appendix ndp #2: Playing Games
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[00:00:00] Nathan Paoletta: Hello, and welcome to appendix ndp. My name is Nathan Paoletta. I'm a game designer, independent publisher and graphic artist. This is episode two: playing games.

[00:00:27] I'm very pleased to say that I've received some questions already for the show. So I'm going to go ahead and start shaping this episode around some of those questions. I have three questions here that feel to me like they're kind of related. Two are from patrons, and one is from a listener.

[00:00:42] Patron Jonathan H asks: how much do you play your current games in design, versus play your finished games, versus play games by other people? Patron John W asks: there are so many games being published every day. As a fan, how do you keep up? What do you think of itch-style, micro games, solo games, art in the format of a game? And listener Yvette N asks: what sorts of forums and tools for outreach after the death of Google Plus have you found the most success, in spreading the word and getting eyes on a new game, whether for play testing or just general community building. 

[00:01:16] I'm going to dive into each of these questions and hopefully you'll see how they kind of come together in the way that I have, as they all get to something that I think is a fundamental stumbling block for the whole game design thing. And it's one that arises naturally out of bringing your personal work into a larger cultural and yes, marketing context. I'm saying that because I'm going to be talking a lot about the idea of getting your work in front of someone else. That is what marketing is, you have to bring something to market. So I'm just carving that out for a second, because I think a lot of us, myself included, kind of bristle at the idea of like, oh, I need to get into the marketing business in order to be a game designer or whatever. I'm just using (it) here as the name of the thing. Um, and not as like an entire big hustle that you have to get into and interact with. So for lack of a better term, uh, marketing. 

[00:02:14] Anyway, the point is, once you start putting your work out there, it makes it harder to actively stay engaged as a fan, or at least it does for me. Uh, you have to devote your energy to getting your work out in front of other people, which generally means that you, or at least, I have less energy to play other people's games.

[00:02:32] This is something that I've really felt. And it's something that I've definitely talked to other designers about. There are some people who have the bandwidth to genuinely and enthusiastically drink from that firehose of all the cool stuff that's out there all the time. And I salute them, but I can't do that. And so I have to prioritize. 

[00:02:53] So that's what Jonathan's question about how much I play my own games versus playing other's games gets to, I think. What I play and when is a matter of prioritizing my time and my creative energy. So. Here's where I get to a big caveat that's going to cover the rest of this episode and really a lot of this show, I think. And that's in the last two years, even prior to COVID, I really started burning out on playing games more than I absolutely had to.

[00:03:26] Um, my, my play muscles, my creative muscles for engaging in role-playing at the table. Uh, got really worn out. And I just really kinda wasn't playing anything for awhile. And then not only did COVID hit, but my wife and I had a child. And so those two things together really deprioritized playing games for me. That's not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing. Um, so since I had creative projects to get over the finish line, that's where my creative energy went, which means that yeah, I just haven't really played anything, my stuff or other people's stuff in a while. 

[00:04:08] Even before that, I mostly played one shots at conventions, that was just kind of the pattern of my life. Um, and I try to get at least one medium term multi-session game a year in with like a recurring group, a group of friends that got together, you know, maybe two to three months of playing the same game for awhile. That was really my sweet spot for longer term games. So to give an over-all-of-time answer, um, especially as time went on, I was most often play testing my games. And then depending on the convention season, I had a balance of playing games by other people and playing my published work. 

[00:04:47] When I'm putting games on a schedule, like at a convention, I often try to offer something that isn't mine that's been tickling my fancy, or that I've had a great experience with and want to spread the word about, um, in at least one slot or for one event, however the organization of that, uh, that get together is. Um, and I also try to play new things. I want to, you know, I think like everyone else, I enjoy getting into the new stuff, um, especially when someone I respect or someone who's doing work that I'm really, that I've traditionally been interested in has something new, right.

[00:05:22] But those situations of putting a game on a schedule are still work, uh, in the sense that my main priority at conventions and, you know, and at play meetups, is generally to increase word of mouth about my games. So the majority of what I put on a schedule are my own games. And I'm generally running those games.

[00:05:45] Sometimes I specifically take a season off from conventions, either from physically going or from treating them as, as work, as promo events. And so those years I'll play a lot more of other people's stuff. I also like one day local game day meetup kind of things for playing, uh, playing new stuff. I've lived in Chicago for awhile and in the Chicago area, there's usually a pretty wide variety of offerings at events like this. So showing up for a one session, you know, one day game meetup to try something new, or try something I've been hearing good buzz about, that, that works for me. Um, of course that again is a pre pandemic thing. I don't know how, or whether those will be starting up again, um, I'm still personally pretty anxious about spending time in door with, with strangers or people that I don't really know. But that shape of event is one that's a lot easier for me to treat as, oh, I'm going to play something as opposed to, oh, I have to go promote my stuff. 

[00:06:47] So my pattern with all of that is really a function of this being my job, mainly. When it was more of a side hustle and I had more of a day job, I generally played more other stuff. Um, but once I centered publishing as my work, then I had to start prioritizing that time differently. I'm not a huge ROI guy- return on investment, right- but there's this valence of, "is this going to turn into a sale" that became more relevant when I went full time. Is the time that I'm spending playing, going to turn into a sale or turn into someone picking up my, my game or, you know, some of my old stuff or, or whatever.

[00:07:32] I do actively resist trying to turn creative decisions into bottom line questions. Um, I'm not going into conventions or going into a play session or meeting up with someone to talk about games as like, "how do I turn this into money" as my main concern. I, I, in fact, try to use that as my least interesting concern, my least motivating concern. But the fact of the matter is this is how I make money. So one consideration, um, that has to be balanced against others like, "is this fun" or "am I learning something" or, you know, or am I, uh, providing valuable feedback to a peer or, or stuff like that- one of the considerations in there is, "is this going to sell some games"? So that's all coming out of the reality that my work, whatever that is, is pretty well entwined with the hobby, whatever that is.

[00:08:36] So as John's question about how I keep up with everything that's published now, as that gets to, this has a big effect on my discovery of new things. I'm exposed to things in a way that's a function of having other designers and publishers as peers. So sometimes I know about stuff really early, um, because it's a conversation I had or I got brought into a playtest or something like that. Sometimes this means I actually lose track of stuff because I first encountered it as an early playtest, and then it went onto someone's back burner or it got extensively revised. And, um, I already thought about it so I'm not looking for it again. So that's, you know, a plus and a minus. 

[00:09:24] But in addition to that, I generally have a pretty good sense of like, what's big right now in the sense of sales and the sense of cultural impact because I'm paying attention to sales outlets for my own purposes and trying to keep on top of what the market, for whatever value that is, is interested in, um, right now. Uh, and then I try to make an effort to follow specific designers that I think are doing good work, uh, usually via, um, social media or mailing lists. And I'll talk about that more, a little later, actually. 

[00:09:58] That's an active push against calcifying my view of who's out there and what's going on. So specifically when a game catches my eye or someone is getting, you know, some good buzz about something, whether that specific game itself is something I'm interested in or not, I'll generally try to check out their other stuff and follow them generally, because I want to see what's going on and I want to actively keep expanding my horizons of who's out there, what's being made. What are, not only what are the trends, but also just like, where's the conversation. Where's the game design conversation right now, and where is it going? 

[00:10:44] But that all said I stopped stressing about keeping up in a general sense, uh, a long time ago. I have neither the desire nor the ability to be 100% aware of all the things that are coming out. Again, I think that's a reality that most people are, are part of. Um, you end up focusing on the things that appeal to you and then things that, even if they would appeal to you, once you got to know them, if they're a half step outside of your general field of view, you might never hear about them. You just have to accept that. Or at least, I've accepted that. It's just a reality,

[00:11:31] The idea of keeping up actually reminds me of kind of, uh, in-joke from the days of the Forge Booth at Gen Con. Um, so if you know, you know. But, uh, in short, in the 2000s, Ron Edwards would organize a booth at Gen Con every year for independent creators and self-publishers to be able to come, buy in for a fairly nominal fee, and then you were there for the convention. You were selling whatever you had there, and then you just kept- and then whatever you sold, you just kept that money. So it wasn't like some kind of share situation. It was, um, kind of up to you to get your thing out there, but it was a platform for you to do that at all, (at a time when) that was relatively inaccessible for most of us. I was part of that booth in 2006 and 2007. My experiences there informed a spinoff booth called Design Matters that I co-organized with Kevin Allen Jr. We ran that for a couple years. 

[00:12:33] But anyway, this thing that I, that this conversation reminded me of, was that: during that time uh, what would happen is that at the end of the convention, everyone at the Forge Booth would buy one of everyone else's game, right? This was kind of a little scene and this was how we could all support each other and also keep up with what's going on. So the joke was nobody makes any money because we just buy each other's games at the end of the show. This is kind of similar to everyone's passing the same $5 around on itch. 

[00:13:03] Uh, but what this gets to is that, that this became, I mean, it was always kind of just a joke, but it became logistically impossible by even the second year that I was in that booth. Um, because there were just too many games. There was kind of a moment where it felt like, yes, I can keep up with this niche micro scene within, within a smaller scene within Gen Con. I know that probably was never actually true, but that became just not possible, um, very quickly. So shedding the idea of keeping up, I think is, uh, has been a healthy one for me. Sidebar over.

[00:13:49] The way that I kind of stay on top of what's going on, or at least just see things is I think the way that most people do. Uh, announcements and promo stuff comes across my radar, usually on a social media of some kind, or I get tipped off to something by a friend who thinks I'd be interested. I also like to be on mailing lists so that I can get announcements about new stuff. One halo effect of how Kickstarter works is that I can opt in to the automatic announcements of new projects from creators that I followed in the past or supported their work in the past. Um, I keep those on because otherwise I will probably never see, um, you know, those announcements. And when I buy something, I tend to get on their mailing list or sign up for updates through their fulfillment platform or whatever mechanism is available to me.

[00:14:40] So I know this doesn't work for everyone, but for me, my email is the one place that I actively will see things. So if I want to keep up with something, I want to get emails about it.

[00:14:57] So this is now getting into Yvette's question, which is where can we spread the word about new projects, find playtesters and build community, especially in the aftermath of having a centralized thing like Google Plus. If I had a simple answer, I would probably be a lot more entrenched in what is going on and be more central in communities than I am right now. Um, but I don't think there is a simple answer. 

[00:15:24] Uh, Google Plus, like forums before it, I think was a bit of a historical accident. Um, Google Plus in particular happened to be structured really well to capture the cross section of people who are into niche games, and want to talk to each other about them. It was a little nerdy, very strongly structured, easy to search, easy to find, um, specific things, uh, easy to build your personal circles based on your interests, which could be interest in a game or interest in a genre or interest in a scene. So, you know, I think the Circles innovation of Google Plus is the unsung, like, this actually was really good and it's sad that nothing else has decided to follow up on it. It's great if you're on the computer all day. 

[00:16:10] But it wasn't meant for the purposes that the game scene used it for. It was bad for brands. It was not very good for advertising, and notifications were always a little bit dodgy. But I think specifically because it wasn't great for brands, um, it of course went away because that's the world we live in. Forums were like this as well, though for different reasons. But the life cycle of coming into a new forum early was great. It's great for an early adopter, you can build a community and be there as it develops, but then it was harder to participate in the later you arrive. And the forum itself rises and falls based on the intention and the ability to maintain, uh, afforded by whoever happens to administer it. So they are highly individual in that regard.

[00:17:03] That's all to say that the idea of a central place, physical or digital- the Gen Con floor every year, the, for lack of a better example, Story Games forum, the Google Plus scene. Where you can just be and kind of find your people; that, I think is a anomaly. And that generally what we have is all these small crisscrossing intersections of individual relationships and interests, some of which you can also attach into and some of which are just not going to work for you for many reasons.

[00:17:41] Um, so where do we find community, right now? For better or worse, social media is the best option, I think. I'm what, um, the internet calls an "elder millennial". So I'm not a great person to ask about new places because I'm a little set in my ways. From the outside, I think people are finding each other on Discord right now, but I find Discord very difficult to use, and I don't really know anything about it. Um, the few times I've gone, you know, joined a server for a specific reason, I've never wanted to go back. And as it so happens, right now there's a larger conversation about tech companies getting involved with, uh, the NFT grift that Discord is kind of involved in and so people are having some, uh, some issues with the, the direction that that company is going in.

[00:18:35] This is another sidebar, but this is a risk with every platform. Every tech company platform. Um, social media companies and tech companies are not our friends. We get to use them and we have to make our own accommodations with how they use our, our information and what, what we're there for and what they want us to be there for.

[00:18:56] But there is a sense of vigilance about like, if this company or if this platform starts investing in things that I don't agree with or starts making moves that I don't want to be part of. I have to be ready to go somewhere else. Um, and I think that's just also kind of the nature of the beast right now that also makes it actively more difficult to build sustained communities online.

[00:19:23] That all said there are two other places that I'm kind of seeing communities develop. One is, uh, itch.io, which a lot of us are using for selling our PDFs and digital offerings. But there's also a prolific game jam scene there. And I think I'm starting to see communities coalesce through participating in game jams and going from jam to jam, and kind of having that design conversation in the context of these targeted design prompts and challenges. And then people who are finding each other there then working together in other regards. So that's, that's pretty exciting. And I think, um, as an arena where your creative work can really blend into community, uh, that may be a fruitful place for, for people who are looking for somewhere to dive in. 

[00:20:15] One really great thing about that is that if you start participating in game jams, um, even if it's not for the purpose of developing into a big project or developing into something you want to get people to buy or whatever, just participating in small challenges is a great way to do the reps to build your design muscles. This will probably be a theme. I come back to over the course of this show. Uh, I'm a big proponent of the idea that to get better at the thing, you have to do the thing. And doing a small game every so often or a small game on a regular cadence and having some motivation to do that and a little bit of structure to help you do that, is a great way to really get those reps in over time. 

[00:21:01] The other place that I think there's people coming together is around Twitch streams and AP streams, actual play shows. Uh, video streams or podcasts. I think certain channels and shows, build communities around their personalities or around their creative output. And there's something to, you know, everyone here is interested in X and we can talk to each other about all the other things that we're also interested in. That feels almost to me like how forums used to work actually. To be a bit of a broken record here, uh, this is me seeing this from the outside because I don't have a great ability to watch a bunch of Twitch or be involved with, um, some of the bigger shows. But from the outside, that is where, again, I see some of that community building energy coalescing. 

[00:21:56] So what do you actually do to get involved and find people again, speaking as someone set in my digital ways. I think the key isn't to find necessarily the hot new thing or the thing that's going to be the instant gratification thing, if that even exists. But it's more finding the medium or the platform or the space that you actively find engaging, that you- (that) feels kind of authentically comfortable and a place that you want to hang out. Or at the very least that you understand how it works and can engage in it on a intuitive level or on a non-serious level. I think being able to joke around is very important, right? Whatever space you kind of understand, and you want to spend a little bit of time on, or you don't find actively difficult to spend time on. That's probably going to be the best for long-term engagement, finding other people in that space. 

[00:22:52] Um, for me, it's mostly, for better or worse, Twitter and a little bit on Instagram. Those are the places where I kind of can just hang out when I want to. Those are also the places that I can leave and come back without it being a big deal, which I think is also important. And, uh, and my email. So I am boring and old in this respect. Twitch, Tik Tok and Reddit, probably, are where I assume more dynamic conversations are happening and where you have more, uh, more people actively looking to engage with each other. But if those don't work for you, I mean, I get it. In the long run, it's just most important to find a thing that you can just be a part of in a way that doesn't feel like it's always work, I guess, and then build out from. 

[00:23:41] Uh, in the pre COVID time, I was a big proponent of going to local game days and regional conventions and spending face-to-face time with people. I know that this isn't appropriate or available for everyone, whether due to geographic or financial or mental or physical ability reasons. Uh, but if it is possible or if it's possible with a little bit of stretch out of your comfort zone, the signal to noise ratio of playing a game with a couple people and seeing who you vibe with, is so much higher in person, in my experience, than it is online. Um, a lot of my relationships are built from meeting them in person, and then we sustain that through our, you know, through, through our social chatter or whatever. So it has a good hit ratio, uh, as opposed to like, I don't know, joining a bunch of Discords and trying to find the right people that you're gonna, that you're gonna have a, have a vibe with. 

[00:24:43] Um, of course right now, conventions are online. Um, I mean, they're starting to come back in, in person, but I'm not going to in person conventions, at least for, uh, for awhile. And I totally understand other people not wanting to. But, um, a lot of conventions, even when they are coming back in person are still having an expanded digital offering, which I think is really, really good. And that may be a good avenue to kind of split the difference. Interact with people in real time and kind of get to, get the sense of who's, who's your people and who you're going to want to talk to in the future without having to go and spend, you know, physical proximity with them. 

[00:25:24] And I think there is a big opportunity, if you're looking for playtesting in particular, because a lot of these virtual convention tracks need offerings, need something on their schedule. So if you come to them with, here's a thing I want to playtest, or here's the thing I want to feature, um, it could be a win-win in terms of, in terms of they get more programming and you get to actually put your game in front of some, some fresh faces.

[00:25:53] As for a specific tool for finding play testers and getting your work out in front of people: I think you should start a mailing list. Um, this can be a newsletter style thing. It can be a announcements and sales only kind of thing. It can be a blend of both, but building a mailing list over time where you get a bunch of people's emails that want to hear from you; over the long-term that really pays off in terms of how much time you then have to spend finding the people who want to see your stuff. Uh, people get really excited about ideas and they get excited about things that cross their feed in the moment. And then they forget it. And I do that too, uh, which is why I like to sign up for people's mailing lists. Because I want to be prompted when their cool thing finally comes out or finally hits, you know, Kickstarter or is available on itch or whatever. 

[00:26:49] I think that you should run your mailing list ethically, which means that it is a opt-in thing. Um, you'd never put down someone's email that hasn't given it to you of their own free will. There are a lot of services for newsletters of varying feature sets and integrations and price points and whatever, from gathering people's emails and just keeping a BCC list to, you know, these full featured newsletter companies. Uh, I use Tinyletter for my mailing list. It's pretty minimal, pretty easy to use. And it has a nice feature where I can just upload emails that I've gotten through other channels and keep one kind of master list that just persists over time. I've used MailChimp in the past, but I found the interface increasingly unwieldy as time went on. Um, a lot of these have a free tier if you don't have a lot of mailings, which is pretty suitable for most of us. 

[00:27:44] Uh, but even if you don't use it often giving somewhere- giving people somewhere where they can choose to give you their email. Uh, that's the easiest lift down the road for spreading the word about your work. 

[00:27:56] Related, I think that if you have digital work in the pipeline, even if it's something that you want to put up for free, it can be a good strategic move to put up a free download onDrivethruRPG and or itch- itch.io. Even if you don't get a lot of traffic from the site, even having it there as a place you direct people to go to download it. This can be effective because the platforms themselves give customers the ability to opt-in to updates about that work. So if you have something up for two years as a free download, and then you iterated on it and now you have a new version of it, everyone who's downloaded it in those two years, some of them have probably opted in to get an update about it. So then that's kind of a supplement to your mailing list where you can just let everyone know that you have the new thing. 

[00:28:51] Again, ethically I think it's only appropriate to use these to talk about your related projects on that platform. Uh, Drivethru specifically has a exception for announcing Kickstarters and stuff like that. Know the terms for all the things that you're signing up for. But, I think the earlier you have something up where people can give you their email, the more people you can reach about your next thing and then your next thing, and then your next thing. 

[00:29:15] I phrase this as a strategic move, because this is something you want to do uh, in the context of down the road, I am going to have more success because I've done this now. Not so much a move of this is going to bring me instant audience or instant recognition or something like that.

[00:29:38] So talking about platforms brings me back around to the second half of John's question. What do you think of itch style micro games; solo games; art in the format of a game? Well, my short answer is that I think they're great (laughs). Uh, I'm not a prescriptivist about this stuff. And I think the debate or conversation over is X a certain kind of game, yes or no; those conversations bore me to tears. So at a high abstract level: yeah. More, more stuff. Let's see what is being brought into the conversation. I think there is no downside to being actively, uh, embracing of new and exciting things and forms and formats and styles. 

[00:30:27] Personally, I do tend to be attracted to more structurally dense work as a matter of personal taste. I like structure in my games. I like a little bit of surprise. I like rules. A lot of micro games tend to be structure-light. So just historically I haven't been attracted to lots of them. 

[00:30:47] I haven't delved into the lyric game scene to any great depth. So when asked aboutitch-style micro games, that makes me think of the genre that is, that is currently encapsulated by the term lyric game. And again, without getting into any kind of debate over what that means, um: I do think that lyric games, as I have encountered them thus far are really interesting to me in that they tend to give me a sense of who the designer is and what their aesthetic priorities are and what their interests are. I get more insight about that than I get, kind of, motivation to play that as a game. And I think that's intentional for some of these games. Not all games need to be played to be worth making! Ah, I hope that's not a controversial statement. 

[00:31:40] I guess what I mean by that is that I think that games are an expressive art as much as a functional art. And I think one of the things that makes role-playing games in particular unique, even within the idea of a "game" is that they are really good at simultaneously expressing the creator (or creators) as well as providing active creative engagement for players in isolation from the creator (or creators). Any individual game can be harder towards one end of that spectrum than the other, right- it can be more expressive of the creator, or more supportive of the player doing their own creative engagement. That's a function of what is that designer interested in? What are they there to do with their game? And it's not the only important axis for thinking about games, but it does make it a little immaterial to me to try and identify what could possibly distinguish "art" from "game" when we're talking about games in general and role-playing games in particular. 

[00:32:40] Before I became a full-time creator, I went to a design program, um, for object design, industrial design, at an art school. Many things have stuck with me from that experience. Some good, some bad. But one of them is what I've adopted as my favorite functional definition of art: If the person who made it or the person who buys it says that it's art, it's art. And I don't feel any need to go deeper than that in terms of trying to split some hair, uh, of game in the format of art or art in the format of a game or whatever. 

[00:33:16] I'd rather just talk about the thing, like, are we talking about All My Exes (are in) Mechsuits, or are we talking about GURPS? Like I'd rather talk about that game than try and establish some criteria by which we assess them against each other. If you say it's a game, it's a game. If, if I buy it and I go, this is a game I'm, I'm going to talk about it as a game. And that's okay for me. 

[00:33:40] To reiterate what I said kind of near the beginning of this digression: at the high level, I'm going to be engaged by certain things for any of a number of reasons; aesthetic, cover art, design direction, theme, genre, a challenge that it makes. Whatever it is that engages me, I'm in. I personally don't need to slot the thing into a certain rubric for me to want to talk about it or be excited about it. 

[00:34:11] So I think that's about what I have to say for now about playing my games, playing other people's games and finding people to play with. Thanks to Jonathan, John, and Yvette for their questions for this episode.

[00:34:23] Thank you to my patrons for making appendix ndp possible. You can join them at patreon.com/ndpaoletta. And if you have questions for the show, a submission form is available at ndpdesign.com/podcasts. Thanks for listening.

[00:34:45] appendix ndp is written, hosted and produced by me, Nathan Paoletta. Music is by Will Jobst. Be seeing you.