Notes on Play

27: The trouble with abundance

I want to be generous, not chintzy with the coolest parts of my game. But that does not mean I should be generous with all the parts of my game. Brian Moriarty's talk linked here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0OY1RDe8Yg].

26: How board game distribution actually works

I learned a lot by calling some people up on the phone. Most notably: physics matters.

25: I made my dream game, but something was wrong

Canticle came to life, and to my exact specifications. But my exact specifications were wrong. Fixing it led to an explosion of great ideas.

24: Where do good ideas come from?

Mark Brown made a great video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m60QbT85Tc] about finding great ideas. And it made me wonder: where did my best ideas come from, and how do I set myself up to have more?

23: Is Catacombian a designer, a publisher, or both?

Brian Bornmeuller's talk at NYU Game Center helped me finally articulate a question I've been wrestling with: what is Catacombian Games, exactly? In this episode I map out the five layers of the board game industry — design, publishing, manufacturing, distribution, and retail — and share how I'm approaching 2026 like a product manager: setting clear experiments, defining success criteria, and actually measuring results.