If you've read through this site, you're probably interested enough to go up one level, and hear about the site itself.
I've helped a small number of people, one-on-one, and it seems silly not to share my knowledge with even more people, when it's so easy to do. I feel like it will be very helpful to some people.
Mostly, I just like creating things, like this website. If you're a board game designer, you're probably the same.
I don't mind a small amount of kudos, but mostly, I just like the satisfaction and challenge of building something, and seeing it serve its purpose.
Writing this site helped me analyse and crystallise my own methodology. When I'm forced to write it all down, I first need to think about and understand it fully. Writing this site has made me a better game designer.
I decided to launch this whole site after it was finished (and after Radlands was published.) I'm looking forward to releasing it, which keeps me motivated.
This site is a discrete and completed project. I've said everything I want to say. It's not some ongoing blog, that will eventually be abandoned. However, I imagine I'll update the site occasionally, due to visitor feedback and ideas, and as my own methodology changes.
Publishing the whole site at once also allows me to create something comprehensive, with a bigger picture — the transfer of my entire board game design methodology to the reader, as opposed to a series of interesting articles with no bigger picture.
I could've published this site a book instead. That's a very appropriate format for my approach, but I feel like a book is an unnecessary, obsolete, and inconvenient format. I'd rather have lots of people read my writing, than make a few dollars. If my advice is valid, I can afford to give it away for free, and earn money by using it to make actual games.
In reality, I have money from past projects I've done, and don't actually need money from board game writing or game royalties.
The spartan layout of this site is intentional. I designed it to be functional and highly consistent, so that it's as easy to read as possible. That ended up being an interesting design.
This site doesn't use images. I find them distracting, and an excuse to convert a simple verbal concept into a complex chart of logic.
This site came together much like I'd create a board game. I brainstormed a big list of topics, and made an article page for each one. In each one, I brainstormed numerous ideas, and noted them down. Then, I began turning these ideas into paragraphs of text. I also created a giant list of notes — random ideas I had later, that would be put into this giant system, for processing.
The initial writing of the site's text was only a fraction of the total work. Many articles were too big, too small, hastily written, or overlapped.
Over time, I rewrote this site repeatedly, piece by piece. I could have written 1,000 articles with the same amount of work. It wasn't easy to break up my entire knowledge of board game design into 90 distinct articles of roughly the same size.
I'm happy with what I've created, and glad that people have enjoyed it. I've even done an update for 2024, to smooth a few rough edges, and make changes where opinions have changed.
Now, to the final article.