Imposter Syndrome! When am I a board game designer?

I'm a game designer. Am I a game designer? I'm a game designer. But am I really a game designer?

What my face looked like whenever I felt like an imposter in the board game design world.

Imposter Syndrome is something all designers experience when they set out on their first design. From not knowing if your design will work, to feeling anxious about sharing it with others, reluctance to give details about your game on design forums and worries about what play testers will say and wondering whether you're simply wasting your time. This is all very natural and understandable stuff. You might also be wondering, at what point can I actually call myself a board game designer? I remember reading on the excellent Jamie Stegmaier's Stonemaier Games Blog that you don't have a game until it's been tested 100 times and still stands up. As I write this, Undergrowth: A Tunnel Crawling Quest is on play test 26 and is holding up well. Still some way to go though...

My advice about imposter syndrome is....Just get stuck in, work on your game, achieve small gains as often as possible, get outside opinions as soon as you think you're onto something, be constantly evaluating and checking-in with your game and yourself and be super honest with yourself if you suspect you might not have backed a winner....this time!

So that's...

1. Get stuck in.

2. Work on your game.

3. Keep moving forward with small, regular gains and lessons.

4. Invite comment from others, as soon as there's something to comment on.

5. Keep evaluating it honestly - have a policy of brutal self-honesty.

Then, throw yourself into the board game design community online. Remember, everyone started where you are now, at the start. Everyone began with a game idea they weren't sure about. Everyone has hit brick walls and almost given up (or actually given up). Everyone is also still learning about game design. Like all things worth doing, you never really stop learning about it, or looking for and discivering new ways to keep doing it successfully. This means that everyone on every forum, from the debutant to the veteran, are still learning. This should give you confidence to introduce yourself, ask the questions you want to ask, share what you've got so far and join in conversations. You'll be be amazed how quickly you start offering your own opinions and realising that like you, everyone else is just trying to find a way to create the best game they can. You run into the occasional douche online, but most people are supportive, humble and super helpful.

It is common to worry when first joining online forums that if you share information about your game, others will steal your ideas. They won't...because:

1. No one wants you ideas, the fun of designing games is designing them yourself, not stealing from other designers.

2. It's virtually impossible to see or read some things about a game design and go away and create that game. Even if someone tried, the game they create wouldn't be similar enough to your game to make you worry.

3. Only a douche would do that, and remember I already said that they are few and far between.

So go ahead and share what you've come up with. The worst that can happen is no one feels very talkative and you don't get much feedback. Chances are though, that you'll get some interested and interesting comments from fellow designers. Feedback through forums, play testing, publishers or players is really the only way to determine if you have designed a game people want to play. At the end of the day, it's irrelevant whether you want to play it, commercial board game design is about producing a product which people who don't care about your feelings (that rules out yourself and your friends and family) will want. The ultimate test of this is uptake by publishers, self-publishing and selling. But, if you're sufficiently reflective to take feedback on board, play testing also tells you whether you're heading in the right direction or flogging a dead horse. Cole Wehrle, designer of some excellent games (Root, Pax Pamir, John Company to name a few) recently said in an interview that Root was play tested over 100 times. When asked how many of those play throughs were of the final game, the answer was just four. Every play test up to the final four resulted in changes to the game. My own experience with undergrowth has been that as play testing progresses the resulting changes become smaller and smaller. This doesn't mean they are any less crucial, but main mechanics tend to bet ironed out early on and changes emerging from later testing tend to be rule or instruction changes rather than 'game changers', if you'll excuse the pun!

You may not be a professional board game designer until you have at least one published and selling title to your name, but you're a board game designer if you're working on designs, engaging reflectively with feedback and realistic about whether your designs could lead to publication. In other words, if you're taking it seriously. To achieve this you have to take that step beyond the comfort zone of playing with friends and family. My view is that you can't claim to have designed a game until you reach the stage where play testing doesn't lead to necessary changes, and that's gonna be close to or more than 100 sessions. Until then, like me, you're a game designer with a potential game. But that's OK.

If you're looking for reassurance about board game design and where you fit into it, drop a comment or a question below and I'll do my best to respond. Take a look at my other blog posts and hopefully you'll find something useful, supportive and informative there which helps you along your own journey.

To learn more about my debut game design Undergrowth, hit the socials below.