The Story of daniel.games

If you've read through this site, you're probably interested enough to go up one level, and hear about the site itself.

The big picture

I've helped a small number of people, one-on-one, and it seems silly not to share my knowledge with even more people, when it's so easy to do.

Mostly, I just like creating things, like this website. If you're a board game designer, you're probably the same.

I don't mind a small amount of kudos, but mostly, I just like the satisfaction and challenge of building something, and seeing it serve its purpose.

Writing this site helps me analyse and crystallise my own methodology. When I'm forced to write it all down, I first need to think about and understand it fully. Writing this site has made me a better game designer.

Approach

I decided to launch this whole site after it was finished (and after Radlands was published). I was looking forward to releasing it, which kept me motivated.

This site is a discrete and completed project. It's not some ongoing blog, that will eventually be abandoned. No one wants to "follow a blog" anyway. This site was complete when I launched it, and will still be complete, when I eventually stop updating it.

Publishing the whole site at once also allows me to create something comprehensive, with a bigger picture — the transfer of my entire board game design methodology to the reader, as opposed to a series of interesting articles with no bigger picture.

Layout

The spartan layout of this site is intentional. I designed it to be functional and highly consistent, so that it's as easy to read as possible. That ended up being an interesting design.

This site doesn't use images. I find them distracting, and an excuse to convert a simple verbal concept into a complex chart of logic.

The task

This site came together much like I'd create a board game. I brainstormed a big list of topics, and made an article page for each one. In each one, I brainstormed numerous ideas, and noted them down. Then, I began turning these ideas into paragraphs of text. I also created a giant list of notes — random ideas I had later, that would be put into this giant system, for processing.

The initial writing of the site's text was only a fraction of the total work. Many articles were too big, too small, hastily written, or overlapped.

Over time, I rewrote this site repeatedly, piece by piece. I could have written 1,000 articles with the same amount of work. It wasn't easy to break up my entire knowledge of board game design into 90 distinct articles of roughly the same size.

I'm happy with what I've created, and glad that people have enjoyed it.

Updates

This site is complete, and doesn't require updating, but I've been happy to update it most years. I make notes throughout the year.

Each update, I read through the whole site. I improve the text as I go, and integrate the year's notes. I change things, where my opinion has changed. I add a few new articles. I expunge the weakest articles, and consolidate others.

Now, to the final article.