First week of November we organised another playtesting event. Again the student association Glitch helped out. It was very nice to see how multiple games were tested, being personal projects, as well as study related projects. Despite all the deadlines. There were digital games, naturally, and a good amount of analogue ones. Students from all … Continue reading Looking back: Test & Chill November 2017

What started with a pilot last study year will now become a regular event: having testing sessions at our study CMD (Communication & Multimedia Design). Especially interesting for game design, but any app, art, code can be brought to showcase, for playtesting / user testing. Participating, also by giving feedback, is a great way to hone … Continue reading Looking back: Test & Chill October 2017

As a lecturer game design I regularly tip podcast episodes on certain topics. Some students really like them, others roll their eyes when I start talking about podcasts again :-). And I am fine with that, I'll keep recommending them as they are a great resources to industry news, personal stories concerning designing and publication, … Continue reading Design resources, hear hear!

What follows is a report of our trip in 2017 to the annual Game Designer Convention (also known as the ‘Spieleautorentreffen’)  in Göttingen, Germany. We will share our experiences  and offer some tips if you want to go there. As a tabletop game designer going to the Spielautorentreffen is great because you can meet a … Continue reading Going to the Göttingen Game Designer Convention

Last week I joined the International Game Designers Association 'SAZ' (Spiele-Autoren-Zunft). Seems appropriate with 2 game publications coming up... My first impressions are good. A personal welcome, an international oriented website in English (mostly) and the managing director Christian Beiersdorf explained all the topics they tackle on behalf of game authors worldwide. Besides insights there … Continue reading The meta-game: SAZ Game Designers Association

Last week I had an interview with a local newspaper about playing and making games. It is in Dutch, you can read it here. I made the statement that everyone likes playing games. Even people who say they don't. They just haven't played the game they will like yet. Or maybe not yet with the … Continue reading ‘Everyone likes games’

This blogpost is is about 'play'. The concept is getting more attention by psychologists and I became more interested in the topic myself. Not only as a psychologist, but also as a designer of games. Creating games means creating experiences that have a potential for priming playfulness. Now, after 2 years working as a lecturer I … Continue reading Play: serious business

As a freelance game designer I started organising tabletop testing nights for the design community two years ago. By now the turnup is steady and multiple games are playtested during an evening. These days I am a lecturer at the major Game Design of the Hanze Applied university. Even though the focus of the study is on … Continue reading Test & Chill – playtesting for students

Making a new game feels like exploring space, seeing what is out there, which direction is fruitful and which are not. And steering is done with hindsight bias: some initial direction might be clear from the start, but often only after trying out different versions of the game it becomes clear what works and what did not. … Continue reading Design Space: to boldly go where no one has gone before

Each year in January the Global Game Jam is organised. In a weekend (48 hours) teams cooperate to make a game loosely based on the theme of that year. In 2017 the keyword was 'waves'. Games can be digital or analogue (tabletop). They asked me to judge, especially for potential tabletop games. There weren none, but … Continue reading Global Game Jam 2017