Keep writing and stay classy

October 06, 2015

Well, that Kickstarter certainly was a wild ride. It became apparent fairly quickly that I wasn't going to have the time to both write weekly blog posts and keep my sanity, so I opted for the sanity. I'm pretty sure it was the right choice. Still, I've now put myself under pressure to get all this stuff done to get the game out by May, so time is still tight. I hate that this blog is the first thing that gets thrown overboard in a storm, though, so we're going to keep it going. Every Tuesday. Blog post. It should be easier to get back into the groove now that I've been doing it for a while. There's also the matter of weekly Kickstarter updates in conjunction with the blog posts. Kickstarter updates are super-important for any project post-funding. Constant communication about what is going on and what the timeline looks like is one of the most vital things for building community and also fostering trust in a company moving into the future. The trust built from the Forge War campaign no doubt had a major positive impact on the Gloomhaven campaign, so it is important to continue that trend moving forward. Which means I'm committing to writing out two long pieces of text each month - one structured with details of the progress made during the week and the other concerning whatever I happen to be thinking about that week. I'm thinking I'll do the Kickstarter updates on Friday to spread the writing out a bit. Writing a post typically only takes me an hour or two, but it can get difficult sometimes, especially when I don't have anything I strongly want to talk about. The act of writing sort of hangs over my whole head the whole day. I try to focus on writing, but I'm not in the groove, so I end up just procrastinating about writing, and then I'm not even spending time doing the other work I need to do. I'm spending time doing nothing. I feel like I've written about this before. Ah well. Sometimes it's difficult, but, like I said before, I now have a lot of practice on how to get things done. I think the key is just to keep working on the other work - making Gloomhaven - and the rest should come naturally. Plus, lots of crazy stuff happened this past month, so I'm sure I'll find the inspiration to write about it. - Oh, you want a story now? Okay, sure. Just consider all that stuff above as a really long prelude. So let's talk about a thread which popped up during the Gloomhaven Kickstarter that was fairly critical of the game. The author had some concerns about Gloomhaven's game play and made some interesting points, but the whole post came off as very antagonistic and argumentative. I and a lot of other people tried to address his points, but I think it ultimately came down to the fact that he didn't want to like the game and didn't want to have a different opinion. Which is fine. You can't please everyone. What was weird about it, though, was that the author is a fairly prominent designer who has made a number of co-op games and expansions that appear to be releasing at or around Essen. He's essentially taking pot-shots at the competition and the whole thing felt very...tacky. This is the reason I stopped writing reviews. When you're a board game designer, if you go around criticizing other people's games, it just ends up looking bad because your bias is glaringly obvious. Look, there was another co-op game that came to Kickstarter as the Gloomhaven campaign was wrapping up. It quickly surpassed Gloomhaven's funding and I admittedly got a bit jealous. I may have even become a little indignant because certain aspects of the rules and game play didn't sit will with me. Some deep dark part of me even wanted to go onto Board Game Geek and start throwing bombs around. I understand the urge. But I also understand that it's a terrible idea. Because it just makes you look tacky. And that doesn't help anybody. So there's a story with a lesson for you. Stay classy and make sure you're not affected by bias before you start throwing bombs and lighting fires.

Leave a comment

Comments will be approved before showing up.

Name *

Email *

Comment *

---

Also in Blog