Where have I been?
Its been a while since I’ve written anything. I find writing to take a lot of effort for me, and I’m generally just doing this for myself, so it was easy to stop. I was also finding it difficult to manage the blog, given I want to use tools and technology that are more open and flexible then the likes of wordpress and medium.
Recently though I came across Netlify which allows for easy and open blog management. So I’ve changed my site over from pure gifthub pages to Netlify. I’ll write about this change later, but wanted to give some context for my sporadic posting, and the reason I hope to get a little more regular.
Ideas to reality
I’ve long had a personal desire to create boardgames, I’ve blogged about some ideas I’ve had here, here and here. That said my desire and my will to do, and the progress I have made have not gotten me very far… so I want to find small incremental ways to improve this. One thing that keeps me back is that I don’t find the steps in the process rewarding in themselves, and feel I don’t produce anything when I do spend time working on my ideas. Without this sense of reward it can be hard to push myself to do more. So I’m going to run an experiement and try to take a more structured approach to my process, not in how I do it, but in how I record it. I’m going to start diarying my efforts, so at least I will produce a history of my efforts even if it might not come to anything.
Boardgame Design Diary : BDD
Software engineering like lots of creative processes tries to minimize the loop between creation and feedback so that the creator can react quickly and iteratively improve things. This is often done at a low level by the engineer themselves but when they interface with the business they need a more high level way to get feedback. There is a process for this called Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), where business users describe the desired outcome when an action is performed on a given state. This formal outline provided a clear mains of communication between the creator and the user.
I want to apply this thought process to my efforts, I want to change my behaviour so that I spend more focused time on designing my boardgame, and I want more clear outcomes from that effort. So my experiment is to start a diary for my game, and record my efforts and progress. Hopefully this will provide me feedback on if I’m progressing or not on my game, and at least provide me some results for my efforts.
BDD 1.0 - Rugby Card Game (RCG)
My first game I will apply this to is my attempt to create a rugby boardgame. I’m a big rugby follower and player and would like to capture some of the joy I get out of it in another form. My first entry will soon follow.