Uses This

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Isaac Childres, owner and designer of Cephalofair Games, a board game publishing company that has put out two titles so far: Gloomhaven and Forge War. I spend pretty much my entire day on my computer, managing Kickstarter customers and coordinating my business through email, as well as designing new games and new content for my existing games.

What hardware do you use?

I mainly use my desktop computer, which I built about 3 or 4 years ago. I honestly couldn't tell you what the specs on it are, though. I just followed some guides published by Newegg and then pretty much forgot all that information. I sometimes use my wife's iMac for Skype calls, though, because my desktop fan is super-loud.

You might also call all my prototyping components for game designs "hardware" too. I mainly use surplus bits from my other games, but sometimes I scavenge other games parts, too. The most helpful prototyping object I have, though, is a 25"x25" cloth mat from Chessex with hexes on one side and squares on the other. It is very useful for creating game boards.

And what software?

Chrome is the number one program open on my computer always. I also use Excel a lot to handle order spreadsheets. I do a lot of amateur graphic design work, as well, either when prototyping or when my real graphic designer doesn't have time to do something. I mainly use InDesign for that, with some smattering of Photoshop, GIMP, or Paint for image manipulation when needed. I also have a bad habit of doing rough graphic design work in PowerPoint.

What would be your dream setup?

Honestly, I don't really think much about improving my setup. It is functional, which is all I need. My computer could probably do with some upgrades, I guess. I could use more memory and processing power.