The more I've seen others' work in game design, the more inadequate I have felt. The cards for Archon Arena as they currently stand are functional but far from beautiful.

My goal is to have an original, professional looking design that clearly communicates the cards' information. I have thought about hiring a template artist and may still do so, but first I thought I would give it a crack myself.

The image above is the initial result of that effort. Overall, I like it. There are things that I'm not 100% satisfied with, and I still have to do the other six types of cards, but I think it's a good start. If I have to go and hire a graphic artist in the future I'll have a good base for them to work from.

I've started eliciting opinions. It'd be great to hear your general reactions or specific comments.

I've noticed something since getting the prototype for I Thought There'd Be Zombies!, and I wonder if others have experienced the same thing. I feel like the quality of the production has stymied rapid development of the game.

With After the Fall I spent a fair amount of time making the early prototypes decent looking and playable, but they were not very expensive or high quality. I used printable business cards for the cards and printed paper for the mats. The counters were Smarties!

The game progressed very rapidly, changing with each play test, sometimes drastically. I did spend time on the graphic design as the game changed, but the components themselves were disposable and felt that way--easy to replace. Usually each play would have several (if not all) new components.

To some extent Archon Arena went through a similar lifecycle. Early prototypes were business cards. Often I'd simply write changes on them rather than reprint the cards. After ordering real cards, the gameplay has changed much more slowly. The second set of cards basically just reflected a redesign of the layout, and very little has changed since then.

Maybe it's just the natural progression of game design. As the game gets more concrete, the prototypes get better, therefore, there are fewer and fewer changes. The key then is to time the quality of prototyping properly to coincide with the level of completion of the game.

With I Thought There'd Be Zombies! I feel like perhaps the good prototype came too early. The game is fun as is and certainly playable, but I continue to second guess basic elements of it. It'd be a lot easier, mentally, to make drastic changes if it didn't involve throwing out a $10 game board and/or $20 worth of cards.

It'd be great to hear from anyone else who's had experience with this phenomenon. Is it just me, or can high quality early prototypes virtually kill a game?

Preparing for a Kickstarter involves tons of things that most people would never think of in advance. One question that has arisen recently is to what extent to reveal a game for free.

Some games are completely proprietary- they show components and game play, but the exact rules, cards, and pieces are not given until a person buys it. My instinct is to follow this model. However, there is another way.

Other games provide a free PDF download of the rules, and some even give a Print and Play (PNP) version. At first blush it seems like this is giving away the keys to the kingdom. Why would someone buy a game they can play for free? And what's to stop someone from taking all your hard work and coopting it as their own?

Aside from these reservations, there are clear advantages to the free and open model. When considering whether to back a game, people are more likely to do so if they have more information. If I have little way of knowing whether I'll like a game, it's less likely I'll be willing to put money down on it.

With these considerations in mind, I think I've found a middle road for Archon Arena. The game consists of 42 combat cards divided into 3 decks at play time. In addition, there are 5 posture cards and 6 leaders. My idea is to provide a PNP version with enough cards to play one battle. So rather than all the cards, I'd have a version with just 14 combat cards, the postures, and 2 of the leaders. This would be enough to give people a taste of the rules and game play without giving everything away. I'd also include just the info on the cards, not the artwork, so there is added incentive for people to buy the full game.

While it seems that free and open and proprietary are mutually exclusive alternatives, I'm hoping that this middle approach can give the best of both worlds. Maybe it will work for you too.

Thanks to Artrimis on TGC for inspiring this post.

Despite the title, I don't have any cut and dried rules for good communication when commissioning artwork. There are some things I've done wrong though that might help out others to avoid the same mistakes.

1. Know your dimensions
When I first calculated the size of the box for Archon Arena, it was smaller than the box size I ultimately settled on. This meant I had written 1500x1200 in the contract when I really needed 1800x1125. That difference in aspect ratio made a big difference in the artwork. For awhile we went back and forth with me trying to get things moved farther apart before I realized he was working off of different dimensions.

2. Communicate the details
So far, for me it's been great when I'm able to ask for something very specific. For example, I wanted the warrior's hands to be farther apart so he looked more ready. I asked and quickly received. In other cases where I've been able to communicate the details, I've gotten what I was looking for. When I've had only a vague notion or been unspecific in my requests, things have taken longer or not come out as I wished.

3. Let the artist be the artist
I've previously discussed how having too specific of a vision in mind can make it difficult to get what you want. In most cases remember that the person you've hired has a lot more experience and training in art and design than you do. Give them some free reign and you're likely to be pleasantly surprised.

4. Be upfront about money
I felt like I was being overly burdensome on my artist. I didn't want him to be upset or feel ripped off by the amount of work I was asking for with revisions. I stated upfront that I understood this and would give him extra if he thought it was appropriate. (He kindly rejected my offer.) Hopefully this way we will both end up satisfied by the transaction.

For me commissioning art has been a learn-as-you-go experience. The lessons I'm getting in the school of life will surely serve me well going forward as I require more art. Hopefully they can help you too.

After the excitement of making progress toward the finished game wore off, I began to admit to myself that the artwork being commissioned isn't going to fit my vision. There are things I like about it, but overall the style is not realistic enough, and the colors are too dark.

As they say, if you want something done right, do it yourself. I can draw things that I'm looking at, just not things from my imagination. So, I decided to take my photo mockup, find a better warrior image, and draw a new sketch myself. The result you see above.

The good thing is it looks how I envision it. The bad thing is I can't really do any more. I've never really done a full color Photoshop. In fact, I don't even have a copy of Photoshop to use. My thought is now I can ask an artist to ink, color, cleanup, and correct this image rather than make a new one from scratch.

Obviously I fell into the trap cautioned against in the Commissioning Illustrations document linked to earlier. My expectations of a certain image have made me disappointed in what I'm receiving. We'll see how the new plan goes. Hopefully I can get the artwork done without wasting a whole lot of money or more artists' time.

Two milestones for Archon Arena were passed today. First, the other day an artist stumbled into the chatroom on TGC looking for work. He was willing to work very cheaply, so I decided it was worthwhile to give him a shot. After being stiffed by two other artists (they offered services and then ignored me when I tried to commission them), I was a little leery, but it has been a good experience so far. The big milestone today is he sent me a preliminary version of the cover art. It's a bit different than my original vision, but I knew it would be. He still has some more to finish, and he's willing to take suggestions, so I'm very optimistic.

The second accomplishment with Archon Arena is that I uploaded the first tutorial video. This one is exactly 3 minutes long and goes through the initial game setup. I shot it quickly using my iPad's camera. I didn't expect much, but the quality turned out to be acceptable, so I went ahead and edited it and put it out. I put it on Vimeo because YouTube really annoyed me. I won't go into that now. Maybe another blog post to rant. :)

Standing next to a group of people, instructing them how to play your game is one thing. Sending out just the game and rules and having the players fend for themselves is a very different animal. The latter is what's called blind play testing.

Archon Arena has been through quite a lot of in person play testing, but up until now no blind play tests have occurred. That is about to change!

The folks who frequent the chat area of The Game Crafter recently set up a playtest circle. Basically, designers post the games they have available. Others sign up to test them. The game is mailed to the first person, who plays it and gives feedback. Then they mail it to the next person on the list. It's a bit like a gaming a chain letter with no money involved.

This morning I put Archon Arena up on the list and almost immediately had two replies for players. It's very exciting to get the game out to a broader audience and hopefully get some constructive feedback.

So off I go to mail out the game. Then, I just have to sit back and wait for the (hopefully) good responses.

Image credit: Gastev - http://flic.kr/p/5vBCdn

This video is guys shipping a game backed on KickStarter.

This aspect of game creation seems like a whole lot of no fun. Not to mention how expensive it is. A third of the wholesale cost for Archon Arena will be shipping.

Our search for artwork is underway. Finding a great artist to bring a game's vision to life is not just important, it's essential. Good artwork will literally make the difference between a game being adopted or it withering on the vine. How does one go about finding a suitable artist?

Putting an ad in the classifieds is probably not going to yield many results. You need to go where the artists are. Online, one such place is deviantArt. Thousands of pieces of art are uploaded to the site daily. You can browse people's portfolios and find the style of art that you want. Then place an ad in the forums. A ton of starving artists will likely respond within minutes. This is the phase I found myself in earlier this week. As I weed through the candidates, there are a few things I would have done differently up front.

First, as I said, having found a number of favorites first is important, so you and the artist share a frame of reference of what you expect. To do this you need a free account. Fortunately, I set one up a few years ago. I imagine some people would be turned off by a "newbie" coming on looking to hire.

Another key is to have what you are looking for as detailed as possible up front. Many artists are leery of giving a set price since the amount of work can vary considerably depending on the details. It's frustrating to get a lot of responses and not have prices, so there's no way to really compare or budget. Also, one thing I initially overlooked was specifying a commercial license. Some people charge differently than for personal pieces.

A big important item is to be prepared for record keeping. You will want to be organized from the beginning. Check out a respondent's portfolio. If you don't like what you see, ruthlessly delete their response. Keep a list of the best candidates and try to nail down exact quotes. Realize that many of the people are in foreign countries and might have limited English. Try to communicate simply and directly.

To deal with all the hassle I was encountering, I ended up making a page on this website. It lists all the commission details, including mock ups of the expected artwork, and it has a form for the applicant to fill out. They have to specify what job they're interested in and, importantly, list a price range. All the responses are nicely arrayed in an online database, so I don't have to do a lot of the record keeping. I wish I had done this right away.

All this being said, I haven't completed the whole process yet. I'm sure there will be some more snags along the way, but maybe my experience so far might help someone else make their first steps toward getting that artwork that's just right. Or if you have other advise, leave a comment.

I got my software problem sorted out with a curt but timely email reply from Kinemac's tech support. With that out of the way, I started working on the animation for part of the Archon Arena video series.

The idea of this video is to give a short overview of the cards, their types, categories, layout, and iconography. First it shows the five card hand and the five types of cards, Weapons, Armor, Spells, Potions, and Maneuvers. Then it shows the icons for offense and defense. And finally we see the Magic/Melee/Special categories.

I've already "written" most of the accompanying voice over in my head. Hopefully, my friend with the radio voice, Carter, will be able to read it for me. Then the timing of the animation will have to be tweaked to match, and it will be all set!

Any feedback, as always, is welcome.