CUDO (the Champaign-Urbana Design Organization) was founded in 2009 as a group for local professional graphic designers who were eager to meet one another to share their passions for designs. However, now it has become a lot more than that.
Today, CUDO has progressed to two operations, CUDO as the parent organization and CUDO Plays, their sister organization.
CUDO Plays started off as the parent organization’s regular board game night with local community members, but some members wanted to lean into learning and exploring the design element. To begin on this venture, the CUDO Plays Board Game Design Competition was started in 2013. Since then, CUDO Plays has successfully run every year, including in 2020 when they transitioned into virtual events. Over 100 all-new and locally designed board games have been created over the past 8 “seasons” as part of CUDO Plays!
Parkland Prospectus reporter Nikola Buis attended this year’s CUDO Playtest Convention over the weekend and had the chance to speak with Tom Ackerman, one of the organizers of CUDO Plays.
Tom Ackerman is one of the handful volunteer organizers that helps with the operations of CUDO Plays and the CUDO Plays Board Game Design Competiton every year. Ackerman mostly manages the website and social media, and of course plays a lot of games alongside organizers and members! Apart of CUDO, Ackerman works at the University of Illinois and writes for the local online magazine Smile Politely.
“The big thing that makes CUDO Plays unique compared to other game design competitions that you might find is that CUDO Plays is committed to helping out teams through every part of the game design process.” explains Ackerman.
Ackerman describes CUDO Plays as a “crash course” in game design for the community. During their season of competition (September through February), they run multiple events walking teams through brainstorming game ideas, creating paper prototypes, writing rules, and multiple cycles of play, feedback, and iterating on the design to make the best game possible.
“Playtesting is absolutely the most important part of game design.” says Ackerman, “You don’t know if your game is fun or even functions until you get in front of players. The Playtest Convention in early November is our biggest playtest event of the year! It’s our deadline for teams to have a rough game prototype to try out. But we do run smaller playtest events during our season of competition and throughout the year, so our community of local designers has chances to try out their latest ideas.”
One of CUDO Plays’ big goals year after year is to create a supportive community of game designers here in Central Illinois. The Playtest Convention, as Ackerman describes, is magical. “Because you can see people taking their first steps as new signers: finding out their game does not play like they thought it would and making huge changes or discovering that their ideas are fun for players. Both discoveries are energizing for a game designer as you start thinking about how to make the best player experience possible. In addition to wanting to foster a design community, those of us in CUDO Plays just love playing and making games, and we want to share our hobby with others in the community.”
CUDO Plays are currently in their 9th season right now, but there’s still time to enter a game design if you’re interested! CUDO Plays are always looking for playtesters to come to events and give their honest feedback!
To get involved with CUDO Plays:
Events are posted on their website at www.cudoplays.com and on their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cudoplays
To find out more about CUDO (parent organization), head on to their website at CUDO – The Champaign-Urbana Design Org (thecudo.org).
If you want to support any of the things that CUDO does, please consider checking out and contribute to their Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/thecudo
Nikola Buis
Prospectus Reporter
