Ignacy Trzewiczek: Game Designer’s Journal #8 – Thanks

[Editor’s note: Portal Publishing’s Ignacy Trzewiczek, co-designer of the 2008 title Witchcraft, has been penning a weekly “game designer’s journal” for Games Fanatic.pl, detailing the origin and development of Stronghold, Portal’s 2009 Spiel release. This article series, now in English, will appear each Saturday on BGN until Trzewiczek runs out of material or Spiel is at our doors. Links to segments #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 and #7.]

The playtesters – if they’re lucky – will see their names mentioned toward the end of the manual. Small print. Somewhere next to the copyrights. Nobody reads that.

It’s bloody unjust. To start producing a game you need a man who invents it, and people who will test it. Before it reaches the stores, countless rounds have to be played, boring, limping, frustrating rounds, which – let’s be honest – are a waste of time for the tester. The guy could play Race for the Galaxy. He could play Neuroshima HEX. He could play Tikal. But he won’t. For one-and-a-half hours he’ll be wrangling with real time rules and sitting over a scribbled board that will change three times in the course of a round. Instead of the components, he’ll have pieces of paper, three versions of the game rules, sheets with rules from previous prototype versions that are being reworked with new, as yet unwritten, rules. And if he does manage to win and has the chance to feel a tiny fraction of satisfaction, he’ll always hear: “Yeah, the game is unbalanced. I need to weaken the effect of your actions...”

It’s a terrible job, but there wouldn’t be games without testers.

So if this journal is supposed to be a report on game creation, on how Stronghold came into being – and a more-or-less useful pointer for other authors – I need to mention the people who agreed to play Stronghold with me, people who have devoted many hours to poring over the disjointed, malfunctioning game; getting bored; and seeing how I constantly make up the rules.

I can’t imagine how I could start working on a game without someone who would sit with me, patiently playing and indulgently suffering all inconveniences. Without someone who will flood me with genius ideas at every stage, someone who won’t pull the game in his own direction, but will settle for observing how the game hangs and breaks – while waiting for my moves, my patches. It’s a job for a saint.

As far as Stronghold is concerned, the biggest acknowledgement goes to Salou, the guy who played many rounds of this worst, most unrewarding state of the game: when it didn’t exist, didn’t work, when I would come to him with some fragments of rules and ask him to play. We played many rounds and talked a lot. His influence was great, for although I rejected many of his conclusions and ideas, I also took many remarks to heart and tried implementing them in the game.

My name will be on the box, yet many ideas contained within Stronghold are not of my authorship. I think it’s the case with every game. Well, let me at least make a nod toward all those friends who had devoted their time, and pay them some respect.

Salou? At some point you could give three marching orders in the game. For many years to come, I will remember Silent’s face when he lost in Stronghold on the first (!!) turn. Salou rode in the castle like a speeding battle car. After that round you could give only two orders. At some point the defender got only as many Hourglasses as the Invader generated. Well, I will remember my frustration for a long time after Salou said “pass,” didn’t generate any hourglasses, and walked into the castle. After that round the defender got two Hourglasses, even if the Invader did nothing.

Silent? He co-authored the catapults rule. You need to know it’s one of the most climatic rules in the game. We sat in MDK and debated because the catapult rules didn’t work the way I wanted, the machines were either too powerful or too weak. A minute or two of conversation, and bang, there’s the solution. Silent didn’t make the catapults; Silent is the catapults.

Obi? He fixed the character rules because they were limping. He played, waited an hour, then walked to me with a ready set of Officer and Warrior rules. Simple as that. They got into the game unchanged. They were perfect.

Michal Oracz and Multi, two people from Portal, put a countless number of ideas into the game. It’s hard to mention them. Testers’ remarks, their whining, their indications, information, that they have no chance, that their opponent is too strong… Tens of notes, ticked results, checking which round the game finished in.

I tried just now to remember whether I forgot anyone. (It’s possible.) There were 25 people taking part in testing Stronghold. I didn’t send out the prototype around Poland; it wasn’t tested “theoretically,” “allegedly,” or quickly by people I don’t know. I was there during each game. I was observing how they play, looking at their reactions. I saw how they learned the rules, how they used the game’s potential, how they used strategies to try to surprise and defeat the opponent.

And I listened. I kept listening to what they were saying. I put emotions aside, averaged out the opinions, and checked if they were repeated. If they were recurring, I corrected the rule in question as suggested.

Hereby I’d like to thank all those people for devoting a few hundred hours of their time to me, sitting and playing with me a game which wasn’t that cool at the time. Thanks to their sacrifice Stronghold was created. And it’s a cool game today…

Comments: