Reborn

I’m constantly amazed at the changes I’ve experienced since the worst of COVID.

Over two years I did almost no games design.

I struggled to think of changes for the one or two ideas I had.

No new ideas.

Since November I’ve been completely transformed.

New ideas. Rapid progress on existing ones.

Lots of spinning plates and progress being made on all of them.

Friday I was supposed to meet Paul to collect more stock to help him ship.

I’d felt rubbish all day and cancelled so I could get an early night instead.

A game mechanism came to me while feeling awful, sat in bed at 8pm.

By 9 I’d designed a game. And written enough notes to make a first prototype.

I slept really badly. Body aches and a blocked nose keeping me awake a large chunk of the night.

The next morning I felt awful.

This idea didn’t exist 24 hours before I finished the prototype!

But I managed to make a prototype that day.

Filthy cold and I still managed to get from first idea to prototype in 24 hours.

The next day I started soloing it in public, a bunch of kids came to watch. One joined in and played it to the end.

Despite it begin an early, broken version, they wanted to make their own copy. 

They were fighting over who got to play a second 4-player game (before their parents, sat nearby, whisked them off for lunch).

It has potential.

In the last few months I’ve committed to doing four things daily: meditate, walk outside, some basic bodyweight exercises, and games design.

Is the transformation down to one of those? Two of them? All of them together?

I daren’t stop any of them. This feels awesome. So productive.

I’m a game designer reborn.

Visualise

I use Trello to organise all the tasks I have to do for Eurydice Games.

This year I’ve added a new column for quarterly objectives.

And put a 3 year goal at the top of that column.

I’ve used the cover feature to add a picture to that card:

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

The picture calls to me.

I love hiking up hills. Though I haven’t done it much since the kids were born.

The photo spurs me on. It calls to me. 

Every single day.

I want to climb that hill. Reach the top. See the view.

Amazing what a great photo can do.

So far this year I’ve been incredibly productive. 

Far more than recent years - more than I expected.

Related?

Productivity

My games design streak ended on Friday after 22 days.

Achieving a 22-day streak would have been inconceivable last year or the year before.

Or probably any previous year since Reiver Games shut down.

I’ve started another now.

The productivity is spilling over.

I’ve got loads of Eurydice stuff done, not related to games design.

I’ve even been cranking through home chores on the weekends too.

We’re back in business

And our new laser-cutter arrived, so once Paul’s recovered from his surgery he can finish the Kickstarter fulfilment.

All systems go!

Pace

My game design languished during 2020.

The only other person I could playtest with was seven years old.

I hate solo playtesting.

Everything slowed to a crawl.

The pandemic robbed me of my headspace.

(Still, I was lucky that was all)

Towards the end of last year things picked up.

I was was able to host some playtesting nights.

I started making progress on a few games.

This year I’m trying to do some game design every day.

Coupled with a Roll & Write design that I can quickly iterate and share with playtesters, my pace has dramatically improved.

Cycle time is very short

I’m even solo playtesting FlickFleet: Xeno Wars to try to balance the ships and make sure they are fun.

I’m loving the productivity. The daily progress. The incremental gains.

Time

I’ve been thinking a lot about time.

How I spend my time after a Kickstarter.

Working out material quantities, ordering and chasing orders.

Then months of spreadsheets.

Combining the Kickstarter export with the Gamefound export.

Cross-reference with the accounts.

Double-checking everything.

Then writing the invoices. Using that collated information.

There’s got to be a better way.

My time would be better spent designing games and doing graphic design.

I’m thinking about databases.

Maybe I can spend a bunch of time now setting something up which will save me a lot of time in the future?

Working in the Cloud

Back when I started Reiver Games in 2006 there wasn't a lot of cloud functionality (I had GMail, that was about it). I didn't own a smartphone or a tablet. My bookkeeping was done on paper (in a physical ledger book), all the spreadsheets I had of game manufacturing details, orders, sales tracking, etc. were OpenOffice (it's free!) spreadsheets on my laptop.

As someone who traveled a lot for work it made running the business quite awkward. I would only be able to update things properly at home. Doing my books turned into a weekly, then monthly and then yearly nightmare. I could only respond to emails when sat at a computer with a physical internet connection. It made things harder and less productive.

This time round I'm approaching things differently. I've a smartphone with a decent data plan that I can use in the UK, Europe and the US. So I can check and respond to emails at home, on the move, at lunch or even while travelling abroad.

Clouds by theaucitron on Flickr

I've made a concious decision to host as much of my Eurydice Games stuff as possible in the cloud. My books are online, so I can update them as soon as I receive an order or incur an expense, keeping them up to date like this removes the horror of the 'my taxes are due. Quick! Let's catch up the months of bookkeeping I've been putting off!'. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my task list is in Trello which I can access from my laptop, from my iPad and my phone. If I think of a cool idea I can just write it down.

I use Evernote to record information about the game ideas I have in flight - so I've got notes, rules, ideas all written down and accessible from all my devices.

I even use the CC (Creative Cloud) version of InDesign and Illustrator for the graphic design of my games, so I can work on them while travelling too.

Having all this data and information available while out of the house, on a trip to the US for work, on the train to Manchester or at lunchtime means I can be more productive and have to keep less stuff in my head. It's a great way to work and I really appreciate the improvement over the first time round.