3 questions to: Raf Peeters, product designer at SmartGames

With our customer SmartGames There is a suitable game for every age group and preference. At the beginning of every game, however, there is one thing: The idea. At SmartGames, product designer Raf Peeters and his team are always responsible for coming up with new, exciting game ideas for you. We asked him about his sources of inspiration, the challenges of his job and plans for the future:

1) Dear Raf, how do you develop new ideas for SmartGames? What are your sources of inspiration?

That cannot be summed up in a few words. There is a personal fascination behind many ideas. It can be something from the real world, such as an animal or an existing technical solution. Alles für die Katz For example, it was born out of my love for cats. I grew up with them. But it can also be something abstract. Sometimes new ideas are the result of a creative process. During my studies, I learned many creative techniques that I use every day. Of course, my more than 20 years of experience in game and game design is also a help. If you are interested in the origin stories behind the individual games, you are welcome to read them on my personal blog: https://www.smartgamesandpuzzles.com/

2) What challenges do you face during your daily work?

On the one hand, inventing new games while maintaining the balance between originality and recognizability. I don't want to repeat myself, but when games are too novel, customers often don't understand them and don't buy them. That scares off for now. It is therefore primarily about meeting people's expectations and then, in the best case, exceeding them. On the other hand, I have to make the right design decisions and convince everyone else in the team. Often the second part is more difficult than the first 😉

When I'm working on new games, I'm always looking for concepts that offer lots of different challenges but only have a few puzzle pieces and rules. I think that complexity shouldn't come from the number of elements in the game, but from how they interact with each other. True to the motto: Less is more! If I am convinced that a concept works, then one of my colleagues writes an algorithm for it to calculate all possible solutions. Sometimes it throws out less than 100 solutions, but it often generates thousands. The most time-consuming part of my job is then selecting the tasks that offer enough fun and variety. But that's also the part I like to do the most.

3) What new developments can we look forward to in the future?

Of course I can't reveal that! SmartGames always presents its new products in January at Toy Fair in Nuremberg. Almost all of my games are copied from other manufacturers sooner or later. We want to avoid that. However, I can say that I invent and develop between five and eight new games every year. Keep your eyes and ears open 😉

Would you like to know more about Raf and its product developments? Then visit him on his webpage!!