For my project, I read the book Becoming a Video Game Designer by Daniel Noah Halpern. I chose the book because I was curious to see how aspects of game design translated over mediums and figured there would be a lot to learn about the process of creating a game, even if the game being created was digital rather than physical. While I ended up really disliking the book, I still think I learned a few interesting things from it. The biggest thing that stood out to me was the ideal of player empowerment. The idea presented was about players being a lot more invested when they felt their actions were their own, they weren’t being forced to do something, and that they had control. When talking about this from a developer perspective, there was an industry professional who talked about how a big part of creating the feeling of player empowerment was basically tricking the player into doing what you want them to do, but in a way that makes them think they’re doing it of their own volition. An example given was a game that had a lot of different characters a player could play as, but the goal of the game was the same regardless, but the action of being able to choose and customize who they were in the game made it seem like they had a lot more control over the game’s world and how they played. This was an idea that I wanted to incorporate into my game to keep players engaged and wanting to play again. Though my game has the simple goal of collecting the most victory points, I created mechanics that give the players more options in how to collect those points. Despite the game having very specified end conditions, and clear limits, the players feel like they have more control and options than they do. Yes, you can move to the right or the left, but the board is still leading you to the end. Reading this part definitely made me stop and look back on games I’ve played in the past and think if I really had as much control as I did. 

Another source I used early on in my project as research was the Youtube channel ProZD. ProZD is a channel that is usually made up of short comedy sketches, but the YouTuber also has a series where he critically analyzes board games. While I was watching his videos, I think I learned a lot about the importance of clear presentation. Specifically, there was an episode where he was reviewing a game that he really enjoyed the mechanics of, but talked about how its really lackluster visual design and rulebook made it hard to enjoy and learn. He talked about how he needed to watch videos of people explaining how to play the game to understand how it worked, and that even then he was having trouble figuring out what to do because the game’s board was far too cluttered. I think watching this has definitely helped me think about how best to communicate ideas when actually developing an idea I wrote about. So far in playtesting I’ve already gotten feedback that I need to make things clearer because while conceptually the idea works, in practice, it’s hard to understand. I think that using some of the advice ProZD gives in his review, plus some trial and error with my card designs, I can make everything in my game clearer and easier to play/understand.