Garrity Games

Don’t let overthinking stop you from taking the risk you always dreamed of taking.

For all of us who love games, at least once in our lives (if not many, many more), a game idea pops into our heads. After having fun rolling around with the idea in our minds for a while, we all have the same thought: Should I make this game? For most of us, we talk ourselves into the easy answer: No.

That’s what I have done for a couple years now. I have this great idea (I think it’s great, anyways), I noodle on it daily, and then… The doubts start creeping in. Who would want to play another trick-taking game? No one will want to play it. So, I leave it. Push it aside. Ignore it.

No mas.

Much like this website, I am just going to do it, and let the chips fall where they may. It could turn into nothing, or, it could become my dream job. Why not push for the latter?

This is the kickoff post for a series I am writing called, “My First Game,” where I document my journey of creating my first game, from idea to people’s tables. As of this post, I have not produced even one fully complete hard copy of my first card game. (It’s a card game called, “The Die Is Cast,” by the way. But more on that later.) So, you will get a (relatively) real-time look at what creating a new game for a novice game designer really entails. I am hoping this series will be equal parts entertaining, educational, and most of all, motivational.

As I said at the top, everyone who loves games has had a some idea jump into their mind, unbidden, for a a game that they are sure everyone would love. And, for almost everyone, they have talked themselves out of pursuing it almost as quickly as the idea had arrived. This series, and this website as a whole, will serve as a tangible example of how making an idea into a reality is achievable. Not easy, but far from insurmountable.

Right now, as of this moment, I am nowhere near a complete, fully produced game. Yet, in a couple of months (if not less), my first game will be up on Kickstarter, available for purchase.

How can I say that without even all the artwork done yet? Why am I so confident that I will sell this game before seeing a semi-complete physical prototype? Because none of those things matter. All these concerns of artwork and play-testing and prototypes and printing quotes and logistics and graphic design — these only serve as roadblocks, excuses to why we will never even attempt to do what we really want to do. 

Of course, if I actually want to get this game produced, sold, and on people’s tables, I will have to grapple with each one (and more) of these aspects of game creation. And so, I have begun tackling each one of these tasks, which I will share in more detail throughout this series. But, that’s not really the point.

It is not these aspects of game creation that keep us from making our own game. It is the mere idea of these aspects, viewed more as Herculean tasks rather than mere items to check off a list on your way to achieving your goal, that keep us from even attempting to make our dreams a reality. We talk ourselves out of the attempt by building the process up in our minds so high into the heavens that we cannot see how it is even possible for us to ever reach those vast summits.

But we can reach it, and we all know we can.

Not through hoping against hope or talking ourselves into believing we can succeed where all others have failed, but by simply treading the same path those before us have already trodden. People have already done it. Others have created, designed, marketed, and sold their own creations for all of time. Never before has it been easier to achieve what I am setting out to do right now, and what I know so many have you have dreamt of doing: Creating and selling a board game.

Others have, I will, we can.

Over the next weeks and months through this series you will see how it is possible to bring your game to market. How much fun it is, and how many splitting headaches I no doubt will get along the way. How the daunting tasks of logistics and marketing and website design and Kickstarter page creation and customer service and… and… And — All of them will be overcome as everything difficult is: one by one. Until, finally, the day of completing fulfillment has come, and everyone who saw value in my game is actually playing the darn thing. It will be glorious…

So, whenever you need a jolt of energy or a kick of motivation, reread this article and know two things to be inextricably true:

One, I am no different than you. I have no super powers that make it so I can achieve this, while mere mortals must be content with gazing up at me in admiration. You and I are the same.

Two, and most importantly, it is possible. This silly guy is showing you that right now. So? What are you waiting for? A personalized invitation?

Just do it!

Share your own fears or examples of things holding you back from pursuing your ideas below. You are sure to find many people who have similar misgivings. It may be the jolt you need to finally get started on your own project.