The Thousand Year Game Design Challenge

Thanks for linking! Here are the entry round-ups so far for the past four months.

January: http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/thousand-year-ga...

February: http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/thousand-year-ga...

March: No Entries

April: http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/thousand-year-ga...

I'm glad you found us here. I should've posted a comment on your blog.

Anyway, I wonder if you might be able to give us some insight as a game designer as to what goes into creating a game. Do you start with a theme? Mechanics? A particular goal (like the one you've set out here to create a thousand year game)?

It was hard to ignore the 800% spike in traffic. ;)

Before I even get an idea for a theme or a mechanic (or a constraint), I look for inspiration outside of my head. I watch movies, read comics, and play games in other media. Oh! I actually documented this process on my blog for a recent game.

I got hooked on this web game: http://www.tonypa.pri.ee/jorinapeka.html

Then tried adapting it to tabletop with this prototype: http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/in-lab-jorinapek...

After several iterations, it became a very different game in its own right: http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/utara.html

Which had many enthusiastic players at a recent convention: http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/playing-utara-di...

It was so well-received, I had dice professionally produced and documented the costs of the process: http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/etched-utara-dic...

Anyhoo, hope all that helps if you decide to go into board game design. :)

If you go to the update posts (there's one for each month), he lists the submissions he's received so far.

Do you have a link to even one of these? I tried looking for these and couldn't find one...

http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/thousand-year-ga...

I found a tag too:

http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/search/label/1000%20Year...

I assume it would be cheating to create a game that takes a thousand years to play? :)

I initially thought that it would be a game that took a thousand years to make :)

Wolfenstein covers the Thousand Year Reich, that's gotta count for something...

You can, but I can't guarantee we'll be able to finish playing it. ;)