Playing your OWN game

It's hard to solo play my co op game I prefer when I have people to play with but love running it with playtesters

I am sure this greatly depends on the type of game you design, the reason you designed it, the people you play it with, and whether you are always the only one to explain the rules and teach it to new players... much of that is not fun to do all the time.

So far I love to play my games, and if asked to play them I will jump at the chance.

I think the most I have played Dominance in one day was about 40 times and I was still having fun at the end. But that was all about who I was playing it with and why I was playing it with them. In that case, it was a friend of mine who I can't beat. I have never won my own game against him (still to this day).

There have been other times I did not like playing it even once.

I think the further I get from the design and playtest phases with all the iterations and changes, the more the games grow on me again. They are like old friends or family... at times I may not like them all that much, but I still love them.

For me, the games I have designed have been a labor of love. But so far I have been designing games partly for myself (In that players like me are part of the target audience).

I am sure that if I was designing a game solely for mainstream players I might feel differently.

Everyone is different and an opinionated question will always get you an opinionated answer. This is not about, wrong or right and I don't think anyone needs to love their games. It just is what it is...

@BHFuturist

This is an interesting question and like others I feel this is very dependant on the type of games you are creating and why you are making them.

Personally I've made a lot of games (as prototypes) that haven't lasted more than a few weeks as I haven't enjoyed them enough.

The City of Kings however was designed to be the game I wanted to play and I've been in love with it for the last 2 years. Even when the majority of playtesting finished I found myself setting up game nights just to play it more as I genuinely love to play it. I even designed a 12+ hour variant which I find myself playing often as well.

As someone who owns over 300 games with very few of them being played more than once or twice a year it's unnatural for me to play a game this many times. It's made easier by the fact many of my friends love the game too, there have been times where we've finished a 6 hour session at 11pm and whilst I'm grabbing a drink they've decided to reset the game to start over.

With that said, this is a very specific game that's been designed around replayability. So each of those sessions feels very different, sometimes focusing on combat, other times roleplaying and other times worker management. I don't think I could have designed a small game I could enjoy this much, after this many plays.

I'm really intrigued to see how I feel about my next game and whether I can fall in love with it the same way.

The only moment when I hate playing my game would be when I have found something that I don't like about it.
Then I try to fix it. And if this "fails", I tend to hate, that part.
Other than that, the game has so much complexity in various area's. I never get tired, trying new things.

Hmm some interesting comments to this question I like to playtest and run my game as I'm usually teaching and like lots of playtesters I don't play it that often myself. As for if it's a favourite game it's hard to say as it's still in early development and I need to add a key element once the core rules have been tested.

I only design games that I want to play. So, if I get to a point in a design where I've played a game a bunch of times and don't really enjoy it, I move on to something else.

And if your game ever gets picked up by a publisher, you're likely to play it a TON--playtesting, conventions, teaching the game, etc--so if you don't enjoy it, it's likely to be a slog.

very interesting question, in fact, I might be scared of my own answer.

I design game according to my tastes, because I am always in a situations where I think I could do better or fix the other games out there. So in a way, I am creating, adapting a game to fit better to my taste.

Now do I enjoy playing the game, well at the beginning maybe not because it's not mature enough, and at the end maybe not either because I just polayed too much and my vision became biassed. There could be small moments through solo play that could be enjoyable.

One thing to do is to take a 6 month break and play your own game later to see if you actually like playing it. That is the only way to know if you really enjoy playing your own game.

Because for baord games, it seems that when you know too much a game, it lose it's flavor and just become a series of mechanics and interaction which makes the game feel bland and boring.

All this ask the question: WHy design board games if desiging them is not fun, and playing them is not fun? I still did not found an answer, still a certain level of addition to game design remains preventing me from not to think about game design.

On the other hand, for video games, it's almost the opposite. I really enjoy what I am playing, in fact, a bit too much that sometimes, I don't want to stop playing and and continue programming.

Part of it is due to the feedback loop of seeing your code work, but it might not be related to the design process itself.

So in the end, I do seem to have more fun making video games than board games. It's a shame that it has to be this way. This is why I am moire aiming towards video game. Not sure if doing board games as a digital version could make board game design funnier, well see.