{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreidhkfmb73yccxivrc2ihradptdafcimqvwyoep67m2bldnhyyjgdi",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:jfhl5z6hh6f7bt6vk47ghr2c/app.bsky.feed.post/3mlrdd3543es2"
  },
  "path": "/the-three-secrets-of-making-games-dcdd2c22d6e2?source=rss-567e1925a7fd------2",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-13T12:22:21.000Z",
  "site": "https://possumcreek.medium.com",
  "tags": [
    "game-design",
    "board-games",
    "playtesting",
    "tabletop-gaming",
    "Patreon"
  ],
  "textContent": "Let’s say you and I are kids on the playground. We want to play a game, but we want to play a _specific_ game. We want to play a game that makes us feel like space aliens infiltrating our school. We could make such a game ourselves (in fact, you and I have made many games together), but…it’s a lot of work and recess is only so long. During the process of making that game, because what we want is so specific, we’ll probably spend a lot of time doing stuff we don’t want to be doing, while trying to find the game that gives us what we want. So we go to an older kid and ask them: “Hey, do you know about any games that make us feel like space aliens infiltrating the school?”\n\nAnd the older kid teaches us a game. And we try it out, and maybe it works for us or maybe it doesn’t.\n\nI think all game designers should know why game designers exist. You don’t need a game designer to have fun playing games with your friends. The game designer is the older kid on the playground — they’re someone _you trust_ to provide you with a game that will give you what you’re looking for. As we get older, and our taste gets more particular, and we have even less time in our days, the game designer becomes even more valuable. The core of the relationship with the game designer is built on the trust that the game designer’s recommendations on how you have fun will be fruitful.\n\nThis means, as a game designer, **you have a responsibility to your trusting players.** If you want people to engage with your games, you have an obligation to respect the trust they’re giving you. That means playing your games enough to make sure that they provide what you say they do, **_or_** warning the players in advance about the lack of testing that’s gone into them. This is a courtesy of trust. If you choose not to, the trusting bond you’ve established with your players is more likely to be broken, and they won’t trust your advice in the future.\n\nThat’s the first secret. Here’s the second secret.\n\nWhenever you write a game, you’re describing a game that must exist somewhere. The process of writing a game is one of visualizing the extant game and describing its qualities textually. It’s a lot harder to do that if you don’t know the game. You need to be intimately familiar with the game as you write it. I know a lot of people who will close their eyes and imagine a game and then write it down. The game still exists in your imagination — it’s still there. But your imagination may behave differently than reality.\n\nOne of the biggest mistakes newer game designers make is procrastinating on playing their games. Sometimes I’ll talk to a lot of designers working on their first or second game, something they’ve been working on for months or even years, and I’ll realize they haven’t actually played the game yet. They’ll have written thousands or tens of thousands of words about a part of the game that they haven’t even tried. _How can you write so much when you don’t even know the game yet?_\n\nWhen I am working on a game, my goal is to go from “words on a page” to “playing the game” as quickly as possible. Everything I can possibly fudge, I fudge. Anything I can possibly handwave through GM fiat, I do. I write exactly enough to get the game in front of people, and then we play the hell out of it. There’s a concept called “playstorming” (which I believe I learned from Epidiah Ravachol), where you sit down with the game and some friends and you design it together on the fly. **You want to try to be playing your games within 48 hours of starting work, and you need to play them over and over again.**\n\nThat was the second secret. Here’s the third secret.\n\nWhen you play your games, to make sure they’re worth playing, to get to know their contours so you can more aptly describe them, you’ll have people giving you feedback. Lots and lots of feedback. This is beautiful — every piece of feedback, especially the negative stuff, comes from a place of excitement and care towards the project you’re working on.\n\nThe first most important piece of feedback you can ask for is:_“Was the experience worthwhile?”_\n\nAs long as you know it was worth doing, everything else is downhill from there.\n\nThe second most important piece of feedback you can ask for is: _“What was your experience like?”_\n\nIf the game landed with the players in the ways you were looking for, you know you’re on the right track.\n\nThe third most important piece of feedback you can ask for is:_“What surprised you?”_\n\nIf all they have is positive praise, but nothing surprised them, then they’ve tuned out.\n\nThe fourth most important piece of feedback you can ask for is:_“What did you want more of?”_\n\nThere will always be more they want. You can’t always be the one to give it to them. Learn what they want and decide if the game will actually give them that.\n\nThe least important piece of feedback they can give you is if they start telling you how they’d change the game. **Your players are masters of their experiences, not of your game.**\n\nThat’s the third secret.\n\n_This post was available in advance on the Creekside Community Center_ Patreon_. Thank you to my patrons for their support, feedback, and conversations. If you enjoyed this article, please back my Patreon to access my full archive and any future articles I release, along with future games and projects._",
  "title": "The Three Secrets of Making Games",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-13T12:22:21.066Z"
}