I am obsessed with replayability in my designs. You probably know it pretty well from Robinson Crusoe – 300 different cards with events and adventures, 6 different scenarios in the box, 3 more scenarios as a free expansions downloadable from our website… You buy Robinson and I promise that you’ll have like 100 hours of fun. This is me designing games. The same is true for Stronghold, Imperial Settlers, for all the games I make. Replayability is the king.

But!

Even though my design philosophy is all about putting in the box so much content that you will never get bored, I actually agree with Tom Vasel who once said in his podcast that if he play a game and have a great gaming night with his friends, the game would already be worth buying and it might have the replayability value of 0 (zero!) and he would still be happy.

Probably most of you now think that this is dumbest thing you’ve ever read on this blog.

Believe it or not, but I am with Tom on this one.

Let me explain.

Grab your 3 friends and go to the cinema to see Spectre. 4 x 20 = 80 usd
Grab your wife and 2 kids and go to the ZOO. 4 x 20 = 80 usd
Grab your girlfriend and take her to a concert. 2 x 50 = 100 usd
Grab your friends and buy and play Robinson Crusoe. 1 x 70 usd

OMG, I would never buy Robinson if I could play it only once!!! Well, really? How about giving it a second thought, huh?

I am writing about this because Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock did something extraordinary. They convinced you to buy a game that has a limited replaybility. You’ll play about 12 games of Pandemic Legacy and that’s it. You are done with it.

(yeah, I know, the first step was made with Rob’s Risk Legacy)

And yet the players are not complaining.
The players are happy like a kid who just got his Sphero BB-8 Droid.
The players praise it to be a great game.
The players value the experience they had, just as they would do with watching an amazing movie or reading an amazing book.

The players are witnessing a revolution, even though they might not be recognizing that yet.

Back to Tom Vasel statement – the question we might ask today is if we are ready to pay 60 or 80 usd for an amazing one-time experience, just like we pay for a cinema ticket, a Rolling Stones concert or a visit to the ZOO.

I think we are not there yet. But the wall has been breached. Pandemic Legacy has showed us that there is a new world out there.

I am very curious what’s next. Are you?

edited by Piotr, thank you!

As you probably heard already, Martin Wallace decided to close his company – Treefrog Games and focus on designing games that will be published by other companies. As he wrote in his statement: „We will cease to produce our own titles and focus instead on designing games for other companies. There are numerous reasons behind this decision, but the main factor has been the increased costs of running the company from New Zealand. This does not mean the end of 'Treefrog’ style games, it just means they will appear with another companies [sic] logo on.”

I am this guy who wears two hats too, I am designer and I am publisher. I totally understand his decision.

Managing company is a huge task, no matter if you work in software industry, food industry or board game industry, it is a huge thing. Being entrepreneur means being at work 24/7.  It’s answering hundreds of emails, it is having tens of Skype meetings, it is catching up every single day. Never good time for setting up prototype and testing for few hours.

I have a team behind me, I managed to build a pretty solid company here with seven full time employees who do all that crazy work that has to be done. And yet, it is a rare time that I can sit in my office and do actual design. When I am in the office, for most time I have to be CEO of Portal Games. I can wear my designer hat after hours, in the evening, at home. That’s how it is.

That’s why I am happy for Martin. I actually envy him. I know it is best for him and I know it is best for all of us, fans of Brass, Steam and all other great designs he made. When he cuts off all those business emails, when he cuts off all those customer service emails, when he cuts off all those shipping issues, production issues, delays issues, he will be finally  able to breath.

And then he’ll give us plenty of amazing designs.

Can’t wait.

Here is a guest post by Charles Beauvais.

It’s GDJ about his designs. Find them on KS here!

To appreciate the following stories, you’ll need to know a bit about the mechanics of the game, Smoke and Mirrors. There are three suits, each of which has a different distribution of cards. Each player gets one card from each suit as their hand.

Star:  1 1 1 1 1 Mirror
Spiral: 1 2 3 4 5 Mirror
Skull:  5 5 5 5 5 Mirror

In playtesting, most players pick up the pattern after a round or two. Stars are (usually) 1, Skulls are (usually) 5, and each Spiral card is unique. So, if you’ve got the Spiral 3, and someone puts down a single Spiral card claiming a total of 3, you know they are lying.
Mirrors, by the way, copy one or two of the other (non-mirror) cards it’s played with.

MAGIC PLAYTESTING MOMENT #1: Manny’s Impossible Bluff
In an early version of the game, everyone (not just the next player) had the option of calling your bluff. Manny claimed a total of 4, and put down a single Skull card.
Consulting the chart above, you’ll see that no Skull card has a value of 4, so he was clearly lying. Watching the game silently, I expected the next player would call him out, and that would be the end of it.
However, the next player was too preoccupied with figuring out his turn to notice Manny’s mistake, and he played without challenging. The following player likewise didn’t challenge Manny. There was only one player left before it would be Manny’s turn again: Gabriel.
Gabriel has noticed Manny’s misplay. He knew that it was impossible. And yet… he had just seen two other players decline to call him on it. Gabriel paused, took a deep breath, and accused Manny of lying.
After the game, I asked Manny why he had played a Skull, when he knew that it was impossible. He admitted to simply grabbing the wrong card from his hand! He was as surprised as anyone to see his Skull card (instead of his Spiral card) on the table, but felt that it would arouse too much suspicion to pick it back up. His audacity almost paid off.

MAGIC PLAYTESTING MOMENT #2: Loser’s Revenge
Weeks later, Jim and Brian were losing badly to Gabriel (who had won five rounds in a row). Jim puts down a Spiral card and claims “2”. Brian doesn’t call Jim.
Brian puts down a Star and Spiral card and claims “3”. Gabriel looks at Brian and says, „The only way to form a total of 3 with those cards is if the Spiral card had a value of 2. But, if you were holding the Spiral 2, you would have called Jim when he claimed to have the Spiral 2. You’re obviously lying.”
But Brian was telling the truth! Even though he knew Jim was lying about having the Spiral 2, he didn’t call Jim in order to set a trap for Gabriel.

DIGRESSION ON GROUP-THINK
On the one hand, Smoke and Mirrors is open to analysis. There are 216 possible hands, but that includes a lot of duplication. There are only 24 unique hands. You have a great chance (93%) of being able to produce a 5, and not a very good chance (33%) of producing a 3. But this doesn’t matter.
Your group might arrive at the (mathematically justified) conclusion: “Never claim a 3, unless you have it” is a good heuristic for the game. You all smile and nod and agree, yes, 33% is far too unlikely, you should never bluff a 3. Then you deal out the cards and, suddenly, the player before you claims to have a 3. Is she lying?
The mathematical analysis, the theory, the discussion, the sensible agreement all go out the window. Certainly, she knows that bluffing a 3 is always a bad play, so she’s not bluffing. But, maybe she’s counting on you using this logic to get away with bluffing. She’s won the last two rounds, so she wouldn’t risk throwing it all away on such a transparent bluff, would she?

MAGIC PLAYTESTING MOMENT #3: Pride goeth before the fall
The dialogue in this story speaks for itself.
Manny: (calling Jim’s bluff) „You’re lying. You know how I know?”
Jim: (revealing his winning hand) „You don’t know.”

Smoke and Mirrors is one of three new games in the ButtonShy wallet series. All three are on Kickstarter right now!

You probably noticed I was super stressed before Gen con. I was terrified, I had huge pressure on me and it was really hard to cope with that. I felt tired all the time, couldn’t focus at work, my only dream was 'Let this Gen con be over.’ Yeah, there was a lot of stress. Or to be more precise – I put all this crazy pressure by myself. Anyway, this was horrible few weeks.

And it’s over.

All games arrived (although we had many adventures with that), games were selling like crazy and games got very good feedback. On my FB and Twitter feed I see more and more pictures of people playing and enjoying Rattle, Battle. That’s my first family game, I was really afraid about the feedback.

I am no longer afraid.

This weekend I saw many tweets with people playing my games. Here is one of them. Father and daughter playing Rattle, Battle. How cool is that!

@trzewik ok… So my 6 year old daughter just said, „why don’t you just board him?”she’s much smarter than me!

— r0cky143 (@r0cky143) August 8, 2015

Operation Gen con is over. I am happy again. I am energized again. I am motivated like crazy again. I work every day since the very morning till the very late night again. I am back in action. I have so much energy as never before. I think I may explode at some point.

Let’s face it. I missed me. I missed this obsessed with work dude who can not wait for the next day and for these all crazy things he will do next day.

Welcome back Ignacy. Good to see you again.

Waiting for Gen con drives me nuts. I can’t sleep. I can’t rest. I can’t focus. I am no longer this always-focused fucking-efficient Ignacy who works 18/7. I am pre-Gen con Ignacy. Lousy dude who can’t find himself a place. I hate this version of Ignacy.

I hate him because he wastes time doing nothing. I hate him because he can’t think about anything but Gen con. I hate him because he lost creativity. I hate him because he lost confidence.

He wants to get to you and show you Rattle, Battle. He wants to reach you and play with you Tides of Time. He wants to act, he wants to do something, he wants to show you stuff he was working on for the past months.

He can’t. He is here, waiting for Gen con. Closed in a cage.