Do you enjoy reading designer diaries? These are often long essays, sometimes even series of essays, that are usually written by new (or relatively new) game designers, describing their labour of love from initial idea to publication (or attempted publication in the case of Kickstarter projects). Designer diaries seem to be a new thing that many people are doing, a trendy thing, much like Kickstarter projects. I find that most of the time I have very little interest in them (TL;DR, heh heh...). In fact I'm getting tired of seeing so many such designer diaries being released. Sorry that this sounds negative. This is probably due to my overall jaded-ness with the quantity of new boardgames. The designer diaries that I'd be interested to read would be those by designers whom I already know and like. Also I would probably be more interested in the designer diary of a game that I have played and enjoyed, because I'd be interested to find out the thought processes behind the design, and the story of how the game came about. I remember Agricola had a designer diary. At that time there weren't many such designer diaries. I didn't spend much time reading the Agricola designer diary, and only went back to read it after finding that I liked the game a lot.
I wonder whether people write designer diaries mainly because they feel these will help promote their games, or because they enjoy writing their own stories. Everyone (more or less) likes to tell his own story right? I'm a blogger. I know. :-) To me, there are other better ways of promoting a game. Now I know many marketing snippets can't satisfy hardcore gamers. These are often just flavour text, or marketing-speak. What I would consider more informative and interesting are photos of game components and brief descriptions, and also a round overview. The gameboard and some key game components can tell much. They set the tone of the game. Highlighting a few key aspects can give a good feel of how the game works. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Something like this. The game is co-designed by Tom Lehmann, designer of Race for the Galaxy. Eventually I decided I probably won't be buying Starship Merchants, but hey, at least I read the whole article.
Sat 23 Jun 2012: A few fellow gamers shared their views and suggestions at BGG.
6 comments:
I sure agree with you. I like that the designer diaries exist, but I wish they were tucked in a corner with the other specialty interest content for individual games (e.g. files, forums), rather than broadcast to me as news.
I do read desinger diaries, but only for games that Im interested in. For games that I have no idea what it is all about, I read it to get some insights and taste of what the game is like, especially how the desinger came out with the idea in first place.
When checking out upcoming or new games, I prefer to directly get information of what the final product is like, as opposed to going through the story of how the game evolved through the design process. I guess I've become a "just give me the executive summary" person now. :-P But it's nice to have designer diaries available if I like a game and want to read more about it.
You know, the same could be said about anyone with a blog, too...
I am not sure what the real objections are to designers having blogs that describe how they designed their game... To me it shows their passion and enthusiasm for the game. I do agree it won't necessarily help decide whether or not you will want to buy the game, but there are lots of other sources to help with that.
I think more often than not designer diaries are articles written specifically to try to promote a new game, as opposed to being posts at a game designer's blog. If a game designer has a blog and wants to focus on writing about his design stories, I have no right to complain. It's his blog and he writes what he wants.
What I don't enjoy is seeing so many designer diaries released at general boardgame websites. Since I personally don't find them interesting, at least in most cases, what I suggest is that if game designers intend such pieces to help promote their games, why not spend their effort on another type of article instead? I.e. the pictorial round overview.
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