Victory Pointers 009 – Design Philosophies and Collaboration with Matt Dunstan

We are joined by Matt Dunstan to discuss finding a community, collaborating on designs, how we come up with game ideas, working with publishers, and recognizing different philosophies of game design.

Matt Dunstan – @wisegoldfish / matthewdunstan.com

Kim Brebach – @secretbasegames / secretbasegames.com

Aaron Lim – @ehronlime / theactionpointspodcast.com

Sye Robertson – @syelon / syelon.com

What we talked about

1:50 – Starting game groups and Australian game design scene growth.

6:00 – Collaborating on game design

8:48 – On the spectrum of design and development

10:00 – How we come up with game ideas

17:10 – On missing rules documents in prototypes

26:17 – Setting design goals and agreeing on a vision for a game

31:10 – Will collaboration lead to more projects being finished?

35:39 – Working with publishers in developing games and finding the “best direction” for a game

41:43 – Level of polish in game prototypes at the pitching stage

44:26 – Building relationships with publishers

47:10 – Philosophies of game design

56:00 – The influence of who we play with and how we play

59:28 – Designing for a specific person

1:01:29 – Designing for the mass market

Links to what we talked about

Cambridge Playtest Meetup at the Playtest UK Games Meetup Group
Brett J. Gilbert’s blog at 55cards.com
Slack
Check out our interview with Jamey Stegmaier here
Sierra Madre Games
Oink Games
Here’s an article on some of Matt Hall’s game design philosophy
User personas in UX design
The Game Design Roundtable
Check out Disciple on the Global Game Jam site here

Games we mentioned

Costa Rica
Elysium
Relic Runners
Empire Engine
Robots & Rockets
Pergamon
Last Will
Colt Express
The Game
Petals Around the Rose
World Without End
Five Tribes
Rights
Sushi Go!
Carcassonne
Ticket to Ride

Music: Something Small (Instrumental) by Minden is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License. Based on a work at http://needledrop.co