Oct 4, 2020

Today, we are continuing our series of exploring the design
decisions behind our own games! Emma and Scott sit down with Gil to
talk about his game High Rise; about how it started life as an
auction game, and the twisty route it took to publication.

SHOW NOTES

1m23s – Gil discussed the Wag auction in his
Networks design diary on BGG.

2m45s – Gil’s game Battle
Merchants.

3m31s – A “MacGuffin” is an
object in a film that the characters all want, but the actual
nature of the object is irrelevant (like the briefcase in Pulp
Fiction). All that matters from the perspective of the film is that
the characters want it. Looney Labs has since published an actual
game with this term, Get the
MacGuffin.

4m03s – Gil’s game The
Networks.

6m24s – Games with auctions as an element in the game: Princes
of Florence, Goa

6m54s – Knizia games that are built entirely around their
auctions: Ra, Modern
Art, Medici,
High
Society

8m18s – The digital board game Sumer (Gil credited Josh Raab with
the game design, but neglected to mention co-designers Geoffrey
Suthers, Misha Favorov, and Sig Gunnarsson).

8m51s – The legendary video game M.U.L.E. – not a
commercial success, but since regarded as seminal and influential.
For a while, “M.U.L.E. as a board game” was a game designer’s
grail, but that’s since been handled by board games Wealth
of Nations, Planet
Steam, and of course, M.U.L.E.
The Board Game.

14m41s – Gil is talking about Roger Caillois,
and his book Man, Play, and
Games. Play is usually associated with having no real-world
implications, but Caillois knew to draw in gambling as a
counter-example.

19m04s – High Rise’s look would not have nearly been so amazing
without the graphic design of Heiko Günther and the illustrations
of Kwanchai Moriya.

20m36s – Rocco is also designer of the game Ninja
Dice.

23m04s – You can follow the High Rise Kickstarter
here; it goes live on October 6.

24m54s – Bryn Smith runs Doomsday Robots, a board game
publishing company.

27m02s – Expancity,
Manhattan.
The Manhattan kaiju “expansion” Gil was thinking of turned out to
be a variant
designed by Brian Bankler and Eric Moore.

27m56s – The amazing Daniel Newman, who is quite an
excellent game designer himself (he made Dead
Man’s Cabal), and who is designing the High Rise plastic
buildings.

28m11s – Not to mention, Elastoplast is a
brand of bandages.

28m59s – The
High Rise design diary.

30m28s – Gil’s online playtest group, Remote Playtesting.

32m24s – Two rondel games, both by Mac Gerdts: Navegador,
and Imperial.

33m57s – Time track games similar to High Rise: Tokaido,
Glen
More, Francis
Drake, and Kraftwagen.

34m28s – Ryan Courtney, designer of Pipeline

36m29s – Eric
Lang’s tweet about turn angst. You can hear more directly from
Eric in
Ludology 175 – Auld Lang Design.

38m33s – Food
Chain Magnate.

45m33s – Geoff and Gil discussed ludonarrative dissonance in

Ludology 190 – Diabolus in Ludica. A positive example of
ludonarrative dissonance: Unspeakable
Words.

46m55s – Cloudspire.

50m28s – Emma is referring to Ludology
209 – The 6 Zones of Play.

51m51s – Bohnanza

51m58s – Here’s an example of
Magic Card flicking. It’s even worse when the cards are
sleeved.

55m36s – Uno, The

Mystery Rummy series of games.

59m33s – The Sears Tower in Chicago is now called the Willis Tower.

1h02m57s –
The preview page for the High Rise Kickstarter campaign.