The Barash Files 001 — The Principles of Game Design

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Zach Barash joins Andy and Anthony for the first episode in a series where he shares his game design expertise. In this first episode, the three talk about the first principles of game design, including the iteration loop most game designers follow (and similar processes in other fields!). Starting with ideation, then forming a hypothesis, finally prototyping and playtesting, designers feed the results they learn back into the beginning of the process.

They talk about how cube designers can learn from the process, adopting the role and mindset of a game designer.

Zach works at Wizards of the Coast on the Arena team, designing many of the events available — his opinions on the show are his own. We’re excited to have him join us for four more episodes in the near future.

Discussed in this episode:

• The Power Broker
• Kingdom Death
• Drawing Live: Zach’s Column for Hipsters of the Coast
• Spaced Penguin Playthrough on YouTube
• The Cascade Cube
• The Turbo Cube
• Reading Rainbow Cube
• Andrew Elebogen Tween about Extrapolating from Too Small Sample Sizes
• The Beginning of Infinity
• The Modern Darlings Cube
• The Museum of Modern Cube
• Linguistic Relativity
• Playing Oppression
• Andy, Anthony, Parker, and Zach on BlueSky

Check us out on Twitch and YouTube for paper Cube gameplay.

You can find the hosts’ Cubes on Cube Cobra:

• Andy’s “Bun Magic” Cube
• Anthony’s “Regular” Cube

You can find both your hosts in the MTG Cube Talk Discord. Send in questions to the show at [email protected] or our p.o. box:

Lucky Paper

PO Box 4855

Baltimore, MD 21211

If you’d like to show your support for the show, please leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen.

Musical production by DJ James Nasty.

Timestamps

• 0:00 - Intro
• 10:02 - Game Design with Training Wheels
• 12:43 - Anthony’s History with Game Design
• 19:21 - The Basic Principles of Game Design: The Iteration Loop
• 33:56 - Balance is Overrated
• 47:32 - How does one go about uncovering truths about their cube?
• 59:11 - What does a cube designer mean when they say they want ‘balance’?