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The game I started designing earlier this year and am currently working on was called Discord and is now re-named to Aeon’s End. This is more a news update explaining where I’m at with the game rather than detailing mechanics within the game.
During talks with Action Phase, my publisher, they made it clear that, while they appreciated many of the interesting design decisions in my game, they didn't see a good market for it. I had designed a game that appealed to my very specific interest. It was a 100% deterministic (No Randomness or RNG), 1v1 game. While this is a genre that obviously enjoys some success (chess & go as classics, along with the much newer game, Hive, as examples), it is an exceptionally difficult genre to design.
One of the key problems with making a 1v1 game deterministic is finding people to play with. When a game has no RNG, relatively small differences in skill can lead to one player winning an overwhelming number of games, often with little back and forth. Hearthstone is a great example of a game that allows people of drastically different skill levels to enjoy the game with each other. There's a sufficient amount of randomness that even if I'm substantially better than my opponent, I can still lose or have close games. In Hearthstone, the better player doesn't always win. This principle allows for players to have more enjoyable games against a larger range of players which helps create larger communities of players. A community is less of an issue for Hearthstone due to its solid gameplay, electronic nature and addictive rewards program, but is a substantial obstacle for a physical game. If you have a physical competitive game but no one to play it with in real life, then that game will not be played.
After our discussion regarding the difficulties of marketing a 1v1 game without any random elements, I realized I had already spent a lot of time with a similar sort of game. Starcraft has always been a game that is hard to enjoy with people who aren’t very close in skill. Until recently, there were very few ways to enjoy 'real' Starcraft (ladder) with friends of different skill levels which contributed to the breakdown of communities as players ran out of friends to enjoy the game with. There’s some ‘randomness’ due to lack of information in Starcraft, but playing someone noticeably better will consistently end in very one sided games which tends to be not fun for either player. I had witnessed this sort of decline for years and realized that the game I envisioned originally was not a design path I wanted to walk down myself. After some discussion, I took the core mechanics and re-built a co-op framework.
Once I showed the general 'proof of concept' that the core gameplay could translate into co-op, I was able to proceed in the publishing process. Aeon's End is now a fully co-op game, although it wouldn’t take many rules changes to play it as a 1v1. Since retiring from Starcraft, I've been working full time on AE and am currently looking at launching the KS campaign in March.
 
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woah, thats pretty huge. Do you worry that making it Co-op will decrease the number of people who can play with friends? (need 3 other people not one etc?) Either way, best of luck, can't wait to see how AE pans out when completed!
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Why did u rename it? Discord was a great name that sticked in your head. Aeon's end, not so much.
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Canada11496 Posts
I find it's actually harder to find people willing to play 1v1 board and card games. (I can't remember the last time one of my friends wanted to play Stratego or Chess.) So I think he would definitely be opening up the number of people that would be interested in the game- flexible required numbers is best, but even the game required exactly four players, I think you would have a wider interest than a 1v1 game. A co-op game is interesting too, because I think co-op games are in a good place with Pandemic and Castle Panic gaining a little more popularity. I know for myself, once I realized there could be co-op games, I started to look for more but there aren't all that many. So I think there actually is a hole in the market. (But I'm no marketing person, just a board gamer.)
I'm curious how you got in contact with a board game company in the first place.
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On January 09 2016 00:40 NukeD wrote:
Why did u rename it? Discord was a great name that sticked in your head. Aeon's end, not so much.
Agreed
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After some discussion we decided that Discord didn't capture the 'end of the world' sort of theme that we're looking for in the game.
As far as opening up the audience, even though it's co-op you can play it by yourself (although it plays best 2-4 players). Overall, a co-op game has more potential for playing with friends because it matters far less how skilled the other players are, you can still get together and have a good time.
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I can't wait to see the final product. Not just because of the games you played, I always considered you strategically intelligent. And, I think designing a game takes a lot of it.
I am eager to see the decisions you made and how I think they would compare to other designers that I would not expect to handle themselves as well competitively.
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On January 09 2016 00:40 NukeD wrote:
Why did u rename it? Discord was a great name that sticked in your head. Aeon's end, not so much.
Yeah. I thought you were talking about the end of the MMORPG Aion. Which is FTP now. Also every google with Aion will get you the MMORPG and Final fantasy. Which is not something you'll surpass easily in terms of search.
Discord on the other hand. I like it more too.
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Austria24422 Posts
Really cool insight, I'll play it one day!
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I play board games with my friends all the time, would love to try out this game.
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United States216 Posts
Sounds like fun! Best of luck with it, man! I feel motivated to make some sort of fan art, even though I don't know much about the aesthetics. I realize it seems a bit petty, but agree that something about 'Discord' does strike my interest more than 'Aeon's End'. Maybe something like 'Final Discord' or 'Terminal Discord' would convey what you are looking for?
Great news, at any rate! :D
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Nice blog but the game name doesn't strike me as fitting
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On January 09 2016 18:49 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2016 00:40 NukeD wrote:
Why did u rename it? Discord was a great name that sticked in your head. Aeon's end, not so much. Yeah. I thought you were talking about the end of the MMORPG Aion. Which is FTP now. Also every google with Aion will get you the MMORPG and Final fantasy. Which is not something you'll surpass easily in terms of search. Discord on the other hand. I like it more too.
Tales of Discord made me think of "My little Pony" though. And now i am sad that this isn't about ponies.
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On January 09 2016 00:45 Falling wrote:
I find it's actually harder to find people willing to play 1v1 board and card games.
So, the core idea I am trying to get at is that a game like Risk for example has the flexibility to be played by anywhere between 2-5 people with no issues. The problem with coop is that very specifically you need four players (or apparently maybe 2 players), you don't get that flexibility. However I do recognize we still know very little about that game, and I could be way off in my thinking here, but this is the way I see it.
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On January 09 2016 00:45 Falling wrote:
I find it's actually harder to find people willing to play 1v1 board and card games. (I can't remember the last time one of my friends wanted to play Stratego or Chess.) So I think he would definitely be opening up the number of people that would be interested in the game- flexible required numbers is best, but even the game required exactly four players, I think you would have a wider interest than a 1v1 game. A co-op game is interesting too, because I think co-op games are in a good place with Pandemic and Castle Panic gaining a little more popularity. I know for myself, once I realized there could be co-op games, I started to look for more but there aren't all that many. So I think there actually is a hole in the market. (But I'm no marketing person, just a board gamer.)
I'm curious how you got in contact with a board game company in the first place.
I've found this to be very true. From what I read it seems like the OP is creating a very similar experience to chess. A 1v1, completely deterministic game, where everyone knows everything about the opponent's position. I personally enjoy chess, and I enjoy playing chess with all skill levels of people casually, even though I used to play competitively; however, that is because I play chess against people I know, not online. Making a game in this style leaves out a lot of drama and surprise, which are partly reasons why video games can be so fun. I don't want to sound pessimistic or critical because I do want to see what the final version looks like, it could be awesome after all, I just kind of fear that the game's skill stratification will be preventative. That said my only information is what you/ve written, so I could be entirely off base. The co-op to me sounds brilliant, and could potentially solve all the things I just typed up.
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On January 20 2016 05:48 docvoc wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2016 00:45 Falling wrote:
I find it's actually harder to find people willing to play 1v1 board and card games. (I can't remember the last time one of my friends wanted to play Stratego or Chess.) So I think he would definitely be opening up the number of people that would be interested in the game- flexible required numbers is best, but even the game required exactly four players, I think you would have a wider interest than a 1v1 game. A co-op game is interesting too, because I think co-op games are in a good place with Pandemic and Castle Panic gaining a little more popularity. I know for myself, once I realized there could be co-op games, I started to look for more but there aren't all that many. So I think there actually is a hole in the market. (But I'm no marketing person, just a board gamer.)
I'm curious how you got in contact with a board game company in the first place. I've found this to be very true. From what I read it seems like the OP is creating a very similar experience to chess. A 1v1, completely deterministic game, where everyone knows everything about the opponent's position. I personally enjoy chess, and I enjoy playing chess with all skill levels of people casually, even though I used to play competitively; however, that is because I play chess against people I know, not online. Making a game in this style leaves out a lot of drama and surprise, which are partly reasons why video games can be so fun. I don't want to sound pessimistic or critical because I do want to see what the final version looks like, it could be awesome after all, I just kind of fear that the game's skill stratification will be preventative. That said my only information is what you/ve written, so I could be entirely off base. The co-op to me sounds brilliant, and could potentially solve all the things I just typed up.
The co-op version supports 1-4 players (although it's best played 2-4) so it's flexible in that regard. And the co-op itself removes all the issues associated with a deterministic 1v1 game like a chess in terms of excitement, playability with different skill levels and so forth. More info coming soon *TM
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EPT
