Research Night: Playing Published Games

Whether you're a current or aspiring game designer or a tabletop games enthusiast, getting together with game designers to play published games has a lot to offer. If you design games, analyzing and breaking down a game after the game is over can help you gain a deeper understanding of game mechanics and explore specific problems you're encountering in game development. If you're primarily a playtester, it can help you develop the skills to understand games' underlying mechanisms in ways that can level up your gaming strategy, and see how published games help inspire and teach designers in their own designs. This is not a prototype playtesting event - rather, it's a chance for you to play published games with other designers and game design enthusiasts and follow up gameplay with rich conversations about how designers implemented, combined, or innovated on mechanics in published games. If you'd like to join us, you are welcome to bring a game you'd like to offer for the group to play - think beyond "I love this game and want to play it again" and focus on games you want to better understand or learn from as a designer. If you're a game designer, you're also encouraged to comment on this page with a specific problem you're trying to address in a game, so that organizers or other attendees can bring games that might help you explore the problem space. Please comment on the event page only for events you have RSVP'd for and plan to attend.