How does Matteo publish games?

So you’ve been analysing mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics, coming up with game ideas, hacking some of them into a prototype, and then playtesting that prototype. 

How do you feel? Is your game finished and ready to sell?

I want to tell you about a game I hacked recently, because I hope it can inspire your next steps.

Let’s publish your game

Why publishing online?

When we say boardgame we think of a physical product, made out of paper, cardboard and wood or plastic. So you might be wondering why and how one could publish that online as a digital product.

Creating a digital version of your boardgame can have many advantages:

1. It makes your design process quicker. Updating a digital version takes less time than printing out and cutting physical copies.
2. It allows you to reach more people. Once you have your digital prototype online, all you need to do is share a link, and with the same link you can have multiple (potentially infinite) games played by people all over the world. This can benefit both your design and commercial processes:
   1. You can work with playtesters and collaborators without geographical limitations. 
   2. Many commercial games are published online as an effective “try before you buy” option: people can experience the game before investing in a physical copy of it.
3. It’s cheaper, to the point that it may not cost you any money at all to get your digital boardgame online. And I’m going to teach you how to do just that.

Virtual tabletops

The digital version of a boardgame is commonly referred to as a virtual tabletop. It looks like a videogame with 3D graphics: imagine a room with a spotlight on a table, where a boardgame is already set up and ready for you to play.

What I like about virtual tabletops is that they don’t enforce any rule for you. There is no artificial intelligence telling you what to do, or keeping the score for you. Instead, you have a bunch of 3D objects that you can stack, shuffle, draw, and otherwise handle like you would their physical equivalents, and it’s down to you and the other (human) players to decide what to do with the game objects. 

So when you use a virtual tabletop, next to the virtual space you’re sharing with other people, you also have a chat and/or videocall open to speak with them.

Among various options, I picked Tabletopia, which is a web-based platform where you can play many board games, and where you can also build your own game (for free). I’ll show you the steps of publishing your game on Tabletopia, but keep in mind these steps are almost the same on other virtual tabletop platforms. 

Getting your game on Tabletopia

What’s next?

💸 Is your game finished and ready to sell? 

Probably not, not yet. You may have new hacks you want to try out. 

🔁 Start a new round of prototyping!

If you found out that your game is a little broken, or not quite fun yet, don’t worry! 

Making games is an iterative process, which is a fancy term for something that you do over and over and over and over again. Each time you playtest something, you’ll spot things to fix and ideas to experiment with. So your game will evolve over time.

I always prototype and playtest my games at least 5 times solo and 5 more times with people, then maybe I start feeling confident with how they work. You see, making games is not always easy. Sometimes you end up with something completely unexpected. Sometimes you’ll realise an idea just doesn’t work at all. I’ve had plenty of those… 😅

👏 You did it! 

But hey, however this playtest went, let’s focus on what you achieved. You hacked a couple of games (your hacks of rock-paper-scissors count too) and prototyped your own! Possibly the first of many games to come. 

🙏 Thank you for bringing your own game ideas into the world! We need more games.

🆒 What next?

What could you do with your new game and your new design skills?

🍯 Share your game 

Take the opportunity to meet fellow game makers. Your ideas will get bigger and better the more you share them! 

💡 Create a print&play version of your game and upload it to boardgamesgeek.com, pnparcade.com and/or gumroad.com.

💡 Find a designers/playtesters meetup near you on meetup.com (there are plenty of virtual meetups too these days).

💡 Take part in a game jam. Jam?! Nothing to do with sweet spreadable food. A game jam is “is a gathering of people for the purpose of planning, designing, and creating one or more games within a short span of time, usually ranging between 24 and 72 hours”. Find some on itch.io/jams

🎈 Expand your game literacy

💡 Find interesting games to play and unpick: boardgamesgeek.com is a good starting point, if you don’t have access to a boardgame library or cafe. You don’t have to actually buy a board game in order to play it. With a bit of digging you could find a free print&play, or you could re-make that game yourself (and in the process you’ll probably end up hacking it into your own game). 

💡 Read game design books and listen to game design podcasts! There are loads, my favourite is currently boardgamedesignlab.com and you can find my game design bookshelf on goodreads.com

👾 Make more games

And yes, this time I mean also videogames. Now that you know how to hack together a game, and are familiar with the game design process > > >  you can apply that to digital games. I would recommend starting with a simple tool (no, not Unity) and then work your way up. Check out this collection of (mostly free) game-making tools. 

✊ Games are powerful

I remember when I first played Pandemic. As we were strategizing on how to save the world from deadly viruses, I had an aha moment. I realised that games are great facilitators of conversations: through games we can explore and share ideas on anything, from beans to capitalism. I’ve seen this come to life at a primary school during a Beesness playtest, when a group of amazing ladies, about 9 years old, managed to balance the beeconomy and keep the whole group happy! 

💭 Games are incredibly powerful thinking tools, and that drives me to keep creating them. 

Now I’m going to ask you. 

☝️What would you like to use games for? 

☝️Why is making games important to you? 

Keep these in mind as you take action on everything you’ve learned in this course and I’m certain you’ll make games you can be proud of!