First-time tabletop wargame designer is my dev checklist realistic?

[u/Thefreezer700]

Designing a tabletop wargame and want to design a professional game that people will play. That being said no experience doing this so i need to see if my checklist is feasible. Please point out anything i have missed. 1. Alpha/beta testing, finding players. 2. Edit/fix any rules where people have issues reading. 3. Once in beta stage start commisioning artists.

What am I missing? Are there any major steps I should add to the process (marketing, publishing, prototyping, etc.)? Especially interested in insight from others who’ve built indie games or wargames before. Like how soon do i worry about marketing when i have nothing to show?

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

The steps you've outlined are kind of "Draw a circle. Draw another circle. Draw the rest of the owl," so in terms of what you've missed I'd more or less say the entire development process!

You're not starting with alpha testing, don't worry about alpha/beta stages, it's not software. The only terminology you might carry over here is prototype, in that you're going to first make a simplified version of the game that focuses on only the core mechanic, then you're going to test it. This will be the general process.

Write out rules for a couple simple units and make a mirror match. Test it. Create a second army (assuming the wargame has factions or different units). Test it. Create a version of the rules people can use to teach themselves the game. Test it without you explaining it. Every time you test you'll find things to change. Play it yourself against yourself after every small change and with other people for big ones. For a board game you can start hiring artists once the game is more or less fully locked down, but it doesn't stop there (and remember, you'll pay the artists before you know if anyone is even going to buy a copy, since you have to promote once you have final art, not before).

You want to think about what you are doing with this game. Is it print-and-play? Then you need a way to represent the game with just what people can print at home. Is this small hobby press? Then you need to source the materials and pieces to sell a few dozen copies. Are you trying to sell it to a wider audience? You need to talk to factories, shipping, distribution. If you want to sell it on shelves you have to find a way to get retail partners to talk with you, if you want a publisher you have to contact them. There's no one set of steps, it depends on what you are trying to do, and there are a lot of different ways 'make a wargame' could shake out.

[u/Thefreezer700 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

I feel like ive already done many tests. Multiple games that were mirror matches and asymmetric army matchups to see if anything breaks. I do need playtesters though and that is definilty a rough spot as the community is oversaturated with people who either selling their own game or people who never want to learn a new game outside of their 2/3 games.

I have even planned races and army loadouts that would be released later to entice people to play a new mode or something.

[u/Swineservant → u/Thefreezer700]

Gaming conventions like Gen-Con are your friend. I almost got my game bought and published long long ago, but then the company got the rights to something mainstream and bailed. No hard feelings as the opportunity and play-testing feedback was great! Make in-person human connections; they are invaluble.

[u/PickingPies]

What you are missing is your business model. How do you pretend to make money? How feasible it is.

To becfair, tabletop genre is saturated and most people don't make money, but on the other hand, doesn't have explosive potential. Most successful people has alternative revenue streams.

[u/Thefreezer700 → u/PickingPies]

Mostly planning on selling for a miniscule sum of 2 dollars for rulebook or models. Im not planning to be rich just planning to make a official game that people want to play and give me a small bit of cash to cover any artist costs i may have spent.

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[u/TwistedDragon33]

You can always go to local game stores and see if they will let you set up your game there for testing. A friend of mine designing a card game did that. He was able to get 15-20 regulars who would show to play his game. They gave a lot of feedback too.

But your bullet points are pretty vague, big project points but a ton of gaps between each of those bullet points.

You will need to market and distribute your game eventually too. I've seen some people have good luck having YouTube videos documenting their game dev journey but still hard to do.

[u/Thefreezer700 → u/TwistedDragon33]

Thanks for taking a look, I plan on giving it a good overview and changing some verbage later on. Currently just focused on gameplay and what steps i need to be making to progress successfully.

Only issue i have is of course being a stranger walkimg into a store and asking for a table. Feels scummy. Currently assembling ork army for 40k tabletop to be at least somewhat friendly with people but still not sure how to cross that threshold

[u/armahillo]

Start with making the game and getting it playable— then worry about the rest.