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What a crazy month! No intro this time, here’s everything that happened with placeholder in May!

PAX East 2025

As a continuation from last month’s post, I went to PAX East 2025! This event is a gaming convention held in Boston, Massachusetts that celebrates everything from games to nerdy-adjacent media. Among other things, the goal of the trip was to run playtest sessions for the board game I’m developing. That game is called…Rule the School! In it, players take the role of student council candidates, campaigning during their student body presidential election. Rule the School (RTS) mixes familiar area control mechanics with deck building, challenging players to create the most devastating string of actions to outsmart their opponents. RTS accommodates 2-4 players, takes about 30-45 minutes to play, and is targeted to players ages 10 and up. 

With the help of my childhood friend Molly and a table provided by the Unpublished Games Network, we were able to run a few games with the public. I was so nervous though. RTS had been playtested numerous times with friends, but I wanted other people’s thoughts. If the game was ever finished or published, this would be the audience that would (possibly) interact with it. 

The view from our table! Not pictured: me, feverishly trying to set up after showing up late

When getting registered for PAX, we had only planned for a playtesting block of an hour and a half. Looking back, I wish we’d been able to playtest further. But the sessions we did get to have were hugely impactful. Each person Molly and I had met were SO kind! They were patient with us (especially considering we were very inexperienced with this sort of thing), asked us great questions, gave even greater feedback, and even stuck around after our block to point us to game-improving resources. It was really awesome to have Molly with me there too – having a familiar face there made the experience feel less formal or intimidating. Playtesting that way was more like a hangout with friends. Did that skew the feedback? Probably! But I had a blast.

I want to take a moment to give an enormous thank you to everyone who playtested with us. You guys were such a treat to play with! You all gave me so much confidence in this project, which was essential for the other thing we did this month.

Ravensburger Game Inventor Days

I pitched Rule the School to Ravensburger! For those of you who don’t know, this is the publisher known for significant titles in the board game space: Labyrinth, the Quest for El Dorado, Horrified, or their Disney partnered games like the Villainous series and the trading card game Lorcana. Every year they hold the Ravensburger Game Inventor Days, an open pitching opportunity where board game developers across the world get the chance to share their ideas. I am pleased to share that I am one of the many that got to pitch my game to Ravensburger’s staff.

Our humble pitching setup! We didn’t get to use that second webcam though...

Similarly to playtesting at PAX, I was so nervous leading up to it! I still remember my reaction to getting the acceptance email – just imagine the sound someone makes after gagging on water, mixed with pure dumbfounded confusion. My imposter syndrome definitely worked overtime then. Thankfully, reviewing great board game development content by Pam Walls Game Design and Adam in Wales (as well as those PAX playtests) helped quell those nerves. The night before the pitch, I focused on explaining the game’s hook and blended that with how I would describe the game to playtesters. I’m by no means an expert on the subject, but if you’re reading this and you want to or plan to pitch to publishers, definitely spend some time playtesting your game and teaching it to someone. Getting in the habit of conveying the key details of your game as succinctly as possible (game duration, amount of players, player demographic, core mechanics, etc.) and understanding what makes the game fun is critical to a successful pitch. If I didn’t spend time doing either, I would’ve bombed this completely. 

Although Ravensburger ultimately did not move forward with my game, I received a lot of praise on the quality of the pitch. They had positive comments about the game’s theme, presentation, and the blending of mechanics. Their only criticism was that the theme did not apply to an international audience, which was a great revelation that I had (very ignorantly) not considered. The game makes frequent references to the American school system as well as tropes about school found in American media, which would be a difficult sell to an international market. 

Even still, this entire experience counts as an unbridled success to me. In the months leading up to PAX, I had only planned to talk to developers to gain some insight on their experience. If it had not been for the support of my friends and the community at the convention, I would have never thought this project was capable of getting to this point. 

Perseverance and What Comes Next

I’ve hit a block with development on RTS lately. During the weeks following PAX, I had been combing through the feedback given after the playtests and started making changes to the prototype. One bit of recurring feedback was that the last player has an advantage over the other players. Consider this: the game is played over the course of 6 rounds and the winner is chosen at the end of the 6th round. In the initial iterations of the game, points are scored after that 6th turn. Since the last player gets to go before scoring, the last player’s actions end up affecting who wins. I’ve been trying different scoring mechanics to see if that would change things, but so far the last player advantage still prevails. I’m hesitant to overhaul certain parts of the game (like the turn structure, since I feel like it’s intrinsic to the game’s identity), but at the same time this is something I want to resolve. Overall, I think it needs to get playtested some more before making big design decisions. I am also starting to feel burnt out after marathoning this project for the past month and a half, so I’m planning to take a break from development after those future playtests conclude.

What comes next for RTS after that? I’m hoping to attend PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia this November! The plan is to run more playtests and meet more of the board gaming community. Everyone has been so kind; I’m also so eager to learn much more about this industry. I don’t know if or when this will be published, but I do know that the journey has been amazing so far. 

Thank You!

I want to take another moment to thank everyone that’s been involved in this process so far. To my friends moonlighting as a rotation of playtesters, the actual playtesters who played the prototype at PAX East 2025, and the staff at Ravensburger who listened to me gush about this passion project, THANK YOU! The past couple weeks have been insane. Each one of you helped make my dream of full time game development feel real. This game has been one of the most creatively validating things I’ve ever worked on, and it’s been incredible seeing it grow.

On that same note, placeholder began as a challenge to myself to improve my writing. It’s slowly evolving beyond that as time goes on. I’m not sure what it’ll turn into, but I’m looking forward to seeing where this takes me next.

Until your next round,

Alfred