Distraction Makers

If there is one thing I love almost as much as talking about game design, it's listening to other people discuss game design concepts. I recently discovered the YouTube channel Distraction Makers, hosted by two veterans of the gaming industry, Forrest Imel and Gavin Valentine. In each episode, they break down a topic from gaming with a mix of tabletop and digital games. They use Magic: The Gathering as an example in a lot of their conversations, but the ideas they talk about have wider implications for all the people who create games and the players of those games.

 

A recent episode I enjoyed a lot is about the differences between implicit and explicit rules. Implicit rules are the things clearly defined by the core rules of a game and any other supplementary materials like organized play documents. These are usually straightforward, but struggle to cover every possible situation without becoming too bogged down in minutiae. Explicit rules seem even simpler on the surface, but they can be a lot more complicated since they are influenced by regional differences in a community and the basic social contracts many of us take for granted. Give them a listen if that kind of thing sounds like something you might enjoy.