Wrote about that one time I was a game designer
I don’t talk about inventing a sport much these days, but I did a short retrospective — as a chance to reboot my newsletter — on Toccer/Tennis on the occasion of its 20th anniversary this year. I have a lot of thoughts and experience having designed and iterated a sport, the parallels are similar in many ways to designing a board game. It’s just harder and more dynamic to invent a new sport, because adoption is very difficult to get and most people can only really sustain the development of a new sport if you turn it into a business.
It’s funny to think how many modern sports simply wouldn’t exist if they were introduced now, and why I sort of cringe at e-sports wider adoption, because while I respect the skill they take, the idea that sports should be proprietary things that someone “owns” is what makes sports growth extremely difficult. Another pasttime of mine, skeeball has this problem relative to pinball. Skeeball lanes are pretty expensive as far as arcade machines go, they’re noisy and they take up a lot of space. Pinball machines are smaller, less noisy and because there’s no corporate trademark on the name “pinball” people are free to make them and the makers of those games actively encourage competitive events around the game. Skeeball’s makers sued people who tried to use the name in their league, before settling, and years later the only people who can use the name basically make it difficult for the game to grow…because all they really care about is selling more skeeball lanes.
Which makes sense, they’re really expensive. But I digress.
Sports are fun and a great way to make small talk with strangers in far-flung places. But more people should invent sports that people actually play, without needing tons of tech.