Yellow Springs family helps create board games
Yellow Springs family helps create board games
Yellow Springs family helps create board games
By Lauren Shows
September 24, 2020
Summary
While families around the country continue to look for ways to have fun in relative isolation due to the pandemic, one Yellow Springs family is feeling the pride of having contributed to the growing pool of home-based activities: earlier this year, villagers Corrie Van Ausdal and Matthew Collins helped create two brand new tabletop games.
Collins and Van Ausdal were hired to generate content for "Bye, Felicia!" and "Who's the G.O.A.T.?" - games created by Nashville-based game company Big G Creative.
The company's offerings include a spate of 1980s references - there's "The Trapper Keeper Game," two separate games based on soft-spoken PBS painter Bob Ross and the alluringly titled "Kenny G: Keepin' It Saxy.".
When a game is particularly content-heavy, the company might also employ freelancers like Collins and Van Ausdal in order to make sure the content of their games remains appealing to a diverse audience.
Each family member would write ideas on index cards - "The cards helped things feel similar to how the game would work," Van Ausdal said - and any idea they liked would be recorded by Van Ausdal in a running spreadsheet.
Before being hired to work on the games, Van Ausdal and Collins were already devotees of the art of the tabletop game - they have a long relationship with the settlement-building board game "Catan," and the whole family have developed something of a Yahtzee expertise.
The family's knowledge of games - and their collective competitive streak - has given them a certain amount of insight on what makes a good game.
Despite the family's wisdom on good games and their newfound industry experience, Collins - a professional photographer by day - said he couldn't imagine creating a game from whole cloth in its entirety.
Having seen how the proverbial board game sausage was made has, they said, added a new layer of interest to game playing.
Van Ausdal said she thinks the games her family helped create follow their "Good game" criteria nicely - but that, at their cores, games are about having fun with people you like, and any game that can facilitate that is a good one.
Reference
Shows, L. (2020, September 24). They've got game- Yellow Springs family helps create board games. The Yellow Springs News. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://ysnews.com/news/2020/09/theyve-got-game-yellow-springs-family-helps-create-board-games