News Bits: 12/2/2013

The NEWS is a little sparse this week (Thanksgiving holiday, over which my family celebrated Christmas). We should return to business as usual next week. In the meantime, the NEWS:

Stonemaier Games offers charity auction for special edition of Viticulture [Link] Stonemaier Games has "made it about others" by auctioning several copies of Viticulture for charity. They reached out to various gaming blogs to choose which charities get donations, and we chose Children's Relief.

Workers at the Winery (a review of Viticulture)

Tuscany! Land of grape and vine! You are a vineyard owner tasked with improving your winery. Construct new buildings, attract influential visitors, and build your prestige through growing, crushing, and bottling delicious grapes. But watch out! While Tuscany is a beautiful place to live, it is a competitive place to work.

Can your vineyard outshine all others? Find out in Viticulture!

News Bits: 7/29/2013

The big news this week was a failed Kickstarter campaign and the discussion surrounding it. But there's more than that. Here is the NEWS:

Fred Hicks discusses the Doom That Came to Atlantic City Kickstarter campaign [Link] Kickstarter for board games is coming out of its infancy into the shaky years of adolescence. This kind of scenario (along with many, many, many others) has with good reason made many people wary of using the platform. I know there's a lot of idealism surrounding Kickstarter, about it being used to fund people's dreams, but really, I think Hicks's advice is on the money. And because there is no great way to test first-time campaigners (to see if they're overreaching), and since I've had several less than stellar experiences myself, I'm much more likely to use my money to fund Kickstarter veterans. Against the spirit of the service? Perhaps, but less risk. (Also, the game's designer responded here. Designer/publisher relationships are complicated, to say the least.)

News Bits: 6/3/2013

I was on vacation last week, so I'm still catching up on news. But here's a good deal of the news from this week:

Bellwether Games interviews designer Ed Marriott (Scoville [unpublished]) [Link] I look forward to Bellwether's monthly designer interviews, and Marriott's interview is no exception. He details the prototyping and design process. Here's an excerpt I liked:

Simplify! In the game design process it is so easy to add more and more little rules to cover the “what-if” scenarios in your game design. I always recommend starting simple and adding detail only when necessary