Busy Summer

Things have been pretty busy lately. I was looking forward to summer as I thought it would be a little more relaxed and give me more time to work on my games and whatnot. Anyway, I just defended my thesis! So now I have to wait for the secretary to read through it, make the changes, wait for the grad school to read through it, make the changes, and then pay fees, get it bound, etc. Hopefully by the end of August I'll officially be a MASTER! Plus I'm trying to get going on the dissertation proposal, so that's keeping me busy.

I recently got the Armor of God printed by BluePanther. (I'll be posting a comparison between Guild of Blades, Artscow, and BluePanther here a few days.) I'm ready to take it down to SLC for A Gathering of Strangers. I'm really looking forward to that.

As I worked with Steve at BluePanther to get the cards printed he asked me about doing some artwork for his Nepal game! It was quite a surprise to me. I mean, I've been a little hesitant about my art abilities, but this gives me some added confidence that I do pretty good work. It has made me think more seriously about doing my own thing, publishing my games myself. I mean, having someone do the artwork is a big expense, but if I'm able to do it myself that would definitely cut back on costs. We'll see if I can get enough money together to really go out and do something like that. It would be great!!

The Game Design "class" (Game Design Concepts) started at the beginning of this week. It looks like it's going to be fun to follow along and hopefully contribute something. The problem will be trying to find enough time to participate in such a way that will allow for some contributions. There's a lot going on this summer!

On boardgamegeek a competition was posted for teams of 2 to design and produce a print n play cooperative game. Dane and I are going to design and submit to the competition. It will be a lot of fun to work with Dane, brainstorm, playtest, etc. as we move from idea to prototype to production. The brainstorming process has begun!

Lastly, we've had a little more discussion on the Korihor game that our Google Group (join us) is working on designing. This whole experience has been very educational and informative already. It's not easy working together on a game design, especially when it involves people from 5 states, many who have never met face to face, with so many different ideas and perspectives on what will make the game not only work but FUN! It's actually a lot of fun working on this project with the group. I hope that the end result will be a great game that we will figure out how to publish and offer as a ZGDI game!!! Then we'll put it up on our website as a great LDS/Mormon themed offering!

Anyway, quite a bit going on this summer! I guess it's good to keep busy.