Battle of the Babies: Deckbuilding Card Game was the first tabletop game I created and it was an amazing experience. At the start of designing your first game, you have no idea where to start. I made some mistakes and learned from them, so I want to share what I have gained from designing my first game so you can be better off designing a game.
Mailing Lists
I thought I knew a lot about getting a mailing list going and I was wrong. If you are launching your game on Kickstarter there are a few things to keep in mind. You want to perform as well as you can the first couple of days so getting a large mailing list over time is important.
Using the Facebook leads ad feature got me a lot more interaction and emails than other paid social media, so I would suggest using that.
It is not Kickstarters job to get you backers, so you need to have a large enough list for comfort on making your project a reality. I started getting a mailing list too late, start early so you have enough time to grow.
There are many different areas to get emails for a Kickstarter but one I failed to do was try at Board Game conventions. Conventions are the best physical resource for a new designer, and I did not utilize them as much as I should have.
Variety Playtesting
I greatly underestimated the value of playtesting when making my first game. I absolutely playtested the game but It is THE most important thing in game design. In order to playtest better, I should have had a variety of different types of testing.
Blind playtesting is to have people that do not know you play the game. Having no connection to you, the testers will be able to give more aggressive criticism which may not be fun but is absolutely needed. You can also leave them with the rules, set up a camera, and leave the room. This allows the players to freely learn, and play on their own. You might catch things about the game that confuse the players that you didn’t notice.
Overall, I should have playtested more hours, and playtested with a much larger variety of people. Conventions are a great way to playtest with people you do not know, and the people there know game mechanics well.
MARKETING AND TIMING
One mistake I made with the launch of the campaign was with the assumption I had about advertising and timing.
I decided to wait until the launch of the campaign to do the majority of my marketing or ads. My thought was, why would I pay for ads for a product that isn’t even out yet. I learned that you need to do those sooner if you are using things like social media ads. Use them to build your mailing list and send them to the “Notify me on launch” button on Kickstarter. It is an extremely important resource that Kickstarter provides that I had almost no one signed up for, which in turn affected the start of the campaign.
GAME THEME VS MECHANICS
Battle of the Babies sounds like a really silly card game right? And it totally is, but usually when people thing of silly games, they think about really short, non-strategic games.
Battle of the Babies is a strategy deck-building card game that takes about an hour to play, which multiple people have been surprised by. This is no problem for people who love silliness and strategic games, but it can put some people off.
Ultimately, you make the game that you want to, but if the theme and mechanics don’t match perfectly, then you might have a small audience of interest.
CONFIDENCE
Putting your ideas out there and creating something from scratch can be scary. Have confidence in your project. It will not be a perfect game the first draft. It takes time to develop a good game, and even if it’s not a perfect first game, that’s okay. You’ll learn from experiences and apply them to future games.
Your friends and family are there to support you. There were many times that I had been shy about sharing my game with people I knew, but every time it was received with so much excitement for what I was doing.
