Creating a game as a job or for having fun?

Games all day may seem like a lot of fun, but for some people it’s all part of the work they do. Liam Judd from Chicago develops board games. Here he tells us about his normal working day … “I’ve worked as a board game developer for three years now and I think it’s a job that I was born to do! I love playing games—computer games, online games, puzzles, crosswords, chess—anything where I can use my brain. I used to feel guilty going to work. That’s because I enjoy what I do so much. It’s lots of fun. Developing a board game always starts with the same question: ‘What is the goal?’ In other words, what do you need to do in order to beat the other players? Games such as chess and backgammon are strategy games, and they’re very popular, but as a developer I need to find new ideas. One way to do this is to watch people playing games online. This helps me understand how people think, what mistakes they make, and what they enjoy. Some people enjoy playing competitive games where the goal is to win. I like games that are collaborative. This means that all the players are working together to play the game, and everyone wins (or loses!). A good example of this is a card game called The Mind. It isn’t one of the games I developed, but I like it a lot. It’s a very simple game, but it’s interesting because there is some psychology involved. There are 100 cards with the numbers 1 to 100 on them. You play with two, three, or four players, and each player has the same number of cards for each level. So, one card in level 1, two cards in level 2, etc. You must play these cards into the center of the table in the correct order. The hard thing is that you can’t communicate with one another in any way about the cards you have. You look at the other players’ eyes, and when you feel the time is right, you play your lowest card. When another player has a lower card than the one you play, you lose a life. I like it because it’s very simple.