Dear Gamers, here again after a long silence to continue my series of interviews. Please, write me if you are interested in some particular designer or, if you are a designer interested in being interviewed. In the meanwhile I have read several books about design and game design and so in the next interviews I’ll be much more demanding.
After the last interview of Rudiger Dorn, I’m continuing with “German” designers but I’m also getting close to starting with someone else with a r
eal different approach and point-of-view. Bernd’s preferred title is Rudiger Dorn’s Goa, and that is something that can help us to have an idea of Bernd’s designing style.
Bernd is a designer that, with his own label Irongames, floats in the vast area of small-publishers, living between self-publishing and real publishers, that thanks to Kickstarter are growing in number and capacity. In the first part of interview Bernd says “I’m more a gamer than a designer,” something I really like. Since designing games is about making players get a good experience, those who are able to play a lot can really have more shots in his gun. Concerning the core question he says “[I] think you need a good balance of Art and Craftsmanship” and then “You need a minimum of Art to design games, otherwise you would almost copy existing games. But you also need a lot of Craftsmanship.” Asked about language independency in games he told me: “I wanna read, I take a book, not a board game,” a nice answer!
Here is the full interview:
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riedemann Friese has done a lot of impressive game design, but fifteen years after the release of Frisch Fisch this still remains the pinnacle, in my mind.
with word lists from other party games. If you have the chance to pick this up, grab it–you’ll find that saying one word at a time was never so hilarious!
throwing, and sliding magnets to try to attract as many other magnets on the table as possible to your piece. Eric Martin demonstrates the game in 
Regime Change: Behind the Scenes at Counter magazine
By: Greg J. Schloesser
I have had the great pleasure of writing reviews and articles for Counter magazine for 14 years. In my admittedly biased opinion, I believe Counter to be the finest journal in the boardgaming hobby. The articles, reviews and commentary are all top-notch, in-depth and insightful. It is difficult to find such consistent quality material in one place (outside of the OG site, of course!)
After 15 years at the helm, Alan How and Stuart Dagger have decided to retire from the managerial and editor duties. Ben Baldanza and I have taken over these tasks and our first issue at the helm should be arriving in subscribers’ hands within the next few weeks. To quote the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it has been.”
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