Recorded at Metatopia 2024 Hosted by Jim Dagg, Misha Bushyager, Whitney Delaglio & Amanda Valentine Game design is art. And play. And craft. So what about when you just want to hone your craft and find joy in something, but don't want to make it a second-job? In an industry where success is defined by quitting your day job or running a $1M crowdfunding campaign, HOW do you shake the hustle vibe and let yourself enjoy design as a hobby ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia Online 2021 Presented by Jason Cox, Shing Yin Khor, Jeeyon Shim. Keepsake Games, Art, Education and Equity. Keepsake games, which generate material objects as a result of play, are a fascinating tool for classroom use. What if the experience of educational games was visually shaped by the students? How would this affect their engagement and retention of content? How can a game like this thrive in the quantitative systems that dominate education ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia 2023 Presented by Hosted by Whitney Delaglio Hand-Holdy content means it has the support of the content its holding hands with to help inform the reader on how to play and avoids lonely content that doesn't add to the gameplay as much as it could. It also makes it easier for the designer to create a game that tells the story/does what the designer wants it to ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia 2023 Presented by Sean Jaffe, Joshua Jaffe, Casey Edison, and Jason Pitre The brothers behind Rememorex, Commandroids, and other titles talk about the ins-and -outs of layout. Making a TTRPG is a challenge to a layout artist, who must juggle aesthetics and theme with readability and ease of use. A valuable resource for anyone just starting out ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia 2023 Presented by Taylor Hubler and Nicholas Ambrose Join our experts for a conversation looking at how to physically design, package, and ship games. We want to make sure that every copy that is printed makes it into the hands of a player, but games can get damaged in transit, or be passed up by game stores due to a physical design misstep. Part one will be going over physical design, layout considerations, and what retailers like to see in a product on their shelves. Part two will be going over why product gets damaged in transit, best packaging practices for distributi ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia 2024 Presented by Avonelle Wing and Nicholas Ambrose So, what is "the three-tier system"? What's a consolidator? Hobby? Mass-market? Specialty? Once you have a design that seems viable, there are a lot of steps between here and retail success. Bring your questions, and we'll try to answer them after a brief overview of possible paths forward ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia 2023 Presented by Avonelle Wing, Curt Covert, and Alex Cutler You've read game design blogs and Facebook groups. You've delved into conventional wisdom. You did your homework. A game should be replayable. You should set your funding goal as 1/5 of your overall costs to fund fast. A prototype should be a single sheet of paper and some markers. A prototype needs to be full production value. Publish it yourself and sell it out of your bedroom; order fulfillment is easy. All of these things might be true, and they could still be the thing that sinks your ship. Our experts tal ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia 2023 Presented by Meguey Baker, Vincent Baker An introduction to PbtA from a designer's point of view. How and why Apocalypse World works the way it does, what your game can take from it, and how and why your own game should work differently. Highlighting PbtA's conversation model, with an emphasis on consent and communication, and PbtA's model of fiction, with an emphasis on adapting it to your own game's needs ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia 2023 Presented by Cam Banks and Amanda Valentine Licensed RPGs are a minefield of conflicting interests, stakeholders, and opinions. With the assumption that you've done the hardest part of securing a license, actually designing, developing, and producing the game is often much harder than expected. We'll talk about the process of faithfully adapting someone else's work to a new game project ..read more

Recorded at Metatopia 2023 Presented by Sydney Engelstein and Geoffrey Engelstein Sydney has taken close to a thousand pitches for Indie Game Studios. Geoff has taught game design and helped designers improve their prototypes for over a decade. Between them they see the same issues with designs over and over again, particularly with newer designers. In this seminar, they will share with you the top things that are wrong with your game, based on this hard won experience. They guess there's a slight chance you've avoided a few of these issues, but probably not. And let's face it - you won't know ..read more