30
Nov

The Vintage Gamer #25: Tom Clancy’s Politika, Part 2 (BG/VG)

   Posted by: Jim   in Board games, Computer games, Podcasts

This month is the 10-year anniversary of the founding of Red Storm Entertainment. As a commemoration, I’m doing a two-parter [go here for Part 1] on my experience as lead designer on Tom Clancy’s Politika. Not a well-rated or beloved game by any stretch, but I thought that relating our experience would help any aspiring designers out there to avoid the mistakes we made. This week I’m covering the things that I thought didn’t go so well — tune into the previous episode to hear the game description and the things that I thought succeeded.

Show Notes:

  • Thanksgiving not fun when sick
  • Listen to Tracy and Laura Hickman’s Dragonhearth!
  • Game description
  • Bad stuff #1: Combat model
  • Bad stuff #2: Random placement and zero-sum game
  • Bad stuff #3: Long turns and number of players
  • Bad stuff #4: Components
  • Bad stuff #5: Special abilities
  • Bad stuff #6: Playtesting
  • Listen to Game Addict Hotline!
  • Contact me for free Politika stuff
  • Closing

Links:

Final thoughts:

One thing I didn’t make clear is that the giveaway is for the Politika boardgame. I also have copies of the computer game, but they might be hard to get running on today’s systems. Still, if you want ’em…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 10:59 am and is filed under Board games, Computer games, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 comments so far

gnome
 1 

Most interesting really… Even though I dont care much for Tom Clancy…

December 4th, 2006 at 5:25 am
Eduardo Alvarez
 2 

Just for the heck of it, wouldn’t mind getting myself a copy, if shipping isn’t too expensive (It’s worthwhile to check, given that I live in Southern South America).

December 4th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Jim
 3 

Unfortunately, all copies have been spoken for. I’m trying to round up some others from Red Storm people, but I’m having little luck.

December 12th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Eduardo Alvarez
 4 

ah, well, no worries. looking forward to your next show!

December 12th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Don
 5 

You said: “If you make your game components to fancy…”

Do you suppose that was one of Eagle Game’s problems? Their games were made of some real quality components and they went bankrupt. Of course, I don’t know what else might have been involved but that seems like it could have been a contributing factor?

December 14th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Jim
 6 

It’s possible, although if they were running a business model where they didn’t clear a decent profit on each game, then they deserved to go bankrupt. Still, that is a tough balancing act to do. If you make the components too expensive, your profit margins are so thin that you can’t keep the company going. Also, any leftover stock is just a big waste of money. But if you make them too cheap, no one buys the game. I’m guessing it’s difficult to carry off.

December 16th, 2006 at 9:57 am
The Vintage Gamer » Blog Archive » The Vintage Gamer #24: Tom Clancy’s Politika, Part 1 (BG/VG)
 7 

[…] of the founding of Red Storm Entertainment. As a commemoration, I’m doing a two-parter [go here for Part 2] on my experience as lead designer on Tom Clancy’s Politika. Not a well-rated or beloved game […]

January 16th, 2017 at 1:33 pm

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