Don't forget to check out the miniac.co Black Friday deals! 1. Buy 2 Minis and get the third free* 2. Buy a cutting mat get a brush coffin half off 3. Buy 2 masterclass courses and get the third free *All minis have to be the same scale & type (physical/digital)
This is another great example why I love your videos! You always let us in on your journey and share your progress and your research and the obstacles on the way. It really shows the huge amount of work you put into your videos.
I really hope your One on One fighting game has some sort of decision making process that happens at the same time, some sort of bluffing/feinting that players have to either call or "fold". Super interesting to see your research into "fun" and im excited for how your game design revolves around all this
I'm back on the Miniac train after drifting away from your vids for quite a while... Really enjoyed a few of ya vids from the last month or so and now YT makes sure to feed me your new uploads front and centre and I swiftly click to CONSUMMME!
Gonna be honest i love finally getting to hear the culmination of all of your bits and pieces of talking about game design on TUP. I love your standard painting videos but im not gonna lie I love when you do the kinda Video essay type beat of just explaining a topic.
this is not the video i expected but it is 100% the video I WANTED. Thank you for this - I've been thinking about writing and designing my own rules/game and this has given me a big boost.
Some great resources here. I would also like to recommend Characteristics of Games, by Elias, Garfield, and Gutschera, published by MIT. They use it as the textbook for game design classes, and the Garfield in the authors is Richard Garfield. Also, the list of fantastic GDC talks is pretty endless.
I love seeing you do what YOU want. You talk on your podcast about how someone with an established fanbase gets kind of locked in and doesn't have the freedom to try new things. As a fan, I'd like to encourage you to explore anything you desire. I'm here for all of it. It was a little sad to hear you talk on TUP about how you're kind of locked in. You're a creative force and I hope you can break away from that feeling and still be happy with the results. Thank you so much for all you do. I can't express just how much you've helped me through my journey, and hope that the freedom to explore on yours is returned to you!
Keep the mix going; not everything you do HAS TO BE a miniature painting video. It's great that it is what got you here, but here is often where you can not stay. You are experiencing a natural progression of the play experience and hobby. I know few people who have been playing for a while and have yet to consider making a game. So, keep banging away at it, as it sounds like you have been on the trail of the game's design for a while now. A 1V1 duling game does sound interesting, and I bet it is challenging to design. Here's to looking forward to a game designed by Scott, The Miniac.
Your enthusiasm for the hobby is one of the major reasons I both subscribed and then joined your patreon. As long as you keep following your passion I'll keep watching
Thanks for the vid! This has always been a topic I wanted to dig into but didn’t know where to start so it’s great to have some references of useful resources!
The point about "Not everyone is going to love your game and that is not a problem." is very important and something that has been lost, especially when I look at movies and video games. People are never going to have a strong opinion about bland food, but if the food is spicy some are going to love it! Not very dish has to be enjoyed by everyone and that is not a problem. To stay inside this metaphor: I enjoy some spicy dishes and when I connect with strangers online who also do, it is a wonderful experience.
Thanks for highlighting how hobbies have more than just one aspect of enjoyment. For many many years I simply collected and painted miniatures because I did not enjoy playing the game they were associated with. Sometimes I simply read novels that were associated with that particular IP because I enjoyed the setting and I was going through a doldrum of wanting to paint or collect. I now play a particular miniature game because I enjoy the game itself and really like the competitive, yet balanced nature of the game. There are so many aspects of hobbies that can be enjoyed, that you shouldn't ever put the pressure on yourself of not feeling you are doing it "right". Just enjoy what you do and take it from there.
Great Video! Wanted to touch on a few points and how they were absolutely applicable to our first game ARSENAL. In our game we have a sort of reinforcement ingress phase, and while we intended the phase to act as an artificial tool to increase game length and keep model count low, we found that players were treating this ingress phase almost as a new pre/post combat phase, very chess like. Players loved it and it helped push ARSENAL as a unique mech game. Another point we focused on was player ownership, while we have lots of lore for various mercenary factions and could have pushed players to join premade factions with their own design, we instead put the lore aside and pushed players to create their own fireteams, going as far to include a name generator, and let players own their force rather than fitting into a larger narrative. And then for the world lore we wrote it out in a way that players could easily insert themselves into any conflict and develop their own narrative
I spent a lot of this year designing a skirmish wargame for fun, and have even tested it with a local game store a few times. I haven't worked on it in a while, but I can't recommend enough that people give game design a try, even if it is just to see what it's like. Some of the most fun I've had while being semi-productive.
Loved the vid. For a presentation style video, it was casual enough that was still fun to watch with a lot of info. I loved your use of b-roll, between what you shot and all the supportive interviews. It was put together really well.
This is an incredible video. This summary of so much information and considerations is so useful I've shared it with so many people. I wish there were more games delivered with this much wisdom behind them. Thanks for making this!
Core Space was an eye opener for me. No D6 dice, only custom dice to decide outcomes, it had looting so there was excitement there. The game/level/dungeon got harder the longer you stayed so there was urgency, great freedom of movement and interactive environments. It had event cards for added randomness, custom crew building, pets, droids, bounty hunters, police, civilians, gangers, the list goes on. All A.I. controlled. So so good!
Thanks for Rule of Carnage shout out Scott! I hope you enjoy our new book! ;) Other books that I hugely recommend: - The Art of Games Design, by Jesse Schnell (a lovely board exploration of why games design is so many different things at once) - The Mom Test, by Rob Fitzpatrick (the best book about playtesting that isn’t about playtesting) - Characteristics of Games (stuffed with Richard Garfield nuggets)
Good advice from mini wargaming. Dave is that he created multiple channels for each subject so that his channel would never get penalized by the algorithm for showing more than one topic. So maybe a board gaming specific channel might be good
this might be my new favorite video tbh. and like, i love all the videos, but as someone who is also working on making my first game and figuring out what it will be, this was a perfect video to have pop up! super helpful advice and awesome to see someone dealing with the same stuff I am 👍
I'm new to the channel and I'm sad to hear these don't do well because this was probably my favorite video of yours I've seen. I'm working on my own game and the middle of this video was hit after hit exactly what I needed to unstick myself
Dude such a good video and all stuff I apply to writing comics. Creatively I’d add one thing to that sense of enjoyment is verisimilitude. There’s a reason guys love watching sniper rifles get put together in every action movie or the training sequence or the depth of lore in Star Wars. That depth signals the level of craft and love put into a product to create a world that is deep and internally consistent and lets us jump in head first and wade around neck deep about all the nerdy details. Some people like chicken tenders, but goodie pp’s love the tendies and its lore. Verisimilitude for the win.
I absolutely love this type of content. I'm very into the creative process of game design amd the mechanics of why and how. One resource that you may or may not ha e looked into is game testing. I've found that it gets my creative juices flowing seeing someone else's ideas come to light. If you are seriously creating a new game, I would love to help be a part of the game testing.
Best of luck Scott! Designing games is so much fun, and your passion is clear. Real talk though, designing a duelling minis game is Dark Souls hard, so don’t get discouraged if that game idea doesn’t work out first time. I’d honestly recommend for your sanity designing something easier and come back to it! :D
Excellent video, really enjoyed this entire thing! Trying my hands at fan-made content for a game at the moment, and this helped push my ideas around to some cool places 🤘
I haven't done extensive research like you, but listening to you describe how you're looking at injection moulded plastic at scale before even figuring out gameplay look is a peak into my own mindset 😆 Great video. Also started playing FaB recently too! Such a good game.
Your game sounds freaking dope. Can't wait until you release it! Personally I love the game design stuff but I get that it's not feasible to constantly put these out
While I absolutely love your painting (literally inspired me to paint at all) these kinds of videos where you walk through your learning experience is really nice. Keep up the amazing work!!
Yea... These are definitely the type of videos I am interested in! I was playing around with some ideas for a wargame myself. I have a 7 year old nephew that I would love to play a game with, but there are no game that simple that I know of. He doesn't speak English yet either. So I did come up with a mechanic that o have not seen yet for tracking health, and action points straight on the miniature. That could develop into something
Great video. I love game design....a lot more than lore if I'm being honest, if a game isn't fun the lore could be the coolest stuff ever written and I wouldn't give it a second look. After 38 years as a gamer settings and lore really have become secondary for me. I look forward to more videos like this in the future, cheers bro.
Loved this video first time commenting, I am in the middle of making my own tabletop game and hearing some of the lessons you learned hit me. Especially the ego, I'm not a very egotistical guy myself and I love collaboration, but I do know that I have a vision in mind on how the game needs to feel and that will sometimes get in the way. Man he would be so cool to collaborate with you!
Nice video. I love infos like this because i mostly play board/tabletop games with my sons and so reinvent some rules for them for easier mechanics ( they are 9 and 4 😅) so i try to borrow rules from other games to keep it simple or better playable! Thanks for sharing!
Lots of games aren't about fun. But the goal might be enjoyable. Look at the biggest games out there, the ones that appear in the Olympics. Sports are games that have been around for so long they often aren't about fun at all. Those people aren't having fun while playing the game. But they will enjoy the win. Other games like horror games aren't about having fun, they are about making you feel something you don't normally. This is more true in books and films than games, where making you cry with sadness is far more common. But these things are also becoming more common in digital games and RPGs. Fun is an aim. But I think you'll find the more matured a game genre (or any creative art form humans make) gets the less reliant it is on fun or enjoyment being the aim. When a creative endeavour becomes more than it's foundation it is able to be appreciated for more than those foundations. Think of art. We start by drawing or moulding clay as children and we make a mess. Humanity put it's hand prints on walls of caves, likely with the dirt of the cave floor or blood of their kill. Then we learn to draw what we can see and tell stories with them. They don't look like what we know at first but with time, energy and practice they become images of what we can see and people we care about - who hasn't drawn their friends and family at some point. The same is true of humanity. Creative humans drew, painted and sculpted real life as realistically as they could for generations. And for a long time that was almost the whole point of art. Just to say "look at this". But with time it took longer and longer to create these extremely realistic works of art and so those making them had time to consider their meanings and so a second language forms that tells the viewer more about someone or something in an image because of the objects that surround them (books of learning,a globe for traveling or exploration, certain rare colours for wealth or power, etc.) and so more is being said in the work than simply "look at this person" and we are already far away from fun or enjoyment and into complex human intellectual interactions and communication. Eventually, with time, and arguably the invention of the camera, the meaning becomes far more important than the image created by the artist. And with that the meaning can be far more than fun or enjoyment, it can mean more to the viewer and creator to portray meanings that are the complete opposite of fun or enjoyment. Feeling like suffering, pain, depression and anxiety. Some of the greatest works in human existence make us feel pain, not pleasure and we go to them because of the cathartic feeling of knowing someone has been there before us and made something amazing from that feeling. It's not enjoyable, it's not fun, but it's incredibly mature and enlightening. Some games do that and eventually the games people put on their top lists of all time won't be about fun, they'll be about capturing and reflecting the human experience and existence. They'll be far more than fun. Our creative history shows us that will happen. Don't believe me. Go and put on that one song of movie that always makes you cry with sadness.
It's easy to get into paralysis by analysis which was described in the video. That's crushed by just doing. Something I struggle with is getting my stuff out into the wild like you mentioned. But, after a long time developing rules for my own miniature skirmish game I'm set to drop my rules in January of 2025. 😅 excited to see what you've got going on with a volleyball game!
my major downside for warhammer 40k is that i have to watch my opponent for 20 minutes to finish his turn. why is it not.....i activate a unit....he activates a until .....and so on
Games that use that mechanic (I'm specifically thinking of Malifaux) end up having some really interesting interactions from it as well. For example you can have abilities that let you do 2 units in a row, and it adds a cool layer where you have to second guess what your opponent is trying to do and wether it's best to preempt them or leave a unit that can react. Sometimes you'll have a unit that you know is about to get killed so you'll make sure you activate it early in the turn to get one last use from it or potentially save it - conversely you muggy know you can kill an opponent's unit if but only if you choose to activate something that stops you doing something else later. It's such a small change that would make the game so much more interesting and also a bit more balanced. The biggest problem with the "i activate my whole army and then you do yours" is one side inevitably takes the casualties first and is then at a disadvantage for the rest of the game I think about this a lot 😅
I run a bolt action league and I'm constantly making mission packs and custom terrain. Do you recommend these books to help me develop rules or make special abilities for terrain/units?
@@benstaffordson7163the main reason it takes longer is probably because more units get to activate though which is fun. If that's an issue you just change the standard points from 2k to 1500 or something it's not that hard imo
Who would've thought that out of all the so called miniature painting youtubers, Miniac would end up being the most interesting and informative of the lot. Whilst everyone else is happy to "mr-beastify" bombastic useless clickbait, Miniac's videos have gone on their own path of methodical examination of rules, painting techs and designs. I appreciate these types of videos so much more
After 10 years in the games industry, I can attest to the ego being present among creators. Especially once they've been doing it for a minute and have had successes.
OBJECTION!!1!1! I agree that for game design you need Theme and Mechanics but there is also something in between! STORY! First think of Theme you want to create - fantasy, post apo, sci-fi, gladiator arena. Then invent a story around it. Story is very important in that regard that this is the thing that "hooks" emotionally your Players. They get to know the heroes, their adventures, what relations they have with characters from other factions, and this is how the Player can impersonate their own ideas and feelings in them. Someone may not like playing with Necrons because they are robots, but they are a faction who lost their souls to gods, but then fought back and enslaved back their own oppressors.
It's useful but that's way down the line. Tight game design can even skip the whole thing. See the entire GIPF project. All amazing abstract strategy games with zero story.
@@infinitedm5396 I mean, Tetris is also an amazing game. Did it hook me enough to play it 25 years later? Not really. But some people still play it even professionally.
6:04 Ego There's definitely a fine balance here. I thiink having the ego is very important in helping you stick to your vision of the game and thus making it cohesive. One of the most common mistakes I see game developers make, both tabletop and electroning, is listening to their audience TOO MUCH. Your audience/players are not all game designers. They only see things from their perspective and they all have different perspectives. In trying to satisfy all the voices, sometimes even the majority of voices, you can completely ruin a game and take out the very thing that makes it interesting and unique. World of Warcraft is a fascinating example of this happening with a large player base giving feedback. I think 40k and AoS suffer from the same thing, just on a smaller scale, though they have other forces, like marketing, in the mix. These games have lost the cohesive vision of their designers and in an attempt to please everyone and it's pretty clear to see when you look at them.
Glad to hear you tried out Flesh and Blood - I picked it up just before Tales of Aria and was impressed by the design! In the end the game wasn't quite for me - too much on-the-spot decision making for me, it went a direction away from MtG (my one true gaming love) that didn't click with me, but it's still a killer game. This is a super cool video, though anything that references Maro so much in game design is bound to be great. Thanks Scott!
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Don't forget to check out the miniac.co Black Friday deals!
1. Buy 2 Minis and get the third free*
2. Buy a cutting mat get a brush coffin half off
3. Buy 2 masterclass courses and get the third free
*All minis have to be the same scale & type (physical/digital)
This is another great example why I love your videos! You always let us in on your journey and share your progress and your research and the obstacles on the way. It really shows the huge amount of work you put into your videos.
I really hope your One on One fighting game has some sort of decision making process that happens at the same time, some sort of bluffing/feinting that players have to either call or "fold". Super interesting to see your research into "fun" and im excited for how your game design revolves around all this
I'm back on the Miniac train after drifting away from your vids for quite a while...
Really enjoyed a few of ya vids from the last month or so and now YT makes sure to feed me your new uploads front and centre and I swiftly click to CONSUMMME!
Gonna be honest i love finally getting to hear the culmination of all of your bits and pieces of talking about game design on TUP. I love your standard painting videos but im not gonna lie I love when you do the kinda Video essay type beat of just explaining a topic.
Dood, yes!! I was gonna say the same things. I started watching mini-painting and loved how TUP and the channel have evolved.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it!! I had a lot of fun learning and working on this video!
this is not the video i expected but it is 100% the video I WANTED. Thank you for this - I've been thinking about writing and designing my own rules/game and this has given me a big boost.
Some great resources here. I would also like to recommend Characteristics of Games, by Elias, Garfield, and Gutschera, published by MIT. They use it as the textbook for game design classes, and the Garfield in the authors is Richard Garfield.
Also, the list of fantastic GDC talks is pretty endless.
I second that. It’s got loads of great ideas in it.
I love seeing you do what YOU want. You talk on your podcast about how someone with an established fanbase gets kind of locked in and doesn't have the freedom to try new things. As a fan, I'd like to encourage you to explore anything you desire. I'm here for all of it. It was a little sad to hear you talk on TUP about how you're kind of locked in. You're a creative force and I hope you can break away from that feeling and still be happy with the results.
Thank you so much for all you do. I can't express just how much you've helped me through my journey, and hope that the freedom to explore on yours is returned to you!
These are my absolute favorite type of Miniac vids!
The ones where both me and Sean get coverage?! I concur. 😅
@@planetsmashergames YES
Keep the mix going; not everything you do HAS TO BE a miniature painting video. It's great that it is what got you here, but here is often where you can not stay. You are experiencing a natural progression of the play experience and hobby. I know few people who have been playing for a while and have yet to consider making a game. So, keep banging away at it, as it sounds like you have been on the trail of the game's design for a while now. A 1V1 duling game does sound interesting, and I bet it is challenging to design.
Here's to looking forward to a game designed by Scott, The Miniac.
Love this video. Way better than watching you painting the 1000st mini to a standard I chan't achieve. XD
Hey he's a painting channel. Don't get the wrong idea Scott, keep painting!
Your enthusiasm for the hobby is one of the major reasons I both subscribed and then joined your patreon. As long as you keep following your passion I'll keep watching
Love it Scott, great to see you back in full flow!
Thanks for the vid! This has always been a topic I wanted to dig into but didn’t know where to start so it’s great to have some references of useful resources!
Perfection is the enemy of done is a banger of a line
The point about "Not everyone is going to love your game and that is not a problem." is very important and something that has been lost, especially when I look at movies and video games.
People are never going to have a strong opinion about bland food, but if the food is spicy some are going to love it! Not very dish has to be enjoyed by everyone and that is not a problem.
To stay inside this metaphor: I enjoy some spicy dishes and when I connect with strangers online who also do, it is a wonderful experience.
You're totally right! It applies to all types of things.
Exactly, so many games turn into flavorless gloop trying to appeal to everyone.
Thanks for highlighting how hobbies have more than just one aspect of enjoyment. For many many years I simply collected and painted miniatures because I did not enjoy playing the game they were associated with. Sometimes I simply read novels that were associated with that particular IP because I enjoyed the setting and I was going through a doldrum of wanting to paint or collect. I now play a particular miniature game because I enjoy the game itself and really like the competitive, yet balanced nature of the game. There are so many aspects of hobbies that can be enjoyed, that you shouldn't ever put the pressure on yourself of not feeling you are doing it "right". Just enjoy what you do and take it from there.
As someone in the middle of a game design project, this was a great watch, andithink I'll be coming back to it regularly!
Great Video! Wanted to touch on a few points and how they were absolutely applicable to our first game ARSENAL. In our game we have a sort of reinforcement ingress phase, and while we intended the phase to act as an artificial tool to increase game length and keep model count low, we found that players were treating this ingress phase almost as a new pre/post combat phase, very chess like. Players loved it and it helped push ARSENAL as a unique mech game. Another point we focused on was player ownership, while we have lots of lore for various mercenary factions and could have pushed players to join premade factions with their own design, we instead put the lore aside and pushed players to create their own fireteams, going as far to include a name generator, and let players own their force rather than fitting into a larger narrative. And then for the world lore we wrote it out in a way that players could easily insert themselves into any conflict and develop their own narrative
I'm really excited to hear more about your design journey - I've been looking forward to this video for a while!
I spent a lot of this year designing a skirmish wargame for fun, and have even tested it with a local game store a few times.
I haven't worked on it in a while, but I can't recommend enough that people give game design a try, even if it is just to see what it's like. Some of the most fun I've had while being semi-productive.
Loved the vid. For a presentation style video, it was casual enough that was still fun to watch with a lot of info. I loved your use of b-roll, between what you shot and all the supportive interviews. It was put together really well.
These videos are very welcome to the channel! I’m in the middle of designing my own game so thank you!!
Thanks, this was very informative and its fun and I think it adds a lot of flava. Your inputs are adding a lot to the perspectives on the hobby
This is an incredible video. This summary of so much information and considerations is so useful I've shared it with so many people. I wish there were more games delivered with this much wisdom behind them. Thanks for making this!
I know they don’t perform as well, but the game design stuff is my favorite. Much appreciated
Love the game design discussion. Can’t wait to see how your game turns out! Been wanting a decent dueling game for ages.
Core Space was an eye opener for me. No D6 dice, only custom dice to decide outcomes, it had looting so there was excitement there. The game/level/dungeon got harder the longer you stayed so there was urgency, great freedom of movement and interactive environments. It had event cards for added randomness, custom crew building, pets, droids, bounty hunters, police, civilians, gangers, the list goes on. All A.I. controlled. So so good!
Thanks for Rule of Carnage shout out Scott! I hope you enjoy our new book! ;)
Other books that I hugely recommend:
- The Art of Games Design, by Jesse Schnell (a lovely board exploration of why games design is so many different things at once)
- The Mom Test, by Rob Fitzpatrick (the best book about playtesting that isn’t about playtesting)
- Characteristics of Games (stuffed with Richard Garfield nuggets)
I am absolutely loving the amount of miniac content were getting.
Hope this turns your channel around man, it's been awesome seeing you post more often, hell yeah
Good advice from mini wargaming. Dave is that he created multiple channels for each subject so that his channel would never get penalized by the algorithm for showing more than one topic. So maybe a board gaming specific channel might be good
this might be my new favorite video tbh. and like, i love all the videos, but as someone who is also working on making my first game and figuring out what it will be, this was a perfect video to have pop up! super helpful advice and awesome to see someone dealing with the same stuff I am 👍
I'm new to the channel and I'm sad to hear these don't do well because this was probably my favorite video of yours I've seen. I'm working on my own game and the middle of this video was hit after hit exactly what I needed to unstick myself
Glad to hear that. Good luck with your game!!
Dude such a good video and all stuff I apply to writing comics.
Creatively I’d add one thing to that sense of enjoyment is verisimilitude. There’s a reason guys love watching sniper rifles get put together in every action movie or the training sequence or the depth of lore in Star Wars. That depth signals the level of craft and love put into a product to create a world that is deep and internally consistent and lets us jump in head first and wade around neck deep about all the nerdy details. Some people like chicken tenders, but goodie pp’s love the tendies and its lore. Verisimilitude for the win.
What a great video. It's just so fun to listen to you talk about something you are enthusiastic about. Keep it up.
Scott, this is video was insightful and well thought out. More of this, please!
I love these videos! Game design is something I've been thinking a lot about recently as well so this was a great resource to find other resources.
I am so glad you liked A Theory of Fun!
I absolutely love this type of content. I'm very into the creative process of game design amd the mechanics of why and how. One resource that you may or may not ha e looked into is game testing. I've found that it gets my creative juices flowing seeing someone else's ideas come to light. If you are seriously creating a new game, I would love to help be a part of the game testing.
Best of luck Scott! Designing games is so much fun, and your passion is clear.
Real talk though, designing a duelling minis game is Dark Souls hard, so don’t get discouraged if that game idea doesn’t work out first time. I’d honestly recommend for your sanity designing something easier and come back to it! :D
Love how every year you keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Keep up the great work and videos.
Excellent video, really enjoyed this entire thing! Trying my hands at fan-made content for a game at the moment, and this helped push my ideas around to some cool places 🤘
Scott, this was EXACTLY the type of video I was looking for when I filled out your survey. Awsome video, dude. Keep up the great work!
Been working on a game myself and this was a great watch! I'd love to hear more about when you've got cooking.
Great video bubba! Your appearing in my feed again, which is making. Me happy.
I haven't done extensive research like you, but listening to you describe how you're looking at injection moulded plastic at scale before even figuring out gameplay look is a peak into my own mindset 😆 Great video.
Also started playing FaB recently too! Such a good game.
I’m creating my own game atm, this video was very insightful:) I’m looking forward to more
Your game sounds freaking dope. Can't wait until you release it! Personally I love the game design stuff but I get that it's not feasible to constantly put these out
Thanks for sharing your experience and the books! Very interesting stuff!
Love this deep dive into your discoveries! Miniac Mondays FTW Woooooo!
Great video on what you learned about game design. I really enjoyed this change of topic.
While I absolutely love your painting (literally inspired me to paint at all) these kinds of videos where you walk through your learning experience is really nice. Keep up the amazing work!!
Yea... These are definitely the type of videos I am interested in!
I was playing around with some ideas for a wargame myself. I have a 7 year old nephew that I would love to play a game with, but there are no game that simple that I know of. He doesn't speak English yet either. So I did come up with a mechanic that o have not seen yet for tracking health, and action points straight on the miniature.
That could develop into something
Love videos about making games. Just recently finished my own dueling minis game for the Wargames Atlantic One Box challenge. Good luck
Really loved this video, and I am not looking to design anything. Also, the outro embellishment was perfect!
Great video. I love game design....a lot more than lore if I'm being honest, if a game isn't fun the lore could be the coolest stuff ever written and I wouldn't give it a second look. After 38 years as a gamer settings and lore really have become secondary for me. I look forward to more videos like this in the future, cheers bro.
gold stuff dude! thanks for bring it here!
Love the format, excellent books and ted talks to follow up on.
These are really great man, I look forward to more!
Great stuff Scott. Keep up the great work bud.
Loved this video first time commenting, I am in the middle of making my own tabletop game and hearing some of the lessons you learned hit me. Especially the ego, I'm not a very egotistical guy myself and I love collaboration, but I do know that I have a vision in mind on how the game needs to feel and that will sometimes get in the way. Man he would be so cool to collaborate with you!
Absolutely loving the game design videos!!
Some of us do love to hear about game design :)
Great video! You're really on a roll as of late 🦾
I’m here for this kind of content. Keep it up!
4:27 I needed to hear this.
Game design is very intersting to me as I also am working on making games of all stripes. Please do more. Or ELSE!
Always like seeing a video on game design! keep them coming!
Nice video. I love infos like this because i mostly play board/tabletop games with my sons and so reinvent some rules for them for easier mechanics ( they are 9 and 4 😅) so i try to borrow rules from other games to keep it simple or better playable! Thanks for sharing!
Love how your reading pointer is a paintbrush
Lots of games aren't about fun. But the goal might be enjoyable. Look at the biggest games out there, the ones that appear in the Olympics. Sports are games that have been around for so long they often aren't about fun at all. Those people aren't having fun while playing the game. But they will enjoy the win.
Other games like horror games aren't about having fun, they are about making you feel something you don't normally. This is more true in books and films than games, where making you cry with sadness is far more common. But these things are also becoming more common in digital games and RPGs.
Fun is an aim. But I think you'll find the more matured a game genre (or any creative art form humans make) gets the less reliant it is on fun or enjoyment being the aim. When a creative endeavour becomes more than it's foundation it is able to be appreciated for more than those foundations.
Think of art. We start by drawing or moulding clay as children and we make a mess. Humanity put it's hand prints on walls of caves, likely with the dirt of the cave floor or blood of their kill. Then we learn to draw what we can see and tell stories with them. They don't look like what we know at first but with time, energy and practice they become images of what we can see and people we care about - who hasn't drawn their friends and family at some point. The same is true of humanity. Creative humans drew, painted and sculpted real life as realistically as they could for generations. And for a long time that was almost the whole point of art. Just to say "look at this". But with time it took longer and longer to create these extremely realistic works of art and so those making them had time to consider their meanings and so a second language forms that tells the viewer more about someone or something in an image because of the objects that surround them (books of learning,a globe for traveling or exploration, certain rare colours for wealth or power, etc.) and so more is being said in the work than simply "look at this person" and we are already far away from fun or enjoyment and into complex human intellectual interactions and communication. Eventually, with time, and arguably the invention of the camera, the meaning becomes far more important than the image created by the artist. And with that the meaning can be far more than fun or enjoyment, it can mean more to the viewer and creator to portray meanings that are the complete opposite of fun or enjoyment. Feeling like suffering, pain, depression and anxiety. Some of the greatest works in human existence make us feel pain, not pleasure and we go to them because of the cathartic feeling of knowing someone has been there before us and made something amazing from that feeling. It's not enjoyable, it's not fun, but it's incredibly mature and enlightening. Some games do that and eventually the games people put on their top lists of all time won't be about fun, they'll be about capturing and reflecting the human experience and existence. They'll be far more than fun. Our creative history shows us that will happen. Don't believe me. Go and put on that one song of movie that always makes you cry with sadness.
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Fun! Yes Fun! Give me laughs and a good time! Thanks Miniac
Fascinating video. Thanks for sharing
Thank you! Such a nice and unexpected topic!
It's easy to get into paralysis by analysis which was described in the video. That's crushed by just doing. Something I struggle with is getting my stuff out into the wild like you mentioned. But, after a long time developing rules for my own miniature skirmish game I'm set to drop my rules in January of 2025. 😅 excited to see what you've got going on with a volleyball game!
I already love this video, and will be checking out these books
Nice beard Scott. Now grow us a beautiful game. Can't wait to play it. 🎉
production value is peek as always 😘
Very good content! I hope the video does well, you are a very good narrator
my major downside for warhammer 40k is that i have to watch my opponent for 20 minutes to finish his turn. why is it not.....i activate a unit....he activates a until .....and so on
Games that use that mechanic (I'm specifically thinking of Malifaux) end up having some really interesting interactions from it as well. For example you can have abilities that let you do 2 units in a row, and it adds a cool layer where you have to second guess what your opponent is trying to do and wether it's best to preempt them or leave a unit that can react. Sometimes you'll have a unit that you know is about to get killed so you'll make sure you activate it early in the turn to get one last use from it or potentially save it - conversely you muggy know you can kill an opponent's unit if but only if you choose to activate something that stops you doing something else later. It's such a small change that would make the game so much more interesting and also a bit more balanced. The biggest problem with the "i activate my whole army and then you do yours" is one side inevitably takes the casualties first and is then at a disadvantage for the rest of the game
I think about this a lot 😅
Some people have tried it and found it tends to take longer for the game. It's already bordering on too long after all.
I run a bolt action league and I'm constantly making mission packs and custom terrain. Do you recommend these books to help me develop rules or make special abilities for terrain/units?
@@benstaffordson7163the main reason it takes longer is probably because more units get to activate though which is fun. If that's an issue you just change the standard points from 2k to 1500 or something it's not that hard imo
Play a different game. There's your solution.
Who would've thought that out of all the so called miniature painting youtubers, Miniac would end up being the most interesting and informative of the lot. Whilst everyone else is happy to "mr-beastify" bombastic useless clickbait, Miniac's videos have gone on their own path of methodical examination of rules, painting techs and designs. I appreciate these types of videos so much more
Fun! Very informative and interesting. Nice video.
Great Video Mate!
I really enjoyed this video / the new content.
Nice interesting insights - thanks for sharing!
I love these kind of videos and I hope you keep making them regardless of views.
After 10 years in the games industry, I can attest to the ego being present among creators. Especially once they've been doing it for a minute and have had successes.
OBJECTION!!1!1! I agree that for game design you need Theme and Mechanics but there is also something in between! STORY!
First think of Theme you want to create - fantasy, post apo, sci-fi, gladiator arena. Then invent a story around it.
Story is very important in that regard that this is the thing that "hooks" emotionally your Players. They get to know the heroes, their adventures, what relations they have with characters from other factions, and this is how the Player can impersonate their own ideas and feelings in them. Someone may not like playing with Necrons because they are robots, but they are a faction who lost their souls to gods, but then fought back and enslaved back their own oppressors.
It's useful but that's way down the line. Tight game design can even skip the whole thing. See the entire GIPF project. All amazing abstract strategy games with zero story.
@@infinitedm5396 I mean, Tetris is also an amazing game. Did it hook me enough to play it 25 years later? Not really. But some people still play it even professionally.
6:04 Ego
There's definitely a fine balance here. I thiink having the ego is very important in helping you stick to your vision of the game and thus making it cohesive. One of the most common mistakes I see game developers make, both tabletop and electroning, is listening to their audience TOO MUCH. Your audience/players are not all game designers. They only see things from their perspective and they all have different perspectives. In trying to satisfy all the voices, sometimes even the majority of voices, you can completely ruin a game and take out the very thing that makes it interesting and unique.
World of Warcraft is a fascinating example of this happening with a large player base giving feedback. I think 40k and AoS suffer from the same thing, just on a smaller scale, though they have other forces, like marketing, in the mix.
These games have lost the cohesive vision of their designers and in an attempt to please everyone and it's pretty clear to see when you look at them.
Great video. I really enjoyed it.
Glad to hear you tried out Flesh and Blood - I picked it up just before Tales of Aria and was impressed by the design! In the end the game wasn't quite for me - too much on-the-spot decision making for me, it went a direction away from MtG (my one true gaming love) that didn't click with me, but it's still a killer game.
This is a super cool video, though anything that references Maro so much in game design is bound to be great. Thanks Scott!
Scott, this is a sweet video
I would like to see more of these videos.
My 5 major takeaways:
1. Fish and chips.
2. Chinese.
3. Curry.
4. Kebab.
5. Pizza.
Oh. You meant something different 😂
Love this kind of content! ❤
Great stuff!
MOAR GAME DESIGN
This was damn interesting, great video!
I enjoy hearing about game design-biased, because I’m trying to design a game 😁