I’m offering these ideas I have had over the years up to all game designers as creative fodder in the hopes that the world will get better games to play.  By encountering new ideas, and especially those focused on games, we gain a different perspective and greater insight on our own game designs, making them even better in the process.

I have found that I have far more ideas floating around my mind that I will ever have time to prototype, much less fully develop into a working game. Think Build Play is my outlet to give these ideas a life they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Rather than simply let these ideas drift away, I have tried to articulate them with about 600-word articles and some quick sketches.  This format may not always get all the rules nailed down for a particular mechanic or explore all the intricacies of a particular theme, but that just leaves room for you to fill in the blanks with your own ideas.  My intent is to give you, the game designer, something to chew on throughout the week as you develop your own killer game, and not necessarily a cut-and-paste addition to your rulebook.

My intent is to release a new game idea post every week.  Over time, Think Build Play will grow until it has hundreds of short posts covering a variety of game designs, stubs, themes, mechanics, and prototypes.  Certainly, not all of these ideas may apply to the game you may be working on at this moment, but I’ve found that human creativity can work in pretty remarkable ways with the ideas rolling about “in the background”.  You may find that a post from two weeks ago suddenly solves a problem you’ve been struggling with or opens up an entirely new set of interesting decisions for your players.  

While this site was created with the goal of helping analog game developers design and create a great tabletop game, it can also be a great source of inspiration for digital game themes and mechanics as well. It is hard work taking a fledgling game idea to the playtest phase – hopefully this site will help you get there!

Finally, please comment! This is not my private game development notebook – I’m putting my ideas out there for everyone to see, and I’d love to hear what you think.