How to get my job: board game designer

​When you sit down to play a game of Monopoly or Scrabble or whatever, you probably don't think much about how the game is a system of rules and balances initially figured out by one or two people. Those rules, combined with the social experience, are what Nate Hayden is fascinated with and what led him to board game design in the first place.

Westword: Let's start with the obvious: Tell us a little about yourself and your history in game design.
Nate Hayden: I grew up in Colorado. Went to school in California for filmmaking and didn't finish. I worked in the special effects industry for a few years, made a band, traveled around and found gaming after the band. I played a bunch of games with friends and met a guy named Keith Meyers at a game group. He is a professional game designer and was going to teach a class on game design at Metro. I took the class, just to check it out, and found that the process of game design was intuitive for me. I began play testing my first game (San Quentin Kings) in that class. After two years of testing, I sold my game at a convention in Germany known as Essen Spiel. Sales were okay, and some people seemed to enjoy it.

After that, Keith had me design a couple strategy games, one based on horse racing and another based on a popular book. In the meantime, I made a couple other designs, one that I sold at the latest Essen Spiel 2010 called After Pablo, based on the events that took place in the Mexican and Colombian cocaine trade after Pablo Escobar was killed in the '90s.

Now I'm working on another game called Cave Evil. This is a collaboration with two other designers, Mat Brinkman, and Jochen Hartman. It is a dungeon crawl, war style strategy game about evil wizard necromancers in a cave underworld crypt kingdom. It should be complete in the fall of this year.

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WW: Can you talk a bit about the beginning stages of doing board game design?
NH: For me, the design process usually starts with the idea of the story or theme, whether it's a game someone else needs me to do or my own idea. I'll usually brainstorm about it for a few months, trying to understand what the mechanics of and functions might be.

I'll meditate on a certain idea for a long while and try to translate the functions of the idea into game mechanics. I'll jot some stuff down until I'm finally ready to make a first play test. Around this time I usually find it's very important to actually have the goal of the game in mind, but sometimes I'll leave it open for awhile until I get further along. It could be different every time, but the above seems like a pattern so far.

WW: From there, what goes into it; i.e., how much is play testing, producing, doing art, promotion and so forth?
NH: Once a first play test is made, I begin testing the design ideas over and over. The initial play test is usually a mess of ideas you want, but it's a total disaster as a game. I will try to find the elements I like and eliminate the ideas that don't work. This process will go for many months and years. I see it as sort of psychological sculpting. Gaming is largely a psychological experience, many mental choices are performed, everyone agrees to an imaginary rule set, the world and quandaries created are also imagined. So the testing process is like a filtration of what I may think is the most enjoyable mental experience of the particular game.

If I'm dealing with an independent publisher, the next steps would be to begin making art that matches the theme of the game, and also figuring out icons that help gamers understand important game functions. This can take several months too, depending on what you want your game to look like.

During this phase, you could begin promoting the game or alerting other gamers on popular sites such as Fortress Ameri-trash and Board Game Geek or whatever site has the game style you're making. Also, a key component would be visiting and selling stuff at major gaming conventions. It's not unlike independent filmmakers trying to promote their films in conventions.