As part of GDC 2017's Board Game Design Day, dev Mike Boxleiter offers a postmortem look at his work co-designing Secret Hitler, a Kickstarted tabletop game with some interesting social mechanics.
May 17, 2017
This year the Game Developers Conference hosted its first-ever Board Game Design Day, a full day of talks about useful learnings from the design and development of tabletop games.
As part of that program, Mike Boxleiter (who's worked on video games like Solipskier and Gasketball) took the stage to talk about his work co-designing Secret Hitler, a Kickstarted tabletop game with some interesting mechanics.
Boxleiter describes it as a hidden role, social deduction game which requires players to take on the roles of German parliamentarians in the 1930s Weimar Republic. The German government system is simulated in a very abstract way to create tension and suspicion as all players are aware that "fascists" have secretly infiltrated their ranks, but none of the "liberal" players know where the other players' loyalties lie.
In his talk Boxleiter went over the initial design process, pitfalls and dead ends which were avoided in the iteration process, and learnings from the final marketing push on Kickstarter.
It was a really interesting talk, one that you can now watch for free over on the official GDC YouTube channel!
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
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