Board game design: It's all about mechanics searching

In a broad sense that is to be expected. When a field gets extensive exploration, some common components get generalized and catalogued. I guess in that view of game design, eventually the list grows and becomes a pick-and-choose fair of combining stuff.

But I wouldn't say that is completely true. Creating new mechanics isn't the only thing which can drive game design forward. Neither is game design only about picking and choosing what is already available

And in all fairness, I'm quite certain the recent forum post topics lining up with design questions were picked and chosen to begin with. the topics in themselves however are discussions on how to implement the topic mechanic, and not a blind question with a yes or no answer.

Finding the mechanics you want isn't all there is to making a game function. A whole lot of balancing and testing and re-iterating needs to be done before a game can be considered ready for play, let alone ready for sale.

I guess i don't understand what is bad about it. Even if we assume someone has compiled a list of all known game mechanics to reference from, it is merely a shortcut.

Right now to me, it sounds like a cook bored of the ingredients he uses, when what truly matters is the portions and combinations of those said ingredients.

It goes on the same premise when designing anything else that needs the appropriate materials, apparatus and whatnot to make it work. You do not want to design a car made of plastic and an engine that runs off jet fuel.

Theme is alright but sometimes a strictly theme based mechanic seems too gimmicky especially if it is executed poorly. To design the game with little consideration to the mechanics needed to make it playable is like putting the cart before the horse. The mechanics make the game, period.

You must not be a software developer. Sure almost any application imaginable may be created, but sorry to burst your bubble, the design of software can get very complex very quickly. Note that not anymore are any major software companies just making software from scratch. They always use existing software and tools. There are many companies that exist for the sole purpose of creating those tools!

It seems software development is a lot like game development now that I think of it.

To be honest, lots of software development starts with an unclear/very loose goal in mind that usually changes many times before the final product is released.

I have been looking into this matter. And have to correct myself a bit in my last post.

There are indeed a lot of mechanic searching posts. Several are camouflaged too.

I suggest:
There should be a clear difference between the several stages of searching though.

Designers with experience will start at stage 3. But if that one fails. They fall back to 2. Then after some more fails they fall back to 1. They clearly need to search again, or think of something anew.

That is not all. There are 3 important thinking tools to help you get through the search.

A goal:
Having a clear goal in mind does help you advance in the stages rather fast. And even inexperienced board game designers (like myself) can take leaps this way.
A search for something that you know is easier than a search for something that you don't know. So you need to have a goal, no matter which stage you are in.

For the silly;

A plan:
Having a clear plan in mind gets the exact same story as having a clear goal.
If you don't plan your search, it can take much longer. Planning is often done in stage 2 and 3.

An history:
Having an history of what you did. History is very important when you design your game. You know what you tried. How you tried. How you failed. Or how you succeeded in some aspects.

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For those who studied board game designing. Feel free to correct my post.

For me mechanics is a exploration on evolution of a game, freedom and so.

But if I want design a game first I start defining what situations I want to live in with a game, and after I choose the materials and mechanics that can adapt to what I want.

The same happen if I want to write a story: the first thing that I need is the end and the subtext, after I create all the steps (episodes or so), the characters, ambient, structure of feelings (dialoguing texts, not-dialoguing text, descriptions, etc...)

I like very much to explore mechanics and, sometimes, I design a game just to see how a mechanic work, but this isnt a serious designing process, it is just an experimentation.