Prescriptive Workflows
I had an interesting conversation recently with a fellow industry professional about, well the challenges of launching a Kickstarter.
They had an interesting insight about the idea of prescriptive tasks versus less well-defined tasks.
Prescriptive Tasks & Workflows
Prescriptive tasks and workflows are tasks that have clearly defined methods or guidelines.
An example for board game design would be something like template design for punch board components. You can easily pull up a component guide (I recommend Panda GM’s) and learn have all the information you need for how to space margins, design custom dice, format print files, and lay out your punch boards.
My friend’s observation is that prescriptive tasks are easy. They might take time. Maybe they’re fiddly. But, at the end of the day you have a clear roadmap or workflow to get the job done.
The harder tasks are those that don’t have well defined workflows or even deliverables. For me, these are things like running a paid advertising campaign or organic outreach on forums.
The less well-defined tasks are the jobs that are a real challenge. They can be intimidating, time consuming, and we might get them wrong.
Making it Prescriptive
The beauty of running Pine Island Games, is that over time a lot of the non-well-defined tasks become prescriptive. That is, while running and optimizing an advertising campaign isn’t something I am an expert on – the process of creating a Facebook ad, sourcing graphic design assets for the ads, setting up an audience and running the actual ad is all prescriptive.
A task becoming more prescriptive doesn’t mean that it’s less creative. Even though I now have more frameworks around sourcing illustration or graphic design – they are still creative processes. It’s just that I now know how to approach those tasks.
By the same token, a lot of tasks are iterative. But having a framework for how to approach tasks helps us iterate more efficiently and come up with better products.
I like this way of thinking about and framing the business. It makes it easier to approach less-well-defined problems, knowing that working through them will help me learn and level up my games publishing craft.
The next time they crop up they won’t be nearly as scary.
Passing it On
My hope is that Pine Island Games will grow as a company, and that some day we’ll have in house partners who benefit from the experience I’m building now.
It’s also why I write this blog.
I want to help other indie publishers learn processes and methods that help them on their journeys. It’s my way of giving back to this community, which I owe so much to.
A lot of articles are like this, a little more philosophical and less full of specific device, but I also try and provide some real concrete advice.
Our Nuts & Bolts series is for instance bite sized prescriptive advice on tackling specific publishing problems. I recommend checking them out:
Game & Product Design
Publishing
Marketing
Graphic Design, Illustration, Packaging & Iconography
What’s is a complicated problem that you’ve developed a prescriptive method to tackle?
