Mr Sloper

I haven't seen this site before. Thanks for bringing it up!

I'm one of the people in the "ideas are a dime and dozen" category. Elsewhere on his site (in his first lesson), Sloper sums my view up very well...

I think a first-time game designer (myself included, a few years back) get too worked up about the idea of the game. People won't play your idea, they'll play your game.

It's an interesting article, but it's really about board game publishing instead of design. I think he's wrong when he dismisses design and playtesting as "the easy part." Too many games fail to make it out of this stage for it to be considered easy. It also promotes the idea that you just need a couple of months for your idea to grow itself into a fully playtested game. I can't help but see this as a fairly agonizing process taking much longer (for most of us, who pay our bills with a day job and can't devote a Knizia-esque amount of time to game design).

Of course, this isn't to imply that producing and selling a game is easy compared to design. One could make the arguement that it is indeed more difficult, relatively speaking. But that wouldn't make the design and development stage any less hard. I don't think it's a step that should be glossed over.

The publishing advice itself seems well-written, though I'm not so sure about the advice to get a patent. It is important to know your rights; however, I don't think patents are applicable to many designers on this forum. I couldn't read the article on the fellow whose design was apparently stolen as it has since been moved, but if the game in question was a casino game that doesn't involve any bits outside the standard cards and chips (and seems more like a poker variant than an original game design), and it's designed specifically for casino play (I assume), then it's a different animal than many of the games our members are working on.

Finally, Mr. Sloper writes from the point of view that if a game is designed, its next natural step is to get published. Personally, I'm an amateur designer. I do this as a hobby; I don't want to worry about meeting deadlines or running out of money, because I don't want this escape valve of mine to stop becoming fun. That means if I take a week off from game design in order to play a computer game, or sleep in, or something unrelated, I will not raise the ire of any investors or developers who need to see the game hit the stores. It also means that if I actually "finish" a game design (ha ha!), I don't have any concerns about keeping it on store shelves or unleashing a new marketing campaign for it. I can put it on my bookshelf, bring it out when friends ask for it, and continue with my life.

(Of course, if an existing company wishes to publish my game, that's a different story!)

So I'd advise any other new designers to not rush into publishing simply because it seems the next logical or natural thing to do. It may indeed be the right thing in the end, but you should reach that conclusion through thought and consideration, not assumption.