[cableshaft]

"Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps.”

Basically just did this again this week. I was re-reading a three year old board game design diary I had written, and came upon an old idea that I had put on the backburner after the prototype played just "ok". I tried to come up with ways to fix it for awhile, and the ideas I had then were so different they morphed into completely different designs (more specifically, it morphed into 1 different design, which bombed in playtesting, and then that morphed into a totally different design, which did really well in playtesting and I showed to publishers, and then reflecting on their feedback resulted in a completely new design sparking in my head).

I thought about the problem for a few more seconds, and one new thing to try popped into my head, not a totally different game this time still keeping with the core mechanism, but a different method how players were given and used the cards, and I dug into it a bit more, and I decided on a different method of point distribution for the cards, and then thought a bit more, and the thought of adding abilities that encourage comboing based one previous or next cards played popped into my head, and then I decided to run with it, came up with a new prototype, tried it out, and it felt at least three times better, and felt more like a game that could be published.

I have a game that is currently a finalist in a game design contest whose design had remained dormant for over a year because I was unsatisfied with it, but something made me think about it again and a new mechanism popped in my head and I tried that and felt a lot better about it.

The Feynman method works for me, at least when it comes to designing board games. I don't mind shelving game designs for a long period of time anymore, since I have had so much luck with just thinking about them again every once in awhile and fresh new ideas popping into my head to improve the game, that likely wouldn't have happened if I kept forcing myself to think about that game.

[kleer001]

RUMINATING!

I just watched a bunch of Marvin Minsky lectures about his theory of the Society of Mind. One of his early questions was (paraphrased) "With all these words for emotions where are the words for thinking?" He eventually popped the ones he'd found up on the board. And, of course, I sketched up some of my own. But nowhere in either of those lists was the quite apropos reference to how a whole swath of unrelated mammals have come to solve the process of digestion of rough food material. And, if we consider thoughts, ideas, and problems to be rough material then I think the word works perfectly.

I'd heard of Feynman's process, but for some reason never thought to assign it this very appropriate word. Thanks for the inspiration and reminder. Best of luck on the game! Please Show HN when you can share it. :)

[auslegung]

In Hebrew, it's the word לְהַרהֵר pronounced hir'her, which is often translated as "meditate". From https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/hbd/m/meditation.htm...

> Most references to meditation occur in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms. The Hebrew words for meditation primarily were derived from two separate roots. The first (hagah ) literally means “to utter in a low sound.” The word is used to denote the growling of a lion (Isaiah 31:4 ) or the cooing of a dove (Isaiah 38:14 ). Therefore it has been suggested that, in ancient Hebrew meditation, Scripture frequently was recited in a low murmur. The second root word (siach ) has the basic meaning of “to be occupied with,” or “concerned about.” Thus meditation is the repetitious going over of a matter in one's mind because it is the chief concern of life.

Just in case you're interested in other options :)

[lioeters]

Mmm, that's a tasty word and definition. Thank you for sharing the meaning of "meditation" in the Old Testament sense of the word.

A similar word comes to mind, to contemplate.

> contemplation (n.) c. 1200, "religious musing," from Old French contemplation and directly from Latin contemplationem "act of looking at," contemplari "to gaze attentively, observe; consider, contemplate," originally "to mark out a space for observation,"

> from assimilated form of com-, here probably an intensive prefix, + templum "area for the taking of auguries" (see temple (n.1)).

---

Tangentially related, in Japanese there are (at least) two senses of "to think".

- 思う - to think, feel, remember, believe

- 考える - to think, cerebrate, cogitate, presume, take for granted, assume, conceive, consider

As someone who grew up there, it's hard to describe the difference in English. The first one is associated with feelings and images, and the second one is more about logical thinking.

For me, I have some thoughts or ideas (some of them from books I read) that I've been pondering for many years. That feels like 思う - it's a long-term, more abstract kind of thinking, often in the back of my mind. I find myself coming back to them, almost by chance, and discovering new perspectives and depths.

[cableshaft]

I'll check out Marvin Minsky, thanks for the mention.

I am planning to take advantage of this weekend and try to get a little caught up on how to play videos for my games. I've got 6 designs already filmed (Cake Walk is the one that's a finalist in a game competition): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDjU-rdSngu-eeqJnc2On...

If I get the newest one up this weekend, it will probably be called 'Shared Fate'.

I didn't think Show HN is really the place to show off analog board games, so I wasn't really considering it. I don't have anything published yet anyway (just one game signed with a publisher), so they're all prototypes.

Does anyone know if posting my game design videos on Show HN would be appreciated? I come up with a lot of designs, though (my 'need to make a how to play video' backlog is like 30 games at this point). Assuming I got more consistent at filming videos, I could probably post one every week or two. Several of them you could probably play at home with components from other games.

[kleer001]

> I didn't think Show HN is really the place to show off analog board games

Let's game it out:

Worst case scenario it gets flagged for removal and your account gets deleted. How likely is that? ;)

Most likely scenario, I think, it goes the way of most posts, ignored.

Best case scenario, people like it and you get some good conversations about it, some interest, and a few new players.

[cableshaft]

I think I still have a bit of residual hesitation from my Reddit days when I posted about a video game I worked on to a couple of subreddits (r/gaming and r/indiegames, I believe) and an admin shadowbanned me from the entire Reddit site for self-promotion (and didn't realize it until a moderator informed me months later that he'd been manually approving my comments periodically. I just thought people didn't care about half of my comments anymore).

Makes me a little more cautious of posting in places where it may not be welcome.

[kleer001]

Fair enough. HN isn't Reddit, if it needs to be said.

Also I've found there's a knack to promoting your game on Reddit and you may have been a bit too forward. From what I recall it works if you take time to figure out what tone and explanation works. I feel there's a tutorial out there somewhere about how to market well on social media. Myself I'm not an expert.

Also Reddit mods can be petty little tyrants. I'm sorry one traumatized you so.

[mulmen]

I’d definitely take a look at a board game post. Games are fun but I don’t play much and know nothing about designing them. Would be interesting to see more of that process. I like seeing creative hobby projects on this forum because if we have a shared interest of whatever HN is then we probably also have a common interest in other areas. That cross-pollinates to other areas. Maybe I’ll learn something in your board game post that helps me solve a problem at work.

[dorkwood]

I love the metaphor of digestion to describe the brain's process. I once tried explaining to a friend how my brain works on problems in the background and they looked at me like I was spouting some new-age nonsense.

[mgreenleaf]

You might like Lewis Carrol's "Feeding the Mind", it takes that metaphor and applies it to a method of how to read books.

On Gutenberg.org too: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35535/35535-h/35535-h.htm

[BurningFrog]

This feels very related to the "sleep on it" technique.

Works well for me. I recognize pretty well when my brain is in a "needs to garbage collect and analyze" state. Then I stop pushing and wait for tomorrow when the results are in.

[hnick]

I'm a fan of this method. Sometimes I just read over a problem, decide if it can wait until tomorrow, then move on. It can make the whole process a lot quicker.

I think a long walk can work similarly. The commonality being to quieten the active mind, though sleep has the benefit of more time.

[auggierose]

It's weird that when thinking of Minsky, I will always also think of Epstein now.

[MasterScrat]

> You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps.

I have lived by those words for many years, but somehow I was never able to find where I had initially read them (yes I tried googling, somehow that quote doesn't show up!)

This works very well, especially if you are involved in research and hobbies in very varied area. For example in running you will learn about interval training - alternating short burst of training interspersed with rest periods. What about using that when training neural networks? How does this map to game design, when you put high intensity on the player for short burst of time? How is it similar with the pomodoro technique? Obviously you end up with many spurious connections but it can light up certain topics in a different light.

[amelius]

> Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps.

Drag-net thinking? ;)