For my senior project, Designing and Creating Engaging Games, I want to answer the question: what is the relationship between design and development?

In 10th grade, I was accepted into the TISCH School Future Game Designers program, in which we learned the fundamentals of game design for both physical, and digital platforms. As part of our final project for that course, we, as teams of three, were tasked with creating a board game. 

The process was long, hard, and ultimately not enough. We were given around 28 hours to complete a game, and while we were technically able to meet the deadline, it wasn’t fun, engaging, or polished. We created a design but didn’t have time to playtest, revise, or perfect. Since then, I’ve taken 2 more game design programs, one focused entirely on theory and design, and the other on digital development. I want to return to creating physical games for the chance to combine everything I’ve learned so far, while also getting the chance to learn new things. I want to, in a way, revisit my project from 10th grade to create something I’m proud of. 

At the same time, I’d like to get in contact with board game companies such as Gamewrite, ALEA, Blue Orange Games, Days of Wonder, Ravens Burger, Stone Meyer games, and more to ask them a series of questions related to my question, such as:

How do you get your ideas for a game?

What is the process of getting your game from idea to reality?

How do you incorporate player feedback?

Because there may be times where my main project is stuck at a standstill, I also plan to be working on a smaller side project. Dominion is a game that was released in its base in 2009 and sees its players building their own deck of cards with the end goal of having the most victory points. Since the game’s initial release, expansion packs have been created that add new features and variety to the game, while keeping it balanced and play relatively consistent. I learned to play Dominion when I joined the Games Club in 9th grade and have been playing ever since. As a side project, I’d like to create my own expansion for the game that would be able to be played either stand-alone or mixed in with other cards. This would give me an opportunity to answer my question from a different perspective, that of adding to an existing product.

In attempting to answer my question, I’ll be faced with the challenge of creating a creative game that not only makes sense to learn and play, but that incorporates player feedback. To do this I plan to split my time into 4 phases: research, design, creation, and testing. To start I’ll play through a wide variety of games, taking notes on what’s fun and engaging, and what distracts from the experience. After that, I’ll begin the design phase, where I made an initial plan for the game. Then in the creation phase, I built a prototype for the game. After that, I played the game with a consistent group of people, who gave me feedback. After that I repeat the cycle starting at design, using what I learned from playtesting to try and improve the game, the cycle continuing until I have a completed, balanced, fun game.

At the end of this project, I hopefully will not only have a better understanding of the relationship between design and development but also an expansion for Dominion and a fun game to play with family and friends.