Sheltered in the Palace
Game Design in the Time of Quarantine
Summary: We’re all fine here, how are you?
So, here’s the story so far. About a hundred years ago, in January 2020, I quietly launched Crab Fragment Labs with a couple of half-baked games, and a plan to keep on baking new ones. By mid-March, there was a pandemic that shut down the whole world and locked everyone into their homes. (I mean, in truth there was already a pandemic in January, but I guess March is when this part of the world noticed.)
Washington residents were officially asked to “stay home, stay healthy” on March 23, but my family had already started curtailing our social calendar. I was canceling game nights and poker nights, shopping only when necessary, worrying too much about the smallest of coughs. Of course, one major exception was that we went on a Caribbean cruise with two thousand of our closest friends.
Yes, we sailed on the JoCo Cruise at the beginning of March, a floating nerd-rock party that we join almost every year. We knew there were risks, and the timing was tight; our ship was actually denied entry into Grand Turk out of an excess of caution (or perhaps exactly the right amount of it). Passengers were discussing their comfort level with being quarantined aboard. Most of us seemed okay with it. But alas, this didn’t happen, and we were forced to rejoin the real world a day or two before it came to a screeching halt.
Today the immediate family (Carol, Nora, and myself) are healthy as usual, and settled into a daily routine. Animal Crossing in the morning, TV in the evening, and a little bit of housework / homework in between. Nora officially restarted school this week (remotely, of course), and Carol is sewing masks and planning meals around the fewest possible trips to the store.
I made bread, which I haven’t done in ten years. I even got some actual work done, cutting videos for Mike Selinker’s upcoming Lords of Vegas Kickstarter campaign. And I made a tiny clean spot in the basement, around a new TV that actually knows what HDMI is (yeah, I’m 18 years late to that party).
But what I have not touched is game design.
The problem is pretty obvious: making new games requires playtesters at every step. Last night I came up with an interesting concept for Fairmarket, a game from the Dew Point universe. Fairmarket is referenced in a few places, but not actually designed. It’s probably some kind of bidding / bluffing /gambling game, and the very first thing I would normally do with this concept is sit down with four other people and work through ten bad versions before settling on something that works.
With. People. Yeah, nope. (Nora is a willing and competent tester, but we’re just not enough.)
I have tried to do this kind of work by myself, and it’s usually a disaster. My recent attempts at solo-building a bluffing game ended up wasting everyone’s time and possibly even losing me some friends. So… I’ll probably try again because I have to, but I don’t expect much until regular game nights return.
I have many other games in different stages of development, all with the same block. I was planning to take four new boards for Veritas to Game Storm at the end of March, so we could give them a final polish before handing them off to Greater than Games on April 1.
Nope.
I just got some important feedback on After the Fog that makes me question the value of some of the fundamental mechanics. I’d love to just brainstorm with the people who know it best, and talk through what makes the game good, and what parts might be expendable, and maybe try a stripped-down version to see if the game we like is still there.
Nope.
And so on. So I’ve been hard-pressed to find any footing or make any progress on Crab Fragment, even though there are plenty of one-person projects (like worldbuilding, artwork, design articles) that I could do if I had the energy. I feel like I have a dozen projects sitting on the track, revving their engines, waiting for permission to move.
So it’s either them that cannot move, or me. Or both.
I’m not complaining, I swear. My family are excellent at sheltering in place, and I’ve been working at home for so long that this almost feels normal to me. We’re well-stocked, patient, and blessed with an abundance of toys. I’m just explaining why Crab Fragment seems to have parked on the starting line. I need to develop a new workflow, if not an entirely new product, if I’m going to be creative during lockdown.
So here’s hoping that after a few more days of the new normal, I can find my way back to a piece of the old normal. In the meantime, look for some more unusual content from Crab Fragment, as soon as I can get my gears turning, and satisfy that sleepless taskmaster Tom Nook.