Welcome to 2014! Today I wanted to look back on my experiences in 2013, point out some highlights and mention some stats from the blog. (Unfortunately WordPress won’t send me one of those fancy Year In Review stats thingies since this blog is not quite 1 year old).

January 11th: Scoville Playtest #1

It was nearly one year ago that I playtested Scoville for the first time. I had been working on it a lot and had just had a breakthrough that made it ready for testing. At the time I had no idea that Scoville would make 2013 what it did.

The playtest went really well. Of course there were tweaks to be made. But the overall feeling coming out of that playtest was, “Holy cow… there’s a lot more game here than I thought!” I playtested Scoville 6 more times in January.

Protospiel-Milwaukee

I took Scoville to Protospiel-Milwaukee and it was well received. I even got Ryan Metzler to play it! I also got to meet Grant Rodiek, Matt Worden, and Chevee Dodd. If you like game design at all you should be following those three awesome gentlemen on Twitter.

If you want to learn more about my Protospiel experience check out my article: Protospiel Recap

Shortly after Protospiel Tasty Minstrel Games requested a copy of Scoville for evaluation. I obliged, of course, and sent them a copy ASAP. Overall it seems it was definitely worth it to attend Protospiel! Special thanks to Chevee Dodd for his kind words in his recap article: Weekly[ish] Update – 3-15-13

Bellwether Games Interview

One of the highlights of 2013 was being interviewed by Bellwether Games. They interview a designer a month and it was a privilege to join those ranks! You can read the article here: Ed Marriott Interview

TMG Announces Scoville

By July I had signed a contract with Tasty Minstrel Games for Scoville. They announced the deal on July 21st and I was so happy to be able to tell the world! I wrote this article, which includes an awesome logo revision for TMG, about the contract.

Boards & Barley Stats & Stuff

I started Boards & Barley last January with the intent of writing about home brewing and game design. It ended up being heavily tilted toward game design, but I don’t think that’s a problem. Here are the monthly viewership stats:

Overall the site was visited by 90 different countries (that still boggles my mind!). Here’s a look at the map:

22 countries viewed B&B once in 2013.

The top five most viewed articles were these:

• Prototype Art: Cubes in Inkscape
• Prototyping Techniques Applied to Scoville
• Monte Carlo Simulations for Game Design – By Adam Buckingham
• The Benefits of Pretty Prototypes
• Prototype Art: Icons in Inkscape

Apparently people really like reading about prototyping. I’ll definitely write more about that.

The most clicked items were these:

• Scoville PnP Files on BGG
• Spotlight On Games Components List
• Inkscape Cube Art via the Prototype Art: Cubes in Inkscape article
• Tiles from Print & Play Games
• Boardgamizer.com

And the top referrers (other than Twitter and Facebook) were:

• The Game Aisle – GenCon 2013
• Cardboard Edison
• Boardgamizer.com
• BoardGameGeek.com
• Kickstarter.com

But 2013 Was All About the People

While it was great that I signed my first game contract and wrote a bunch of stuff and got some people to read it, the real highlight of 2013 was getting to meet so many awesome people in the game design community.

At Protospiel-Milwaukee I met a bunch of awesome designers. I owe them all at least two PBRs each!

At GenCon 2013 I met about 30 designer/publisher people I had not already known. Thanks to everyone who was willing to sit down and spend their precious time playing my Scoville prototype. Also thanks to Matt Worden for inviting me to speak on the Protospiel panel.

At BGG.con I met another 15 people I had not already known. Thanks to all those who were part of the 22 Scoville demos that I ran during the con. Thanks for taking the time to play my prototype when all the hot Essen games were only a few tables away.

Here is a big list of awesome people I met throughout the year (or that I had previously met and got to hang out with again during 2013) (I likely missed a few of you. For that I am terribly sorry!):

Chevee Dodd, Grant Rodiek, Matt Worden, James Mathe, Scott Metzger, Matt Loomis, Carl Klutzke, Eric Jome, JT (The Game Crafter), Brett Myers, Kane Klenko, Espen Klausen, Ryan Metzler, Steve Dast, Peter Dast, Francois Jolie, Neil Roberts, Scott Starkey, Michael Mindes, Seth Jaffee,Ken Grazier, Jason Tagmire, Nolan Lichti, Kevin Kulp, Tom Vasel, Eric Summerer, Chris & Suzanne Zinsli, Jay Treat, Cole Medeiros, Robert Couch, AJ Porfirio, Eric Leath, Mike Mullins, Jeff Large, Kevin Nunn, Don Beyer, Patrick Nickell, Adam MacIver, David Chott, Darrell Louder, Ted Alspach, Ben Rosset, J. Alex Kevern, Benny Sperling, Jax Sperling, Matthew O’Malley, David Miller, Rob Lundy, Michael Coe, Corey Young, TC Petty III, Andrew Tullsen, Chris Kirkman, Jamey Stegmaier, Ben Pinchback, Matt Riddle, Alan R. Moon, Gil Hova, Andy Van Zandt, Dan Manfredini, Rael Dornfest, Scott King, Matt Leacock, Matt Wolfe, Randy Hoyt, Scott Morris, Quinns (SUSD), Colby from Plaid Hat, Norman from Big Game Reviews, Mike Eskue, The I’m Board With Life crew, Brian Frahm, Chris Darden. And there are some many more of you on Twitter that I am looking forward to meeting in person!

Special thanks to Chris Kirkman of Dice Hate Me games for being willing to evaluate a game from an unknown designer.

Special thanks to Michael Mindes and Seth Jaffee of Tasty Minstrel Games for being willing to accept a game from me and for the contract.

Special thanks to Grant Rodiek, Matt Worden, Chevee Dodd, and Brett Myers for your awesomeness at Protospiel-Milwaukee and your willingness to share so much info on the game design community.

Special thanks to my level 1 friends Jeremy Van Maanen, Adam Buckingham, and Ben McQuiston for being willing to playtest my games, whether good or bad, and for telling me the truth about how good or bad they are.

Most special thanks to my wife Erin for putting up with my piles of chits and cubes and cards and paper scraps all over, and for submitting to the earliest and worst playtests of all my game ideas. Love you babe!

2013 was an amazing year and I can’t wait to see what 2014 will bring! Tomorrow I will post an article about my designing and brewing goals for 2014. Thanks for reading!