ugly components to play a few rounds of your game against yourself. That will typically save loads of time you would otherwise spend thinking about ideas that when put to the test won’t work without big changes. This is not because they are a bad game designer, but because games are typically made to be a system to analyse and predict while playing it. If your game is so simple that you can analyse it even without having played a single game of it, it will probably be a boring game.
But more likely you’ve made a very complex system that has some parts that makes it very unbalanced. That’s the other advantage of the quick mockup: You just make the bare bones. Often designers feel their games should have bells and whistles and cool ways to change the game rules or special abilities. But what they should test first should be the base game without that. It’s ok if the game feels lacking in cool things the players can do, but if the base mechanics of the game do not work or are wildly unbalanced in some way that is much easier to notice without a bunch of rule changing effects in play that obscure the issue but also being unbalanced.
The power of an iterative process is not to be underestimated. Don’t spend time on making the game pretty too early since it’s harder to throw away bad designs that look good (and that you’ve wasted time on). Experience helps with having an idealized image in your head about how the components *should* look later on and seeing potential of card games that just some pieces of scribbled on scrap paper in card sleeves. It doesn’t help with getting playtesters for ugly prototypes though, but once you’ve designed some good things you hopefully have some friends who have faith in your new projects so you can get those early playtests in.
My last and somewhat obvious advice would be to play more games of all sorts and analyse their game mechanics and what makes them tick. But I’d like to think I was already doing this when I was five.
Pelle, thanks for the great advice.
I can’t agree more that it is so important to just build a quick-ugly prototype and start playing. A game can play so well in your mind, but once it’s on the table you’ll see it’s strengths and weaknesses very quickly!
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So right, i’m creating a tabletop game about surfing and everything you wrote is really true !
and now when you have finish everything the last but no the least is to promote the game !
but it is so nice to have done something you shoudn’t imagine possible.
If you want to have a look on my surfing game : http://www.surfandbizz.com
If you have advise on promoting game, i’m lacking of inspiration .
Thank you for this post very helpfull
How’s the process going so far? The website looks good! Are you using kickstarter? How are you going about promotion?