I discovered the hard way that large-scale social games are more difficult to pull off than simple dice games or card games. I intended on debuting Vicious, my cruel and emotional game, at a reading of past contributors to Verse Noire. It didn’t go well. The following are reasons why:
- The rules were too complicated: There were too many stipulations as to what players could and couldn’t do, and I managed to forget a few of the rules as I was explaining. Everyone got confused, including me.
- There were too many materials to distribute: Every player needed a name-tag, several sheets of paper to write on, and a writing implement. These materials had to be passed out at the start of the game, which ate up time and gave the players that much more to get confused about.
- The expected arrangement of the room wasn’t flexible enough: I wanted two teams of equal sizes sitting in circles, with the team-members facing each other. But this was a literary reading event; all the chairs were in rows, facing forward. I could either rearrange the entire layout of the room (taking more time), or I could try and fudge the gameplay based on the actual arrangement. The gameplay depended on the team members being equidistant to each other, and being able to read the name-tags. When I left the arrangement of chairs as it was, the game became virtually unplayable.
- I didn’t think about time: This was a big one. The game was supposed to last around ten minutes. The rules, however, were far too complex to have the entire game play out in this amount of time. The game would have been much better suited to a longer time-frame.
- I didn’t playtest: I should have, but it was difficult to gather enough people in order to try out the game (ten players was the absolute minimum designed for). This is no excuse, though. I should never have tried to publicly present a game that wasn’t thoroughly tested.
- I choked in front of an audience: I got completely stuck when I realized things weren’t working right. Why? Because I didn’t plan out my presentation. I spent so long on the rules and the aesthetics of Vicious that I never bothered to write a script for introducing it. For some people, this might not be an issue, but I discovered that I really can’t ad-lib in a tight situation. Having even an index card with bulleted points would’ve helped immensely.
All-told, it was definitely a learning experience for me. Next time, I’ll have some ideas on how to build a proper social game, with less whining and excuses.