In this episode:
I chat with Myles O’Neill, another Australian indie board game designer who is Kickstarting Dragon Racer, a tactical card drafting game about racing dragons. We also talk about entrepreneurship in board game design, applying for grants and funds, eSports, the viability of Magic: the Gathering as a spectator sport, gaming in Canberra, and the common thread between MOBAs, deckbuilding games and roguelikes.
Download link below or on iTunes, and feel free to send us any feedback at theactionpointspodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter as @action_points, and on Facebook and Google+
Episode 66 – Racing Dragons as eSports with Myles O’Neill
Music: Theme for Harold (var. 2) by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a CC Attribution 3.0.
Links for the things we talked about:
Check out Myles’ game Dragon Racer on Kickstarter
You can also find more information at their website and Facebook page
Join us at Meeplecon, 6-7 December 2014 at Edinburgh Gardens
Vault Games ran a launch party that featured local board game designs, which is great support for the local community
Evolution: The Origin of Species
Pokemon TCG is still going strong
Civilization (or Advanced Civilization)
Dream Quest, which I’ve written about here.
Action Points! 
I’ve been thinking about the 30 second loop in tabletop games quite a lot, and I think it’s definitely present and engaging. I see it as that brief moment of 100% engagement, like the rerolling in KoT or your actual turn in Dominion. Similarly to “casual games”, I often feel manipulated when the loop is too obvious and too limiting. Intellectually, I feel this way about both the games mentioned above, but I get giddy during actual play. It seems many of the games that I feel meh about but are quite popular utilise the loop really well, but I feel are less engaging with the decisions outside that loop.
Yeah being turn-based dilutes the potency of the loop, since you’re usually less engaged on other player’s turns. Videogames don’t have that problem. Out-of-turn actions can help with that, but risk pulling focus. I think real-time simultaneous mechanics still have design space, but it’s really difficult to get right since you have to balance engagement with bookkeeping and “fairness”.