A Week in the Life: Monday

I've wanted to give an account of my work days and weeks for a while.Always looked for a normal week. Finally realized they are all different.

This is a view into being a professional board game designer.

1/

6:50 am alarm.

Check news and life on phone but answer nothing. By 7 am, I am up. By 7:15 I am in the basement to do a boxing workout. It's new and I'm not good at it and I'm 50 but it makes me feel better to have moved around early since the rest of my day is sitting.

2/

8 am

Workout done. Coffee. Organizing my day while it brews. I have a master To Do list that is long. Includes Ironwall Games (original designs), Restoration Games, and personal. Each day I take that list, copy it, and make my smaller daily list. I keep it below 20 things.

3/

Today's To Do list is 14 things: 4 ironwall, 6 Restoration, 4 personal. I mark three of them as things to discuss in meetings. Rest are done in non-meeting time. I will get less than half of these things done. I just don't know which half.

4/

This week is a big week for Return to Dark Tower. We're getting ready to turn over the print materials for the main game to the factory. This is a big milestone but it's daunting. Digital work and expansions will continue for months or even into 2021.

5/

But the print materials for the main game will be locked. We're looking at everything, using an alpha build of the app. We're working with rulebook editors, internally checking capitalization, punctuation, consistency, looking for loopholes. This will take most of my week.

6/

Wondering when the first "workweek legacy" reply appears in this thread.

7/

9 am

Showered, coffeed, and ready to work. This is my daily energy high point. I've nudged my wife that we have a 9 am meeting (we work together and she is very much not a morning person).

Bonus: one of my brother's called and talking to him was on my list. One thing done!

8/

We're starting the week with a Return to Dark Tower (RTDT) all-team stand-up to set our two-week sprint. So we have design, graphics, production, engineering, electrical, programming, marketing, project management. We'll figure out if we're blocking each other and set goals.

9/

I also like to keep my inbox between 5-10 items. So I hose that down throughout the day. I'm at 11 right now so this isn't bad. But I did just have to schedule a 5pm meeting for today, so my day got longer.

10/

In the RtDT meeting but we're just starting up so I slyly asked a member of my team to add a rulebook PDF to an Ironwall Tabletop Simulator prototype so the publisher can play. I had sent the TTS without rules last week, which is dumb.

11/

The big issue on RtDT right now is the print deadline, which includes rules. The rules include screen shots. So the app screens need to be developed months ahead of when they normally would be. This is a delicate dance.

12/

40 minutes into an intense scheduling crunch time meeting and my energy is flagging. I did just eat breakfast so hoping that helps. I like creating things and design challenges. Scheduling and logistics are vital but not what motivates me.

13/

RtDT sprint meeting done. 30 second break and then a Restoration team meeting. We have those on M/W/F. This will be about an hour where we go over everything we are doing on all projects. We have a lot of projects. We look at art, talk about playtesting, future plans, etc.

14/

These Restoration Games meetings is where my master To Do list grows. Usually whatever we talk about isn't going to be done today so I put it on the master list to deal with when it's relevant.

15/

RG Things discussed:
Contract statuses
Digital playtest going out today
Status of various Unmatched sets
Physical prototype status of Key to the Kingdom
Status of a digital product
Reviewing gameboard art for Key ttK (awesome)
2021 operating budget and sales planning

16/

New twist. The foe tokens are blending into the board on Return to Dark Tower. Knowing where they are is important. So we're having an impromptu meeting to discuss how to make them pop better. It's always fun at the deadline. But now onto digital issues.

17/

Coffee and water refilled. Moved to my two-monitor desk. In a discussion for RtDT about advantages. You use them in the game to help your heroic actions. There are loopholes that we're closing. It's fun work but ripples through the final copy (which is supposedly done).

18/

Now we're onto looking at a bunch of app screens for RtDT. Need to do some redesigns for the rulebook. What goes where, what info is needed, etc. That'll be an hour or so. Back in a bit.

19/

This meeting is chugging along so I'm getting some background stuff done. Have to answer an email for German press for Pandemic Legacy Season 0, hosed down some Slack needs, and looked at last week's Restoration Games sales report to look for trends/reorders/out of stock.

20/

This is going to be another day I work through lunch. Note that I will eat lunch, but during a meeting or at my desk. Happens 4 out of 5 week days.

21/

Lunch break! 22 minutes. Then going over Return to Dark Tower final text on cards and tokens.

As someone pointed out, a lot of today's work is more game production than design. That's true. My role at Restoration Games involves the design, development, and production of games as well as being a partner in the company, so business needs as well.

23/

I do game design as well and I'll be focused on that more as the week goes on. But today is about making good ideas into great final products. I firmly believe that the art, vac tray, name, rulebook marketing plan, etc. deserve as much attention as gameplay.

24/

Spent my 18 minute break loading the dishwasher, looking at the mail, and skimming the news. Now, sandwich in hand, it's time to review final text for RtDT print materials (other than rulebook).

This will be at least 90 minutes.

25/

I've been in meetings for basically 4 hours. During that time, I've been fairly sharply focused. But now I'm kind of fuzzy and this is my down time. But getting this right is important so I'll keep focus for another 90 minutes. But then I'll be cooked.

26/

A lot of what we're saying now is "Can this be misinterpreted? Is the timing clear? Are we saying it the same way in all places?" It's weird.

I just said "You'd have to willfully be a dick to interpret it that way. And it's a co-op, so hopefully someone calls them out."

27/