Although it looks very different from its network-building peers, Snowdonia is still, at its core, a game about building a railway. It may for the most part be simplified down into a single line, but there's more going on under the sleepers than initially meets the eye. Let's pull them up and have a look.
How do I lay track?
Track in Snowdonia is laid using the D action. However, laying track costs steel bars, so you actually have to take at least two other actions first. You need to use the A action to obtain iron ore and then the C action to convert that iron ore into steel bars.
The fact that laying track is a slow multi-step process is important and affects many elements of how we assess it.
What do I get for laying track, is it worth it?
In isolation, you don't get very much. Track card values can range from 0 to 7 points but most frequently awards 3 or 4. Assuming we're laying track efficiently, that's 3 actions spent collecting iron ore, 1 action converting it into steel bars and a further 2 actions to lay them into track. Assuming average track values, that's 6 actions for 10 or 11 points. Fewer than 2 points per action. For reference, simply moving your surveyor 6 times will get you 15 points.
If this was all there was to say about track… then no, it's not worth building.
But this is a game about building railways, it can't be bad!
Don't fret, I haven't given you the full picture yet. Though track cards aren't as valuable as buildings for raw victory points, they more than make up for it once you can start taking the relevant contract cards. The highest scoring contract awards a massive 40 points if you can build 5 track. Let's run our calculation again. Now we take 5 actions collecting iron ore, 2 actions converting it and 3 actions laying it. Assuming we make smart placement and get an average value of 18 points for the track itself, plus 40 from the contract, we get 58 points across 10 actions. Or 5.8 points per action. That's very good.
So I only want to build track if I have a good contract card. Got it.
Hang on, it's not so simple. For starters, track is a limited scoring opportunity. Typically there are only between 10 and 15 available based on scenario and player count. They also only become available to build once they've been excavated. Secondly, over 50% of the contract deck rewards you for having built track. You can be quite confident you'll see at least a few track-based contracts in a given game.
These 2 points combined mean that it can often be well worth your time to build some track when the opportunity arises, even if you don't yet have the necessary contracts.
Ahh this is sounding better now, any more nuances I should know about?
This is Snowdonia! Of course there are. I would say that there are two more major points to consider: the game end timer and, even more so than usual, your opponents' game states.
Firstly, in Snowdonia, the game ends at the end of the round in which you lay the final track. This means if you're ahead and can accelerate the game end you could disrupt opponents' final scoring plans and win, even if the track was of limited value to you.
Equally, if your opponents have contract cards that require 4 or 5 track to score, there's every possibility that by building a few yourself, you could deny them the chance to score them. Score denial is usually weaker than pursuing higher scoring options yourself, but with track based contract cards, you could be stopping an opponent scoring 20 to 40 points. That's comfortably enough to decide a game. So yes, that building you could make with 2 steel bars is worth 16 vs the paltry 7 you might get from building it as rail, but it's likely worth sacrificing 9 potential points to deny your opponent 30!
What can we expect from track in Grand Tour?
Good question! As always I can't tell you everything, but here are a few sneak peeks:
That's everything for today – hopefully that'll help you keep better track of the scoring and denial opportunities available to you! (Come on, I'm allowed one terrible pun aren't I?)
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What are the cubes in Snowdonia and what are they for?
By default, a game of Snowdonia will contain 5 types of cube:
Iron ore – Used to make steel bars which in turn can be laid as track or used to build stations and trains.
Stone – Used to build stations.
Coal – Used to gain your 3rd worker from the pub via a train card.
Events – Players cannot obtain these. They instead trigger events, which move the game forward in various ways.
Rubble – Needs to be excavated so track and stations can be built. Can be used to make stone or score contract cards.
Today though, we’ll only be looking at the first 4 of these. Rubble is a bit different from the rest as it never enters the bag and is tied to excavation rather than the stockyard. We also explored rubble in some detail in the previous train of thought article.
How do I get these cubes?
The main way to gain cubes in Snowdonia is with the stockyard action. Placing a worker there will let you take 3 cubes of your choice from those available (with a limit of 1 coal per worker).
The stock yard is a limited supply. It starts play with 7 iron ore, 4 stone and 1 coal. At the end of each round, more cubes are added to the supply randomly from the bag (the quantity is either 6, 9 or 12 based on player count). The composition of the bag is also not even. Iron ore is the most frequent resource, followed by stone, then coal and finally events.
Which resources should I take?
This is almost entirely dependent on your goals. Here are some basic goals you might have and how they’d guide your play:
Build an early train – Take as much coal as possible alongside enough iron ore for the train you want.
Score a high point rail-based contract card – Get 9 iron ore to efficiently convert at the works.
Capitalise on opportunities on an upcoming station card – Collect stone.
None of these scenarios are tremendously nuanced in isolation, but they can change significantly when brought into contact with your opponent’s plans. Snowdonia as a game rarely makes you “commit” to a particular archetype of play. Your contracts or train will often push you in a certain direction, but you’re never completely locked in. This is interesting because it means players can pivot and dip into any aspect of the game as it progresses. Scarcity often drives such decisions.
Let’s use an example of a player who has been consistently taking iron ore and laying track to try to score a contract that requires them to lay 5 rails. They’ve laid 3 rails and have 2 more to go, but they notice there is only 3 stone left in the supply. Although this would deviate from their plan to finish the rails, 3 stone is very easy to leverage into a building for 6 or 7 points. By taking it, they’re securing a solid scoring opportunity for themselves later and denying anyone else from having stone this round.
Alright, I understand those cubes then, this seems fairly simple. What about events?
Events can be a source of major disruption in a game of Snowdonia. It is quite common to see new players shocked or upset as the game lurches and digs up 4 spaces worth of rubble, shuts a station they were planning to build in or lays the game-ending track before they could.
It makes sense, that does sound pretty random.
It is random to an extent, but often such upsets are more predictable than first meet the eye. This is because the bag is not completely random. In fact, its entire contents can be deduced at any time by looking at where the other cubes on the table are. If the stock yard is overflowing or players are hoarding, this means there are fewer cubes in the bag and thus the probability of events is higher.
I’m unconvinced, show me some examples.
Let’s take a 3 player game as an example. Assuming 6 of the 14 coal in the box is placed on trains during set-up, the bag starts with 20 iron ore, 11 stone, 8 coal and 5 events. 44 cubes total. Using a hypergeometric distribution probability calculator, this means there is a 54% chance of drawing 1 or more event cubes from the bag but only a 13% chance of drawing 2 or more. From this you can see you would actually expect to see an event on turn 1 slightly more often than not.
Now however, let’s look at an example later in the game. Players have been hoarding resources and the bag is down to only 17 cubes of which 4 are events. You are now looking at an 86% chance of drawing at least 1 event and a 44.5% chance of drawing 2 or more. These are pretty radically different odds to be making your decisions on.
Let’s use the above odds to explore a mistake a new player could make. The new player has have 6 iron ore and wants to do the following so they can lay rail next turn:
Worker 1: A – Gain 3 more iron ore
Worker 2: C – Convert 9 iron ore into 3 steel bars
This is a less efficient conversion, but it will score them the track they were otherwise very likely to miss if they’d gone with the original plan.
This is relevant to other resources in the bag too. If a player's plan revolves around stone but they can deduce there’s not much stone in the bag and stockyard then it may be time to change plans for a bit.
So I’m supposed to stop the game to crack out a hypergeometric distribution probability calculator?
Of course not, it just isn’t practical to be counting the number of cubes constantly, nor is it reasonable to expect players to be using an advanced calculator mid-game. But, these examples hopefully illustrate how you could still make better judgements just by making estimates based on quick scans of the cubes on the table.
The relationship between resource cubes and the bag in Snowdonia is a rich one that permeates much of the game. It's an interesting comparison point when considering other games. In Lords of Waterdeep for example, cubes are taken and returned to a supply. They are simply resources with no further dynamic interest. Brass, however takes a different but interesting approach where cubes are not random but form a dynamically priced market.
This was a crunchier topic to chew on, but this sort of probability analysis is a skill that will serve you well in almost any board game! Can you recall a time you were caught out by an event cube? Do you feel better equipped to handle that situation next time? Let me know in the comments!
Also, now we’re 3 articles in, I’d be curious to hear what you think of these, are they too detailed? Not detailed enough? Again, please leave a comment!
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Jaya Baldwin]]>In all pursuits in life, there are obstacles that will stand in your way. In Snowdonia, that obstacle is rubble. You want to build a railway and its stations… but you cannot do so without first getting your hands dirty excavating. Grab a shovel and let’s dig into the B action.
What is excavation and what do I get for doing it?
The excavation action will move rubble from the line into your personal supply. How much you excavate is based on the work rate. This could be as low as 1, or with clever use of contract cards and other effects, reach into double digits.
The first benefit is the gained rubble, used to score contract cards or convert into stone. The second benefit is scoring points by excavating the final rubble from station spaces. Excavating is also necessary to progress the game; track and stations cannot be built until the rubble in the way has been cleared first.
What is the value of rubble?
I would argue the primary purpose of rubble in most scenarios is to score contract cards. Contracts demanding leftover rubble can be worth a lot of points and, compared to track or building, achieved more efficiently (weather permitting). Rubble generally has high availability vs station and track opportunities also.
For example, the highest scoring rubble contract in the default deck scores a hefty 21 points for 16 rubble. If the work rate is at 4 and you have a contract that doubles that for a round, you can get 16 rubble in just two B worker placements. You’ll likely score some station bonuses as part of the process too.
Rubble taken to the works can be converted into stone at a ratio of 2 to 1. Taking stone for free from the stock yard is better value, but converting can be useful when there is no free stone available. This conversion can also be a handy way to grab a stone you might need in a pinch if only crafting 1 or 2 steel bars.
How good are these station excavation bonuses?
Very good. They’re usually the only way to score points and gain resources at the same time. It’s incredibly efficient to claim these in most cases. This is where positional placement on the B action card becomes very important though. Only the player removing the final rubble gets the bonus, so you may want to deliberately excavate in a later position to make that happen.
Are there any other benefits to excavating?
Yes, but they affect everyone. Removing rubble will open up valuable opportunities to score track and buildings. In some games, these will be snapped up very quickly. A good way to ensure you’re the one benefitting is to take your lay track(D) or build(E) action with your first worker then excavate with your second. This way you get access to the new scoring opportunities before your opponents do.
Excavating will also push the game closer to ending: the line needs to be fully excavated before the game-ending track can be laid. This isn’t strictly beneficial, but sometimes closing the game out quickly is in your interest: for example if you believe you are currently winning, or feel other players' late-game scoring opportunities are better than yours.
Wow excavation is clearly the best action in the game, I’m going to do it all the time!
Not so fast! Compared to other actions, the value of excavating varies wildly. Played incorrectly, excavation will open up scoring opportunities for opponents while giving you very little in return:
If the work rate is low and you have no bonuses, it is, frankly, one of the worst actions you can take. Take the example above where we obtained 16 rubble in 2 B placements, to achieve that with a work rate of 1 and no bonuses would take 16 B placements. That’s less than half the efficiency of simply moving your surveyor to the top of the mountain… which is already considered a weaker option in most contexts.
Even if the work rate is high, things can still go awry. If you place workers in poor positions, other players will score track, buildings and station excavation bonuses you’ve just spent precious actions opening up. Yet worse, if you don’t manage to obtain good rubble contracts, then the rubble you’ve gained in this process will largely be useless too.
Wow, this all sounds very context dependent, is there anything else I should consider?
Contextual dependence is the fundamental essence of Snowdonia! The scenario you’re playing often has a big impact too. For example, in the Uganda Railway scenario in our upcoming Grand Tour expansion, there are many changes to excavation to take into account:
It would be impractical to go into the microcosms of every scenario’s excavation mechanics here. But the above hopefully illustrates that you can’t take your excavation strategies from Snowdon and expect them to work equally well elsewhere.
That’s all for today, we’ve dug more than deep enough. Before you go though, are you a fan of excavation based strategies? Do you find yourself able to win without excavation? What’s the most rubble you’ve ever excavated in a single turn?
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Jaya Baldwin
]]>“Who goes first?” is a question that has been with us in board games since their inception. The process of how that is decided, its impact on game outcome and the role it plays in strategy can vary wildly. The strategy around the humble first player marker is the subject of this first article of Train of Thought: a series exploring elements of Snowdonia, in the lead-up to its upcoming expansion: Grand Tour.
What is the first player marker and how do I get it?
Rules wise, it’s straightforward. Whoever holds the first player marker will place their worker first each round and play will then proceed clockwise from them. It is usually obtained by placing one of your workers on the final position of the stock yard action.
Why do I want the first player marker?
Going first in Snowdonia is very powerful. Placing your worker first, means you can take exactly the position you want, uncontested. This can be crucial to see your more ambitious plans executed, especially if they require multiple actions in the same round to achieve. Each action has slightly different nuances regarding first player:
A Stock Yard - Sometimes there will not be many of a particular resource available in the stock yard. In the case of coal and stone, which translate into extra actions or victory points respectively, this can get quite competitive. You never know when you will next see the resources you want come out of the bag, so getting them while you’re able can be prudent.
B Excavation - The timing of excavation is crucial. Excavating a station space pays out a good amount of victory points while also gaining you rubble to use towards contracts or conversion. It’s one of the only ways to both gain VP and resources without spending anything which makes it very efficient. The catch is, if you’re not scoring a station space, excavation can be weaker than other actions, especially at low work rates.
C Works - This action is often less contested, but it has fewer worker spots than others. Usually when you want to convert, you really need to, so it’s good to be sure you can.
D Lay Track - Track cards vary meaningfully in the number of points they’re worth and are often very limited in their availability. Additionally, the highest scoring contract cards all demand a lot of track to achieve, making track highly desirable.
E Build - Much like track, the opportunities to build are limited and the cost-to-reward ratio of station spaces are rarely equal. If you are aiming towards a particularly large build project or aiming for a specific train that is central to your strategy, you want to ensure you get it.
F Site Office - In lower player counts, there is only one worker space here. Given contract cards are one of the best ways to score points in the game, it usually gets taken early in the round. In higher player count games, you risk the contract you want being taken by somebody else, potentially wasting your action if the other options don’t suit your game plan.
G Surveyor - In most scenarios, this action has no limit to the number of times it can be taken, and the order players take it in is irrelevant. That said, in many scenarios, such as the Necropolis Railway, the surveyor mechanic can turn into a race with potentially game-deciding points available.
When is it worth it to take the first player marker?
As the above makes clear, it’s always better to have the first player marker than not. But it comes with a cost. The last position of the stock yard is one of the less valuable actions. You may not get a full three cubes and even if you do, they will generally be the ones nobody else wanted. So when weighing up if you want to become first player, you have to consider several factors:
1. Your current position in turn order - If you are in second place, you can usually still execute efficient rounds of play so long as your goals do not overlap too much with the first player. The relative gains here are smaller than if you are in last place, where you may find yourself completely unable to take some of the actions you want.
2. Your need for resources and the state of the stock yard - Leftover resource cubes at the end of Snowdonia are, usually, not worth anything. The actions spent gathering those resources are effectively wasted. If you already have a glut of resources, or the stock yard is emptying, you risk getting fewer or unnecessary cubes. You should be sure the first player marker is still worth it if you will not otherwise benefit much from the action spent obtaining it.
3. Your plan for how to use it - Ideally, when taking the first player marker, you should have a plan for your first action next round. Laying limited track, excavating a station space or taking a high value contract are all good options. If you are resource poor, the excavation rate is low and the available contracts do not help you, then you could be in a weak position to benefit from being first player next round.
4. Your opponents’ resources and intentions - Being first player is only valuable when other players want to take the same actions you do. For example, if you are the only player with steel bars, it’s less likely other players will be laying track or building using steel. In that instance, being further back in turn order might not matter. Keeping an eye on other players’ resources and contracts will help you get a better sense of their goals, better informing you when it will be important to act before them.
Hopefully you’re now equipped to take the first player marker exactly when you need it! How do you generally play around the first player marker? Do you take it often? Do you find yourself able to win without it? Leave a comment below to discuss!
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Jaya Baldwin
During the fallout, multiple Kickstarter projects have been left unfulfilled, leaving backers rightfully frustrated and angry. This is not fair on backers, which is why, from today, our first order of business will be to try to make this as right as possible.
But I need to set some realistic expectations on what that will look like.
First, I want to make it clear we are a small company and simply do not have the resources of a large toy maker or a giant publishing group. Furthermore, in the ultra-competitive environment of tabletop games today, we have a responsibility to maintain disciplined cost control for the sustainability of the business over the long term. This is something we take very seriously at Naylor Games and it is my personal opinion that - speaking frankly - a substantial chunk of the industry has been operating an unsustainable model. We have seen rapid growth, too-good-to-be-true pricing (on products and shipping) and impressive sounding headline revenue figures frequently put above sound principles. As a result, businesses have crashed and suppliers, customers, employees and fans have been the ones getting burned and - effectively - footing the bill that was always going to come.
However, we are determined to do what we can - within our means - to do right by the backers and get these excellent games into their hands. We will be releasing more details about our plan in the coming weeks but for now I can tell you that we are safeguarding all the backer-allocated stock that was manufactured: The backers can have these games without paying for the games themselves again.
Not every add-on item or accessory was manufactured: many of these simply do not exist. But for the three outstanding board game projects (Subterra II, CryptX, Aquanauts), English versions of the core games and most expansion content have already been made, along with copies of the original Subterra and many of its expansions. These can be shipped.
If backers want to get their games, they still can. To allow this to happen, backers will be given a choice about they want to do with the stock currently allocated to them:
I know for many this will be far from an ideal situation. Morally, backers should simply have got what they ordered from ITB when it was still a going concern: it’s that simple. But as the new owners of all of ITB’s stock I do hope we can make the best of a bad situation for backers.
For the Alba book project, the situation is unfortunately different. There is - to our knowledge - no Alba stock at all. This was a much loved concept that deserves to see the light of day in physical form one day, but the journey there will be much longer and less certain. We have already reached out to the original creative team and are excited to explore what we can do there.
If you’re a backer of any of these projects and you have more questions, please keep an eye on the Kickstarter pages themselves for updates. If you have private questions to ask, please email itb@naylorgames.com rather than using any other channel. If you have questions relevant to all backers, please use the Kickstarter comments. You’ll hear from me there very soon.
That’s it for now - there is so much work ahead and my immediate focus will be on fixing this. We are still getting up-to-speed with exactly what is and is not available and how we’ll get it to backers.
But I also want to say just how privileged we all feel at Naylor Games to have this opportunity: both to be the custodian of so many fine game titles and to meet ITB’s considerable and committed fanbase.
In our mission to create true forever games (which I urge you to read about if you want to learn more about us), we have many exciting game projects ahead. I look forward immensely to sharing them with you.
Yours,
James Naylor
CEO & Game Designer
Naylor Games
Dan Thurot, writer of Space-Biff!, is one of my favourite reviewers and may be the most respected critic in games. In this episode, we dive into the economic function of the game reviewer, the nature of game criticism vs review and Dan’s unique historical perspective on games.
Space-Biff!: https://spacebiff.com/
The Space-Biff! Space-Cast!: https://open.spotify.com/show/4MKGea62ikdZn7JWOwR52J?si=ccbe4fd2e749
Listen to the Episode: YouTube - Podcast
James 0:00
Hi I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective.
Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is the legendary Board Game Critic Dan Thurot, writer of Space-Biff. When it comes to writing about board games, it's difficult for me to pick a favourite writer. One of the most rewarding things about my deep dive into the landscape of game reviewing several years back was discovering people who can really write, even if a lot of them compared to the big names in board game YouTube, at least, are really under the radar. But if someone at gunpoint forced me to pick a favourite, unmoved by my genuine pleas that I really do like them all for different reasons, it would be Dan. Dan's writings are considered, careful, but imaginative. And he nearly always has a unique perspective. As he says himself, he doesn't just approach games through the lens of gameplay experience, as crucial as that is, but from a wider cultural perspective as well, considering how games fit into our wider experience of the world, what they can say about historical events, and about society in general. Indeed, when I learned in this interview, that Dan's day job is a professor of history, a lot about his interests fell into place. But what really makes his work special to me is that it goes beyond the merely thoughtful review. From broader essays on the role of history in games, to a deep analysis of Root through the lens of French postmodern philosopher Foucault, it's safe to say that Dan's thinking about games is very deep, and very wide. And while that kind of thing may not be everyone's cup of tea, I for one am Always glad that someone like Dan is taking games seriously like this. Beyond Dan's personal biography, this episode focuses mostly on the role of criticism in games, and the place of different kinds of game review in the market. Personally, I found it fascinating. And if you're interested in the wider context game reviewers operate in and the forces acting upon them, this episode is for you. We join just as Dan and I have moved on from a surprisingly lengthy chat about homelessness in his home state of Utah. I've just followed it up by asking him a nice, easy question. What is the economic function of a board game reviewer?
Dan Thurot 2:37
Oh, boy. Well, okay, that's really two questions, isn't it?
James 2:41
Hmm. It's at least two questions.
Dan Thurot 2:44
Yeah, it's at least two questions. And I think we can break it down very broadly, into what types of reviewer are we talking about, because there's the commercial reviewer, which we would say is like a consumer guide. And then a critical reviewer, or critic, however you want to say it, it doesn't really matter to me, which I think the focus is a little bit more on the culture. And I think these both play a role in the economics, but they might be at times a slightly opposed role. And it creates a an interesting ecosystem. You know, I wonder if you could make a board game modelling that ecosystem? Well, anyway, one of the things that, so here's how I would delineate them. So a Consumer Reviewer. This is somebody who would go out and say, You know what, Kingdom death monster. This is a phenomenal game. It's got all these nice miniatures, it's got some really good AI, you're going to, there's nothing like it, you're never going to play a game like it, it will spawn imitators, but they won't have the multimillion dollar budget. So they aren't going to be quite like this. Unfortunately, now, you'd have to ask yourself, Is this worth $450? And here's my answer that this is worth it for this level of pledge but not worth it for this level of pledge. And I'm simplifying it a little bit, but there's always that element, where you know, you'll read reviews where their function is to tell you sort of the the dollar per pound, or to put it to put it in, in English English. The pound per kilo gramme, I don't know. The, to put it into to put it into that parse-ability for consumers. Is this game worth your money? And, and I, and contrary to some people's expectations, I've discovered I do not think this is bad. I don't think this is bad at all. When I want to see a movie, I absolutely read a commercial review. You know, is this movie worth seeing in theatres, where it has a high price. Is it worth getting on DVD? Is it worth getting from the library or streaming? I will absolutely, is it worth not seeing at all, because it's just not even worth the two hours? Right? That's a commercial review. And that plays a very important role in the ecosystem and economics of the of the hobby in the industry. Because the reality is, is that people are consumers, and where you fall on that is going to be, is going to be very hard to parse. And so it's useful to have people who are analysing that for you, right. I think it's a little bit I, where my complaint comes in is that we put in an enormous amount of weight on that side of the critical spectrum. And I'll get to that in a second. But the the consumer review is valuable. I think one of the things that a consumer review can do is help avoid bloat, that as game prices are creeping up. These are the people who are writing things that say, Well, you know, what, the latest Fantasy Flight product? Yes, it's beautiful, and it's big, and it has a million components. But is it worth that $150 price tag? Well, maybe not? Do you really need more plastic? Maybe not? Do are you doing? Are you even going to play this game more than, you know, one and a half times? Maybe not? That has a lot of value. And I hope that that was one of the ways that has value is it helps push prices down toward a more consumer friendly range? Because everyone, myself included, I'm more likely to be interested in a game that looks great and costs $40 than a game that looks great and costs $150?
James 6:41
Yeah, it makes total sense. Who do you think? Okay, so this is difficult for you to name specific names. But what sort of places do you think you read commercial reviews? Or you see commercial review content on board games? Because the thing I'm really thinking is, I feel like that describes the sort of platonic ideal of how that would work really well.
Dan Thurot 7:05
Yeah.
James 7:06
And yet, actually, when I review stuff I review, I actually had very few people talk about the relationship specifically, between price as on the nose as that at least. And the value of again, even though they might be talking in terms that are perhaps more classically commercially structured they're talking about the components definitely are much more like, Oh, he's the most there might even be a delineated section of a rich text review that talks about the components and assesses them as like a unique elements that builds up the game, which would be obviously very different to your style. But I don't hear much about price. Am I just reading the wrong reading, looking at the wrong?
Dan Thurot 7:45
No, I don't think so. I think that the way that we talk about price, it manifests in a few very specific ways. And one of the ways is that usually you won't get a review, for example, that comes out and says, this game is worth $30, but not $40. Right? You'll never see that. Or if you do, it's so niche, that it's effectively useless. Right? Because dollars are worth different amounts to different people, you might make more money than I do. So your $40 and my $30, you know, you know, maybe that's equivalent to us. Who knows,
James 8:20
they can't say the real price of this game, according to our sophisticated algorithm with was $37.86. Right? There that that doesn't need that doesn't exist.
Dan Thurot 8:31
Yeah. So the first way that I think that when we talk about price, how do we do it? The first way is that we do note extremes. And you'll even see very well regarded places like shut up and sit down doing this. Like if they if they talk about a very expensive game. They will note it. And I don't think that's wrong, right? That that's appropriate, especially for a very expensive game, because they are consumer focused, they are interested in giving you consumer based reviews. Now, they're still not going to be silly about it. But they're going to point out if a game is just exorbitant. The other the other side is that one of the ways that we will often talk about games in a consumer standpoint is that we go the opposite direction, we'll be more lenient on games that are cheap, or small. So for example, like if a game is a print and play, even from one of these new companies like postmark games, I think it's called where they're doing, which I haven't played any of their games, but I'm fascinated in that model. Where where you know what you were, you're gonna pay, I don't know what it is $15 And you get in perpetuity, you get to just print off your own maps, and we'll make new maps for you. And you just get those downloads. That's not notable because of the game it in of itself, right? That's notable because of the economic model of it. So a commercial reviewer is probably pointing out the extremes whether something is prohibitively expensive. or whether they're going a little more lenient on a game, because it's affordable, because it's small, because it's travelable, because it's something you can carry with you or put into, you know, a quiver or whatever. There are a lot of ways that we can create consumer reviews that aren't saying like, this is worth n dollars, but not n plus $5.
James 10:19
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Thurot 10:20
Another way is the focus on components. That is inherently a consumer based review. Because you're putting front and centre the idea of the game as product, as opposed to game as culture. So you're saying like, Okay, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to do what I would call a template review, right? Where you're like, Okay, here's like how complex the rules are. Here's an image of the components and how nice they are. And then kind of at the bottom, you have the final thoughts. That's very much a commercial review. I it's so much a commercial review that it's actually not that far off from the kind of review, you might read about a car or a washing machine, where those often have bulleted reviews where they're like, Okay, well, here's how the car handles. Now we're going to review like the potential add ons. Now we're going to talk about the seat warmers. Now we're going to talk about kind of the appeal and family usability of the car. Now, here's our final thoughts, your what you're doing is you're taking the game and you're reducing it into its components as a consumer product, as opposed to looking at it more holistically and saying, What does this say about culture? It's a difference between if I wrote a car about sorry, if I wrote a review about like, an old Studebaker car, you know, as a product, versus writing about it as an icon of culture, those are going to produce very separate reviews. And the consumer review is going to talk about like mileage, and how it handles, you know, things like that,
James 11:47
which of course, would be awful, presumably for the Studebaker.
Dan Thurot 11:50
Yeah by today's standard's right?
James 11:53
Yeah. Exactly.
Dan Thurot 11:54
I know a priest who restores Studebakers. And I don't think he rides them very much just just tinkers with them.
James 12:01
Well, that's the value of being a cultural icon. I guess you don't have to ride it very much.
Dan Thurot 12:04
Yeah right. Yeah, so that's one of the other ways that I think we talk about we talk about price without talking about price, is that focus. And now this isn't to say that, like a critical review can't talk about, Wow, this game is expensive, because that does have an impact on the culture, doesn't it? The more expensive a game, the more you could call it elite, the game will be it will be prohibitive to the vast, vast majority of people, which in a way is a negative hit on that games culture, because how often do super expensive games break into the wider culture? Well, sometimes Gloom Haven? They do, they can. But usually the way that they can do it gloom Haven is, I mean, gloom Haven does so much so well. And it does a lot to save its price, even though it's big and expensive. And, and Isaac has done some very smart stuff like releasing cheaper versions and a digital version. I mean there is there are ways for those often to break into culture, as opposed to something like Kingdom death, which in a way exists in culture as a rumour.
James 13:18
Yes, yes. It's a game that that you've read a lot about. You've heard a lot about, you know that there are this absurd number of Kickstarter backers that it has. Right. And yet you've never met it? Certainly, I mean, you probably have, but certainly from but but broadly, in my experience, I don't I don't think I know a single owner of that game, or anyone I know who's ever played it personally.
Dan Thurot 13:44
Right. And I think I know, two, and which is not many, like I know a lot of people who play board games, and I think I know two. And one of them was real. He bought it to flip it. And so.
James 13:57
So really just that's just pure games as financial speculation anyway for him.
Dan Thurot 14:01
Right. And there are plenty of people who play that game. So So does that make sense? Where I would?
James 14:08
I think it's a very interesting delineation. And I really like your comparison to cars. Because I think what's so interesting about the car, I would say, compared to films where I was finding it harder to place it exactly on the spectrum, is that the naturally utilitarian nature of a car is that it is very, is that you can describe it in terms, specifically of features. And it'd be very high value, very high value in features alone. So I want to know how comfortable broadly and it is, I want to know how good the aircon is I want to know these things, this list of things that can be sort of productized quite quite effectively. And what I think are so fascinating about game reviews is in my experience is that they don't quite as easily, straightforwardly fit that mould. So when I read a review of a game that just says something like well, the miniatures, for example, I might say about Magnate or you get a lot miniatures for your money actually you get a lot of miniatures Somebody maybe that's that's a feature, they would say they would say, it does this, it has these components. I'm like, That's brilliant. I'm glad you're glad you approve of that, and you think it's good value. But at the same time, it doesn't, doesn't really tell you anything about the experience of playing it. And that's not to say, by the way, obviously, I'm caricaturing a hypothetical example here. I can't think of a single review of mangate I've read that didn't try to say something about the experience, rather than just list list what was in the box. But, but I think it's nonetheless interesting that when those elements take a lot of, for me, anyway, a huge amount of of the forefront of the spotlight. It's then so interesting, that the the experiential piece, which to me is sort of a single most important piece, even as a consumer is not as relevant. And I guess is this where the crossover and I guess before you move into your, I'm assuming definition, more of the critical, where there's a kind of a bit of a bridge here, maybe between these two things?
Dan Thurot 16:03
Yeah, I actually do think that both of these review types are on a sliding scale of experientialality. Right? They're both talking about their own experience, where where I think consumed commercial reviews do tend to try to, they make overtures at being objective. And, you know, we talk a lot about like objectivity and subjectivity when we talked about critical stuff. And the reality is, you can't, you can't do it. But there are ways that you kind of can't like, showing us pictures of a game. You're right, objectively, that's the game. That's a way in which we can be objective, right. And so a commercial review does tend toward what we would call objective without ever reaching it. Because they're still going to tell you a little bit about the actual experience and experiences themselves will be subjective, in general, and this is all a sliding scale, right? You can probably find commercial reviews that are deeply experiential, and critical reviews that aren't. But in general, I tend to think of it as kind of an alligator, you know, it's bigger on one end than the other. And so, like, a critical review, I think, tends to be a little more experiential. But I think even on the far end of that, if you're getting really deep into culture, then the personal experience can become secondary. I mean, I've read some wonderful pieces, like for example, on Catan, talking about like, Catan, the birth of colonialism in games and, and all of that, and that's deeply non experiential. It's not telling you what it's like to trade, you know, wood for sheep. Or to have a bunch of bad rolls, like you play a game where you roll nothing but boxcar so that the poor player who was really dumb and built his first city on a brick with a 12, like, he kept getting brick and you built on all the sevens and you never got any resources that you can use. There are definitely critical reviews that are not experiential. But yeah, I would consider that a bridge is that all reviews are going to at least likely touch upon experience in some way. Like, I would hope that whoever was writing this piece on Catan had played Catan. Just so they know what's going on. But so I would think that a critical reviewer or a cultural reviewer, at least at least in my experience, I am interested in what the game feels like to play. But I'm also interested in and I'm not always doing this, nobody is I'm also interested in, in what arguments are the game making? What in what ways is it intersecting with culture? What is it modelling? Does the game want you to feel something? Feelings can also be a part of culture? Now, what is this game doing? Not only is what are the actions it's making you take on its way to that doing? So that's how I would describe the critical review. And in my experience, those critical reviews, I mean, they might mention, they might mention price, they might show you the miniatures, they might comment on that. But in general, that that like anything on a scale, that's that's a little more diminished, they're more interested in those. I call it holistic, but maybe that's me tooting my own horn, considering the game as a as a cultural artefact as opposed to a purely commercial one. But honestly, we regard almost everything commercially in our culture. So I don't mind going the other way. A little bit sometimes.
James 19:39
Yeah, interesting. Well, what proportion again, I think it's much better probably to give me an approximation of this rather than name specific names unless you feel comfortable doing so. What, what specific problems you think of what we see as board games are broadly critical rather than commercial. You're talking about the majority. But is it something that would you say This really characterises quite a small corner of, of games, or
Dan Thurot 20:05
I do I do I think I think I don't know about a percentage. My gut reaction is like 2%.
James 20:14
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's that's not many at all.
Dan Thurot 20:16
And I'm not saying that of like every person who would consider themselves a professional reviewer, that sort of everyone is a reviewer, you're a reviewer, even if you never write down a review, you give recommendations, right? You discuss games, you talk to friends, just by dint of you choosing to bring certain games to a game night over other games, you're a reviewer, because you're exhibiting preferences and making those preferences go out into the world and impact other people's preferences. That's all in a sense review. And so, every reviewers are a dime a dozen. We're all reviewers, we're not special. of the people who are actually writing down reviews, you know, Board Game Geek, just mentioning stuff on social media saying this game was really good. Most of that tends to be commercial. It's in the business of making recommendations. So I would say like, 2% of people are interested in the cultural, but I think it's catching on. And here's the reason I think that that's the case. Like, just to give a shout out, I won't say anything negative. A channel like No pun intended, is that what they're called?
James 21:32
No pun included,
Dan Thurot 21:33
No pun included. I always just want to call them NPI.
James 21:36
Yes,
Dan Thurot 21:37
like, they're a radio channel or something, the National, whatever. So no pun included. I've been watching these video essays that they're doing now, like on blood on the Clock Tower, or on colonialism in games. And and I think that you go back and you watch some of their older work, and there was always a commercial bent to it. But now they're moving more and more toward the cultural critical perspective. The same is happening in a number of other fields, I received a lovely note, from one of the reviewers at Meeple mountain, Meeple mountain tends to have a they have a big group of reviewers, and many of them are commercial, because they're a big review site. But this note, mentioned that this particular reviewer was trying more and more to focus on, you know, what are the games saying? What are these games doing under the hood? What sort of arguments are they putting into the world. And this reviewer had only recently discovered my work, and had been doing that cultural work, even before reading any of my work, but the reason he sent the notice he had read some of my stuff, and wrote me saying like, this is exciting that I've read a few of your pieces on writing critical work. And it's it's exactly you said what I'm trying to do. And so I'm excited about this. And so I don't think it's any one person who's doing it. But I think as a whole, we are seeing the ecology start to shift a little bit in that direction. It's it's a niche that people are recognising they can occupy. I also think that commercialism is inherently hollow. And people are realising they want to talk more about why do we see certain games? Why do certain games succeed where others fail, as opposed to just should you play this game? And as I said before, it's always a spectrum. So I'm not saying everything was commercial and is becoming critical. But I think we're seeing that previously, the cultural side of the review sphere had been a little underserved. And more and more people are feeling that and moving that direction.
James 23:49
Interesting. It's very interesting that you see that because actually, I think that's actually a good example, particularly the NPI video essays, as you say. And if you're starting to see more of this kind of content, essentially, you mentioned Meeple Mountain as well, because I feel like they've always had a partial to doing a few things that are a little bit different. I remember one of my favourite humour articles they ever did, was it said, I think the headline was just Kickstarter to include playtesting as a stretch goal. Which I just enjoyed,
Dan Thurot 24:19
that's brilliant
James 24:19
enjoyed the piece tremendously. Muah, Chef's kiss, it's gorgeous. That was absolutely, absolutely excellent. So it's kind of glad to hear that actually, some of the writers are wanting to broaden out even more into more into wire more widely into culture beyond just sort of humour content about the about the sort of the hobby. That's very cool. Well, I'm also to think about the role that the critical consumer relationship reviewers have to each other because something that I had sort of noticed a bit was that after you had previewed magnate, a lot of other reviewers got a bit more interested because they thought, Oh, well, it's sort of worthy of more interest because this person who's very well known for their kind of critical coverage is engaging with it. And that implies it has worth. And so I sort of wonder, again, this is why I come back to that question about the economic role of how people fit into this, which, by the way we may be more or less comfortable with, but I think it's something that we doesn't get talked about very much, because I think everyone fears where this conversation can go, if you see what I mean, is, it's interesting that, you know, our critical reviews have always historically, I think, across different disciplines, had a certain degree of cachet and status about them. And I don't know if that's partly because of the ability to, at least among some, at least among some people, perhaps most of all, among other writers. So for example, I think Shut up and sit down mentioned that you had talked about magnate. And it was sort of interesting to think that they, I think they may have seen it previously another situation, but it was very interesting to think that they had noticed that because you had covered it, because obviously they look to your writing as something quite inspirational for them. Do you see what I mean?
Dan Thurot 26:13
I do conceptually. I don't, I don't tend to, like I don't count my numbers. For example, I hate knowing how many views something gets, like, for example, I made the terrible mistake of looking at my so you mentioned Foucault and the woodland, the series that I'm doing on Root and how it's influenced by the work of Michel Foucault. And it's, it's not like the numbers are, are bad, but they're not as good as you know, like writing about some hot thing, and just knowing that made me frustrated and discouraged. And
James 26:56
can I would I be able to guess that probably, I'm gonna make a wild stab in the dark here, that your review of ark Nova had quite a lot more traffic than for example, that piece about Foucault and Root.
Dan Thurot 27:11
Yes. And and, and to me, that's wild. Because there's, there has to have been like 2000 reviews of ark Nova. You know. I don't think I had anything novel to say about ark Nova. Just because it's had such wide dissemination, everybody's played ark Nova, who's going to say something about ark Nova. So when I, even when I reached out to clay, from Capstone games, and I said, Hey, clay, I know, I am the last person in the world to even know that ark Nova exists. I have heard, I had heard the title, I thought it was about spaceships. And
James 27:52
I did too, when I first heard it as well, to be completely honest.
Dan Thurot 27:54
Yeah, I thought it was like about making a space Ark, to save animals and humanity or something, which, you know, that's a cool idea. But it just hadn't hadn't caught my interest. And so when I found out it was about trying to make a conservation a zoo, I was going, Oh, that's cool. I would like to try it. Also, it's been out for like two years. And so I wrote to clay and I said, Hey, Clay, you know, he and he often will send me games. And I said, Look, I'm just curious if you have any extra copies of ark nova. And maybe you want me to take a look at one of them. But I totally get it if you do not. Because I doubt anyone's going to read it. At this point. I doubt anyone's going to care. And he said, You know, I have a ding and dent copy that I can send you said, Okay, that's great. Yeah, I'll take a ding and dent copy, he sent me a copy with this huge ding on a corner or wrinkle across the box. And I couldn't have been more grateful. Because, you know, like I said, I think at the time, there were like, 2000 reviews on BoardGameGeek. And I played it and wrote about it. And of course, instantly had just 1000s of hits and I'm going, but why?
James 29:02
Thinking there's so much other content.
Dan Thurot 29:04
Yeah, well, why why do you think But why aren't you reading the stuff that's interesting. You know, like, I'm not saying I phoned it in, you know, I tried to write a good review. Of course,
James 29:14
I found your genuinely your comparison of terraforming Mars, and how that related to theme actually very interesting, because obviously, as a publisher, I'm always I feel sometimes greedily mining reviews to learn more about why games work. Like I feel like that's my primary interest. So I did find that quite that that and I didn't, I hadn't read that so much elsewhere, because I think people are genuinely less interested in that, that kind of aspect. As you said about the you mentioned, it's been nice to see people moving in the direction of why is it that things work? And obviously, as a publisher, at least I don't know how many other publishers are like this because we actually I don't think I've talked to any other publishers about this subject at all. Maybe I should. About that's probably why I find so much of your stuff very interesting is because it makes me go. Oh, yeah, it's not. It's not what's going on in that one. I'm just, stroke beard,
Dan Thurot 30:07
well it's a fascinating game for that reason, right? Like, everything it does, has been done by other games.
James 30:15
Yes.
Dan Thurot 30:16
And in some cases better. But it takes those it takes those ideas and combines them in just such a fascinating way that it's kind of like a best Hits album, of different of different bands, you know, where you can, you can get it and you can listen to all their best hits and not have to listen to the crappy parts of the album.
James 30:34
And compilation albums are hugely successful, aren't they? They are among the highest selling album.
Dan Thurot 30:38
Yeah. And so it kind of plays that way. But all of this is just a long way of saying, it makes me deeply uncomfortable when I hear that, like, Shut up and sit down has, in any way been influenced by me, because I don't like to pay attention to that. I just don't like to think about it. Because I'm writing for me. I'm trying to explain to myself, like, like, here's an example recently, somebody sent me their game. And they asked, Well, what do you think of it? Before I had written about it? I said, Well, I don't know, because I haven't written about it yet. To me, that's the process of becoming, is sitting down and writing the review. Which is one reason I hate play testing. You know, people, I'm I'm often asked by designers who are familiar with my work if I could play test their game, and I sit down and play it. And they say, Well, what did you think? And I said, Well, I had a, I had a good time. You know, we were like laughing. And, you know, I made a joke. And you laughed, and you said some jokes. And I laughed, and we moved some pieces around. And that was a perfectly good time. And, you know, I and it isn't until I sit down and try to explain explain the things I was feeling by writing that I'm really going to understand it.
James 31:47
It's as if then maybe we're expecting you to sort of stop, pause for a second look off into the middle distance, and then sort of just come out with a sort of rather wonderful pronouncement on the particular nature of the experience, maybe make an allusion to some classic poetry, and how it relates to it. And then and then and then was actually like, naturally, why on earth would you be able to suddenly produce something like that?
Dan Thurot 32:14
This game is like, Yeats in his middle years? Yeah, it's I, I'm not much of a talker, to be honest, which is why I find podcasts a little baffling. I feel like I just get on here and stammer a bit and but I'm so I. So does being a more cultural reviewer carry cachet? I don't know.
James 32:39
And then to some extent, you don't you don't want to know, right? Because the problem then becomes this awful thing of the response to all of this. That I guess is the fear that it begins to change what you do, right?
Dan Thurot 32:54
It does to an extent and like I don't want you know, if if my writing influences somebody, I'm happy that that happened. I don't mind you know, and I don't even mind hearing about it a little bit. But I don't want it to become about the influencing. Like, I despise the idea like Mike Barnes, who's also a talented reviewer. He likes to get my goat by calling me an influencer internet. Oh, wow. And he knows that that just drives me nuts. I hate that term. Same with content. I don't think of myself as writing content
James 33:34
You're a content creator, don't like that either.
Dan Thurot 33:36
Yeah. I don't like that idea. I
James 33:38
will I put the episode up for this. We absolutely shouldn't say Dan Ferro, content creator
Dan Thurot 33:44
Yeah, content creator. It's just the worst.
James 33:52
Oh, if only the audience could see your facial expression of that.
Dan Thurot 33:57
Take a, have that screenshot, you might
James 34:02
We'll make that the episode cover?
Dan Thurot 34:03
Yeah. Make that go on iTunes. Yeah. And part of that is because I don't like the commercialism of it.
James 34:10
Yeah.
Dan Thurot 34:12
I, I would much rather write something that gets nobody to buy the game that gets everybody thinking about the game.
James 34:19
That makes sense. Yeah.
Dan Thurot 34:21
You know, and that, to me, that's a little bit about Foucault and the woodland and other series that I write about games at that level. Even though some of them are a little pretentious, you know, I probably mined Root as much as it's going to be mined. But to me, that's that's the beauty of a game is that it can model tricky things in a simplistic way, in a way that streamlines complex ideas that it can model emotions, that it can get people around the table talking about relatively complex things. I have a friend who's who is a little bit I don't want to say anything rude, just kind of buys into simple history. And it's through playing games like John company that he's sort of donned into this world where he can think critically about colonialism and and about global trade and about maybe there are some problems with some of the philosophies that he had just accepted, outright and easily, that he had some of the narratives he had been told his whole life, maybe there were some footnotes to those narratives. And maybe they shouldn't have been footnotes. I love that games can do that. And they can do it in a relatively safe space. That isn't to say that all games are equivalently safe. A game like John company, people should know what they're getting into. Don't spring that on someone. But I love that games can do that. And I want to talk about that. And that doesn't have to necessarily be about colonialism that can be about a wide range of topics, even about why are some games, why did they feel good if they're a party game? Like what is it doing that works? What part of our brain is it tickling? It can it can touch all aspects of our life? That's what I want to talk to you about. And sometimes there's weird pushback to that. There's a there's a there's a fellow from Ireland who really hates my Foucault in the woodland articles, and is always like, why don't you write about Kant's blah, blah, blah, for for Bonanza or something? Yeah.
James 34:38
Kant's categorical imperative as it applies to Bonanza, yeah. UnIronically, I'm at least intrigued.
Dan Thurot 36:44
Yeah. And I'm going, behold the coffee bean. And it's just such an irony to me that throughout all of, you know, so my, my original field of study was bioethics. And very philosophical. And it was, it was interesting to me that in philosophy, philosophers and philosophy professors are always bemoaning that everything in society is philosophy. But nobody pays attention to philosophy. And then you go out and you write an article about like, Okay, this game is about philosophy. And then the philosophers are like, God, this is bubkis, pooping their pants over it, which I think is just so philosophical. Get mad at Christopher Nolan, because he made, you know, some philosophy and a movie or something. So that's what I want to do. That's the stuff I like writing about. And I don't want to be an influencer. I do hope to be a good influence.
James 37:45
Yes,
Dan Thurot 37:46
in my own small way, but not let's not be an influencer. I want to also be influenced, I want to I want to see I want this to be a conversation.
James 37:55
And is that something that so I guess then to you, particularly, seeing more of that critical flowering of more stuff in the board game industry is usually positive, because it means you get to read and more of those kinds of ideas in a way that aren't just the more commercial reviews yourself.
Dan Thurot 38:10
Yeah, you know, one idea that I've had, and I keep wondering if I should take the plunge now, or just keep waiting, is doing like a quarterly or a monthly newsletter, I don't know if it would be on my site or elsewhere, where it would just be a roundup of like the best critical writing about board games from that month or that quarter. Just to just to highlight that there, there are good conversations going on. It's just that many of them are outside the usual scope of the commercial interests of board games. And I think that would be fascinating. And it wouldn't all be like weird niche stuff from like the Wargaming Lab of, you know, Rand or whatever it would, although of course, that stuff could be included. I think things like NPI doing. Their essays could absolutely be included. I think that people are hungry, maybe not every person gets hungry, but I think a lot of people are hungry to see more of a questing criticism a criticism that maybe asks more questions than it answers or doesn't really give a fig where, whether you buy a game
James 39:29
yeah, I can I can see that completely. That there is something very very attractive about that. Michael of Meeple like us certainly used to do in his roundups every month would sometimes used to keep a list of interesting links from board games, many of which were the slightly more interesting, critical pieces where he where he was able to find them. And I remember I loved that that list. That was something I used to check all the time because
Dan Thurot 39:51
So who was that that did that?
James 39:52
Michael of, don't know if you've heard of Meeple like us, I don't know.
Dan Thurot 39:55
Oh, yeah,
James 39:56
at the moment, but yeah, for the board game accessibility people and I think cuz that was very interesting having that curated list that occasionally, you'd asked me to contribute to and ask some of his readers to contribute to throw in things they thought were kind of really interesting things they'd read. So I think that's a great idea. I think, personally capturing some of that critical writing on board games. I have no doubt you obviously have the number of reviews you produce already. You've got a lot to do, but I do, I would certainly hugely support that.
Dan Thurot 40:24
Well, it would be interesting, I don't I I'm, I'm hesitant, because I am lazy. And I don't know if I want to, but I mean, setting up something like a tip line, basically, you know, please email me about any interesting critical work you see, Please promote your own work to me. You know, don't send me your review of, you know, the latest, I don't know, cool, Mini or not game. That's not to say they can't do good work before I get any hate mail. It's just, they usually don't,
James 40:59
yes, unless I guess there's something very interesting cultural to say about Zombicide, for example, and how it fits into our conceptions of the zombie. And why have zombies become so popular? There are sort of interesting things you could think about there about, I'm why the acting zombies and the particular ways in which how you your what your job is in the game, and how you act through the game against the zombies, there might be something more interesting about that. Possibly.
Dan Thurot 41:23
There is and you know, it's just so it just makes me sad that this metaphor of, of death by consumerism has itself become death by consumerism. I, oh, man, zombies are just so tedious. They have become tedious. Is that does that mean anybody wants to read about me getting depressed that a zombies have become tedious? I doubt it. So I probably won't write that.
James 41:49
Leave that for someone else to do? Oh, I can I can offer finding a new angle on that one? That's really interesting. Well, I think that I think that's that that itself is kind of fascinating that sort of, in some extent, in your ideal world, as you said, you don't you don't want to be an influencer, you don't want to be the person who's out there, pushing people in any way towards acquiring certain kinds of stuff. So actually, in many ways, sort of, ideally, for you to operate in that cultural sphere. Actually, it's not like you want to be part of a commercial ecosystem at all right.
Dan Thurot 42:26
You know I think there's really no escaping it. And to some degree, I'm a hypocrite because I do write the occasional Kickstarter preview. I mean, I did one, I did one on magnate, for example. And usually the reason I write those is, I turn down a lot. Even games that are sent to me, I turn down a lot, because I don't think it's worth selling. But sometimes I will play a game that's usually an independent game. It's saying something perceptive enough that I do want it to sell a little more. I have no interest in selling, you know, I don't know, pick a big company. Fantasy Flight, Fantasy Flight? I don't know. Something under the Asmodee umbrella. If they send me something, I'm not necessarily interested in selling it. But so for example, I've written a lot of previews for like Cole Wherle's work. And that's because I want his work to succeed. Because it itself is an act of criticism. So I mean, John company is, that's a critical essay in board game form. You play that and it informs you about problems that you never would have dreamed the company had had, the East India Company had had, unless you'd read books on it, and but not here, here it is in a game, you're going to gain an appreciation for how half of the world's total commerce could pass through one company and still not generate profit.
James 43:56
Yes. Oh, I mean, these data companies. Absolutely. It's a fascinating subject. And as you said, Exactly. extraordinary, extraordinary. How could it still not be profitable.
Dan Thurot 44:06
Right. So so it has to get bailouts, half of the world's trade. And it's and it needs bailouts. How is that happening? Here is a game as a critical essay on that. So sometimes I will write just because I want more people to engage with with certain games, or your game. What? Why does a housing bubble happen? Why does the housing crash happen? There's something perceptive and useful in playing this game and looking at Oh, well, maybe big, maybe big corporations that just buy these things to sell them and have no investment in the in the neighbourhoods and in the cities that they're in maybe this has something to do with it. And so I do promote games on occasion. Even tacitly like I don't say go and buy this Kickstarter, it's really cool. So yeah, I but on the whole I don't really want to influence People to buy things I hope. Sometimes I influence people to not buy things, save some money. We're all. We're all in this together. But yeah, I hope to be a good influence on the way we talk about games. I don't know if I am. I hope so
James 45:17
I think it was a very positive influence. I find your writing quite inspirational in the sense of, I really, I think, Oh, this is a really unusually interesting take on that. And I think it's, what I like is that, I think most of all, I like that your work person, I think you take games seriously. And there's always a strange thing in board games, I feel like, I'm quite serious in how I present in board games. And so people, and I think I want to talk about Naylor games, I realise all the things I want to say about it are quite serious things. But I think that's partly because I felt like games should be taken more seriously. And the idea that they can be something like that, again, could be an essay, like your John and company is beautiful, of that game is a is an essay on this subject. And it does do something unique, because because it's an interactive medium, and you kind of act through it, that one act in the game that you're taking moving pieces around, taking an action is actually incredibly rich, in terms of relative to just say, reading a book, where all the sort of structuring is done up front for you about how meaning is going to be communicated. And instead, you get to act the meaning. That's, that's super cool.
Dan Thurot 46:35
Yeah, it actualizes the meaning in a way. And and if the model is built in such a way that it can incentivize players to take actions that they would normally consider horrifying, or that they would consider brave or any other, you know, courageous, whatever action you're trying to incentivize if you can create the model in such a way that you are showing players an experience outside of themselves, and showing them something true about human action, about human nature, about cultures, about companies about history, I find that very valuable. And it doesn't need to be this big grand thing necessarily. I think even a game like apples to apples does it? Right?
James 47:17
Yes.
Dan Thurot 47:18
That humans we love silly comparisons, we are always comparing. So okay, here's a game that you are trying to make the silliest comparison possible. And in a way that maybe someone else would make a comparison and it becomes how do we as humans not only make comparisons, but how do we assess the way other humans make comparisons, and you're actualizing that in a way that I think is very informative about a human condition. That doesn't mean that in writing about it needs to be dour. I think we often learn best when learning is enjoyable and airy. So I hope I'm not influencing people to write like, boring essays.
James 47:55
Well, absolutely, you don't want, Yeah, I think that's the thing, isn't it? We don't want necessarily writing that's the sort of deliberately academic as a way of sort of, get what's the right way to phrase it, it's almost like it's using that as a way to garner itself or garnish itself with authority. It's like, well, let's write something that's like, it's very dry and serious, because then we know that we know it's good. Whereas actually, as you said, there's a great joy in writing that is fun and enjoyable and amusing, and has humour and in part is Messam message often better,
Dan Thurot 48:29
actually began writing space-Biff in part as an antidote. Because in my personal life, I, so I work in history, and so I do plenty of dry writing, about historical subjects, and I wanted to write with contractions and jokes, and, you know, write about things with a sense of life, as opposed to, you know, academia, I have a great appreciation for academia and the way that that needs to be written. But outside of that sphere, it's a suit of armour. And, you know, we put on that suit of armour in academia, for the sake of things like clarity, getting rid of miscommunication, enabling peer review, but really outside of that setting it the problem with that suit of armour, even in that setting is that it can make one very brittle. And maybe you're not, you're not, you're not very good for a hug. Right here, you're in this big cold suit of armour. And, and it can be very hard to communicate outside of that setting, when writing in that suit of armour. And so I think there's a lot of value in writing about games in a cultural way, or talking about games in a cultural way, without concealing yourself behind that shield. By putting yourself out there and being vibrant and being excited or being upset and not having to shield it behind according to you know, in the view of this author, no, you just say I, you feel something. It's okay for you to feel something. It's okay for you to think a game is garbage or that you think it's the best thing ever. It is okay to be ebullient it is okay to be disappointed. You can express things with emotions that you can't express academically,
James 50:12
you're allowed to have an opinion that requires no citation.
Dan Thurot 50:15
Yeah,
James 50:15
right for support. Yeah.
Dan Thurot 50:17
And that's actually one reason why some of my essays, I do not want citations in them. The citation may be a hyperlink. I don't want a bunch of footnotes. So I've written pieces like, on I wrote one on, I miss named it, it's my bad greenwashing history. It should have been grey washing history, because it was about it was about a couple of games by Martin Wallace, a study in Emerald in Australia, in which he casts certain people as aliens from HP Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos.
James 50:54
Oh, yes, I remember this.
Dan Thurot 50:57
And it was a it was a big essay. And it was hard to write. And it very easily could have been academic. But I didn't want people to feel like they have to go read footnotes. I just wanted you to be in the place and feel what I was hoping you would feel being with me, as the writer. And I think there's value in that
James 51:16
completely. I completely agree, I think is tremendous is much more enjoyable to write to read as well, ultimately?
Dan Thurot 51:22
Well, I hope so.
James 51:23
well absolutely. I mean, I don't think we people don't generally seek out academic treatises for entertainment, unless they're very, very interested that very specific subject matter, and want to dive very deep into it. That's the only reason people will do that, generally. So that's, what do you do? And you said, your work in history is something you can say any more about? Because I'm, I don't think this is I didn't realise, you know, outside of your reviewing, I don't think realise what your what your job is.
Dan Thurot 51:47
So I'm right now I'm kind of between jobs, because when my I have a, I have a daughter, I have two daughters, but one of them is three years old. And when she was born, I went on sabbatical. Because my wife is in health care. And she works. You really can't work part time in health care. And so she works full time. She's very big into her career. And it was a lot easier, you know, an academic career. Who cares if you take a break? And so, unfortunately, during COVID, they did want me to come and do some online classes, because some of the older peers who had tenure decided to retire early rather than learn new things.
James 52:27
Yes, I mentioned that's question a question. perennial issue in academia. Yeah,
Dan Thurot 52:30
so I so I am a professor of history. And I usually teach my period is called Late Antiquity, which is a more recent periodization. The very easy way to explain it is that most people conceptualise it there's the classical era, you know, big empires, Rome. And then there's the mediaeval era. Oh, now we're small kingdoms and castles. But but really, there's about 1000 years in between that. And late antiquity is the study of how do we go from one to the other?
James 53:01
Oh, interesting. So you would include what might what is often called, or historically often called the Dark Ages? For example?
Dan Thurot 53:09
Yes,
James 53:10
that that period of time, so all the way from kind of late Hellenic Greece, I guess, and that so that was something I think about your interest in that the game was thinking of you've written a fairly, maybe written about it a couple of times acts of the apostles,
Dan Thurot 53:22
oh yeah, the acts of the evangelists,
James 53:25
and I think about your knowledge of, there's that very interesting game about this. What about the Council of Nicaea, as well, and I think about all of these
Dan Thurot 53:32
amabel, Holland's Nicaea, yeah, and those, and those all fall into that period. So one of the a lot of my specialty is in the development of early Christianity. Christianity has a tremendous impact on that transition. for better and for worse, I'm really interested I've written quite a bit and studied quite a bit on how does the development of heterodoxy and orthodoxy? How does Christianity go from oppressed to oppressor? I'm interested in that sort of history. So that's usually what I teach. There aren't all that many board games in that time period. We've had a few exemplars lately. So that's really where my interests lie. Sometimes, I don't know as much you know, about later things I know a lot less about the Renaissance. American history I think is just boring. So that's what I that's my career.
James 54:29
Interesting. Interesting. I mean, that makes a tremendous amount of sense in terms of if I think about lots of people writing the sorts of subject matters you're interested in. And I think it's an interesting period because it's it's not a period that people know very much about so there are loads loads of parts of it I find fast and because I'm with a completely this, the story of Christianity, particularly from its early days to the the let's call maybe, I guess we call it the early Middle. ages, I think is I think is absolutely fascinating. I've always been richly interested in Byzantium this like fascinating kind of continuation of the Roman Empire. But but but not at the same time how it changed and how it evolves in its own particular direction that it took. So, so yeah, I can, I think it's a fascinating period. And I was I feel like, the Renaissance is also a fascinating period. But it's a much more widely studied period that I think a lot of people know a bit more about.
Dan Thurot 55:30
More people know about that. I mean, a lot of my a lot of my work does include things like translation, we look at a lot of very old Jewish documents, or early Christian documents, and what is this trying to teach us about the culture that its authors were working in? Things like that. And it's such an exciting period, too, it's transformed just in the last century, because of advances in archaeology. We're learning all sorts of things, a lot of Iranian discoveries, you know, we always, we keep finding all these cylinders and Stell A's, that are teaching us so much about how were people living? What were their laws, like, What were their? What was their day like? So it's a very exciting period to be working in. But it is very dry.
James 56:18
I can imagine that it will, I can imagine, especially because of the, to some extent, what a history must be, on some level, to some extent, because you can't, if you're trying to piece together, kind of a lost world. There isn't as much immediate room, I guess, in that in that job, for the kind of emotion we're talking about when it comes to getting to write what you do in board games.
Dan Thurot 56:44
Yeah. And there's kind of this, you know, I mentioned this irony with philosophers. The same thing happens with historians, where historians tend to be very dry and very precise. And then you'll have an author come along, like Barbara Tuchman, or, Oh, what's his name, who wrote the anarchy, Dalrymple? Who they write kind of like an accessible popular history? And historians are like, how dare they
James 57:10
How dare they make people interested in it?
Dan Thurot 57:14
Yeah. And the rest of the time historic historical professors were like, Why does no one like history?
James 57:21
Such a surprise?
Dan Thurot 57:23
And well, it's? Well, it's because it's kind of boring sometimes. And you get grumpy at the people who make it exciting. That's that's a problem.
James 57:33
Oh, fascinating. Fascinating. It looks like we're running out of time, unfortunately. It sounds like because to be honest, this is this is one of those conversations where I feel like we could just keep talking about this for hours. And I would I would love to just talk, to be honest, for an hour about sort of the the development of early Christianity. I could, I could absolutely talk about that. But I feel like the listeners to producing fun will say, James, I'm not so sure this is on topic.
Dan Thurot 58:02
Fair Enough, yes.
James 58:06
Is there anything else that we should be looking out from you? I mean, literally, during this conversation, we've been talking about something positive back of the mind for a while about a kind of collection of kind of critical writings from around the internet. Is there anything else that we should be on the lookout for coming from space-biff anytime soon?
Dan Thurot 58:22
I don't know, I, you know, I kind of fly by the seat of my pants most of the time. I've got some cool ideas coming up. I don't know if I'm, I'm always wary of saying them for fear that I won't do them. And then people will be disappointed in me. But But no, I just I hope that people, check it out. Come come and read and come and comment. And let's have a conversation. Let's talk about board games.
James 58:47
Absolutely.
Dan Thurot 58:48
I love board games.
James 58:49
Well, you know what? I could tell that.
Dan Thurot 58:53
Well, good. Glad I got that. Of all my weak communication, I'm glad I got that at least across
James 59:01
I think you I think you got that across fairly convincingly. I would say
Dan Thurot 59:07
Well that's good. You know, board games are wonderful, aren't they? We, as humans, one of the things that I love about us is just how much we play. That we like to enter that illusory mind space, right? That we're going to we're going to come into this circle and we're going to follow rules. How silly how silly, and we're going to make new rules and we're going to follow them. And in the process, we're going to do something pretty incredible.
James 59:37
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Our capacity for that and, and to be able to enter a space where those rules become the structure of the world in a very meaningful way. So instantaneously, is quite, it's quite extraordinary. Actually, by that, as you said as process that we'd ever thought this well it's just some cardboard What the hell is this?
Dan Thurot 1:00:02
You get invested in it. Yeah, it becomes you for a moment. You get mad about it. That's, that's exciting.
James 1:00:09
And it's very cool as well. One of things that I think is, is this, this, to me is the deep, deep fundamental inclusivity of games is that this is true for basically everybody as well. So it doesn't matter whether it's someone who's terribly invested in an enormously complex economic Euro game, or whether someone who is just a group of people sat around playing a very simple card game can be equally invested. And totally part of it is it is like magic. And certainly the reason why I love working in this space, because being able to the thought that one gets to craft that magic. Oh, that's just such an it's such an awesome thing to get to do. Well, Dan, thank you so much for talking to me today. This has been really, really interesting. And yeah, it's been so great having on the show.
Dan Thurot 1:01:03
Well, thank you so much, James.
James 1:01:14
Producing fun is produced by Naylor Games, if you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at Naylor James and write me an email James at Naylor games.com. Until next time.
In addition, we are publicly launching our comprehensive back office service for independent creators: Back Office by Naylor Games.
It’s safe to say… we’ve been pretty busy recently. And we like to think we’re only just getting started.
As soon as the Kickstarter for Magnate had ended in December of 2019, I knew I wanted to publish more games - and I wanted to grow Naylor Games into the kind of publisher that would consistently make the kind of games I believed in.
But I come from a systems and product background professionally, so I also knew this would not succeed without groundwork. We also still had to prove to the world that we could produce anything - let alone an ambitious, engaging, critically applauded and commercially successful game. With the worst supply chain crisis ever happening around us, we wouldn’t even get to prove that until the end of 2021. And it wouldn’t be until well into 2022 - as we started running out of stock all over the world and signed brilliant localisation partners in other languages - that it seemed to me that engaging and commercially successful became fair descriptors of Magnate.
All of this meant our efforts would be best served behind-the-scenes. We took the calculated risk that Magnate would be at least moderately successful and prepared the way for when we could be bolder. So we put all our effort into building knowledge, building systems, getting better and better at development on a myriad of projects, and learning how to do the critical things you need to make and ship products efficiently and effectively.
Game Jam was the only title we decided to share publicly and it only achieved this because it revealed itself to have so much more potential than the small proof-of-concept I originally envisaged merely to test our methods. And as an accessible card game, it had the added benefit that we could easily test it outdoors in the darkest days of the pandemic, so we didn’t lose too much pace while so many of our lives were put on pause.
Perhaps more importantly the journey turned out to be just as much about reflection: confronting what we’re bad at, and most importantly of all, finding out what we honestly believe. This period was expensive, and not always the most fun. Operating a bit like a submarine for a long time isn’t fun. Now that we’re ready for the next phase, it’s a delight to share it with you.
This kind of release slate is what I plan to be the shape of things to come: A range of ambitious titles that we can’t wait to play the final versions of. A set of projects that we are inviting our players into, to further develop and release when they’re ready to create enduring joy: a set of forever games.
As insanely exciting as this release slate is for the whole team, the most important thing for me personally was the result of that reflection, crystalised into this mission of Forever Games we have also published on the site today. It feels like we have a compass now, built on distinct beliefs that are not the same values and practices as every tabletop company shares. Indeed, I think there is much that people will disagree with, dislike, believe to be foolish even or doubt the practicality of to be found on that page.
I won’t go into further details here - that page says it best and explains the why. Now, it’s worth exploring a bit more about the games themselves.
A very substantial new addition to Tony Boydell’s railway classic Snowdonia. I can’t say too much more for now but I can say it is beyond thrilling to work with Tony to develop this. What we have in store is, in its own way, equal in stature to NSKN’s 2019 Master Set. It is 100% Snowdonia, but it will deepen the experience and push the game into some completely new design space I think the fans will enjoy. We have a duty to a very substantial and loyal fanbase and we will rise to the occasion.
You can sign-up to get updates here.
Blackjack for math lovers, this maths puzzle game will be our first East Street release since our acquisition. Absolutely opposite scale to Magnate, it's very much in keeping with East Street’s focus on fast, family- friendly fun in small boxes. It's an incredibly simple, highly accessible game for players of all kinds: very much including people who have no next to nothing about modern games (which will present a new and exciting marketing challenge - building upon what we’ve learned about a wider market we’ve been lucky to begin reaching with Magnate in the US). It’s utter marmite as far as games go: if you don’t like math puzzles, 21x isn’t for you - but it's a piece of compact, streamlined brilliance from the very talented designer Leo Samson. This will be Leo’s first published game, but I am sure not his last. A name to watch.
Learn more here.
Likely our next big new game release, there is no better way to describe this game than how some of our playtesters have: “Real-time Gloomhaven!”. If that’s not ambitious I don’t know what is: and it’s one hell of an intimidating high concept to live up to (a comparison to BGG’s number 1 title? No pressure!). But my hopes for this one are high. I can’t think of any other game we’ve done that’s had such overwhelmingly positive feedback and that we enjoy so much we have to actively resist simply playing it to playtest it. It’s innovative and very fresh: like playing an action RPG at your table. No surprise: this one has been brewing in our Lead Developer Jaya Baldwin’s head for many years, reaffirming that games from the heart, with long gestations, are the best. It is a joy to see a game with Jaya as the lead designer.
You can sign-up here.
Formerly known as "Boardgames: The Boardgames (The Card Game)" this one is already underway and you can learn more about the game here. Gradually I am seeing more and more people engage with it, which is delightful - especially game designers. Expect to hear more soon!
This is the one I can say the very least about of all. We have a great design that has been brewing for some time. But I am unconvinced as yet if it really nails what it wants to be yet. What I can say is that this is not an expansion but a new standalone title. We do have several tested Magnate expansion concepts. It’s possible that in our agile approach, they will rocket forward and overtake this, but they are not our immediate goal, while we wait to see how the now localised versions of magnate and its second print run land.
I am immensely proud of Magnate, there are things we can improve about but it is mostly already the game it wants to be. But I think the biggest area for improvement is in reconceptualisation of its form while preserving its experience, and gameplay. There is something in Magnate’s core that is so incredibly accessible and resonates with so many people, but a more accessible product overall would benefit it.
As if this wasn’t all enough, we also decided this was the right time to take our comprehensive, global outsourcing service public. I think I’ve said enough about the work we’ve done to systematize what we do and lay the foundations for success by slowly building out the typically considered “boring” competencies needed for success in publishing. It only made logical sense to me to give others access to all this. After all, it turns out it's one of the things we are really good at and right now this industry is seeing this game-unrelated administration work senselessly duplicated all over the world. That's something we can fix.
Our new information page says it all. If you’re an independent creator, we may be able to help you quite a lot.
That is, I hope you will agree, plenty enough for now!
All the best,
James Naylor
CEO & Game Designer - Naylor Games
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Until recently Chris was a pediatric doctor - now he’s a full time game developer and - indeed - our very first on the show. In this episode we talk about what game developers do, working with famous game designers and organizing the UK’s first protospiel.
Protospiel Nottingham on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProtospielNotts
Protospiel Nottingham website (and tickets): https://protospielnottingham.co.uk/
10 Minute Design Chat Podcast: https://tenminutedesignchat.podbean.com/
Paper Fort Games: https://linktr.ee/PaperFortGames
Cosmoctopus Kickstarter Page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paperfortgames/cosmoctopus-the-board-game
Personal Tabletop IG Account: https://www.instagram.com/tabletopapprentice/
Listen to the Episode: YouTube - Podcast
James 0:00
Hi I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective.
Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is Chris Kingsnorth game developer and organiser of the Nottingham Protospiel. I was keen to interview Chris for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, Chris fills a key knowledge gap the show has had for a while. We've never interviewed the game developer for despite the critical but often misunderstood role that developers play in the industry. Second Chris's story in the industry is a really interesting one, a practising paediatric doctor until very recently, and working right now on a special educational game designed to be used in a medical context, Chris has thrown himself in at the deep end of games in no time at all. In the grand scheme of things, he's pretty new to tabletop, not discovering his first modern board game till about 2015. But by 2019, he was already organising a convention for other game designers and developers. That's exactly the kind of passion we like around here. As you can imagine, we had a lot to talk about. Chris is an eloquent advocate for game developers a dream role he works full time in. He has much to say about the process of taking a game from really Good to Great, working closely as he does with Henry Audubon, designer of Smash Hit Parks on Henry's new title, Cosmoctopus, this episodes ended up being a perfect encapsulation of the game developer role, and what goes on behind the scenes at the publisher after a game is signed. If you want to understand this, and the development process better, or you want to organise a convention yourself, this episode is for you. We join just as Chris is explaining his method of finding time to get into the industry.
Chris Kingsnorth 1:57
Very much what I started doing when I didn't have much time, but I did really want to do game stuff. And it's kind of a bit less sleep. And a bit more and a bit more games this kind of approach that I took.
James 2:14
Yeah. Well, it's very difficult isn't it when you're starting out, because very few people in games actually are full time employed in games, right?
Chris Kingsnorth 2:22
Very much so and finding people to get advice from about that is difficult, because it's such a hobbyist industry kind of overall. And because so many of the people get into it by playing games first, rather than being sort of employed in it. Yeah, knowing what the route into games looks like, can be very difficult. It's like going into it, but no one's made the map yet. It's that part off the edge of the map, no one's drawn, you've got a vague idea of how people get there. But it's all hearsay, rather than actual, this is how you do it.
James 2:54
Do you think there will ever be a map?
Chris Kingsnorth 2:56
I think it's such a nebulous sort of role being whether it be a game designer, or a publisher or developer that I don't think there is. And I think it's still such a small industry that a lot of it is being in the right place at the right time. But also putting yourself in a position where opportunities present themselves. And it always makes me think of the phrase, the harder I work, the luckier I get, which I think is something that stuck with me when I heard it in the past. In that, you know, you can set yourself up for things to go well, it doesn't mean it will always happen. But doing that can set you in good stead. And that was very much kind of how I got into things I was in the right place at the right time. Having done some things in the past that set me up, which I didn't even realise was going to happen.
James 3:46
Because you're now... are you mostly employed in games now? Is this a full time gig for you? Or mostly kind of a part time thing?
Chris Kingsnorth 3:53
It's a full time for me now. So I I am now Yeah, five days a week I am developing, designing, doing bits of everything I suppose at Stone Sword and the sister company paper four, which is what I head up. So yeah, I'm full time there, which I realise is an incredibly on sort of it's it's an honour to do and a very lucky position to be in to be able to do that. So yeah.
James 4:20
Well, that I mean, that's really interesting, because I think very few people are full time developers especially. And actually, I'm sort of realised thinking back. We've not yet interviewed anyone on the show, who is primarily first and foremost a game developer, which is I feel like it's a great pity so far that we've not done this because I think this is a this is a fascinating and often poorly understood role, I think compared to a game designer. So here we've got a game designer does. People have an image of someone coming up with a concept, drawing, maybe making a few sketching out of prototypes, thinking of the play testing events, that and then eventually getting public If the dream you get the contract, your game sells 10 million units a year. And you're a millionaire. Okay, that's not very many people at all. But that at least the concept of in the ideal of a designer is quite clear. What do you understand a game developer to be?
Chris Kingsnorth 5:16
So I'm still learning what that means. And I think it means different things for different individuals, but also for different companies, depending on their size and their to use a sort of term used in business, their agility. So you know, do you have a role, which is just a developer? Or do you have a role that is developer amongst a myriad of other roles that you take on whether that be for a few minutes a day, or a few days a week, or whatever. And I'm very much in a role, because we're a very small company of, I'm a developer, in that the game I'm working on was actually signed before I joined the company. And it was given to me in a kind of, here's a game we want to publish, it's great. Take this stuff we've got and make it happen. And that's very much the kind of the starting point for this. So development of the game and sort of the additional playtesting, and working with artists to get art, project management, things like that all come under my role of development at this company. However, I know there are people, people like John Brega, for example, who they are developers, specifically, they do the development role, and then hand things back to a company to do the art and the project management, all of those kinds of things. So as we were saying, I think these roles aren't particularly well defined in the industry as a whole, and especially not when you've got small companies where lots of people are not available to do different roles.
James 6:47
Yeah. So that's interesting, isn't it that I guess your role is understandably like most small companies is one when it comes to a lot of different things. I've heard that definition as well. But people talk about the development role that also includes what you might term art direction, which obviously would have its own role in a lot, much larger organisation. Let's talk more about that developer part of it. Because I guess that that, is that your main that must be your main time, then that's the most people kind of principle thing you're doing?
Chris Kingsnorth 7:14
I'd say that's most of my time. Yes. So from a, the best way for me to tell you about is probably to kind of give you an idea of the like, how I started and the game I've been developing and how the steps that have been taken towards getting that to become a product because at the end of the day, that's, that's part of what a developer does is getting it to make it a marketable product that people enjoy. So when I came to the company, I was given the game in its prototype form,
James 7:42
And which which game is this? Can you talk about it the stage?
Chris Kingsnorth 7:44
Yeah, this is Cosmoctopus. So it's a game by Henry Audubon, the designer of Parks, people are probably known for that. And this was his lockdown design. And it's about it's about being devotees to a cute but all powerful celestial octopus. And it's a tentacle gathering engine building game,
James 8:05
A tentacle gathering game. This is, this, is this a new genre?
Chris Kingsnorth 8:10
Maybe it is. This could be the the birth of this new genre of engine building games we're designing perhaps. So that was the game that was given to me in very good shape. Obviously, as a developer, sometimes you'll be given games that have promised but they need a lot of work. And sometimes you'll have games that have you know, pretty much there and you're just doing the final polishing and, and sort of chamfering off the edges. And in this case, it was definitely the latter. So I was given the prototype game, and essentially then spent a fair few hours just playing it through myself play it through with Henry to just understand the game. Because the designer has spent many hours and days and months on a game and they have a certain vision for it that as a developer, when you come in, it definitely pays to try and get inside their head and understand that vision of what they why they designed the game. And when they design the game. For example, this one was during lockdown and I Henry will admit himself, you can definitely tell that he had been maybe indoors for longer than normal. It's a little bit unusual, and esoteric. And there was some bizarre things going on. And I wanted to understand that and I wanted to understand the world he'd made, because I'm going to be making changes to it. But I want them to be ones that make the game better for everybody. I don't want to be coming in gung ho and changing it to make it look, you know, work well on paper, but actually moves away too much from from his vision. But also, you've got to change things. That's the whole role of a developer that you've got to make changes so that you can get it to a place where people can actually buy it and will want to buy it and it gets out to people who are interested in it. So a lot of my time is spent playtesting and as a developer play testing, as well as changing the game balance and things like that also is a bit of market research. And it's talking to people about whether they like the look of the game and how it makes them feel when they play it. So that you can position it as a product in the marketplace, what target market, you're going for what age group, those kinds of things, which are often suggested by a designer, I think when they're designing a game, generally, you've got that in mind, it's just making sure that you then make sure it does fit with that suggested market, or you change it to fit with something that fits your company's set of games or ethos, things like that. That's a big part of it.
James 10:39
That's, I mean, that's really interesting, isn't it? Because I think a lot of people think of game development as specifically the game itself. And you can imagine that some of that makes a lot of sense, it'd be good to go into some examples, I guess, if we can go into a bit more detail kind of thing to change. But I would guess, if I think about development that we do at Naylor games, would be around things like small rules changes, optimization of explanation, it might be modifying something in a turn order, the way that bidding works, sort of small changes here and there that are designed to improve the product and to, but retain the feel and the vision of that of that thing. But you're going a little bit further there. And obviously you're telling me Well, of course, this is a very much a product podcast. So I inevitably will always use that word. But I actually think a lot of people don't think very much about that when they're thinking about game development, which is that you're actually talking about well, there are questions here about product market fit, that your job is partly to address. What what kind of product market fit questions were you addressing with Cosmoctopus? Because multiples because one of the issues there sort of a you raised is there's something maybe a little bit more esoteric than some of his previous work. And then that immediately raises questions for me about what how, where's that going to fit?
Chris Kingsnorth 11:52
Exactly. So one of the first things that had been suggested actually, before I even joined the company was that we wanted this game to stand out from other games, which might be felt to have a similar theme to this. So there are a number of games about esoteric orders of people who believe in certain beings, Cthulhu being a big example. And being you know, one of those themes that's used quite a lot through the market. We, we felt this was similar to that, but we wanted to take it in a different direction. And that's actually where we came up with the idea that this, this being this Cosmoctopus could actually not be your world ending terrifying creature, but maybe maybe more of a space toddler who's wandered off from the brood. And that was one of the early changes we made to think what how can we grab people's attention on the shelf with this product? What if this octopus and thinking of the cover in advance was kind of this cute, Dumbo octopus esque, almost Disney character, within this scene of devotees that clearly looked quite serious, poking a little bit of fun at that kind of Cthulhu mythos vibe, while also appealing to two different markets at once. Because you get the people who think, Oh, it's a cute character, what's going on there, and that draws them in. And then as they get closer, they see oh, this is a game with the some people down the bottom that look like devotees. And that's a bit strange. And all the cards have got these weird and wonderful things on. That was one of the things that we brought in and with that, we very much wanted to kind of get if this game was on someone's shelf, what makes it stand out from all the other games that's on their shelf, not only the character, but the colour palettes and things like that, which comes into art direction, of course. And that was then a really good basis as we develop the game for us to have an idea of the target market. And also, can we make this a product that someone could play with their children around the dinner table and a gamer group who wants to be a bit more mean to each other could also play? And how do we bake that in from the beginning, rather than that being a tacked on thing at the end?
James 13:54
Interesting. And that clearly evolved some sort of thematic change, was it previous so it was more Cthulhu esque at the beginning.
Chris Kingsnorth 14:01
So Cosmoctopus was very much a serious octopus, who was more towards your Cthulhu. To be fair to Henry, he'd made wonderful that there's lore in this game. That's great that you know, you don't need to know it. But if you know, it's kind of hidden in the game, and so I haven't changed very much at all, from that point of view, because it was already really good. But yeah, it was mainly that the the octopus Cosmoctopus was kind of this potentially very scary being that that lived in space.
James 14:29
Right. Okay. And so making it a lot more fun. Yeah, it's interesting in terms of that approach to thinking about market fit as well. So you're thinking primarily about people seeing the box? In what context? Are they kind of thinking about that?
Chris Kingsnorth 14:41
So I'm thinking about it from two points of view, because I think that with games as they are today, and with small companies, generally you're going to have a game that starts off on Kickstarter, and then goes into retail hopefully would be the thing. So you've got two different things there because people that buy games from Kickstarter, never see the box on a shelf, they, before they back it, they see a front cover. And you need to kind of capture them with what that front cover shows not what it looks like compared to other products because it won't sit next to those directly, but also wants to think about the fact that if I went into a boardgame cafe or a boardgame shop, and there were 100 games on the shelf, which one would stick out to me as being different or unusual enough that it would make me pick it up? And I think it's that getting someone to pick up a game and flip it over? is the key to selling games in those kinds of situations. So that's why I'm trying to think those two different kinds of situations, how can I make something that kind of grabs the attention in both domains, I suppose
James 15:42
makes sense. And well, what kind of gameplay changes did you have to make to bring all of this into light.
Chris Kingsnorth 15:46
So not very many if I'm honest with you. So the the core of the engine building, like premise that Henry had designed was very solid from from the beginning. And many of the tweaks we made were finding by playing it lots and lots of times the odd loop, which was kind of exploitive, with this kind of game where you can combo things up, finding ones where Oh, actually wait a second, if I happen to get these two cards and be able to afford them and play them at the same time, which is rare, but will happen. Now the game is broken. So just finding a couple of little things like that, which until you play it hundreds of times, you're not going to find and then trying to marry up the kind of theme and the world that Henry had created. From a gameplay point of view. We also Henry always had the idea this game from the beginning has a solo mode in it. And actually, what we've kind of done is that the character that is a small deck of cards, who makes the game a solo game, you can actually introduce into any multiplayer game, and it turns it from a competitive to a cooperative game. So means that yes, it means that you've got solo play, and you've got multiplayer play. And depending on your game group, you can pivot between whether it's you're working against each other, or you're working together. And thematically, it's a private investigator who's coming to find out what you all know about this mysterious celestial cephalopod. And you essentially are putting aside your differences, because now he's more of a threat than each of the other devotees are. And that's kind of thematically,
James 17:20
Of course, because the private investigators might put an end to your little cult,
Chris Kingsnorth 17:25
Precisely.
James 17:25
So that you need to you need to presumably, somehow avoid him.
Chris Kingsnorth 17:25
That's it.
James 17:30
That's the idea.
Chris Kingsnorth 17:30
And so we brought that in, and we tightened up the kind of solo rules to really simple but we can also introduce into the multiplayer. And we also had some new ideas about well, actually, if the private investigators learning more, he's going to get more powerful because he's got more knowledge. So now why don't we have cards where when he reaches a threshold, he now becomes more powerful all of a sudden, so you have to think about if he reaches that, what's going to happen? So we added in a investigators notebook where he, as he gains tentacles himself, suddenly, he's a bit confused. But then suddenly, he has a revelation and the cards flip. And now he changes the rule of the game to to make it feel like oh, no, now he's accelerating. Now he knows what we're doing. So we added that in as well, which was a nice little additional thing, which, which just adds a bit of flavour to the game. And that sense of pressure, which in these kinds of games is quite nice. I think.
James 18:23
So how does all of that fit though, into your kind of product market fit question? Because remind me again, what you're kind of going for? So is it? Is it more of a family title? Or is it Where do you where do you see it fitting? Exactly.
Chris Kingsnorth 18:33
So I think that it fits generally in it's one of those ones that it straddles really, it straddles two different things. And the prime example of that is that at UK games Expo, we had the front cover on the banners. We also had a four metre inflatable tentacle, which does garner some attention. But essentially, people came for the poster and came for that and stayed for the game and really enjoyed it. And what was nice is you had kids coming across who saw the cute character and thinking, oh, I want to find out what this is about. But then the parents that got closer who were then like, Oh, this is unusual what's going on here, love the card art and love this kind of thing, Shall we sit down and play a game. So from a product fit point of view, adding those gameplay changes essentially means that I can play this game with my wife who's not a big gamer. And we can have you know, 14 minute two play a game that we we can blast out. But equally, I can take it to my regular gaming group who will happily play Twilight Imperium. And we can play against the private investigator on the top level of difficulty. And we can be as mean as we want to each other and that having that dial allowing people to turn means that hopefully we kind of can target it towards people who are new to games, but also people who are very like into games.
James 19:50
Makes sense. Are you at all concerned sometimes with this that it might not quite nail the experience for either of those markets? Because I can see the best of both worlds argument But I can also see the worst of both worlds argument.
Chris Kingsnorth 20:02
Of course, and there's always going to be that risk. And I think that that's why getting it out there and showing people and getting people to play it early is a really good way of doing it. And actually, it's important, especially when you're doing Kickstarter thing to explain to people why it's like that, and the fact that it does have these things that you can do to do it. And having played tested it with loads of different groups now with a young family versus four people who didn't even talk to each other, and they just wanted to beat each other, like, just absolutely blast through it. They've both got different things out of this game that they've really enjoyed. And some of the hardcore gamers have said to me, you know, this, this game, I will happily pay my gaming group and show it to my kids. And I think it's just introducing people to the idea that these games can exist, that you can have a game which can be malleable enough that you can play with different groups, which I think sometimes games try to do, and it doesn't work, because it's just as working really hard to show and to prove that it does work. And you can do it if you design things in the right way.
James 21:06
Have you had any difficulty sometimes working with Henry in terms of something that he's quite committed to? That wants to be in the game? And then you've had a so so well, that doesn't fit quite what we need to do from some of them a product perspective? What's it been like working through those issues if they indeed have occurred?
Chris Kingsnorth 21:22
So it's been brilliant working with Henry, it's always things that as a part of my job, I've come into this and my first game is getting to develop Henry Audubon's game, no pressure, but no, it's one of the things I've really enjoyed it. And he's, he's great to work with, there are always going to be things where there is a kind of meeting of minds where we think we think this direction works. And it might be different to the direction that you thought that things might end up going. And being kind of open about it is important. From a gameplay perspective. Actually, I don't think we've really ever had any problems with that we're both on the same track. With regards to the gameplay, we both understand the game well, I can see where he's going with things. And I'm also because I realised this, this is kind of a passion project for him too, taking the time to listen to why certain cards are designed a certain way and things has been a really important part of my learning process as a new developer. There are cards in the game where I was like, Oh, this game, this card should probably be a bit more expensive. It's a bit too this. And Henry tell told me Oh, it's based on this specific thing from another game. And it's a bit of an homage to that, and then making it work. So not to the detriment of the game. But me understanding that that's important. And taking that on board. When it comes to sort of the game as a product and the art and things like that. We obviously suggested changing Cosmoctopus from being this scary thing into this sort of cuter thing. And that's a very big change. That's a big change to kind of the vibe of it. But it's one of those things I think was kind of, if we're going to make the standouts, and we're going to sell it to people, we've got to go with what people like and what they're telling us and what we're getting feedback about. And there's been some to and fro about the sort of how we present that. And we're at a stage now I think we've got the balance. And we're still got time this the thing I think with Kickstarter is always one of those things, you want to get as much done as you can. And you feel like you feel like the start of the Kickstarter is the end point when actually, you know, within reason, there are small things that can be tweaked here and there afterwards. But overall, we've not had any big sort of problems from a sort of art direction point of view. It's a kind of almost like a love triangle a little because you've, you've got a developer slash art director who's me in this kind of role. You've got the designer who's designed this for months, who has a very specific vision in their head. And then you'll have a third party being the artist who has their own thoughts and techniques and things they do. And finding a way that you can bring those three things together to make something that works for everybody is a big challenge, and I think is always a big challenge. Unless you're doing something where it's your design, and you can control it. You don't need to ask anybody else what they think about it. That's different. But being in a situation where you have to get those three things in tandem can be can be tricky, but it's I like these challenges. I actually think that they teach you a lot about how to make something that works for everybody, but also about when you need to make decisions for for the game and to make the game the best experience it can be for everybody. And when you need to say this is the stage we're at now. We're going to focus on something different.
James 24:40
That must be quite difficult sometimes though, isn't it to draw that line of
Chris Kingsnorth 24:44
Very difficult.
James 24:44
Where are you going to say this is we can't take this any further. We can't afford to keep fiddling here.
Chris Kingsnorth 24:49
And it is and it's it's really tricky because I would I would in a perfect world, I think any developer any publisher would be like right we want to get this 100% Everybody loves absolutely every single little thing about this as a product as a game, that will never happen. I think that that that is a goal, which if you pursue it, will end up with people being just as unhappy, but for different reasons. And I think you have to have a point at which you're like, we've got to make a decision now, whether that be because of time constraints, or it'd be monetary, or other reasons, or you're just really convinced that you've hit the thing that you need to hit, and you just have to have faith in what people are telling you. But it makes it no easier. It's still very difficult. Because just in general, I'm, as a person I like to, you know, make people happy. And please people, I think that most people who are into games, they're generally fairly affable people who want who want to, you know, be social and be happy. And sometimes you have to step outside that persona to make decisions, which is part of the role and part of the difficulty, but also why you have a team around you. And obviously, I'm lucky here that I've got a team of the six of us in total, which for a board game companies, if you know, an indie board game company has a fair number of staff and it means that I have other people I can bounce ideas off, and that I can just check in with and just say sanity check, am I completely off the rails here? Or is what I'm saying kind of making sense? And I will happily if people say to me, no, that's, you've got that wrong. I'll be like, cool. Let me reassess. Let me find out what we're doing. Because yeah, I think that's, that's important to have other people to, to check what you're doing, rather than just going full steam ahead with your own ideas.
James 26:36
Yeah, it makes sense. With Kickstarter, you raised a really important point, I think about how the beginning of the Kickstarter, it's anything like that's the end of the process. But actually, that's just one of many stages in the process. How do you go about deciding what needs to be locked in before the Kickstarter starts, and what can still be remained a little bit kind of loosey goosey?
Chris Kingsnorth 26:58
So from my point of view, I think that gameplay needs to be very, very close to being done, like to the point that like, unless you're thinking of adding things to your Kickstarter, which are going to change the way the game plays, I would want that to be like, as much done as possible. I think there's an argument for having some wriggle room, because Kickstarter can be a collaborative process with your backers. And having that having that not set in stone and a few things, if someone suddenly suggests something amazing that no one's thought of so far, being open to that as an option is definitely still really important. But I think going in with only 50% done, and then having the other 50% be sort of designed by everybody else feels a little bit on the the difficult side. So from my point of view, gameplay needs to be like nailed to the point where I could easily make this game today, and people would play it. And they would have a great time that from my personal point of view, I think that from an art point of view, you have a little bit more wiggle room with Kickstarter, depending on the amount of money your company's got, and things like that. You want to have enough art done that you can show people, this is what the end product is going to look like. And if it's not exactly like this, this is a fair representation of what you're going to get through your letterbox at the end of the process. So I think that's important to have that. And I think that having the plan for what the product is going to be like physically is really important. I know that on Kickstarter, it can be really easy to in the in the adrenaline of it be like we're going to add to this and we're going to add this stretch goal and these bits and pieces and suddenly a box that was your average box size is now twice as heavy, or it's twice as large or now you've got three envelopes with extra stuff in. And that can be difficult because you want to give people more stuff, but especially at the moment, not locking that in can have effects on your shipping cost on how long people have to wait. And I think for me personally, I want to have the product to the point where it's almost completely done so that I know what I can get files off to printers sooner I can say to people, this is a pretty accurate representation of what you're going to get and how much it's going to cost you because I think at the moment that's even more important with how things are. And to that end from this game, we decided on the size of the box at the very beginning. And we have stuck with that. And any changes we've made I have been like this is not going over this amount of punch boards. This is not going over this amount of cards. And if we need to change things, we need to find ways to do it with the limits we've already got. And that's really important because I think it stops that sort of product creep of like oh now there's another extra this amount and that and then you suddenly realise now the box is a bit bigger and that makes it now 2.1 kilos and you're in a different bracket for shipping and all these kinds of things. So So keeping that in check has been really important, I think and something I've tried to build in from from kind of day one. And then I suppose the other thing from a game paced gameplay perspective is that you can you can approach things like solo modes and what some people see as kind of add on gameplay value as either something you baked in from the beginning, or something which you decide if there's X amount of people that would like that, whether that's through stretch goals, or whatever, we will find a way to make it work. And for me, it was really important to kind of work that from the beginning. But Henry had already done that. So I think it was it was easy for me to make that decision, because it was already a solo mode in this game, for example, I don't need to retrospectively do that.
Because that was something he wanted it from the beginning.
Yeah.
James 30:45
How about how did you go about signing Henry for this? What was the process by which did he come to you? Or was that it work?
Chris Kingsnorth 30:50
So it happened before I got here, but I know the story. So actually, I believe it was at PAX unplugged last year, that Henry had taken his prototype and a sell sheet. And it was seen by I think it was hungry gamer, who had contacted James, our director with a picture of the sell sheet. And he said you need to find out about this game it's great. And there was very little about it anywhere at that point, like it was there was just that photo on Facebook somewhere, I believe. But Henry had been playing it at that point. And James basically said to Henry, I want to know about this game, let's hear about it. And very quickly signed it from hearing it from having a vibe of what it is and knowing that Henry's got pedigree as a game designer as well. So it was signed fairly quickly. And then when I came on board, it was my project and was like, this is Cosmoctopus, this is your your thing to take and sail with. So yeah, that was the signing process, it was an interesting one in that it wasn't directly pitched to the company. And it was through somebody else that we ended up finding out about its existence, which is, which is nice. I think those kinds of fortuitous things are both nice for publishers to know that you can do it that way. And also nice for designers to know that obviously, the traditional route is that you do it and you go and pitch it to somebody. But if someone sees something and they think it's good, there is always a chance they will come and find it. If all the stars align, and someone recommends it to them, or they see it or whatever.
James 32:22
Yeah, or you got that recommendation as well. Which is that's pretty great. Right? When someone else
Chris Kingsnorth 32:26
Exactly.
James 32:27
Who knows games pretty well is able to go I think you should take a look at this. That's that's pretty good.
Chris Kingsnorth 32:32
And I think it's having people who you know, if they come to you and say this is a good game, and you know that they play similar games, or you trust their judgement on things, listening to them and taking it on board and not batting it away is really important from a publisher standpoint, because you can miss some gems I think I think there's lots of games out there that potential like amazing games, and they just don't get picked up because they never come into the into the orbit of the publishing world.
James 32:57
Yeah. Makes total sense. Yeah, that's really cool. Really, really cool. If that sounds like tremendously interesting. Being able to work on a project like that, I think especially with with a, a well known designer, who's got as you said, such a pedigree, I think is a good way to put it.
Chris Kingsnorth 33:10
Yeah, definitely I've been, as I say, it's been an honour from my point of view, it's one of those things where I, not only have I been given a game to develop by somebody, like Henry, but it's a game I actually would love, it's the kind of game I'd play. So it's not like I've been given a game as developer. And I'm like, it's not really my kind of game, but I can develop it. It's my kind of game, which gives me more passion to work on it, which I think then circles back into a better product overall, I think there's a lot to be said for developing games you're actually really interested in because you think about things in a different way. And you're willing to kind of try different things that you might not in a game style. You don't usually play for example,
James 33:48
What kind of developing work were you doing before this one, because this is the first you've been doing at Stone Sword? What were you kind of doing before that?
Chris Kingsnorth 33:56
So before this, I've mainly been doing my own stuff. So I have basically been in the right place at the right time having built some groundwork previously. So my background is that I'm actually a pediatric doctor. So I trained
James 34:11
This is this is very tangential to game design.
Chris Kingsnorth 34:14
Definitely. So I went to medical school. I've been a doctor since 2000, and fifth 2013. And I had been doing game stuff in my spare time for the past five or six years, which medicine led me to that because I was out a hospital a bit in the middle of nowhere with some colleagues and we stayed there and accommodation. And we started playing games as a way to pass the time because there was nothing else to do. Went to UK games Expo learn about play testing and then just started devouring anything that I could find about game design. So ludology, reading books, like anything I could find, started entering some BGG contests and doing some work for other people who saw my designs and said, Oh, I've got a game that like that part would work really well for Could you design this system for me for this game. And then my next kind of step towards things was that I organised a protospeil Nottingham in 2019, which kind of pulled me into the the Nottingham industry collective group who are design studios and designers in Nottingham, who were like, Who's this person we've never heard of doing an protospiel, he should come along to our meetings and find out about things. And that pulled me in. And through that event, I got the bug for designing games and doing development here and there. And essentially, when I got to the point where there was an opportunity for me to take a year out of medicine, I was like, if I don't try this, I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life. Because there's many reasons that medicine is not, you know, it, as people can imagine. It's very stressful. And there's lots of other reasons and hours and things like that are not great. But it's mainly that I suddenly realised I had a passion that I never knew existed. And looking back, like my granddad was an art teacher, and an artist. And I've got a lot of creative people in my family. And maybe, actually, that's what I was always meant to do. But I went down a certain path. So when I came over into this world, I thought maybe I should take the chance. And I made a table top CV never had to do a CV before, medicine doesn't work like that. And I sent it to James here, because I'd met him at protospiel a few years ago. And it wasn't that I was looking for a job. I just said, Would you mind looking at this, because I'm going to send out to some, to some people. And I'd like to get your feedback on it. And he was like, Oh, we just had a really successful Kickstarter. And we're going to need some more people. How would you feel about coming and working for us? And it happened to be exactly the right time and a 40 minute walk from my house. And I could not ever say, yeah, how could I ever say no to that? And that's kind of how I ended up in this where I am now. So I've definitely taken a turn from where I was. But a good one from my point of view.
James 37:04
That's fantastic. I mean, that's just absolutely well, as you said, right, right place right time. But to be fair, obviously, with all of that experience as well, organising that protospeil, you must have met so many people through that process over thought, how many? How many attendees was that first one?
Chris Kingsnorth 37:17
So the 2019 one, I think there were 45 people. So it's not huge, but it was the first one in the UK. And I've never organised anything like that before. So I was like, the only way I'm going to find out if it is viable is to just try it. So I paid the venue cost and hoped I could recoup it. And I organised it. And it went really well and protospeils are not for profit. So after I paid for all the stuff, I give all the money and we made, we made 950 quid for charity. And I thought, wow, we've done it. And people loved the day. And I was like, met lots of people. And so it was a small event then. But people wanted it to come back. And I had grand plans to bring it back in 2020. And then obviously, we couldn't. And then this year, we've finally into a situation where we can do it. And we've got a bigger venue we're doing two days, we're hoping to have 100 people per day, and hopefully raise at least twice as much for charity. So
James 37:18
and when is that again?
Chris Kingsnorth 37:19
So that is on bonfire weekend. So fifth and sixth of November this year in Nottingham, and Nottingham city centre. So yeah, that will be two days and people come for one or two. And they can come as a designer bring their own stuff, or they can come as a play tester. And the thing that is different about protospeils is generally it's lots of designers testing with lots of other designers. So not only can tell people tell you what's wrong with your game, but they might actually have a way of fixing it, which is the bonus to some other play tests. But what's great is the UK we're very lucky. We've got play test UK that do regular events, they're fantastic. We started doing a break my game one in Nottingham. So I think now what we're trying to do is the more the merrier. From my point of view, the more opportunities that there are for people to play test stuff. And if we can raise a bit of money for charity in the process, then everyone wins. So yeah, that's why I'm doing it this year, it's going to be bigger. And yeah, I'm really looking forward to it because that was my first proper foray into doing tabletop stuff. So it's got a sort of, I've got a soft spot in my heart for doing that event and for for making it special for everybody.
James 39:21
So what was the gap between sort of starting to make your own games? And then deciding that the logical step? If you've just been making a few things that you've got into quite recently, you're talking about, was it sort of like 2015? Was that kind of the kind of time you start getting into games in general?
Chris Kingsnorth 39:28
Yeah.
James 39:28
To thinking what I need to do now is organised effectively, a miniature game making festival.
Chris Kingsnorth 39:40
So it
James 39:41
It seems like pretty quick turnaround from that
Chris Kingsnorth 39:42
It was. Yeah, so it was about two and a half years or so I think between me kind of like starting to learn basically from me starting to play games and learn about game design to doing protospiel, and it was a bit of an accident. I remember specifically I was walking home from work one day and I was listening to The Game Crafter podcast, I'd accidentally put it from oldest to newest. And the oldest episode on that list was how to run a Protospeil. And it was aimed at the US because there are lots of Protospeils in the US. And because The Game Crafter support them, it was basically this is how you would do it.
James 40:18
It's a kind of brand, brand, isn't it? The Protospeil, it's a kind of an it's actually when presuming when you organise when you actually have to licence it, do you, Is that how it works?
Chris Kingsnorth 40:26
It's not. So it's kind of open source if you like in that you as long as you represent the ethos of Protospeil, which is not for profit, and it's reciprocal playtesting no one like owns specific parts of the play testing, you can essentially do it, I did reach out to the people that organised it. And I did ask them, and there's lots of information on various Protospeil websites about how to run your own. And so the info was there. But what wasn't there is the fact that no one's ever done one in the UK, I didn't know if anyone knew what Protospeils were, I didn't really know like, what kind of venues we'd do it in what I get the vibe that in the US there's a lot more kind of convention centres or hotels that do events where rooms to do this kind of thing are potentially cheaper or easier to find. And I think that was one of my major challenges was finding a venue to do it. That was somewhere people could get to that was accessible that had like the stuff we needed and the dates that were available. And so yeah, it kind of happened by accident. But I was like, Well, I can keep thinking about whether it's going to work or not. Or I can just try and do it and find out. And I decided to go for the latter option. So I kind of fell into it. But once I decided to do it, I decided to see it through to the end. And if it went well, great. And if it didn't, then now I know. I think I'm very much that kind of person that I'd rather try it out and find if it works rather than wonder whether it was ever going to.
James 41:48
Yeah, I mean that when it makes sense. That's the way to do it isn't it is to is to find out. I mean, that's Dare I say the soul of playtesting is that I try to have gone some try it out. Is it gonna fail or not? Right,
Chris Kingsnorth 41:59
Exactly. And maybe it's a mindset kind of thing that that I like that kind of challenge. And maybe that's what drew me to games and design and even Event Management very much that kind of vibe of you do all the preparation and hope people come, right. That's the that's the kind of way it works. So
James 42:16
Yeah, definitely with events, there's also an always inevitably some kind of On the day things. Maybe something isn't worked 100% There's an issue that you just could not have foreseen that comes up, even if you're planning is really good.
Chris Kingsnorth 42:28
Exactly.
James 42:29
And suddenly you're firefighting something, and there's a little bit of iteration in that process is
Chris Kingsnorth 42:33
there is yeah, that's playtesting of the event rather than a playtesting event.
James 42:38
Yes. Playtesting of the event itself. And how many people do you think, are you, dare I say obviously, you may not want to say how many people are you expecting for this Protospeil 2022?
Chris Kingsnorth 42:46
So I've got room and therefore would like 100 attendees per day. So obviously, some people might get two day tickets, so they might come and come across both days. But I would like to have a sort of like turnstile 100 attendees per day, because I think that the space can take it, that'll be a really nice atmosphere without being too chaotic. And also it means that we can essentially at the end of the day, the more people that come, the more money we can make for charity, and more play testers that can be there and more games that can get tested. So it's one of those, the more than merrier kind of vibes.
James 43:19
And how beneficial is it being located in that sort of effectively the centre of games, at least as far as tabletop wargames go in the UK and Nottingham.
Chris Kingsnorth 43:31
So it is a great place to do it. Nottingham is an interesting place from a tabletop perspective, because it used to be known as the lead belt, because it was where Games Workshop started. And so you have lots of either current or past employees of Games Workshop who either have splintered off and done their own game design things, or they are doing it as well as working for Games Workshop. What's interesting is we didn't have any regular playtesting events until about six months ago in Nottingham. And it's one of those things that when I joined and I was doing Protospeil, I was like, oh, people aren't doing this kind of thing in Nottingham, which is interesting. From a being central point of view. It's great for travel for people because that's the great thing. We're in the middle of the country, right? So it's it's further up than Birmingham. So if you're a bit further up than that, it's easy to get to and it's pretty much central easy to get to from London things I do realise it's not easy for people to come down from Scotland, I do feel like they sometimes do get short shrift if you come from Scotland because there's only certain events for that. But obviously it made sense for me to organise it here because it's where I live and it means I can physically go and look at venues and find out things and I know the town and I know the transport links to be able to recommend to people and I couldn't have done Protospeil, the first one, without the Nottingham tabletop industry collective. So there's lots of different people involved in that there's needy cat games. So James Hewitt and Sophie and they were so kind to invite me to that not knowing who I was, and saying, Do you want to come along to this, you might meet some people who know some stuff. Because I didn't know anything back then I was very naive, but but had an idea of what I could do. And with their support and the support of other people I met through that I've been able to do loads of stuff. So doing it in Nottingham for me, had I never done it in Nottingham and never done Protospeil, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now. So it's one of those things that I it's lots of things that fall into place that I could never have controlled that brought me to this point, I suppose.
James 45:33
Yeah. Make sense? What was the first tabletop collective event that you attended, then? Because I've been once I think so far, obviously, it's a little bit further for me, because I'm down based in South London. So,
Chris Kingsnorth 45:44
Of course.
James 45:45
As a little a little bit more complicated for me. But yeah, what's the first one you went to?
Chris Kingsnorth 45:49
I think it was one of their breakfasts. So they tended to, pre COVID, They did like an industry collective breakfast. And it was usually about half, eight, nine o'clock on like a Wednesday morning until 10. Ish. And then they also do ones in the evening. And it was one of the breakfasts that I managed to get to, because back then I was doing over to medicine. So my shift times were like all over the place. So being able to do something on a certain day was tricky. But also I did have days where I knew I wasn't at work. So I could go to those kinds of things. And I just happened to have one day that I went and I sort of went, and they did a nice thing, where at the start, they generally get people just introduce themselves and say a little something. And that kind of kicked it off. And people were interested, and they wanted to hear more about the ideas I had for it. And yeah, it was lovely. There were some local companies that supported sponsoring the event for banners and things like that. And again, all those little things added up to me being able to do that event, which I would never be able to do like just me as a as a silo. So yeah, doing at Nottingham is one of those things that it feels like it's the natural place to do it. But actually from playtesting events until recently, Nottingham has actually been not the the hub of that compared to other cities by the looks of it. But we're we're slowly making changes to that and improving that situation.
James 47:05
Well, yeah, I mean, that's really interesting. I find this quite surprising, because it is such a central place in in the United Kingdom for this kind of game development, I guess, I guess. But I guess with the skew towards war games, and miniatures and those kind of pieces. It's a bit different, right. Like they feel like the explosion recently in designing games, there's been a lot more about designing board games than it's been about designing war games, which I think it's, it's sort of hobby heyday was probably more like the 70s and 80s. To be honest,
Chris Kingsnorth 47:34
I feel like it's, that's definitely a part of it. And I think that the Venn diagram of war gamers and board gamers, obviously, there is some crossover. But the Venn diagram of war gamers, and board gamers who would be interested in coming to a playtesting event for board games is a much smaller sliver,
James 47:51
yes, by definition, that's an even tighter circle, isn't it? Well, it's more than that.
Chris Kingsnorth 47:55
And so I feel that that's probably why those worlds didn't meet for Protospeil specifically, but there are people who came to it, who also do loads of Wargaming. And I think having the option to bring those two worlds together in Nottingham is a really unique sort of situation that you don't get in other cities. And we're currently trying to kind of bring those worlds together with kind of the companies that are coming out of Nottingham and the fact that Games Workshop are here and yeah, trying to work together with local companies to do those kinds of things and make it more of a hub for both, well, just tabletop games in general. So whether that be war, board, card, RPGs, whatever you cast under that umbrella.
James 48:36
Well, certainly, you know, I've met quite a lot people there, for example, who are artists and graphic designers who specialise in the game space because of Games Workshop and other companies. So you can see that there's like a lot of related skills there. But I still find that fact they hadn't done in places recently, quite fascinating, because I think about in here in Croydon, in South London, we have a play test event that happens every single week. And it's one that we do that has sometimes up to 15 people attend it. And then you know, we're getting that week in week out. And I think well we have that Nottingham doesn't until recently have something like that. It's kind of quite extraordinary in some ways. I think maybe partly we have such a fantastic resource in eluded quest here in Croydon as well, which makes an enormous difference in terms of having like a what, literally the world's best board game Cafe according to Gama, at least. So that definitely is wonderful to have that here. That's really fantastic. Now you I just said you actually also been working on a game that has a bit more of a kind of, dare I say utilitarian and practical role to play.
Chris Kingsnorth 49:36
Therapeutic. Yeah. So therapeutic. I would probably say.
James 49:40
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So So tell me more about that. That sounds like a really curious concept when I was reading about it.
Chris Kingsnorth 49:46
So this is something that I thought about when I was working as a pediatrician because most of my day sadly involved me making kids sad because I had to take blood from them or they had to go for a scan that was loud and scary. Or we had to do some other procedure that involves them being in a situation that's unfamiliar for them, and therefore scary. And we have absolutely fantastic play therapists who are trained to help us prepare children for procedures. And they're trained in, you know, aspects of child play and child psychology. And if I was to say to one of the play therapists, I'm going to take blood from this patient at four o'clock, would you mind going and have a chat with them, then at two o'clock, they'd go, and they'd take materials with them to help prepare that child for the procedure that was going to happen. And that would involve some play, and some sort of explanation of the procedure that was going to happen and things like that. The problem is, as with many things in the NHS, sadly, there are only a limited number of play specialists, and they're not always available. And in my head, I was thinking this is such a valuable resource. Is there a way we can have like an alternative if the play therapists aren't available? And what if parents could do a bit of this preparatory work themselves, that wasn't just reading a leaflet, which is often what people get given when their child's coming in, your child's coming in for, you know, blood to be taken, here's what's going to happen. And it's generally focused at the adults, there might be some stuff about the child, but it's generally a leaflet or something. There's lots of stuff being done with videos and exciting things like that for kids, which is great. But I was like, what if, could we make it about play? And the idea I had was, in the back of my mind, I was thinking about button shy games and the concept of 18 card decks and the fact that you can do loads of those. And I wondered, could we make preparation decks that were basically a game, a tool to teach kids about the procedure they were going to have. And they also worked as a distraction technique during the procedure themselves. So the idea will be that on one side of the cards, there will be a cartoon version of this is what's going to happen. So someone will clean your hand, and then someone will do this. And they'll do that in steps. And it will be accompanied by a thing that the parents can read out. And basically, the plan would be the child would put them in order and talk about it with their parents, and two of the cards will be different. And one would be a little certificate card that they can fill in at the end when they've had the procedure. And one is, one is a How am I feeling card. So it lets them they talk through and they can explain, they can point to the thing about how they're feeling about it. And then the cards flip over. And there are essentially like many Where's Wally's so that when you're in the procedure, they can be held by the parent so they can be looking for things in these pictures while someone's doing a procedure. Where's Wally books are very well used in pediatrics for this exact reason.
James 53:00
Is it because it's it's taking attention away of that primarily?
Chris Kingsnorth 53:03
Yes, exactly. And they're looking for something specifically. And that really helps with the stress, it's a distraction technique, essentially. But sometimes the books are locked away, or they get tatty, or we don't have them or whatever, or they're bulky and you can't carry like a Where's Wally book in your pocket. So the idea will be then use these and each deck will be for a different procedure. So it might be I'm having a plaster cast of my arm, and maybe I'm going down for a CT scan those kinds of things. And my plan would be we'll have these, and parents will be able to get them. So they can do like preparation for kids in advance of coming to hospital. And they be a really like cheap, easy thing to buy, because it's an 18 card deck. And also the hospitals to be able to have them on hand so that the people doing the procedure can go and get the deck and take it to the child and say, Why don't you have a little look through this while I'm getting all this stuff ready for those times when the play therapist isn't there. And it's never going to be a replacement for them ever. But it will hopefully bridge a gap where there's a need when we don't have that and allow parents and children to kind of take a bit more agency over the things themselves because it can be a parent with child thing without another person necessarily getting involved at the early stages, which I think can be really powerful.
James 54:17
Yeah, and presumably these would be because they contain a certificate for the child. These will be like a disposable item that you could just produce quite cheap, fairly cheap quality card, I'm guessing
Chris Kingsnorth 54:26
Yes.
James 54:27
And they're kind of just wrapped up in some cheap way that you can then just give it to the child and they take it away with them presumably.
Chris Kingsnorth 54:34
Yes, the dream would be if we could find a plastic card material that can stand up to being wiped with disinfectant wipes, difficult with cards, that you would essentially you could also you could have those ones but you could also have ones in like a chest on the ward and it'd be all the procedures and it would be
James 54:52
Right
Chris Kingsnorth 54:53
and you also then have a stack of the certificate cards and you go and you give the these wiper ones to the kids they do all the stuff they use them, then they all get disinfected and return. So you've always on hand got that. nailing that down is the thing that's going to make the difference. But it's one of those things that once we've kind of finished with the game during the moment, that's something that we're going to be moving forward with. And taking forward to, to the NHS and charities to try and make into it a thing.
James 55:22
And is this a product you're developing effectively at Stone Sword? Or is this a separate separate kind of thing? We're doing
Chris Kingsnorth 55:27
We're doing it we're doing it under kind of the umbrella of stone sword as it but I think it will probably end up being something that's another like parallel company or another parallel thing eventually. So that it's very much kind of the therapeutic arm of stone sword games, if you like.
James 55:43
Yes, and indeed makes a lot of sense. I mean, I think, yeah, it's a very different market. It's
Chris Kingsnorth 55:49
Yeah, definitely
James 55:50
I mean, we're talking here, complete chalk and cheese, I mean, the the goals of what you're trying to achieve in play might be the medium. But you've got very different goals there with incredibly different market. So that.
Chris Kingsnorth 56:00
But it's one of those products, that the, to be able to make a product like that you have to have a fairly specific set of skills. And I feel like I have that set of skills in that I have the knowledge to do the medical bits, and I have the game design knowledge and the ability because of where I'm working. That puts us in a really good position to do that. And I think it's going to be a really exciting thing moving forward, which can hopefully bring some good to situations that aren't pleasant for people.
James 56:27
Yeah, well, I would say, how many people who are game developers, employers, gainers were also paediatricians, that's, that's quite a unique cross section. So
Chris Kingsnorth 56:39
I don't think there's many of us,
James 56:40
They're are probably not too many. So I suspect, you're quite safe there, you're not about to be suddenly drowned in 100, different competitors, as good as that would be for the children, though. It would certainly be something where I suspect you will be working on that one as a focus at some point. That's great. That's really cool. I think that's a it's a, again, such an imaginative, powerful use of that. And again, using play to do that, I think it's just such a such a cool idea. And it seems like an eminently practical one as well, even in the more disposable form of it, that, you know, you can just produce those, give them out. That's great.
Chris Kingsnorth 57:17
I think it's one of those things, it could be used as a promotional item, it could be used by charities so that it actually can be adapted to their colours and their logos and those kinds of things. So that's kind of what we're going to go for and making it making it something that's very malleable, has the same end effect, but can be used for raising awareness of certain things.
James 57:38
Absolutely brilliant idea. And have you got other kinds of ideas in your in your kind of your pipeline, so to speak of things, you're thinking that other applications for this kind of thing and play in the medical context?
Chris Kingsnorth 57:49
So we do, I think that it's one of those things that it's a tricky world. Because if you are being factual about something, and you're explaining what's going to happen, that's different when you get into the world of using it as a more therapeutic tool, things like diagnostics, or teaching somebody how to do a procedure that suddenly goes into the world of medical devices. And so you've got to be really careful. Because what we're making here is not a medical device, it's no different to a leaflet, it just happens to be a game. Whereas if I was there making a thing that was like, Oh, we're now going to give the 18 card decks to medical students to teach them how to take blood from somebody. That's a whole different like sphere of research and regulation that you would need to go through. So as much as I would love for that to be a thing. I think, especially for a small company, that's just not a viable, viable thing for us to do. Now, if we, if this product took off, and we had people that were interested in developing that who did have those, those links, then that will be something I'd be very interested in. Because I've always been interested in teaching medical students and nursing students and allied health healthcare professionals say, Well, that would be another potential but not for us at the moment, I don't think,
James 59:00
Yeah, makes total sense. To be honest, I mean that I have a friend who works in the medical device space. And he's working on a really fascinating project, which has to do with treating people with epilepsy using music,
Chris Kingsnorth 59:14
Very exciting,
James 59:15
And it turns out that they're able to outperform quite a lot of drugs, using music that's calibrated to their brainwaves. It's really fascinating stuff.
Chris Kingsnorth 59:24
That's cool. That's really cool.
James 59:26
It's really, really cool. But the problem is, is that even though it's just scan, a scan, and then music, that's still classed as a medical device. So there, there's a huge amount of of bureaucracy to navigate to make that work, even though the possible risks of it, I mean, compared to drugs are incredibly low. So I've really, really liked astronomically low. So it's really interesting to think again, as soon as you're in that space, you've got to start navigating that issue. So probably best just to stick to the kind of leaflet replacement At least for now, yeah,
Chris Kingsnorth 1:00:01
That's it, we do so in the pipeline as well, parallel again to that product is, watch this space. If anybody's interested in gardening, there's going to be an 18 card, gardening product coming your way from from us as well, in the very near future.
James 1:00:17
Oh, interesting. I'll have to keep an eye on that one. That sounds that sounds gonna be like, That's very, very interesting that you'll just have to tease us with that for now.
Chris Kingsnorth 1:00:25
I will for now.
James 1:00:28
So, before we kind of wrap up, I want a couple of things. I think the first question I would ask is, is, if someone's to get into being a game developer, obviously, you've had quite a unique path. But what can you take from your unique path that you could recommend others if they really want to get into more the development side of things,
Chris Kingsnorth 1:00:44
A huge amount of getting into this industry is getting stuck in and being kind. And honestly, I think if you can keep those two things in your mind, when you approach anything with trying to get into the industry, you're not going to go far wrong. What I would say is, my first thing was that I was like, Oh, this looks like a cool thing. But no one's ever done it here, let's give it a go. If you can find something, anything that's like, Oh, this is a bit different. And you're like, Oh, no one's ever done it, don't just instantly think it's been tried. And it failed. It could just be no one's ever done it before. And that can be anything that could be like, you know, a certain design project you want to do, or it could be an event like I did. And I think that like looking for those opportunities. And getting stuck into them is really important, because you'll meet people through that, that then in a few years down the road, they like they might have a link that you never even realised. And it's such a small industry, that by meeting people and doing it in like a genuine way, not literally like not networking, per se, obviously, that's important, but more just being enthusiastic about the things you enjoy, and showing genuine interest in other people's, what they're doing, will stand you in great stead, because they'll remember that. And if you're genuinely passionate about it, it might be they've got a tiny project you need a hand with and you're like, Oh, I could spare an hour a week to do that. Yeah, I'll get involved in that. And then next time, they need someone to do it. Now it's two hours a week. And it might be a gradual introduction into the into the industry, which is very much the more normal route into tabletop games. I've been very lucky. And I every day, I realised that I have been very fortunate to get to where I am now. And it's, as I say, it's timing. It's lots of other things. So don't be disheartened. If you are trying to do these things. And that hasn't yet happened. Doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong necessarily. It just means that the opportunity's still out there for you. It's just not shown itself yet. So yeah, be kind, be passionate, be honest. And like, just do it because you'd love it. And I know that sounds a little bit pie in the sky, perhaps. But I honestly think that's what makes people take notice of what it is you're doing or want to do.
James 1:03:06
Well, I think people can sense whether it's genuine or not most of the time, I guess unless you're a complete psychopath. And you're very good at giving off a sense of authenticity that isn't there. For most people, they will only be able to know that people will be able to sense whether something is authentic or not. I mean, this is a strong sense I have whenever I meet people, if they're coming into tabletop, and they are thinking maybe it's just a money opportunity or something, which is a terrible plan in general. But we're thinking that that could often sense pretty quickly, that they don't really have that genuine interest, or they have they have a kind of slightly, slightly more selfish approach to it. And I've found that as well, if you're prepared to kind of give to get involved, to be passionate, offer your, offer help. That's really the best way to do it in whatever way and then everyone's path, it does tend to be very weird. Mine very much from a kind of formal product management background is, for example, very different to yours. So it is this just extraordinary variety. But that commonality of passion, and genuine interest, I think is seems to be something that's consistently coming up across many of these conversations.
Chris Kingsnorth 1:04:13
And it's one of the things that makes the tabletop industry so interesting, because there's no single route in everybody is so different. And this is the thing about like, I don't know if you found it with your previous work, but in medicine, every person I was in medicine with for the past 12 years, we've all done the same thing. We've literally done almost the same thing to the to the point where we've all done the same exams, and we've all done the same thing. Whereas in tabletop gaming, you will come in and you'll meet people who've done things that you would never have imagined and they'll have great stories and you'll have a great time just like if you're a people person and you enjoy learning about people. It's such a wonderful way to do it, while also getting to do some games stuff like is the dream right?
James 1:04:57
Certainly that's one of the really cool things I think about the industry in general is the number of characters that you meet to have very, very wide ranging backstories. I mean, I think for me, interestingly, product management is also another of those disciplines where you get people from quite a wide variety of
Chris Kingsnorth 1:05:13
Interesting.
James 1:05:14
Yeah. But again, I would however, say if you were the industry I was in before, which was advertising is very much an industry where people who, again, have a somewhat similar background, are moving between all the same companies, it's probably not quite as regimented as that very, very strict path that exists in medicine is, but nonetheless is more common. Games are definitely a kind of collection of renegades very much is kind of how I certainly I see the games industry,
Chris Kingsnorth 1:05:45
But I think that's what gives it the life it has. And that's what makes it really interesting. And I love that. And that's why I love going to conventions and playtesting and stuff, you just get to meet people. And that's one of the most I think, personally, I think it's one of the most rewarding things you can do in your life is to find out about the people and to, to just learn cool stuff about them. So
James 1:06:05
100% 100% indeed? And what should we be looking for from you coming up soon? What What should we be our own should be and keeping an eye on PrEP decks? Is it what the new sort of the Cosmoctopus Kickstarter, that's gonna happen soon?
Chris Kingsnorth 1:06:18
Yep. So Cosmoctopus Kickstarter will kick off on the 25th of October. And so that'll be running for three weeks. So please watch out for that the preview page is already up because you Google it. And then after that we're going to be focusing on from a kind of parallel point of view, the prep decks are definitely the next thing, and then maybe the gardening thing. But also, we are currently trying to get hold of a couple of IPs for games, which we may well be announcing next year, if that goes well. And also next year, hopefully, we're bringing out one of my own games, which the team felt was worthy of being being published. So that'll probably be towards the tail end of of next year. So Cosmo is the main, the main thing we're aiming for at the moment. And it's all all speed ahead on that. And they're very excited to get out there in the world,
You're gonna be a very busy man, it sounds like over the next the next few months and year plus from the sound of it.
Definitely, I definitely am going to be in that situation. And then obviously, on top in the spare time, we've got Protospiel coming up in November.
James 1:07:25
Yes, let's not forget the convention as well, which will have significantly multiplied in size, as well.
Chris Kingsnorth 1:07:31
Yeah, hopefully. And we'll hopefully have some speakers coming to that as well, which would be nice. And yep being supported by Panda this year, kindly. And The Game Crafter is sending us a big box of bits again, as they did last time. So there'll be lots of things to play with. And you know, might even be able to make it whole game during the weekend and get it played tested. Who knows.
James 1:07:52
Oh, wow. That's really cool. Well, I mean, I to be honest, I was planning to come anyway. But I think 100% I'll come along now like That sounds really cool.
Chris Kingsnorth 1:07:59
I think it'd be cool to have a game jam within the convention with a something like that, which I'm trying to plan. So just a simple kind of in your downtime, if you want to make a game, why not? Let's all see what we can make. Yeah,
James 1:08:10
Definitely. That sounds absolutely fantastic.
Chris Kingsnorth 1:08:12
Yeah. So really looking forward to that. And it's, as I say, that's all the combination of things I love games, getting to meet people and doing an event so yeah, looking forward to that a lot.
James 1:08:21
Wonderful. Well, Chris, thank you so much for this conversation. It's been a real pleasure, I think particularly great to give people more insight into how developing works and some of the really cool stuff you're working on.
Chris Kingsnorth 1:08:33
Great. Thank you very much for having me. Really, really appreciate it.
James 1:08:45
Producing fun is produced by Naylor Games, if you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at NaylorJames and write me an email James at Naylor games.com. Until next time.
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As well as running what may be the most successful podcast about game design ever - the Boardgame Design Lab - Gabe Barrett has run 10 successful board game-related Kickstarter projects: including a solo-only game that raised more than $65,000. In this episode, we talk about why he started the show, why he stopped, the power of building community, and useful advice for budding creators.
Website: www.boardgamedesignlab.com
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BGDLCommunity
“Robomon” - new game launch: https://gamefound.com/projects/gabe-barrett/robomon
Listen to the Episode: YouTube - Podcast
James 0:00
Hi I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective.
Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is Gabe Barrett podcaster, game designer, publisher and creator of the Board Game Design Lab. Long before I was bitten by the podcasting bug myself, I was a regular listener to Gabe Barrett's show. Until very recently, he's put out a podcast about game design every week since 2016. He's interviewed what seems like every game designer about almost every conceivable topic in search for insights useful to the ever growing audience of people that want to make games. In the process. He's built a huge community around his podcast, with 12,000 people in his Facebook group alone. As if he weren't busy enough, he's managed 10 Kickstarter projects in the same period, including a solo only game that raised in excess of $65,000, in my view, Gabe is a true master of building a gaming community and gaining traction in a market by giving something back first. So I was very keen to understand more about his motivations, methods and unique path to making multiple successful projects. Gabe is an absolute force of nature. And this conversation was enlightening in unexpected ways. From the incredible benefits of being in a small industry, to the unpredictable but practical ways that building your own crowd can help you succeed. And sage advice about becoming a cannon waiting to explode. This episode is brimming with useful insights for all kinds of creators. We join just as Gabe is telling me what it's like being out of the podcasting saddle.
Gabe Barrett 1:58
Muscle and it just gets stronger and stronger. And what's funny, I haven't recorded actually, since May, and we're in August right now. And that's weird, because I had so many in the tank getting ready like for the end of the show, which is I knew was going to happen and like end end of June, early July. But I had recorded so much I haven't recorded in a long time, James so I'm really excited to be here man really appreciate you asking me to be on the show. My life has been absolutely bananas lately. And so this is nice just to sit down and kind of feel back in my like comfort zone really of just chatting about gaming stuff over a podcast. This is excellent. Thank you, sir.
James 2:33
You really are more than welcome. Thank you so much for accepting my invitation. It was brilliant, that you're able to be on the show. Because your podcast was probably the very first podcasts actually listened to in games. And absolutely one of my favourite gaming lessons. I think I discovered ludology later and that had some that's got some great stuff on it as well. But yeah, I can think back to quite a few episodes. Actually. You had a guy on who was really interesting from a marketing perspective. I remember he does the he has I'm trying to remember the guy's name now he's been on. I think you've made we've done a few episodes with him.
Gabe Barrett 3:04
Andrew Lowen.
James 3:06
Yes. With Angels and Demons, the kind of
Gabe Barrett 3:08
Yeah, that game. Deliverance is the game he's been working.
James 3:11
Yes.
Gabe Barrett 3:11
Yeah,
James 3:12
That's the one. Yeah, yeah. And I remember that was brilliant, because it really made me reassess online marketing, and what it potentially could do in games. And that got me really, really intrigued. And I liked how, although you obviously tended to be more design focused, I really liked the way that from quite early on, sort of, from my perception anyway of it, that you were looking at games in the round very much.
Gabe Barrett 3:35
Yeah. And that was the goal, especially as my personal like gaming journey continued. Because, honestly, I did three hundred and one episodes, I didn't ever do a single episode that I was not excited about in some way, right. And so the way you keep that going, is to make sure you're always talking to people that are one, interesting, and two, have something to say and the other like, there's some kind of expert in some way, shape, form or fashion, but also that I had a lot of questions about. And so that turned into, alright, let's talk about publishing. Let's talk about marketing. Let's talk about package design. And let's talk about all the many things because my journey was going that direction. And so I had tonnes and tonnes of questions. And then I would just reach out to people that I personally wanted to talk to, that I thought would be an interesting person to pick their brain, and then I can turn it into content at the same time. And so it just worked out really, really well. And so that's, that's always my advice to people trying to make content is be careful about, like getting stuck doing the same thing over and over again, because eventually you're gonna get tired and you're gonna have to pivot and evolve and change. And so the best way to avoid that, you know, where you're getting just kind of burnt out on the same old thing is just go where your excitement leads. And I feel like if you have a community that's built up around you and what you're doing, there'll be most of them will be along for the ride. And that's definitely the case with board games and publishing as well. And so I just kind of go where the juice is You know, and see what happens.
James 5:01
I think that's great advice for almost every podcast I think about some of the most successful ones in the world, in any sphere, are often built on people saying how much the reason they get people on is because they're very interested in in the guests. And that's something whenever people ask like Joe Rogan about his podcast, for example, which I think is probably still the biggest buy number listenership in the world, he talks very much about, they're the people that he's genuinely wants to talk to. I think the same is true. Yeah, of lots of different podcasts. And for me, it's really interesting that you touch upon something there. That is very, very interesting, when you said that it was actually a kind of excuse to talk to these people about precisely subjects that actually are going to be really helpful. And I feel a little bit like, one of the sort of secret benefits of doing a podcast, although it can be a lot of work. Is that precisely that? Like, I feel like Oh, my God, I've learned so much from so many people already that I've got to interview. And I think, Whoa, I'm rather privileged here I have all of these amazing people to talk to who have got some really interesting wisdom to impart. And that's, that's been fantastic.
Gabe Barrett 6:04
Yeah. It's always funny too when people you have invited on the show, send you an email, and they'll say, Hey, thanks for having me here. Are you kidding? I can't believe how that you came on the show. Like, thank you, like, I'm the one benefiting here. And then the people that obviously, get to listen, and that was definitely the case early on, man, like I never ever expected to do 300 episodes, I never expected it to turn into a community and this big, bigger thing than me. Like, there's 12,000 People in the Facebook group right now, that blows my mind. Like, I never thought that would happen. And I just thought, hey, I want to do a show about games and game design. And let's see what happens and see where it goes. And then all these people just kept accepting interviews, like Jamie Stegmeier, Matt Leacock, and Rob Daviau. And all these folks, they were just like, Yeah, I'd love to be on the show. It's like, Are you kidding? Like, I'm nobody, I've literally done nothing that you would look at and go, Oh, yeah, that guy's worth talking to. And, um, and so it's just been amazing that, that people who will join you in anybody thinking about making a podcast, creating content, whatever, just got to put yourself out there. And you might be surprised like I was at how many people say yes, and then you're off to the races?
James 7:12
Yeah. I mean, it's extraordinary, isn't it? I think, do you think it's partly because the industry is quite naturally open as well. I mean, it's also benefits maybe from being a bit smaller than some industries, too.
Gabe Barrett 7:23
I think it's because I'm so handsome. And people would look it up, like, Oh, that guy. He's so attractive. Let me talk to him.
James 7:28
I can confirm this is true. We're talking on zoom right now.
Gabe Barrett 7:32
No, you're you're 100%. On point, it's definitely because our industry is very tiny compared to video games compared to movies compared to books and novels and all that kind of stuff. And so like we have, we basically have access to Steven Spielberg effectively, right. And we can reach out to the best creators, the best people in the industry, like we can reach out to them directly through BoardGameGeek. Like, they all have an account, and you can direct message them easily, right. And they check it and they respond, right. And it's easy to find people's email addresses, versus, you know, Steven Spielberg, that you'd have to talk to, like, 17 people before you ever even got a text through to him, you know, of five words, right. And so that is a huge benefit that we have, and you go to Gen Con, you can sit down and play a game, you can play the creation of the effective Steven Spielberg's of our industry. Right. And that's just, it's nuts. And it's such a joy. It's such a privilege that we have that this is the thing we're excited about. And unfortunately, that also means that our industry doesn't make near as much money as some of the other ones. Like we're not in this zillion dollar space, which kind of makes content creation a little harder to make money off of versus like the like, you can have a video game channel hit a million subscribers, and it's not that big a deal. Like there's so many of them. But if you had a million subscribers in the board game space, wow. Like you were in the next level, like top five of of channels, right? And so it's just, there's always sacrifices, there's give and take. But um, yeah, we're, we're in a great space, man, I really enjoy it.
James 9:00
Well, I mean, that's an interesting question about that, because that's one of the things I really wanted to ask you was, are you able to live from just the kind of board game design lab stuff? Or actually is the what you do? Because obviously, you make loads of games as well, on Kickstarter, kind of part of that, too.
Gabe Barrett 9:17
Oh, absolutely. It's all one big holistic thing, right? I think I could probably live off of BGDL, board game design lab stuff. If I if I really wanted to, like if I was putting out like two or three courses a year, if I was putting out, you know, one to two books a year, I probably could, I can probably like piece together a living off of just that. The problem with that is my brain doesn't work that way. My brain is like, ooh, shiny object over there all the time. And so I'm always like, try new things, and you know, whatever I'm excited about. And so that turns into a lot of board games and different types of games and you know, solo games. And right now, I'm doing a lot of narrative like story driven, open world kind of game stuff, which a lot of fun but also crazy and huge and so I kind of pieced together my income through a lot of different means. But also, something else to think about is like I would not, if I was going to write a book, and I go online, and I find a podcast or a course or something like that, from someone who's teaching me about it, I want to know what they've written. Like, what have you done? Right. And so that's always been a thing with me is, as I was making board game design content, I was, I tried to be careful not to kind of get above my standing, I guess, you know, and, like, not come out with a course and be like, Hey, you should do game design like this, this and this. And people are like, what games have you made? And I'm like, Well, I've got some prototypes. I, I just didn't want to do that, you know. And so like, even the books I've written, most of them have been reaching out to established designers, getting their ideas, getting their feedback, getting their answers to questions, and then like, putting all of that together, where I'm more of an editor than a writer. And I've done a lot of writing, but it's a lot of like piecing things together from other people who you should listen to more than me. Right. And so that's always a challenge, too. And so if I was only doing game design content, I don't feel like I would have near the credibility, right? I also wouldn't have the stories like on the podcast, I wouldn't be able to go okay, I'm working on this game. Here's what I'm dealing with. Here's, here's an answer, I found to a question. Here's something I'm still fighting through. Let me ask you about it. Like, I wouldn't have all the knowledge base to kind of pull from. And so that's always something to think about, as well, again, don't get too locked into the one singular thing. And so yeah, it's kind of a mixed bag. As far as like all the different things I'm doing.
James 11:29
Yeah, almost almost, you really have to make something make several games, I guess, to be able to be in that position to kind of impart that knowledge, even when you are editing and you're bringing those answers together. Being able to contextualise all of that and bring it together is going to be much easier when you actually really, really understand subject matter because you've been there done it.
Gabe Barrett 11:49
Exactly.
James 11:50
I actually on that note, that's something I really liked about the format to your book. And I can't remember which would have first the first one?
Gabe Barrett 11:57
Board game design advice.
James 11:58
Yes, that one with this idea of breaking it into stories from different designers. Because that's also how one of my other favourite books and board game design, which is the kobold board game design.
Gabe Barrett 12:11
Yeah, that's an old school one
James 12:12
that was really old school one. But again, the format of multiple essays. And I thought that was so useful as a way of doing this, rather than trying to construct some kind of complete how to guide, I think, in some ways, because I think that's a very good format in the same way that you know, I'm fine to just being got my to get my hands on a copy of the building blocks, tabletop game mechanics by Isaac shadow and Jeff angle. Yeah, and again, it's like, it's really useful in a slightly different way as a tool, because that's looking at building blocks, which on their own, actually, that's not gonna be not gonna be very useful. But it's a reference in the level of that thinking rather than the level of the kind of more meta problem solving level that you find in your book, for example, is a very useful way way to approach it. So I can see how for you that the podcasts, creating all of these games fit together quite organically, I guess. And to some extent, you couldn't really pull them apart entirely.
Gabe Barrett 13:08
Right? Everything informs everything else. Right. And it's just and that's, that's game design in general, honestly, like, the game I've been working on for the last two and a half years in earnest, right, of really, really designing it. When I say two and a half. I don't mean, oh, I started two and a half years ago, and then I left it for six months. And I picked it back up for a couple months, I, literally two and a half years of nearly daily working on this thing, right? It actually started six years ago, when it was a totally different idea. And it was way bigger than I could have put my arms around. And so it was so overwhelming, I put it back on the shelf. And then many years later, because of learning because of reading because of all the podcast, interviews and and talking to people, I realised how to solve the overwhelming problem that I didn't know how to solve years earlier, and then picked it back up right and then kept going. And so it's really interesting how the creative space that we're in is so much built on the wealth of knowledge, right? Because you might work on something today that turns out to be a terrible idea. It's useless. You can't figure it out. It's probably not gonna sell. Okay, fine. Five years from now, you have a totally different thing you're working on. You go Wait, what did I do five years ago, that I had, oh, that was Oh, and you go find your old prototype, your old notebook, you know that you wrote some notes in. And and you're like, oh, that's the, that's the answer. And so it's cool how we are in a space where it's just like naturally organic, right? It's always changing, evolving. And you you literally could reach back in the file from years and years ago. And it turned into something that is pretty special today. And so it's it's interesting how it all works together.
James 14:39
Yeah, completely. And I think the inspiration can often come from many unlikely sources as well. It feels like almost the more interesting the inspiration or the more tangential to it. All right, like in some ways, in my experience, some of the less interesting games I've seen sent as prototypes have often come from places of someone saying well, I just want an abstract that isn't stuff, rather than are there some particular thematic inspiration, or some need to solve a very particular problem. And one of the things that makes me immediately look at kind of your career there, in interesting ways, this recent game that you've done, this trio of solo games, because one of the things that's been interesting looking back through your Kickstarters, is that you've done a lot of projects that are really quite unusual. There, for example, lots of solo projects, the idea of going right, we're gonna do a fundraising of a trio of just solo games, I would have thought from the outside, gone. Well, okay, we've got a creator here who's primarily known more for the broader business of bringing bringing knowledge and helping people learn and understand about games, you're going to do something so focused as that I always think that's not going to raise any money. And then I look on Kickstarter and looking at the page and like, $67,000, from that, and so I'm always interested to know, where did the inspiration for example, to that come from? Because it seems like quite a bit of a left field choice.
Gabe Barrett 16:04
Yeah. So one thing I tell people all the time, is create where you are. And at the time, I was in Honduras, and I had lost my main gaming buddy, he had left we were working at a school, I was teaching English, he was teaching chemistry, he had moved back to the States. And so the main guy that I played games with that I played prototypes with, he was excellent at, like developing and helped me like answer questions and figure things out. He was gone. And so it was just me. And I was like, well, if it's just gonna be me, and my wife, usually we would play games, but she was super busy. I've got four kids, like she and I have a lot going on, okay, yeah. So late at night, you'd be like, 10 o'clock, but hey, you wanna play games, she's like, I'm going to bed, well I understand. So I just started working on solo games, because that's kind of what my life was like. And then especially because of pandemic and you couldn't go out. And so that's a lot of ways how it started, it was just like, my life is in this situation where solo games make a lot more sense. And they're a lot easier to play test and design, because I'm by myself. And so that's where it all started. And then with one of those games, a guy named Joe Clipsal. He, he designed what's called the hand of destiny. And he knew I was working on solo games, I had already published several. And he reached out and he said, Hey, I got this game. Actually, it was on the podcast, I interviewed him. And he was telling me about the game. And then after the interview, I was like, you've got to send me a prototype, I think that might be a game I might be interested in publishing. And, and he did, and it was excellent. It's this game you play in your hand. And you know, it's all kind of like Palm Island, but a dungeon crawl, basically. And it's a lot of fun. And so that was another thing that the podcast helped out with. Either, I was able to open the door to places that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise, because I had relationships. But then also people were able to open the door in with me, because now we have a relationship, right? And where they would say, Hey, I'm working on this thing. I go, Oh, let me introduce you to whoever I think they could help you. I think they might be interested in publishing the game like that. They're in your area, you should play test together, whatever. And so that's another thing to just kind of put yourself out there and relationships turn into good things.
James 17:56
what extent do you think being in Honduras influenced the podcast, because I can see how particularly the situation you're, in some extent, in the middle of pandemic, everyone's in that same situation, it's really hard to be able to play games with people, unless we're doing it on things like Tabletop Simulator, which personally I always find is like never quite the same.
Gabe Barrett 18:15
Yeah, It takes forever,
James 18:16
Right? It takes forever, move, click something grab, it makes this otherwise quite fluid experience of a tabletop game quite painful at times. What impact did that have doing the podcast there? Because it strikes me that that might have presented some some challenges?
Gabe Barrett 18:32
Oh of course, I mean, I was there for a little less than eight years. And so basically, the entire the entire time I was doing the podcast. And actually, so I got into game design, in my early 20s. But just as a hobby, just something every now and then I would have an idea. And I would write some notes, and it would turn into like a complete mess. And it would be awful and I'd be like ah who cares. And I would leave and I would come back and leave and come back, whatever. When I was in Honduras, I started listening to podcasts. I was listening to the Plaid Hat Games podcast, I was listening to Ludology, I was listening to a lot of them. And I just got more and more into game design. And I was doing I was working at an orphanage down there for a while. And my schedule was crazy. It was three weeks on one day off. And I was just losing my mind, right, because I was working 6am to five or 6pm. So 12 hours a day, three weeks straight. And just dealing with kids all day long, right. And these are not like typical kids. These are kids coming out of very, very broken situations. And, and so it was just very, very demanding of all my mental energy, my bandwidth, my spiritual bandwidth, everything was just poured out all day. And so I started really leaning into game design as a way to escape and just kind of have a way to like get my brain off of reality and go mess around with some game idea and some problem. I'm trying to solve some mechanism to make this theme come to life, whatever. And then out of that, I was like, Well, I really want to kind of get more into the industry like what does it look like to lean into this? And that was around the same time my wife and I my family we had left the orphanage We were working with an organisation to help kids transition out of orphanages, and kind of get real world skills and learn how to get jobs and go to college and stuff like that. And we were working with that organisation. And then I had more time, I wasn't working three weeks on one day off 12 hours a day. And so it was like, Okay, what if? What if I created a YouTube channel that Well, I don't think there's no game stores in Honduras. It's not like, I'm gonna go review board games. And I was just trying to, like, think through like what I want to do. I was like, what if I created a podcast, I was like, okay, and I just moved to a place that had a decent enough internet connection, where I could do that, right? And there was no video, really, it was a lot of audio stuff. And power would go out randomly, because reasons. And the internet connection would be awful sometimes. And so it all started there, right? And created a lot of challenges. But yes, it's just kind of crazy. Again, I never expected it to take off. I literally sent I think, like, 12 emails out early on. And I said, Hey, you know, sending out to different people I thought would be really cool to have on the show and people way above my paygrade. And I was like, Hey, I'm starting the show. This is what it's about. I love to have you on, you know, on for an interview to talk about this topic. And I think 10 out of 12 said yes. And just like, Okay, I guess we're doing this. I thought maybe Maybe one, maybe I could get one of those. And then 10 out of 12. And so
James 21:13
hang on. So you've sent these out before you'd done your first episode, right?
Gabe Barrett 21:18
Yep.
James 21:19
So you didn't really even know if you actually even really enjoyed the process at this point.
Gabe Barrett 21:23
No clue. Going on a whim and a hope and dadgum Jamie's Stegmeier was the first person to say yes, he was on there for the first show. And it just, and I think that's nothing. That's really good. That's a good point. I never thought about this. Him being my first guest. Probably set me up to continue doing it because it was so much fun. And he was so cool to talk to. And so when engaging, and he not only had good answers, but he also came back with good questions and put things back on me. And so that was just a really fun first episode. And then you get done. You go, Okay, I think I can do this. Can I do it for a long, long time? I don't know. But I can at least do it for the other nine people who've already said yes. And then we'll just see what happens. And as we were talking about before we hit hit record, like the average podcast doesn't make it past eight episodes. So if you can get to nine, you're already in like the top echelon, percentage wise of like, shows that exist. And so right from the get go, I already had nine episodes. I was like, Okay, that's cool. And then it just became scheduling and like staying consistent and making sure that a show came out every single Wednesday, and it did for 300 Wednesdays in a row. So it was yeah, a lot of fun. Man.
James 22:36
What year was that? The first one then?
Gabe Barrett 22:38
2016
James 22:39
2016. So actually, already by that point, point, it's not like Jamie Stegmeier wasn't already pretty big name right?
Gabe Barrett 22:46
Oh he was somebody.
James 22:49
isn't that after Scythe came out. Right? Like we're about that time.
Gabe Barrett 22:52
Yep.
James 22:52
Yeah. So fantastic. I mean, again, as you said, how awesome is it that we live in an industry where that's, that's a possibility, right? That someone is kind of big as him. I mean, famously, he is he's friendly and whenever I've spoken to him on like social media or chat. He's always brilliant. So at some point, I need to invite him on, because we'd love to have him as a guest on producing fun to talk about,
Gabe Barrett 23:13
he is the best. Like he's the best of us, as far as people in this industry. Like, it doesn't get any better than him. He's thoughtful. He's empathetic, he's engaging. He's kind. He's charismatic, like he, if we were going to have a person to go on the Joe Rogan podcast and represent all of us, I would elect him to go and chat. And so yeah, he's awesome.
James 23:32
Well, yeah, he's a great ambassador isn't he for the entire industry. Because he's, he managed to fuse being such a great guy, but also so successful financially as well. Like, if I look at how successful Stonemaier have been at making things that people really love, at scale, and turning over 10s of millions of dollars. Yeah, that's a kind of pretty, pretty unique achievement.
Gabe Barrett 23:54
Yeah, and he's brought so many new folks into the hobby, wingspan, did it, Scythe has done it like so many people, they see that thing. And they go, Oh, that looks interesting. And then, you know, next thing, you know, they bought 100 other games. And so we all benefit as publishers as people in the industry, from the work he's done. And there's a lot of other publishers out there too, that have done such a great job of bringing in new people, and then the rising tide lifts us all up.
James 24:18
Yeah, well, that's the thing, isn't it? I think that that's something is very much not a zero sum game, which explains why, I guess these podcasts if you're, if you're persistent, you are as energetic as you are with guests, keeping everyone you know, keep the thing moving all the time, can actually be very successful, because actually, people are quite happy to share knowledge to explore how to make things better, right? They're not they're not like, everything's a trade secret. We're going to be super guarded about it. And so in my experience, most of the people I meet who tend to have that more very trade secret orientated approach, actually don't tend to be that successful in the game industry either because I think they're not learning from other people either and just sharing it is more valuable than trying to hoard the knowledge. Like it's like it's sort of treasure or something, right?
Gabe Barrett 25:07
Yeah, absolutely. One thing I learned long time ago was, it's better to be a ladder builder than a ladder climber. And you end up in a much better place when you try to build ladders for other people, than just constantly like trying to commit yourself and keep them down and make sure you're ahead and push them down your foot while you're going up, whatever. And people see that and they reciprocate, there's a lot of kindness. But also we are privileged that we're in a industry, that people aren't just going to buy one thing. So if I'm selling cars, and I work at a Toyota dealership, I need to sell somebody a Toyota, because if they go buy a Honda, they're not gonna go buy a Toyota the next day, it's not like they're not gonna buy another car for like, three to seven years, you know, maybe 10, maybe 15. So, like, I have to make sure that my company is the one you buy. With board games, it's the complete opposite. If I can get you to buy my game, and it's good, and you enjoy it, you're gonna go, I want more of these today. And you're gonna go buy more, and you're not, you know, me, hopefully, you're gonna buy more from me, but also, you're gonna go out and find other games that you like, and you're gonna, your taste is gonna change, you're gonna get to a deeper where you don't want to go like heavier Euro. Or maybe you've got some kids that come along, right? Okay, let's get a bunch of family games. And so it makes sense for us to work together. Because we all benefit, right? Bringing more people in makes makes us all more money, we get it all make more cool projects and cool games and have cooler licenced IP's and stuff like that. So it just makes sense.
James 26:28
Do you think that's partly the property of the fact that I mean, generally, maybe unlike some segments of the market, it's one in which you have people who are, by their nature interested in such a wide variety of things, they're going to be from a wide variety of publishers, if I think about compared to adjacent stuff, like, for example, let's take Warhammer for example, Games Workshop, when people tend to buy into that they tend to buy into that company's products like very entirely, or the same thing with TCGs. Right, like Magic the Gathering as well. It's like they get into magic the gathering. And then obviously, they're much more alike than the general population to also be interested in board games. But they're probably not likely to collect all the TCGs because they decide that's my jam. They only buy a huge pile of Honda Civics. I've got no other way to compare it really. But with your analogy,
Gabe Barrett 27:18
I think you're I think you're dead on.
James 27:20
Yeah,
Gabe Barrett 27:20
I think you're exactly right. Because if I'm going to do Warhammer, then I'm not going to do another miniatures based war game. Like it one is too expensive, two. It's a lot of rules. It's a lot to learn as a whole system to figure out versus Alright, I'm going to learn five different systems like no, it's, it's just too much. And also your community typically is surrounded, surrounding that one specific game, those armies, the way the point system works, the way the movement and all that like, that's what that's the vocabulary, that's the jargon you're using around that one game. Same with magic, right? If I'm playing Magic a lot, I'm probably not going to go out and spend more money on a different TCG. Maybe maybe a living card game, but probably not a TCG, because I'm already invested. I've already got my community I'm already go into tournaments, whatever, like that's where my focus is. Whereas board games, it's not. It's just not like that, right? I don't, I don't buy a one game from a company and go yep, this is my company. This is all I'm never gonna play these games. One because so many companies are making similar games, right? You can go out and find very similar like Scratch the same kind of itch games from tonnes of different places. But two typically we just don't get into the hobby in that mode, like you do with Wargaming, or collectible card games. And so I think I think my Toyota dealership, analogy stands firm right there. Because if someone buys magic, that's it. And so if I'm the magic seller, you know, I'm trying to get them on that one thing, because then then I'm going to make more money versus them spread things out.
James 28:44
Yeah, that's really interesting. So that makes me think about how you go about then your strategy for selling things as your business on I couldn't. So interesting, because when I think about this, I know you as Gabe and as the Board Game Design Lab, I don't think of you as a publishing brand exactly. Even though you've published a lot of stuff. So there's also think we're interesting is at the same time, it feels like there's kind of a bit of a family resemblance between a lot of your games, and not just because you've done maybe quite a few more solo and puzzle things. Because if you know, if I think back to some of the slightly earlier products, like Final Flicktier here, for example, like that's really different, it seems to what you've been doing recently, it's not like button shy or something like that, where it's just like so completely, perfectly, like targeted at a very precise kind of experience. There's very, very narrow in what it's trying to achieve in just trying to do that one very narrow slice very well. Is there a kind of broad brand thinking to what you're what you're doing? I'm always kind of curious.
Gabe Barrett 29:50
Yeah. So early on, it was literally what am I excited about? And let's make that game and that's fine.
James 29:56
Why not? I think we're all like that. Right?
Gabe Barrett 29:58
But from a business standpoint,
James 29:59
yeah. especially the beginning.
Gabe Barrett 30:00
Yeah, absolutely and, and pitching games to bunch of different companies, that works really well. Because then you can go out to different people that design and publish different things for different player counts and different themes on and it works out really well. But when you're doing it yourself, and that's one thing I've just kinda learned in my adventure here, is you do want to find your people, right? Who is your audience. And if you keep doing things that are very, very different, people aren't really going to know who you are like, what do you what are you doing, alright, then it's gonna be confusing. And if you confuse people, if you confuse you lose as good of a marketing term. And so it's something to be aware of. And as my journey has kind of continued, that's why I'm getting more and more into, okay, I make solo games. Sometimes I'll make a two player, like a one to two player thing, but I'm not gonna go out, you're not gonna see three player games from me. Now, maybe a passion project, one, one day down the road of some game I've really just wanted to bring to life. But typically, it's one to two players, very thematic, I typically hire the same artists and graphic designers for my games. So if you see one, you're like, oh, that's, that's from Bayer publishing. Right? looking, you know, it's almost like Coca Cola. Like, if you see the colours with the red and the white, you see that swirl, you don't have to see Coca Cola, you know it's them. And so that's another thing I've really thought about is using similar artists to really make things similar, I guess it would have been, that way, when someone sees it on Kickstarter, or they see it on a shelf somewhere, they know where it's from, they know it's one of my things, even if they don't see the name on the box, or anything like that. And so I think that's something to think about from a product standpoint, and now a lot of companies, they they produce a tonne of stuff, you know, C mon and WizKids, and stuff like that, like, they're not gonna hire the same artist, you're not gonna have the same style for everything. And that's, of course, but if you're an indie publisher, you're doing just a couple, one to three projects a year like I do, then it's something to think about. Because one, the artists you hire, can they have enough bandwidth? Probably to work on that many projects in a year, they probably would like the consistent work as well not have to wonder, where am I gonna get my paycheck next month. And so if you can kind of keep them hired on and keep them working on stuff, that's good. But also, it just kind of keeps your brand similar enough where people see it and go, Oh, okay. Yeah, I bet this is something I would like, because I liked the last one that was like this. So yeah.
James 32:21
Yeah. I mean, it's notable to me that when I looked at the realm of shadows, particularly red and white made me think of the red and white in your Board Game Design Lab logo. Was that deliberate? Or is that?
Gabe Barrett 32:34
That was not, that was, I just told the artists, hey, I want black, white and red. And literally, that's what he, that's what he came up with. And I was like hey that works out. And that's another thing, hire really good people that are better than you at things. And because Jorge, he does a lot of my cover art. And he is phenomenal. Like just a wonderful artists, one of the best I've ever seen, let alone worked with. And so yeah, his guy was just like, hey, here's what I'm thinking. You run with that? And that's what he came up with. And it was excellent.
James 33:02
I mean, yeah, I'm very impressed by the art execution on these things. Always looks, the pages look really great on Kickstarter. And they have that ebb and I wonder then how much of your customer base overlaps with that incredible audience that you've been able to build out for the show people who just want to learn about how to make games? Is it quite a strong overlap? Or is it actually not as much as you'd expect? This is what I'm really curious about when I think about people's different approaches to marketing. I've met some people who say, I don't do any specific community building at all. I focus purely on the product. And then I pay for an absolute mega tonne of ads. And I just dump money into a Facebook, Google Ad machine. And then massive Kickstarter fundraisers pop out. And they do like no social media at all. And then I know other people who were like, No, it's all about the community. And in some ways, it feels like, you know, you would be one of the biggest figures of advocates of what incredible things can be done with communities. So yeah, I'd like to know more more about that, if you can.
Gabe Barrett 34:06
Yeah, so as far as like the overlap of my folks, it's an interesting. Hybrid. So when you're designing solo games, you're losing the majority of the market right off the bat. Right? The vast majority of people don't care. Like they're not playing a solo game, they play games, because they want to go to game night and have a whole bunch of friends or they've got their spouse or whatever. Like they're playing games to interact with other human beings. And that's amazing. And I love that I prefer at the moment to design and play solo games. And so from getting from the get go, I'm already being like, Alright, 90% of y'all have fun. So there's that I if I was going to really step back and do this purely from a business standpoint, I would design a game about designing board games and manufacturing board game, like I would lean into this whole thing and I've even I even played around with it and I just couldn't get it to work. I tried that. But I also wasn't super excited about it. I was like, I don't know this feels it's feels like I'm just trying to make money. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But there's so many other things I was excited about that I was like really passionate about, like wanting to bring to life, I was like, I'll just, I don't I don't do something else, I'll see if I can get some ads or sponsors, or if I'm gonna just try to make money off this. So there's that. So but it's interesting overlap because I, every single campaign I run, I will receive messages from people that they say, hey, just want to let you know, this game is not for me. I'm not a solo gamer. You know, I don't like the theme. I don't like the mechanism whatever. But I really appreciate all the content you've put out. I really love the podcast, I've gotten a lot of value out of the show, I've got a lot of value out of the community. And so I'm going to support you because of that, and I'm going to send it to my brother, my cousin, whatever, because I think they'll really like it. Or they'll just throw $1 in as a support, right? Just to say, hey, I don't like this, I don't care. I don't want to be in the pledge manager. But here's a here's a few bucks. And so there's that right where people they want they want to give back even though they don't want the product. They want to basically donate to the cause. And I appreciate that, right? So there's that. But then there's also the overlap, not of people buying stuff, but of people wanting to help, right? Like so many people in the community will reach out and go, Hey, you know, it's not really my kind of game. But I would love to edit the rulebook. Like proofread the rulebook? Sure, I'll send them a link, Hey, throw some comments on there, you know. And I've had people reach out and say that they were trying to get into rulebook editing or proofreading or something like that, would they? Would I be willing to let them do it? And and I'll put their name in the rulebook at the end as a person who did it. And then they can point to that and go, Hey, you know, I'm working on getting, turning this into a job. And these are the rule books I've worked on. My name is in the back. Like, okay, yeah, I'd love to help with that. You know, now, most of the time when people reach out with services, and they're really good, I pay 'em, you know, I don't I don't, I feel weird about just do so for free. And so, but that's also led to, like my graphic designer, a guy named Drew, who has worked on almost every single one of my projects. He reached out to me years ago, as a guy trying to get into the industry. He's a phenomenal graphic designer, but he was working in insurance, like he builds insurance websites, you know, not exactly a super riveting creative field.
James 37:07
like compared to being able to work in games.
Gabe Barrett 37:09
Exactly. And so he reached out, he's like, hey, you know, this, what I want to do? Do you have any prototypes that I could just like, work on the graphic design, and just send those back in and just trying to get he's just trying to get better just trying to get into the industry, trying to learn? And so, you know, I've got people, people send me stuff like that all the time. I don't put a lot of like expectation, I don't put a lot of necessarily, hope that they're going to be amazing. So I'm like, Sure, man, I'm working. I was working on this little like one v one street fighter or combat game at the time, I sent him the ideas and sent him kind of like, what I was looking for a card layout, stuff like that, and what he sent back was phenomenal. Like, it was so good. And I sent him an email, I was like, Hey, man, I've got this other project that I'm gonna publish, like, it's gonna be a real thing, not just a prototype. I need you to work on that, like you, you are hired if you want the job. And and so that was another just excellent thing that came out of the show, right came out a person that heard the podcast and was like, Okay, I want to be part of this in some way. And then he's worked on close to 10 projects. He did the layout for all the books, he's done the graphic design for the cards. For all my hunted games, he did the graphic design for room of shadows, he's done a lot of graphic design for RoboMon, that's about the the old game found like, again, they came out of the overlap of people in the community. And so there's more to it than just people supporting you financially. Obviously, it's helpful, obviously, it's necessary to make money that so that then you can make more content, right. But there's been so many amazing relationships that have come out of that, as well. It's just been a lot of fun.
James 38:32
Yeah, that's really interesting thinking about it an alternative way, because as you said, I can imagine that if you were making games that were much more broadly applicable to a very wide market of gamers, because the thing is, in reality was we said this is a small industry, and hobbyists are already a pretty small segment of that. And then solo hobbyists are an even more small segment. So you couldn't really rely on even with you know, for example, that that incredible Facebook group you've built out on that audience of people. And it's very interesting how when I put the call out for questions for the show, some guests, I don't get many questions for because I think there are people that I think are fascinating and have some really interesting cool things to say, but they're maybe not quite as well known as other people. I think you're you've got the record for for a number of listener questions. I put out one tweet earlier today. And immediately, it's like, Oh, what was it about this? What's his favourite VAT? Like so many people really wanted to ask you questions. So one of the things that I've not been brilliant at recently is making sure all of those listener questions get worked in. So today, I'm going to make sure that all of those questions, we're going to go through all of them, because they're actually all great questions as well. I think I'm very fortunate and my followers have really interesting things to ask about as well. So, so we'd be really good to that. So yeah, so it makes total sense that actually, there's the audience. For some people, a community strategy might be like, well, it's quite directly related to the subject area. But actually for you, it's not like So there's this tremendous value here of just being in this network of people who want to help each other out. And actually, you end up getting lots of interesting inbounds that someone who was coming at it from a very more straightforwardly commercial perspective, where they're thinking purely of like ad spend, because I can measure that and then just benchmark against outcomes would have to go through a more conventional hiring and search process for that talent, you've kind of benefited by all this inbound interest, which is, again, I think, is I guess, that's another characteristic difference of that kind of approach. Because it really interests me at the moment because, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about the benefit that I can bring to the industry and things I can do, and try to work out where I fit in that because I think some people so you come across as being a naturally very extroverted person, that, would that be fair to say that?
Gabe Barrett 40:50
Yeah, it's it's weird. I am an introvert that presents as an extrovert. Ah, but you put me on camera, you put me on stage, I am in my element. And then after it's done, I am exhausted. I gotta go be mom be by myself for a while y'all leave me alone. I gotta recharge. And so it's, it's interesting. But yeah, I definitely present extrovert.
James 41:07
Well, that's interesting is that because actually, if I think if I think about that one even more deeply for a second, you are also a passionate about closing solo games. And that wouldn't be a classic extrovert trait really, would it? In terms of thinking, thinking from that perspective, maybe you'd be off making party games, perhaps things like that instead. So that's, that that's a really, really important, you've got that kind of natural energy and passion and ability to engage people in conversations kind of perform as well. And I guess that means that fits quite naturally into into what you're doing. And so that's the question I asked myself, when I talked to people as well, it was starting out and like, well, sometimes it's worth maybe thinking a bit more deeply about what your unique skills are. Because it might be that the cookie cutter approach wouldn't work for you, right? Like some people go well Jamey Stegmaier did a really successful series of blog posts from like, 2013 about Kickstarter. So if I do a set of blog posts about Kickstarter, that will work for me, and it's sort of like, well, a that was almost 10 years ago now. And, and b, that's not going to probably work for you because you're not Jamie Stegmeier, only he is.
Gabe Barrett 42:12
Yeah, I was watching a YouTube video the other day. And a guy was breaking down Mr. Beast, and all his success. And he's like, Alright, here's what I'm gonna try break things down and deconstruct some things and share with you as YouTube creators, what you can learn and how you can impact your channel. But right off the bat, I just want you understand, you are not Mr. Beast. You're not that guy, like, you're not gonna be able to reach that level of success, doing it the way he's done it, because he's already done it, you know, like, you gotta go find your own path and your path 99.9% chance is not going to lead to the same success his path has led to it is lightning in a bottle. It is so much based on luck and chance, and just being in the right place at the right time meeting the right person, whatever, you never know what kind of funding someone had, that you have none. And they had all this extra, you know, they they started the game, a lap ahead, like you just never know, right? And so you just have to do do your thing and try to help people along the way, hope for the best and work really hard, and good things happen. But um, yeah, don't try to be somebody else to try to be the best version of you that you can.
James 43:13
Yeah, I got that's very much, I think, a very strong piece of advice in general, I think and particularly, I feel when you're trying to forge your own your own path on that. How do you advise if someone is wanting to do at least do a podcast because they feel like they can contribute a bit there? What's the best way to listen to people?
Gabe Barrett 43:31
The best advice for listening, that I have received was to realise that listening is not just waiting on your turn to talk. You're not just sitting there. If you're interviewing somebody, you're not just looking at your next question, because that's very obvious, right? When someone says something, and the listener goes, Oh, that that deserves a follow up, that deserves something to dive a little deeper. What does that mean? You know, whatever. And then you're just right on to the next question. You're not listening. And it's obvious to people, right? Versus you going oh, that's it. Okay. That's, that's an interesting angle. What have you thought about, you know, follow up question. Because people can tell, you're actually engaged. You're not just sitting there thinking about the next thing, you're gonna say that's gonna get them, or that's going to be super interesting. And people go, Oh, they're so smart. Like, you're actually literally listening. And it takes a lot of practice, man. And one thing I was really fortunate of. So I spent many years working for the church, and doing a lot of youth ministry and helping teenagers overcome obstacles, overcome problems, and teenagers are a mess. And so if you're not like really listening, you're gonna miss some kind of like, really important detail that they don't even think is important, right? They're just gonna throw it out there and you're like, Whoa, hold on. I think that's the heart of our issue. And then I transitioned, I was working a lot with people that were experiencing homelessness in Atlanta, and I've been doing that for 12 years. And so much of that is you just sit down, and maybe you're sharing a meal together, whatever, but you're just listening. Because what I found, especially in Atlanta, food was not scarce. There's too much food and a lot of ways. A lot of people in Atlanta eat too much that are on the street and there's a scarcity, psycho psychological scarcity. But there's not a literal scarcity of food. And so, you know, when you're getting really getting into the actual needs, conversation was one of the biggest things, people were invisible, they would stand on the street corner, and no one would ever make eye contact, people would walk by and pretend that they were just a, you know, a shrub, or a fire hydrant. Like they're part of the scenery, right? They're not a real human, and to sit down and look, somebody's face to face eye to eye, and go, how's it going? How about the Falcons this year? I know, they're terrible. They're always terrible. You know, it's been raining a lot. You've been strange, whatever, and but you're just having a conversation, and that but then out of that, you can start picking little details, and figuring out ways to actually help somebody. Because what they really need is not food. It was the conversation to realise that they just didn't know where to go, to get their social security card to be or to get an ID to be able to get a job. Whatever it is, right? You start playing the clue. You're Sherlock Holmes, you're you're trying to figure out okay, what, how do all these things fit together? But you can't do that, if you don't really, truly intently listen. And so I've benefited greatly from coming out of those those worlds, where that was just what you had to do. And so then I get into this podcasting interview space. Well, I've already been doing this, I just haven't been doing it. While recording, I haven't been doing it about game design. But it was the exact same skill set that I could bring over into. And so that's another thing I tell people all the time is what are what are the skill sets you've picked up in your day job in your teenage years, going to college, whatever, then you can apply to this new world that we're living in? That is so content driven? It's a story driven, you know, TikTok driven, or whatever? And how can you kind of use your preparation? To then do some cool stuff. Now you didn't realise you're preparing? You didn't realise you spent 10 years learning how to do something that's gonna help you now, but you did? And what are those things? And how do you leverage it?
James 46:49
Yeah, and I guess it's quite difficult for people to do often because they tend to have a very categorical view of experience. So it's like, well, I was working, let's take the graphic designer, like, well, I work in insurance. And then well, they didn't really think about games. But of course, actually, the skill, the real skills there, that's a job title, it's slightly easier to see it. But the real skills there overlap. I think, for me, for example, I used to run a newspaper. And I think from that's been quite helpful in terms of thinking about editorial content, bringing kind of like a proposition together. And that plus my experience in software coming into making games was like, well, actually on a lot of credit, project management, crafting a product thinking about marketing and things that I've already done, even though this seems like a big,
Gabe Barrett 47:35
making clickable headlines.
James 47:37
Yeah. Right. Like that, that's a good example of a very, very specific layer of that. So it sounds like when you're listening, then you're almost building up a little bit of a map of that person's life. And and who they are. Which is I guess is, is that really what's prompting the interesting follow up questions?
Gabe Barrett 47:58
Yeah. So one thing I've learned over the years, is that I don't think I've ever met an uninteresting person. Like even the people that are quote, unquote, boring. You just haven't found the right question. You haven't found the right line to get into. And I'll give an example. This was over let's see, this was back in the spring, I was with a friend of mine guy that I was working with down in Honduras, we were working for a school and we were on a recruiting trip trying to recruit more teachers to come down to the school. And we were eating lunch with some of his family members. Like they invited us over, we were in the area and i Hey, should come join us for lunch, like cool. And so we went over there. And his brother in law, on the surface is one of the most boring human beings you'll ever meet. He doesn't talk much. He's very quiet. You ask him a question. He's like, yes. And that's all you get, like, he just doesn't give you anything. And so it's like, okay, so I almost I looked at it, this is a challenge, because I know there's a cool, interesting person in there somewhere. But there's, you know, for whatever reason, he just doesn't present as anything that you would ever know. And so come to find out, he was working for a software company that works with law enforcement, and the FBI, and all sorts of stuff. And so he was really deep into, like, figuring out, crimes based on like people's internet usage and stuff like that, and has written all this code for algorithms to like, so like, you have a person that you think has committed a crime, but you're trying to like piece together the clues. And he basically is working on software that can go into people's Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff and like piece together stuff, and then present it as a report in data form. So you're gonna have to spend, you know, 10s and 10s, and hundreds of hours doing it yourself. The software just bloop and then pull stuff out. Which is kind of scary. In some ways. If We're gonna be honest, yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, a little bit freaky. But at the same time, super interesting. And I would just ask, like, how does this work and how does that work? And I get we get into like, the ethics and the morals of it and he was like, super passionate about Yeah, like we need to regulate this stuff. We got Make sure people aren't using this for evil, like he was like very on board with, you know, we got to make sure there's like oversight. And there's people like making, you know, making sure these law enforcement agencies aren't, you know, doing this just because they're mad at their girlfriend or some like that. And so he was on both sides of like, this is super helpful to society to find a murderer is helpful to society, but then also to make sure that, that people aren't being abused with this technology is also super important. And so, but again, that turned into an incredible conversation with morals and ethics involved, and new technology and all this stuff from a guy that on the surface seem so boring. I just had to find the right question. And then because because once I figured out the questions to ask, I didn't have to talk anymore. Like he was so passionate and so excited about it, that the answers went from Yes. To Yes, Let me tell you about this, and this and that. And the other thing was everything we used to try, we should do it this way. And all that, like it turned into an amazing conversation. And so it just, everybody's got that you just have to kind of get in there and find it.
James 50:56
Exactly like, from as you said, one word answers to something quite so fascinating. That I think is a subject which we're all interested in. And we're all actually have a stake in as well, like that's a really one as critical technological questions. So obviously, as someone who's very passionate about talking to people, and you've got a great skill for finding out what's the real question, because you said you've had to do that. In lots of contexts in different different work, particularly youth work leading up to this point. What why did you end the podcast?
Gabe Barrett 51:23
That's a great question. One I've learned from Barry Sanders, which was one of the all time great football players in NFL to retire, while you still got something left in the tank. Always leave people wanting more. It's something I've always thought about. And so that that played into it, because I was not at a place where I was burned out, I was at a place where I was done, where I didn't think they were more interesting conversations to have. You know, to be fair, I think I've talked about every topic you can imagine, at this point, you know, there's there's very few stones left unturned, although I'm sure I can find some. And we could get even more like very specific about topics. And we can tell, you know, do some episodes about that. But at the same time, I wanted to do something new, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to kind of change things up and try something else. And like I said, in the final episode is like, I don't know that this is the final episode period, you know, I might get the itch again. And a year from now we'll come back. And let's do episode 302. And let's, let's get the show back on board. And we'll go to 500. I don't know. But transitioning right now, one I was transitioning back to the States. And so back in March, I moved to, back to Alabama. So I was in Honduras for eight years, I moved back home closer to where I grew up in Alabama. And so that was a big transition, I knew a lot was going to be happening. I knew the job I was working at the school was going to be ending in July. So it just ended a couple of weeks ago, I knew the mission stuff I've been doing in Atlanta for 12 years with the homeless, I knew I was I was basically handing that off to a very good friend of mine who's going to keep it going and keep doing some really cool stuff. He's excited about it, I was passing it on to him. So I'm in this interesting place right now where I'm kind of re establishing my entire life. And the podcast was just part of that. It's like I'm gonna, I'm gonna wipe the slate clean. And we're gonna do some new things, I want to lean into publishing, I want to I've got this massive project I've been working on for a long time, I'm gonna lean into that properly, I had my focus split on so many other things, and go, Okay, we're gonna focus on this thing. And then I want to as far as like content creation, and that kind of thing, I'm still excited about that. I just want to try a different method. So I'm working right now on a YouTube channel, which I was hoping to launch this month looking more like September. But I'm really excited about that. I've been working on videos and like, learning how to edit and doing other things and Robo Mon this game we're working on has actually been great, because I've been making videos for that and having to figure out okay, how do you do these things? How do you set up the camera just right? Where do you put the microphone that is close enough to your face, that the sound is good. And then you're gonna editing and figuring out thumbnails and headlines and all that kind of stuff. So that's another thing. I'm really excited about learning all these new skills. And yeah, so that's just kind of where I'm at. It wasn't like any negative thing. It wasn't like, oh, I don't enjoy this, or I'm tired of this. It was like, no, let's go try something else. Something new, and now's the right time to do it.
James 54:06
Yeah. Do you think you'll still be doing some interviews on YouTube? Or do you think it's going to be more kind of you're broadcasting out things or it's gonna be more about the game, like how to play type things, what kind of things what kind of things can we expect from you in the future?
Gabe Barrett 54:17
Yeah, so it's a little bit of a pivot, where it's not just going to be board game design stuff. I'm trying to go like one step up the ladder. And let's talk about creativity. Alright, let's talk about scheduling. Let's talk about productivity. Let's talk about how to get the most out of a small amount of time, which definitely applies to game designers, but also writers and movie makers and whoever, right, really just trying to go okay, if you are a creative person, the world needs your your thing, whatever the thing is in your head, we gotta get out of your head and out into the world because I believe that it can help people in some way, maybe it's just entertainment. Maybe your story is powerful enough to affect somebody who's also going through something traumatic that you went through and you can get to help them get on the other side of it, whatever it is, right? And so just trying to help creative people and Game Designers will be able to fall right into that, like, I don't think I'm going to do anything that they're like, oh, this doesn't apply to me. Like, we all need to learn how to be more disciplined with our creative time, or whatever it is, right. And so that's another thing. I'm just excited about kind of exploring. A Bigger Picture, right. And I've got all these these ideas, I'm working on all these different scripts, about creativity, and stories and things like that. And it'll probably involve interviews, and I can, you know, obviously reach out to people that I have really good relationships I would loved to have Peter C. Hayward, and Jamie Stegmeier, you know, two of my favourite people that have been on my podcast like this, let's sit down, let's do a YouTube interview. And let's let me cut it up. Right, let me make it more YouTube friendly, and kind of have these different topics per video out of this, you know, 30 minute conversation, as opposed to just the long form thing like a podcast would be right. And so yeah, lots of different ideas as far as so good.
James 55:45
Yeah. Oh, that sounds really great. Well, I'm sure particularly I mean, Jamie must have a huge, huge amount to balance. I mean, they're still quite a small team on standby. So
Gabe Barrett 55:52
Oh, yeah,
James 55:53
balancing all of that stuff out. I'm sure there's a lot of very valuable productivity tips there. Well, as promised, I want to make sure I also go through some of these listener questions because we don't have all the time in the world. And I want to try to at least
Gabe Barrett 56:03
Yeah, I'll try to stop talking so much
James 56:07
Please, please don't apologise. It's absolutely fascinating. And I feel like it's classically one of those conversations where we could just keep talking forever, pretty much. So the first question I've got is from Leon green. And his question is, what's your favourite board game mechanic and why? That sounds like a real stinker to me,
Gabe Barrett 56:23
That is is a hard question, man. It's not deck building. I don't know what it is. I can talk about deck building for days about all the things that don't enjoy about it. That's like one of the main mechanisms that people love, and I'm just like, oh, another deck building game?
James 56:37
What is it about deck building that you're not keen on?
Gabe Barrett 56:39
I think
James 56:40
Some people like love it. And I must admit,
Gabe Barrett 56:42
oh, man,
James 56:43
I'm a pretty big fan.
Gabe Barrett 56:44
Some people that's all they buy. That's That's all. Yeah, man. I had a friend in Honduras that was like that, like he would play any game as long as it had deck building, but nothing else is like, we are not going to be compatible as gaming friends. Star Realms, his favourite game in the world, I think partially, in my brain. I am not overall good at engine building games in general. And deck builders are engine builders, I guess it's naturally what they are here, you're starting off with basically nothing and you're over the course the game trying to build up to have this engine where your cards all work together. And you've gotten rid of a bunch of bad cards and got all the cool cards. I dont know, my brain just doesn't work that way. And so I want to blow stuff up and shoot aliens with a shotgun and run around and throw some dice. And so I love I love anything that like gives, give me a dice pool. As far as like mechanisms I love. Give me a dice pool. Let me roll some dice. So just random chance. And then let me make some decisions. Right? Less Oh, of like, I'm gonna roll with see what happens. More and more. I'm like, Okay, let me let me have some control. But then also, I love dexterity style games. Like, give me a thematic game with some dexterity elements. Right, the game I created years ago hunted mining colony 4...415? 514? What? I can't even remember the name of my own game, anyway, the alien game that I made a long time ago, you've got these tokens and you're tossing them into a box. There's an alien print, and you have to landed on the alien to get hit, right. And so like I literally win or lose based on my personal ability to toss these tokens. Like it's all on me. It's like a sport.
James 58:14
Right.
Gabe Barrett 58:14
Yeah. Right. It's like playing basketball like you win or lose being or being able to throw the ball in the hoop. And there's there's no random chance. It's just like your skill. And so I love I love dexterity games in that way. Because like, I want to know that I won not that the dice made me win. Or vice versa. The dice made me lose like no, I lost because I wasn't good enough. And so I love dice pools and I love dexterity would be my my answer to that.
James 58:36
Yeah. So I guess it's about designing a game with all of those elements.
Gabe Barrett 58:41
Almost as if I have
James 58:42
Yeah, it's almost like you have
Gabe Barrett 58:45
With robot combat thrown in. Yeah.
James 58:48
So I've got another question from Tony Boydell. Who asks, What game do you wish you designed that you haven't designed as in a published game that you said, God, I wish I'd been the designer of that game.
Gabe Barrett 59:00
Oh, I mean, Catan just because, you know, be sitting on a fat stack of money, right? Same thing with Ticket to Ride or monopoly,
James 59:08
any of those really?
Gabe Barrett 59:10
Although I think the person who designed monopoly never really get paid off.
James 59:14
Yes, I think that was I certainly think the landlord's games. Maggie Lizer? Is that the name of?
Gabe Barrett 59:20
I know it was a lady that did it.
James 59:21
Yeah, who designed the landlord's game, and she didn't get anything for that.
Gabe Barrett 59:24
Ironic. Isn't it ironic?
James 59:26
It sounds like well, the whole thing but I think it was the whole point was it was an educational thing about like the dangers of property ownership. And then and then it's like someone goes hmm it would be a lot more fun if there were no tenants in this game and everyone was a landlord. Let's rewrite that and it becomes Monopoly!
Gabe Barrett 59:42
I don't know if there's anything more ironic than that situation right there like I don't think you could I don't think you could create anything like out of your head like make it up and it'd be more ridiculous than the way that situation played out. I don't think anybody would believe it if it wasn't true,
James 59:55
and then it goes on to become like the most successful board game of all time as well, which is quite extraordinary.
Gabe Barrett 1:00:01
It monopolises the industry anyway, game I wish I had created. That is a good question. I don't know, maybe pandemic, because what I love about pandemic, what I love about what Matt Leacock is doing, especially now is who knew that that system was so flexible? Right, that you could not only do a game about the world ending because of disease, which not exactly a big-time seller at the moment, not a lot of people are like, No, thank you. But the fact that he's been able to turn it into a Cthulhu version, and a Roman like Romans versus barbarians version and a stop the flooding of Scandinavia version and Cthulhu, Warcraft, I'm trying to think all the different versions that are out now, like that system is so dynamic and so flexible. Like, I wish, I wish I could design, if not pandemic itself, like just a system with that flexibility that you can keep coming back to it. And you know it really well you're comfortable in the system. But you can do a million things with it. And they all sell great. It's not just like random niche things, but it's things that are actually going to the market. And selling copies and so I think I mean, I'll go with that one.
James 1:01:11
Well, it's a bit like Catan, isn't it? It's, it's become a kind of brand of itself. And but it works because this isn't so flexible. I mean, also Pandemic Legacy season one is like the first good legacy game that was created. Really, really good one. And I think so, as you said, it shows itself to be an extraordinary system, and very easy to apply. So there's a thing
Gabe Barrett 1:01:32
Yeah, like you say, like that game had a really cool story. Like who knew that you could have a pandemic game but also have a really cool narrative underneath? And like have like these pivotal moments where people have an emotional responses, like there's certain months in the game, you're like, oh, my gosh, you just like sit back. You go. Oh,
James 1:01:47
Yeah. Oh, yeah. You suddenly thought I punched in the face like, Oh, God, no, how are we going to deal with this challenge? We've lost or something like that. Right? Like, definitely has that without without giving any spoilers, it has some really like, jaw drop moments really and in that game, but it's very impressive. So I guess on the same somewhat similar theme, then Arcana Profitia, which I don't think is their real name, asks, What's Gabe's comfort game the one he reaches out to, without even realising.
Gabe Barrett 1:02:17
So it probably something with my kids, it's probably
James 1:02:19
guessing it's not a pandemic.
Gabe Barrett 1:02:20
Not pandemic, definitely not. Especially not in Honduras, man, Honduras was so locked down, like you can't imagine, like, given example. You can only leave your house once every two weeks, based on your ID number. So if you were like the final digit in your number, so like I had my residency card, and I think the last number is like four. And so that would be Mondays were ones Tuesdays were twos, Wednesdays three, there's a fourth, I could go out on a Thursday, but the following Thursday was for eights, so I would have to wait another week. And then I could go grocery shopping or go do whatever. And that was just one example of how just ridiculously locked down Honduras was. And so Wow, yeah, I didn't really leave my house at all, um, for a long time. And luckily, the delivery industry in Honduras really started to boom. And so if you needed stuff, you can just use an app basically, like Uber, Uber Eats, but it's called Ugo. And people just bring you stuff. And so that worked out pretty well. And anyway, I don't want to play any pandemic games. But
James 1:03:21
I felt the same way. We were actually funnily enough, it was Christmas, New Year's Eve 2019, that a friend of mine and I, we started playing Pandemic Legacy season one, I think we were playing it we we've got the third or fourth game. And then by the time we could meet up again, I think it was going to be like the 20th of March 2020. at just the point, the UK first went into lockdown. And it was just like the example of just just Oh, yeah, and then we came back to it a lot later. And to be honest, the shine had come off it. So I'm what as a game, I think particularly as I was going around just being like, oh, then I quarantine this city. It was like, not really felt like I'm having such fun anymore. Like he was just one of those ones. So I could definitely make it. I think for a lot of people very reasonably, that would be the opposite of comfort game. I was very surprised when I read that there had been this boom in sales of pandemic early in the pandemic. And I was like, are you sure about that.
Gabe Barrett 1:04:24
Again, it was the hero fantasy man, people wanting to be the hero and stop it and save the day. And then, you know, a year and a half went by and we're still dealing with stuff and like I just want to play a party game.
James 1:04:36
Yeah, exactly. That's a very astute. Yeah, I think you're right. Like in the beginning. It's more like a hero, we can get good deals like
Gabe Barrett 1:04:43
two weeks, two weeks to stop the spread.
James 1:04:47
That was nice and exciting bit upon
Gabe Barrett 1:04:48
a year into our two week anniversary, it's like oh.
James 1:04:51
It's just not not quite not quite so entertaining a prospect anymore playing that.
Gabe Barrett 1:04:56
But back to your question. Yeah. So there's a My kids and I, we play pretty regularly called the fuzzies. And it is basically a new version of Jenga, where you have this tower, but there's all these little fuzzy balls that kind of stick together in really interesting ways. And you have to like pull a ball from the bottom or the middle, you have to stack it on top. And there's cards that tell you like, what colour to pick. And then there's like rules. If you, if you're knock one down, you have to like, use your left hand, your off hand, pick up the next one, like there's an interesting little like twist to it. So it's not just a Jenga remake. But it is so much fun. And I also love it because everybody's equal. Like most of the time, when I play a game with my kids, I'm going to dominate them, I'm going to beat them. And I'm not going to feel bad about it, like I'm going to let them know, you're going to lose. One, one day, you will beat me and you will know you earned it, and it will be a good day. But it ain't today. And so that's most games. But that game, everybody's equal, because I probably have lost that game more than I've won. Because of just the nature of it, right? It's also dexterity which I love. But I'm the moment that I put the little ball on the tower, and it's in the wrong place. And the whole tower collapses, that that moment where my kids go ohhhh! And they get so excited because dad lost and they win. You know, it's just, it's just fun. And it takes like five minutes to play. And so if I just want to sit down, play a quick game before bed with my kids and just have some fun, where they're just as likely to win as I am. I think that's the game I'll go to the fuzzies.
James 1:06:24
Yeah, the fuzzies is great. I must try it out sometime. It sounds like a lot of fun.
Gabe Barrett 1:06:27
Oh, it's a tonne of fun.
James 1:06:29
And then a last question today was from Jan Rutishauser, which I hope I pronounced correctly and haven't accidentally butcher their surname. What's the and I think this is a very appropriate question to end on. What's the one thing you've learned interviewing other designers that you now use, in your own design practice very consistently. And I'm guessing based on our earlier conversation, that might actually be difficult, because there could be a lot of things there.
Gabe Barrett 1:06:53
There's a million things. And it's also situational. Like, I would reach out to designers and publishers, you know, throughout the history of the show, that had already done things or had already had a good bit of success with something that I was in the moment working on. Right. So early on, when I'm trying to get into publishing, I reached out to a lot of publishers, a lot of people that did marketing, a lot of people that had run Kickstarter campaigns successfully, and to pick their brains about those things, fulfilment. A guy named Toby came on the show, and had just one of the most informational shows I've ever done. And it was all about shipping and how to save $1 on your shipping, because when you're shipping 5000 copies, that's $5,000. Right. And so that, you know, there's so many, so it's, it's kind of hard to say, because it was very much in the moment, situational. What I've learned Overall, though, if I was just gonna speak, in general, is one thing to always remember is that your taste comes before your your skill, or before being good. And what I mean by that is, you're going to know what's good long before you can create what's good. You can you can go give an example from the art world, you can go to a museum of art, and look at the paintings on the wall and go, that is amazing. Like that creates an emotional response in me, that is phenomenal. The line work, the paint, the colour, everything is perfect. When long before you could sit down and even draw a stick figure. And so never forget that, because you're going to look at other people that are really good and have a lot of success. And you're going to have a tendency to compare yourself to them, when it makes no sense because you're not you're not seeing the 10 years of stuff they threw in the trash. You're not seeing all the edits, you're not seeing the first drafts that were trashed, they're awful, you're not seeing any of that all you're seeing is the final product that probably took a team of people to bring together and you're looking at that, and then you're comparing it to your prototype and going, mine's not any good. And you're right. You're absolutely right. But just keep going. Right there thing wasn't any good at 1.2. And so keep fighting, keep putting time in keep putting effort in. Keep just trying to be the best version of you that you can stop comparing yourself to other people to waste time. That's you're not running a race against anybody else. Anyway, the race is with yourself. And then the question is, can I be better today than I was yesterday? Right. And so realising that thing that you know that you're going to know what's good long before you can create what's good, but just keep going. I just don't give up. Because all the people that we look at today, is like the all time greats are really just a bunch of people that didn't stop. They kept working, and they got better. And they grew and they learned and they made a lot of mistakes and they figured things out along the way. And now we look at them and go wow, they're amazing. Yeah, but it wasn't overnight, right? Like they were there they were 10 years. It took 10 years to become an overnight success you know and it's of those things and I had a guy tell me one time to to live like a loaded cannon which is really interesting concept right where every day you're trying to do something to quote unquote, load the cannon, right that you're trying to be ready, right you're you're gaining knowledge you're getting in skill, you're figuring things out, you're overcoming obstacles and problems and, you know, making mistakes and getting better. Loading the cannon and that way when the light shows up when the when the catalyst to light the fuse happens, boom, it was already loaded, the cannon was loaded the whole time, right. And you can apply that to a lot of a lot of things in life, but definitely with creativity, that you're constantly trying to figure out how to load the cannon that way when that quote unquote overnight success opportunity happens. It's a massive explosion, right? Because you're ready.
James 1:10:20
Yeah, I think that's an absolutely fantastic advice for anyone. Because those things are, nothing happens until suddenly it happens. And that's where you want to be ready for it. Right? Absolutely. What brilliant advice be a loaded cannon? I like that a lot. So what can we look forward to coming soon, from Gabe Barrett, what should we be on the lookout for?
Gabe Barrett 1:10:42
Yeah, so RoboMon is a kind of Pokemon / Megaman inspired game I've been working on for a long time. If you'd like sleeping gods in this kind of like open world, go explore, do cool stuff, have some battles, you know, enjoy interesting story narrative. I think it's again, you might my like, it's a one to two players, it's gonna be on Gamefound, starting on August 22, it'll run through kind of mid September, and it has been overwhelming and a tonne of fun to work on. For the last two and a half years, it's got another probably eight to nine months of finishing it out after after the campaign. But um, it is, it's a huge project man. Like even when talking about going to a new end of the spectrum, like I've historically been designing solo games that were about $20 and took you about 20 minutes to play. Now I've got a game that's on Gamefound it's gonna be $79. So massive change in price, but it's gonna take it's like 30 hours of content. And you can sit down and play for 20 minutes if you want to, like I've set up the game where you can play for as short or as long as you want, you can dive right in, you can step right back out really, really easily. Setup takes about two minutes. teardown takes about three minutes, like it's a very, very quick game to get to the table and play. And at the same time, it's got a lot, it's got a lot going on. But yeah,
James 1:11:59
suddenly gone from Yes, you said like a 20 minute solo game to suddenly your own kind of version of seven continents.
Gabe Barrett 1:12:08
Literally, I mean, it's very similar, it plays differently. It doesn't use cards, it uses this map book, where you're turning the pages, and you're going to different locations in this world. And you've got this adventure book full of stories and skill checks and combat and, and puzzles. And we've done a lot of like graphic design, like graphic novels kind of stuff, like a lot of the cutscenes. I think all the cutscenes are comic book pages. And so it's more than just sit down and read a block of text. It's like no, no, here's a really cool visual, as well, we can kind of see the characters you see in talking to each other. And you see some like little easter eggs go on in the background. And it's a massive undertaking, but I got a great team of people working on it with me. And again, it's just been a tonne of fun. And the other thing about working with a lot of people is you get to, you get to be surprised, right? So often when I'm working by myself, I am designing the surprises, like I am creating the thing, but I don't ever get to be surprised, right, I created it. But with this project, there's so much going on, that I've had to hire other people to do, whether it's you know, some of the writing all of the all of the art and whatnot, like I can't draw to save my life, the puzzle design, whatever. And so people will send me these things. And it's like, oh, man, like I get to experience them for the first time. I get to figure out how to crack this puzzle for the first time. And so it's been a tonne of fun to work on on the project, and I hope other people will check it out. And yeah, consider backing it. I think it's gonna be kind of a new way to look at board games. In the same way seven continent was it's like, oh, I didn't know you could do that. So I guess I'm, I'm gonna try to put this game in some replacer it's like, oh, who gives me some ideas, I can kind of inspire the next round of narrative story driven game.
James 1:13:41
Fantastic, Gabe, that sounds absolutely excellent. I look very much forward to the Kickstarter campaign. I'm massively gonna check out that sounds really interesting. The idea of cutscenes sounds super cool. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. I knew this would be a good one that we'd have a lot of really great things to talk about. And it's been absolutely great.
Gabe Barrett 1:14:01
Yeah, really appreciate you have me on the show. Again, it's good to get back. It's fun to get back into the behind the microphone to dust the dust the dust, knock the dust off my microphone, but it's been a lot of fun. I really appreciate you having me on the show.
James 1:14:20
Producing fun is produced by Naylor Games if you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at Naylor James or write me an email James at Naylor games.com. Until next time,
Back when I regularly wrote a blog about game design (before moving my focus to podcasts), I would often get microscopic in my focus on a game. Indeed, I once wrote a piece about one aspect of the turn order of firefighting co-op Flashpoint. It ran to 4000 words over two parts. It’s no surprise that I am entirely convinced that there is a limitless amount to be written about the specifics of the things that games are.
And why not? As well as rich in depth for game design nerds like me, games are lovely things to write about. Many games today are now truly art objects. From the tastefully produced box to the colourful, gorgeous assembled object on the table, they’ve become an aesthetic experience before even being played. The more gorgeous they are, the more intensely they fire up the imagination: an idealized vision of all the future games we will play with them. A recapitulation of our previous memories, of all the times we’ve enjoyed before - sharing a laugh, a contest, or the sweet, quiet camaraderie with those close to us. Even opening a box and seeing all these wonderful components of an as-yet-unplayed game, its components still un-punched calls to us with all that potential - the deep-seated, biologically hardwired desire to share those moments of joy with the tribe.
It is fair to say that lovers of board games - much more than video gamers - think more in social potential. Whatever advances there have been in boardgame apps or tabletop simulators, we know they are all pale imitations. We know we really want physical togetherness. And yet they are perhaps still as a group - like many inveterate problem solvers - still seeing so much through the lens of things. It is things that are to gamers generative - to which all credit is given to experience: the things are good or bad at this player count. Succeeding at victory criteria established by the thing is actually important. It is the rules of this specific thing that I delegate the power to make me happy or sad. It’s important we don’t just arbitrarily house rule how the thing for something as frivolous as feeling better that way; the delicate balancing of the machine must not be upset.
And yet, what feeble forces are things like rules, set against the currents of a player’s life?
Games today may now be considered collectables. But sky high shelves of unplayed games were never really investment assets - they are rarely ever bought for something so cynical and crass. For the hobby gamers, they are something far more beautiful: the wonderful triumph of hope over experience. Each is a boxed-up vision of a moment that might never happen: the awkward 3 player title that can’t be played at home with your partner and never quite makes it to a friend’s house. The long games of table-sprawling monsters lost to youth with their impossible time demands in a life with responsibilities. That campaign game you really need to get the same group of people together for but there’s always someone not free on Saturday. The game you’d love to play after work, but it's rapidly losing its battle with Netflix as you shrink into the sofa. Was the game objectively unbalanced and luck driven? Or did the player just have a bad day because they don’t always get to make the choices they’d like to make in daily life? Is the game too taxing… or is your brain just too fried from work these days to give it thought its systems demand? Did I love that game for its own cleverness or tension, or is it just great to see my friend again after so many months?
As time has gone by, this is where I find my thoughts drifting. It’s one thing to make objects that live in the theoretical space of the playtesting table where anything is possible, but the reality of people’s lives are imposed on games all the time. To really, really succeed as more than just a beautiful vision of what it could be, to actually get played - to bring its promise to life - a game really needs to serve a moment in the current of the player’s life. Made for a moment - maybe even to improve a moment - is where the power of a great game lies.
Indeed it was only many months into working on my most recent game that it began dawning on me on why *I* liked it so much. I was pleased with the mechanics, the general direction of the art to Game Jam, a game about making games. It was appealing and tested very well. But more importantly, I started to really discover what this mad little card game, gave me exactly what *I* needed from it.
It’s a short game, only 25 minutes or so but it uniquely combines two elements: an optimisation puzzle where you’re pushing your luck to use various levers to score as many points as possible and a storytelling round where you try to pitch your strongest game concept to the other players. As someone who wants their brain to be pushed, I love what gamers have come to loosely term “crunchiness”: I want proper problems to solve that involve multiple steps. I want meaningful choices. I actually want the agony of at least two closely balanced options. But I also love a performance, and I love anything that brings people a bit out of their shells and helps them be creative. After a long day at work - even in the immeasurably privileged position of actually working in games - I want that crunch. But I just can’t handle something hefty like Brass in that moment. Similarly, you can nearly always sign me-up for some improvisation, but at the end of a long day my batteries just don’t permit being permanently entertaining. I am social, but I am not the wild-eyed extrovert who keeps picking up momentum the longer the party continues
Similarly at the start of a game evening - especially with people who don’t know each other too well - what I want most of all is something I know everyone will have a good time with. I also want a tool to break the ice and encourage people a little bit out of their shells. Once again, I started to notice that this little game was perfect. A natural, stealthy icebreaker with a bit of something for everyone. A particular moment, perfectly served - for me at least. We’ll see if others feel the same.
Maybe all of this is obvious to people much smarter than me. Games are increasingly beautiful things (long may it continue) but the more we focus on moments the better we can make the games serve them. After all - it’s those moments that make life worth living.
by James Naylor
]]>Nick Bentley has been working in the industry for years. But recently, he took up a new role with Underdog Games: a game publisher smashing up conventional wisdom and selling 100,000s games in the process. This week we have the deepest conversation I’ve had before or heard before about *why* people buy one game rather than another. This is an absolute must-listen for aspiring game creators.
Underdog Games: https://www.underdoggames.com
Nick’s website: https://www.nickbentley.games
Nick’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/nick__bentley
James 0:00
Hi I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective. Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is Nick Bentley, president of game studio at underdog games, formerly of North Star games, and a neuroscientist. I've been trying to get Nick on the show for absolutely ages. Nick is not only one of my favourite follows on Twitter, spitting out interesting ideas about game design, product and life in general at a furious rate. He's also a key part of a business I find fascinating. Underdog games was only founded four years ago, and has but a small product range to its name. But in that time, it has sold 450,000 games, almost all of them directly to the general public. Its most successful title the $50 a piece trekking the national parks makes up the lion's share of that total. Yet it's relatively unknown by most hobbyists. With results like that, there's always something to learn. And oh, boy did I learn a lot. I'm very lucky to have so many great guests on this podcast. But it's rare that I'm joined by one that actually makes me feel rather stupid in the best possible way. This episode gave me a radically new perspective on what makes games successful. Nick is a smart heretic, who comes from underdog with a theory of what makes games sell, that turns a lot of conventional wisdom in the board game industry completely on its head. What's more, I think he's probably right. Whether you're a designer or a publisher, I really think you can't afford to miss this one. Even if you don't end up agreeing with the kind of approach Nick is advocating here. I challenge you not to learn something from it. This one goes deeper than any conversation I've had before, or heard before, about what actually makes people buy games, and the extensive lengths a company could go to, to find that game magic that's worth any aspiring creators time. We join, just as I'm telling Nick, why I was so keen to have this conversation.
Nick Bentley 2:25
Thank you.
James 2:27
Particularly when it comes to the whole question of direct versus the con traditional model, because my experience is that a lot of people assume, okay, this is how board games are done. You do a Kickstarter, you, that's all you you make a lot of money up front, maybe you get your game made, then either you leave it there, which is increasingly the business model of quite a few companies. Or you then sell a remainder to distro, you don't want to get involved in retail that's too complicated. Maybe you've got a few retail pledges, and then maybe you hope you wonder your game goes gangbusters. And then that's it. And yet our model seems to have quite a lot of disadvantages to me.
Nick Bentley 3:06
It's got some problems. Yeah, it does. I want to caveat this conversation with a thing that's particular to our company that allows us to like behave very differently from other companies.
James 3:17
Interesting.
Nick Bentley 3:18
Which is that we were founded by not a board game person, we were founded by an entrepreneur who is very good at E-commerce. And his expertise has allowed us to do things which I think at other publishers would be very risky for lack of expertise. But at our publisher we can do it because we have this this incredibly smart and knowledgeable person helming the ship, you know,
James 3:49
so that immediately makes me want to know what he was doing before that so because
Nick Bentley 3:57
oh, he was okay so first of all, his name is Hassan Hasmani. And in fact, like you probably once you hear about him will wish that you had him on instead of me. He's, He's one of the most like insightful people I've ever met in my entire life. He's in his mid he's in his mid 20s he founded this company right out of college. He already made his first like million or something in college, doing boardgame arbitrage online.
James 4:28
Was he like running like an Amazon store or something like that, like, oh, yeah,
Nick Bentley 4:31
basically. Yeah. I mean, I shouldn't I probably shouldn't speak too much for him. Because, you know, it's his story to tell but so like, he's like, unbelievably good at creating, like a viable business. You know, he was like, just doing that out of doing this arbitrage out of his dorm room. And he was he's very sort of systems based person and so like he sort of like he was seeing so much data about the way board games were moving through Amazon, that he started to sort of build mental models of like, why things sell or don't, you know, and because it was arbitrage, you know, he was just like, he was making a lot of money, but he was just, you know, sort of making a little bit of money on each game on a large volume. And I think, as I recall, he was like, Well, you know, if I became a publisher, then I could have a lot more of this margin. You know, I think that was the original motivation.
James 5:25
I think that I can't think of a motivation that's sort of more different to the typical board game story, where you'd have someone who's like, Oh, I love these games, I really want to make my own game. And then, sort of once they actually got into the business, if they're smart, they realise they've got to educate themselves a bit about how things actually sell, how to sell online, all those questions. And then then they eventually get to, well, if they do really, really well at that, then they'll learn a lot of that those things. But we're saying is that Hassan is coming out of it from the point of view of this is actually how things sell. This is the patterns that seem to be emerging about what sells and why things do and don't. I'd like that. But I'd like a bigger slice of the pie.
Nick Bentley 6:08
Right, exactly. I would also say that, like, I think one obstacle that a lot of people who start boardgame companies have is that they are sort of fundamentally creatives who feel they have to get into business in order to pursue their creative dreams. But there's a actually a huge conflict between being a creative and running a business dispositionally, you need completely different things. So Hassan has the disposition to construct a beautiful business, I mean, his art is business making. And so like, like, I've seen at other publishers struggles that we just don't have, because Hassan is a unique bird in this world, you know?
James 6:48
So I mean, and maybe let's explore that a little bit more, because I think that you're talking there about such a fundamental tension. Because it's something I feel all the time, there were loads of games, I really, really want to make, and I always describe myself as someone who loves board games 50% and loves business 50%. So I have, I'm always torn between the things where I'd like to go, let's barrel off down this exciting direction, from a kind of creative point of view. And this is really cool. Let's make this a reality. And then the other half of me that's going, Yeah, but okay, but be real, will that sell, will that work? What does the component cost look like? Realistically, what other kind of margins if you include this, you're going to massively reduce that? And it's almost like I have to be a bit two brained the whole time.
Nick Bentley 7:02
Right, exactly. Exactly.
James 7:40
And I guess he can be a bit freer from that. Because I guess if he's, as you said, his art is business and working out how to make really successful businesses, then then that is that yeah, that that's very interesting. It immensely prompts me really makes me or prompts me to ask all the about how internally, therefore product development works at underdog, because yeah, he's thinking, Well, I'm I was arbitraging board games anyway, now I want a bigger slice of the pie. And I think it's an exciting opportunity in selling direct to customer, something that you've published. But obviously, then I guess the element that he wouldn't be able to bring to the table there would be the creative element about designing compelling games.
Nick Bentley 8:17
Exactly. So he actually originally, when he founded it, he partnered with an industry person, a game designer named Charlie bank, who has been sort of the driving creative force of our company. For a long time. He's the designer of our best selling game called Treking the National Parks. And his design sensibilities have sort of set the tone for what we do. And we've come to understand what we're trying to do through the reactions we see in customers to Charlie's games. And so like our our whole creative mandate sort of emerges from the partnership between Charlie's creativity and Hassan's business acumen.
James 8:55
So then, is it the case that it's a pretty classic kind of vaguely Hollywood model where Charlie is proposing concepts and then Hassan is vetting them? Or what does the development process look like?
Nick Bentley 9:08
Oh, yeah, it's not. It's not that it's. So before we, I think I sent to you a document that sort of contained, like, our internal guidance about how we make games.
James 9:22
Yes, it's a kind of like, yeah, it's really interesting. It's like a kind of this is so interesting, because I haven't not seen many anyone else do this. Yeah, not just like transparent from the point of view of something like what Jamey Stegmaier does, where he's very transparent about his financials, and broadly about his business in general. But what you're actually doing is saying, here's our kind of vision and set of beliefs about like, how we how we work, actually. So stuff that might be regarded, to be honest, really as sort of secret sauce, trade secrets kind of stuff. Certainly coming from looking using that business part of my brain and looking at that. So yeah, that would be great. If you could expand a little bit more, a little bit more on that.
Nick Bentley 9:57
Yeah. So I mean, one of the things that we believe really deeply is that themes like themes matter a lot, right? More, I think than maybe other publishers think. And but finding and constructing an elite theme is as hard as constructing elite gameplay. And so an enormous amount of work goes in upfront to thinking about, ideating, and debating about themes. So for late, you know, every game we publish, we've gone through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of concepts that we vetted and rejected. Yeah. And when we're vetting them and rejecting them, we're not thinking in terms of do we like this, we're not thinking hey, I mean, it is important that like, especially that whoever the designer is, can like, draw inspiration from it. But the starting point is, like, what will resonate with some very large identity group? And those those things are very hard to find. And, you know, when when people do find them, like amazing things happen. And you know, the classic example that we're all living under right now is Wingspan, you know, I certainly didn't appreciate how pervasive birding was as, as an as an enthusiasm as a hobby as an identity, as it actually is, you know, but Elizabeth knew, you know,
James 11:23
yeah, I mean, that's really fascinating isn't it, as I remember many years ago, reading about how it was like something like the second or third most popular hobby or the second most popular hobby in the UK, I'm thinking, and this was long before wingspan came out. I'm thinking nah, come on. That's not real. And then actually, yeah, it is. Opie that. See, I find that also really, really fascinating. Because immediately, the thing about wingspan's success that I think a lot about on this front is it's a bit of a pet theory at the moment, but it's something John and I talk about a lot, which is that part of the problem with the Pareto distributions of game success. So for example, something like you know, wingspan is 54% of all of Stonemaier's revenue, lifetime revenue as well, like not just in any given year since 2019, since it was released, which is a staggering, staggering, Pareto distribution of success. The problem can kind of become and I wonder how much, the way that marketing momentum works, that once something is sort of 10% ahead of something else? It can through sheer force of the Rolling Rock force of momentum, create outsized gains that are way beyond that,
Nick Bentley 12:39
For sure. I mean, it doesn't I mean, a power law distribution essentially means that must be true as I understand it.
James 12:47
Yeah. Because otherwise, unless, unless you think that in the underlying system, there are some fundamental reasons why something is, is just genuinely that much better than something else. But But I think that becomes then a really interesting, interesting question. Because the extent to which that is true, becomes a really interesting thing about your entire theory of success. Because if it's like, well, wingspan is so dominant, because it was a theme that was say, I mean, we're gonna I'm gonna deliberately using crazy model numbers here, because they, it's impossible to quantify this kind of thing. But let's say that it was it was, it was three times more relevant than the next theme, then then you think that like, that's a pretty big part, probably of its success, and then the momentum carries it the rest of the way. If you think it was only like 30% more relevant than the next theme, or 10%. More than the next theme, you've got a very different theory about like, what like is, is the distribution more about picking themes? Or is it more about it? Or the does the distribution suggest that is more about that, or it's more about how you enable marketing momentum? And so that's what I just really assume you said that about, like, the role of theme first, I think that's fascinating, because that's going right in the face of I would say, what most people in games in the hobby game world think. Because Absolutely, it's opposite logic, because they'd be saying, Oh, no, no, no, the mechanics are what matters. It's the gameplay is everything.
Nick Bentley 14:14
Yeah.
James 14:14
And actually, you also hold up a second there. Actually, maybe, maybe not.
Nick Bentley 14:19
Well, I would say I would say this. It's not like we think theme is the only important thing.
James 14:23
Oh, of course, yeah,
Nick Bentley 14:24
It's that there are a number of things which are necessary, but none of which are sufficient. And one of those things is gameplay. You can have an amazing game. But if there are other critical dimensions aren't excellent as well, it doesn't matter. And one of those dimensions is theme. That's an important one because the first experience the very first point of contact that customer will have of the game their very first impression formed will have nothing to do with the mechanics and it will be everything to do with the theme, and the way that thing looks, the way like the box cover looks right?
James 15:03
Yeah, totally.
Nick Bentley 15:04
If you think of the game itself as marketing for itself, and this is how I think, that first impression is the top of the funnel, the top of the marketing funnel. And so anybody who doesn't get through the top of that funnel doesn't get anywhere else. It's a gate you have to go through. And so keeping that gate big and open is vital.
James 15:23
Completely Well, and put it that way, it sort of seems almost stunningly obvious, doesn't it? Because you can't perceive the gameplay directly. You either have to get it through a secondary source, like, Oh, there's this review I trust, who says, This is a good game, you have to trust a friend. Or the only other way to get it is to actually play it.
Nick Bentley 15:46
Yeah, there's something else I want to say here, which is incredibly important that I think a lot of people miss, which is that when a person goes and buys a game, they are not buying it just for themselves. They have a crowd of people, friends, family loved ones, other gamers that they are thinking of and about when they buy the game, and they're thinking to themselves, will this game be appealing to them? And if and if the answer comes up, no, it doesn't matter how much they like it, they won't buy it. And so if a game punches you in the face with what it's about, and it's about something that a lot of people like, you have a much better chance of passing that gate. And if you don't, so wingspan is another amazing example of this, right? Not only is it about birds, but it's called wingspan and it has a picture of a big bird on the cover and nothing else. And so it punches you in the face, like you know exactly what it's about. If you know somebody who likes birds, like it's really obvious, like it could be a gift or like we could play this together. If it was called like dreams of ornithology and it had a picture of a you know, a jungle with birds peeking out, it would be less, there's a moment of uncertainty that that would create. And in when you can't, and when you sell things, moments of uncertainty are poison for sales. Right?
James 17:04
They're a complete disaster. Because this is a problem is that? Well, I mean, again, this is this issue about everything. I mean, it's not because it's not just that there are so many games competing for people's wallets, even. It's that the total aggregate amount of attention that everything is competing for on your eyeballs all of the time. Like what regardless of what products they are services, media, etc.
Nick Bentley 17:28
Yeah,
James 17:28
the more instantaneous that you can say, here's this, it's this, it's birds. That's the moment you can do that. It's it's actually very, very, it's very, very impactful. And as you said, I liked your title of dreams of ornithology because that sounds like exactly the kind of slightly more erudite, but obscureist game title, that I can just see being way less successful. You literally repackaged the same product. I mean, and then with wingspan, you can probably actually measure that actually, you could do empirical experiments or something like that.
Nick Bentley 18:03
Yeah, I'd also say like this, this way of thinking can filter down into all kinds of, like more specific production questions like, if you think about the way that people make first contact with games out in the wild, it's very often online, right? When a lot of publishers are like, putting their boxes together, they are sort of thinking of them thinking of the experience that you get, like maybe in a bricks and mortar store, you know, but in fact, like a huge fraction of your first contact with the game is online. And when you do that, you're looking at a thumbnail. And so much of like the detail that you think is awesome, when you're putting the game together, is lost. And in fact, counterproductive, because it makes the game look like mud. This is something we've struggled with a lot because we have a couple of games with themes that cannot or we have not figured out how to represent them with single iconic images. And so like things like that we think about a lot.
James 19:01
So even to the extent where I guess, in your development process, when you're kind of sifting through this vast number of possible thematic concepts, and you're looking for the kind of the few little diamonds kind of in the rough to work with this, would this be another one of those filters that you're kind of applying to that would be like, can, can we turn it into something that's clearly iconographic?
Nick Bentley 19:24
It's something we talk about. However, it is so hard. It's so hard or it has been so hard for us to find like true large identity group games that are underserved that like when we find one of those at least so far, we have been like, Alright, we're gonna make a game about this. And we'll worry about the box cover representation later. But we also recognise this is causing us a problem. And this is a problem that we don't know how to fully address.
James 19:50
Well, I mean, that's very hard to predict upfront, isn't it? Because if you're already going for the goal of find the largest Identity Group, and then you're like, Well, okay, because partly because actually, you You're quite limited by your imagination as well, because it could be that you will find them iconographic solution to to something or it could be that you won't. That's really hard to know when it's just a concept.
Nick Bentley 20:11
You can't know upfront, right? Yeah, exactly. Although you can get it like it, you can get a better or worse idea. For sure. I mean, there are some things where it is, you can take comfort in the fact that it's obvious upfront what it's going to be like. So we are going to publish a game this year called her story, H E. R. s. T o ry, which is about like, remarkable women of history. So you can guess what's on the box, you know,
James 20:34
Well, well completely Absolutely. And I can see how that one goes straight to exactly what you're saying about large identity groups. You know, they'll think about women who want to see other historically prominent women who feel very strongly that there are underrepresented, generally underrepresented in history, tapping into them, particularly, it's an aspirational thing as well. Like it's that's I can see instantly, how that fits what you're saying perfectly.
Nick Bentley 21:07
A lot of people want to give their daughters role models.
James 21:11
Yes, yes. Completely, completely. And that's like very powerful for that. Right. So that's fascinating. I love this. This is so completely opposite. It really is like, the more you go into it. way of looking at it.
Nick Bentley 21:26
Yeah, I mean, it especially the thing about her story, that identity group is half the world.
James 21:31
Yeah.
Nick Bentley 21:32
That's like as big an identity group as exists anywhere. And it's a passionate one right, especially now.
James 21:40
What, Yeah, but what I think is fascinating about it, there's immediately racist questions for me, right? Which is that what defines the identity group? Because one of the things in some ways, the wingspan example, is quite nice, nice, because it's quite, it's pretty simple, I think, as an example, whereas what's interesting about this one straightaway, is that I can see how, although theoretically, the audience is 50% of the of the world. And on some level it is, but actually probably the the group that will respond exceptionally positively to that.
Nick Bentley 22:15
Yeah.
James 22:16
Is itself actually a probably a
Nick Bentley 22:19
Less
James 22:20
A much smaller group. And by the way, still not a small group, by the way, but a much smaller group in terms of it because of because obviously, that not so much, 4 billion people, but very much, but a smaller group than that, because it will be it will be much, much more appealing to people who have a certain set of socio political assumptions.
Nick Bentley 22:40
For sure, yeah, I would want to say you pointed to something a minute ago, that I think is really important. Understanding identity groups is hard. So I'm sitting here, I'm sitting here talking, like I understand what I'm doing, you know. But it's true that every time we make a game, and especially with that one, we're making a bet, you know, it's more akin to like stepping up to the plate, and a baseball game, and maybe you connect, and maybe you don't. And your goal is to raise the frequency with which you connect, or the probability with which you connect with the ball. But in terms of like, knowing you, you can't prospectively know if you've really tied what you've done into the identity well enough to make it work.
James 23:21
Oh, completely. Well, because necessarily, which is we are, in reality, a kind of multiplex of many overlapping identities. That makes this really fascinating. Also, to some extent, the identities are I mean, this is great, right? We're getting into really philosophical territory here, I love this. Sort of both exist and don't exist, in the sense that they are, what we're really talking about is something like a construct about a group of people. The real world corollary of which is like a vast amount of different thoughts and feelings that kind of tend to occur together, and tend to be somewhat clustered and associated in individual human minds. And the hope is, is that that particular clustering and set of thoughts and feelings and associations is is shared enough over a wide population group. And we kind of call that an identity.
Nick Bentley 24:18
Yeah. And not only that, I would say it's also not just, it's like the tenor of some of those thoughts and feelings may matter as well. So there's, if I can refer back to her story, so like, a lot of people play games. Like if I if I'm sort of pre doing a pre mortem on her story, let's assume her story fails. And right now I'm gonna do a pre mortem, and I'm going to try to like predict why it fails if it fails. It seems to me a lot of people buy games as a kind of, there's a there's an element of escapism in it. And this ties into the aspirational nature of board games as well. So our best selling game is trekking the national parks. It's pleasurable to play because the idea of going to the parks is a very pleasurable idea in itself to people right? Her story is about a topic, which is at this moment in some way contentious or at least adjacent to it. I mean, our our game is a straight history game. It's just about like remarkable women who've done remarkable things. But the halo of associations around like all women's issues right now seem very tense. You know? And it could be that you so even though there's a large identity group, the particular tenor of the feelings, maybe aren't right for a board game? I don't know.
James 25:33
So yes, because of course, that's the issue is that there's there are there are lots of identity. Yes, there's funny one, isn't it? It's both there might be identity groups that because we've assumed obviously that, that we could, the first that I guess that or the basic, the very basic model, rather, that's a better way to put it, would be that there are infinite number identity groups, you can make a game that will sell to any identity group. And the problem is really that on the commercial side, is a problem of Have you got a big enough identity group. That actually what's really interesting is that, even if you can find that identity group, can you present to something an experience they want to indulge in? That a game can deliver on that has the correct positive associations?
Nick Bentley 26:14
Yes. And that's a whole other thing that we shouldn't lose sight of like, none of this matters if the game isn't fun to a ton of people.
James 26:20
Oh, yeah. Yeah,
Nick Bentley 26:21
You know? so that's another thing where like, we think in terms of necessity, but not sufficiency. And I think it's actually really easy for a company like ours to get to think that if you nail all like the identity stuff, you're going to be fine. But that's not true at all, right? Like, there are so many games in the world, you have to create something exceptionally fun to get traction. And then the magic is in like the unification of all the all these different factors that go into making the product.
James 26:51
Well, I mean, yeah, I mean that well, that absolutely, of course, every time it's that unification of all those factors. What's really interesting, though, is that what I kind of find really fascinating is, it seems like almost your company has like a, which I guess we've kind of talked about already, but just to kind of really, like, zoom in on it specifically, like the theory is something like, look, the real business is about identifying the themes that resonate with identity groups, on the kind of assumption that, to some extent, the gameplay problem, kind of will always get solved. Because obviously, if you if you viewed things, the opposite in opposite world the other way around, you'd say, well, look, the really tough thing is, and the really critical thing is nailing the game mechanics, and you can always solve the theme problem.
Nick Bentley 27:36
Yeah, let's talk about that I struggle with this myself. So in choosing the theme, first, there's like a good side and a bad side, as I understand it. The good side is, once you understand the theme a little bit, and the way that people relate to the theme. And like the things they the experiences they like, and wish they had around that theme. We know all these things, we interview customers like extensively, and do a lot of like customer analysis, before we even make a game
James 28:07
When you say extensive, what, how much were you guys talking about here?
Nick Bentley 28:11
So I probably do for each game. Before we make it, we will do. I'll do like 14 interviews, but they're in depth interviews about and then also, we also typically do a thing where we, we had let's say we have after we know, we winnow all of our hundreds of concepts down to like, you know, five or something like that. We'll send those to big customer lists, we've really big list because we're ecommerce, and then we, we say like, okay, you know, if you're gonna pick one of these games that you want us to make, which one do you pick? And more importantly, why? And then, and then we will get 1000s of comments back for the winner. And then, like, we read those comments, like they're the Talmud, you know, like, trying to get at the meaning behind the words, right?
James 28:57
Yeah, yeah.
Nick Bentley 28:59
And so by the time we get to making a game, like, we actually understand quite a bit about the way that like, large groups of people relate to the idea. And that gets turned into a set of constraints on game design. And as you know, constraints on game design are great, because then you don't have a blank sheet of paper, then you have like something to hinge off of. So that that's the good side. The bad side, and I think we experienced this with this game, her story that I'm telling you about is some themes just seem more conducive to making a game of them than others. So like, when I tell you we're going to make a game called her story about remarkable women of history that does not by itself, immediately suggest to you mechanisms or any mechanistic framing about what you as the player are doing in the game?
James 29:54
No.
Nick Bentley 29:55
You know, and so, like, one problem we had was we spent so The amount of amount of resources that we put into making this game is so obscene I, like, I'm too embarrassed to even like say, say numbers, so I won't. But one of the reasons for that is like, figuring out what like how to connect it to game mechanics is brutally difficult. You know?
James 30:15
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, it's really interesting. You say that, because as you were, you were kind of leading up to that point. I was thinking, yeah, like, well, I don't have any immediate ideas. Now, if I compare that to say, for example, with Magnate one of the interesting things about that was like the moment the game concept came together, like almost instantaneously, several key mechanical ideas just instantly came to being because they were like, Well, okay, it's property. That means it's all about how things physical space interacts. And different kinds of businesses and occupiers near each other, have to interact. So it's spatial, great. It's financial. So there's gonna be a market crash, because that's what everyone thinks about that property is like, when is the bubble gonna burst? Done? Right? Actually, that turns out to be a much harder problem, but at least where you would take it was kind of fairly instantly obvious, because the theme suggested certain mechanical approaches straight away. Like, it's not like you would normally think of a city builder, it's going to have some spatial elements. Right? Probably. Whereas this one, I had that ended in the moment, I thought that was interesting, as I thought, Well, part of the issue is that it's, it's, you're taking something saying, here's something that says, here's, here's some stories of some incredible women. But the stories have already been written.
Nick Bentley 31:31
Yep.
James 31:31
And so anything that's like past facing rather than future facing? And I mean, that in terms of not necessarily past in terms of historical but I mean, like, in the Ludo narrative position of the player? Are you kind of looking back at the past? Or are you looking towards the future, because if you're a merchant, in 17th, century, Germany, let's say, because that would be a good old fashioned Euro game theme, something like that. You are at least, like, my own future ahead of me as the merchant is I'm trying to make as much money as possible. So there's like a kind of like a simulation and a set of experiences that suggest themselves, whereas whereas this, I can see straightaway, it's like, oh, this, there's not really a set of things that suggest themselves, you're going to have to come at this a little bit more brute force, probably
Nick Bentley 31:31
Yeah. It caused a lot of pain to get at it. Like, we actually worked with some outside designers who I idolised like, my heroes. We frustrated them. Because it was just like, oh, make another this isn't working, make another version that's totally different. Make another version that's totally different. And you know, so no, probably made 35, 40 different, unique, conceptual games until we like hit on something that we felt was right.
James 32:39
Wow. Okay.
Nick Bentley 32:41
We wouldn't have had to do that. If it was a game that suggested mechanics more readily, you know.
James 32:46
So what's fascinating, it's so realistic, as you said, this, I had this do just forget your model, I suddenly gave me a slight weird sense of embarrassment. Because I was thinking like, Oh, my God, what we tend to do is, we do see loads of ideas, we do iterate through quite a lot of ideas. I don't think we're especially structured about it. But we get to a point where something feels like, oh, hang on, this is this is a hot one, this sounds good. And then we spend enough time with it. And we think, yeah, actually, let's explore this further and then play it. But we have no kind of real framework or something like that for it. I think we would definitely take a more old fashioned in some sense, quite organic approach to trying to determine that. But I can also see that it that the one advantage that that very organic approach has is it is very lean, from a product development investment point of view. And the thing you're saying straight away is like, and like and theoretically, right, it would be the better approach if you were some kind of magic thermometer, who could always go, I feel like this is the one and then pick the correct theme. Having one person who could just do that would always be much more cheap and the whole point of coming up with a framework is that you want to build a real like, this is the critical thing that makes it business rather than just art, isn't it? Is the the problem is the soul of art is often about unique individual creations where the Creator has a personal relationship to them. And the art of business is can you make this reproducible and scalable? And so these whenever in any entertainment business, these things are always like smashing into each other. And so you've got a fascinating thing here of like, well, we've got this process that's like, actually, so far, you seem to have proven can reliably produce games. But my God, is it expensive sometimes, because you're talking about getting through 30 or 40 of those, as you said that those those individual games was, you know, typical process would be would be the complete about face. I know lots of people who basically commissioned designers to say, right, we will go to a famous and I go right, we won't want to go and buy you because we never we slap your name in the box, it will sell at least some units.
Nick Bentley 34:45
Yeah,
James 34:46
and then that designer generally sells them a game, and it's maybe not one of their most favourite concepts. It's like one they've gotten a draw. And it won't even cost them that much actually to buy that concept off that designer. It will be sometimes very cheap to do that and it Really amazed me when I start having private conversations. And I won't say any numbers. I know because they're commercially sensitive information people have told me, but I will say they are surprisingly cheap.
Nick Bentley 35:07
Yes.
James 35:08
And and then they just go right push the button, where's you're saying, well, actually, the gamble is on, funnily enough, the machine is aiming to become a non gamble, because you've got this reliable way to produce produce things. But I guess the problem is the gamble is that actually itself on this concept of this process, is that you can develop things really, is that the cost don't escalate beyond all imagination, by by the fact that you have to go through 40 different, like, if it's just like just a lot of hours of designer time you're paying for
Nick Bentley 35:38
Right. now. I mean, her story taught us a lot in that regard. Like, I don't think we can ever again spend as much money and labour on making a game as we did for her story. So like, we have to change if we, if we don't want to take too much risk. So we're going to be weighing more heavily that sort of that sort of thing, going into the future. And the things we're working on now are much more the connection between concept and gameplay is like way, way, way, way easier. But all of this is to say like, okay, so, you know, we think in these Pareto terms, right, so the question is, like, what is the best way to get to the top of that Pareto curve. And, you know, you can think there's two ways you can think about it, take a whole bunch of cheap shots on goal and hope one goes in, or you can like try to think really deeply, to try to take a few really great shots on goal and then like market the EverLiving shit out of them. And so we've obviously taken the latter approach, but I don't know that it's the right approach. I do know that it does inspire people in our company. So there's a, there's a big difference in the psychology of a group. When if you say to the group, we have to do the best work of our lives to survive, we have to rally around the idea that we're going to be the best we've ever been right now. That's a lot more exciting, then we're going to pump out a bunch of shit and see what happened.
James 37:08
Yeah, oh, 100%. Well, one of those is imbued with mission. Right? It's, it's, it's something where and it's inspiring because actually, you're going to work hard to see an amazing payoff. And the other one says, It's okay. It's hard to have much pride in the one, because you're saying the other one is like, it's okay, if we pump out some crap. Because what matters is constantly taking that taking the shot on goal. And I actually think that the issue but this one, and I think the reason why I feel like the industry is to my mind, from what I'm seeing is tending towards, actually not anything like by the way that the specifics of what you're talking about in terms of identity groups and that strategy, because I think that's, that's still very, very alien to a lot of way, the way that people think at the moment about this. But the idea of look, let's just broadly speaking, a smaller number of of better things that are more likely to be successful, because the other strategy is like, it's too expensive, actually. Because because the problem with the other strategy is that it's because actually, you have a cheaper version of it already, which is your cheaper version is let's iterate through 100, 400, 500 theme concepts, probably 40 Games was too much, but maybe 10, I don't know, five to 10 distinct game concepts.
Nick Bentley 38:18
Yeah.
James 38:18
And all of those are way cheaper at that stage to develop than than actually 40 different games. Because 40 complete games isn't just labour. And it isn't just brainstorming time. It's like all of the project management, the manufacturing real materials.
Nick Bentley 38:39
Yep.
James 38:39
Being purchased all of those things. So it's like a question of like, well, to some extent, every one strategy is actually
Nick Bentley 38:46
Costly in different ways. Yeah,
James 38:48
Yes. And everyone's but everyone's strategy is to some extent, throw everything at the wall and see what sticks because, because no one is like a perfect thermometer for game success. They can't just be like, right, well, I know this one's a winner, and then develop that one game, then bam, make a million dollars with it, means that actually every one is, to some extent, having to take, somewhere in the funnel is deciding, well, do we produce lots of things or a few number of things. And the difference is that the companies who are saying you probably have a theory, that there's kind of no way to be successful, and that it's all luck. So in fact, we're going back to earlier talking about earlier, but their theory would be that wingspan is no better than ever than anything else. It's like 1% better maybe. And then that just happened to spiral. And that happened to spiral could have been on any other set of reasons. It might have been because of the way that the weather that day, it could have been, you know what was recently in the newspapers or on the TV, it has very little to do with wingspan's fundamental quality as a product in any sense. would say, Oh, well given that then the only you might as well make complete games and you keep and you keep going. You keep buying the scratch cards right over and over and over again.
Nick Bentley 39:51
Yeah, that may be true. I don't know. I will say I will say that for me personally, I have I used to be a scientist and I'm driven by a desire to learn. So, like, I don't think I could do this, if I felt like there was no hope of learning and improving. And so the just emotionally the, the idea of just throwing stuff out until something happens is like a big turnoff for me. You know, I'd rather like die on the hill of trying to learn and failing, then then not trying to learn,
James 40:21
Oh, completely, like I've had conversations with some publishers, who definitely buy into the kind of random theory. And and ultimately, all of these are theories, because there is no there is no laws of physics that are applicable at this scale to this problem. Like, there's no way for us to go to carry out the, you know, the perfect experiment where we create multiple, complete copies of Earth. And then we can simulate all of the different things, the different game releases until we get to the one that the very the underlying laws about why games succeed or that or don't succeed. So to some extent, we will, we're all we all have different interpretations of the same Messy, messy universe of games. What I would say about the problem with the random theorists, is that a, it's maybe not viable on a simple level that it's so expensive, as an approach to take. And I think that because a lot of the companies, and that let's be honest, okay, I'm gonna talk about one company that I will specifically name here, because I feel it because it's one that's already gone bust. And that's tasty minstrel games, they owned to my mind, maybe one actual blockbuster, something like Orleans, I think. And then basically, they owned a couple other quite famous games. And when I said this, someone they got upset because it's a tasty minstrel like loads of good stuff. But actually, to be honest, when I looked at their back catalogue, I was like, they don't have that many really good games here. And it seemed like their theory probably was, and I can't speak for them too much, but just based on their output seemed like their theory was, well, we just have to keep publishing stuff. And then if we have enough hits, then that pays for the losses, and then we're okay. And I thought, it's fascinating, because years ago, I remember kind of tweeting about this and talking about how that was kind of, for example, used to be like Hollywood's business model. And they moved past that, because they fundamentally have the same pressures, which is that it's so expensive to write with kind of create, produce, film, edit, released and distribute, and then market, that doing it, every idea is not going to be viable. And it only would make any kind of sense if you truly believe that all success is utterly random.
Nick Bentley 42:21
You know, that I think there's a historical reason that companies do this. So I think, I think this is just my belief, I believe that the make a bunch of things and see what happens model worked a lot better, like 10, 15 years ago. So I mean, Z Man games, right? They became huge by doing that, until they until Pandemic happened. The problem now is, the number of games published each year is much higher. And the ambitions of the people who make them at least some of them is higher, there's more like sharks in the water. I think that means that the probability of throwing something out and having it work has shrunk so much that it's not as it's not nearly as viable way of thinking as it used to be.
James 43:06
So I think I think you're right, I think that's a really important point is that this is this is it, the reason why that strategy is now looking like it's really creaking, is because of the way the market has matured. And that strategy was actually perfectly viable before, in a world of much less choice.
Nick Bentley 43:23
Exactly. And the second thing related to that, the world of communicating about everything has got become busier. And part of the Pareto curve is visibility, right? So if I make a million games then, so if I make 10 games, and I have a marketing budget, I can only put 1/10 of my marketing budget into each game. Like there's there's a Pareto law of visibility as well. The most visible things get more visible and everything else falls away.
James 43:48
So what we end up with is a kind of product development funnel, in which that gets much bigger at the top, probably, because you need to iterate through more concepts to be really sure that the bets you're making are good bets.
Nick Bentley 44:02
Yeah, me and you can never be sure. So this is like it, like the specific math of it, which we don't really know, matters, right? So it depends on how much are you raising the probability for all that work you put into the one thing? You know, we don't know, I will say that our company has been very successful so far doing this. So until, until we fall apart in some kind of way, which, you know, may happen, we're probably going to keep going.
James 44:24
So yeah, it's like every well, effectively every time again, talking from a scientific or using a scientific analogy, at least, every time you're effectively you're re performing the experiment and you're you're hopefully increasing the number of data points and you're getting to the issue where you're getting more well, okay, this this model looks hopefully more stable. So the first the first game you do it with it really is just a theory.
Nick Bentley 44:46
Okay, yeah, actually, I have to interrupt here too, as well. Because that is does not characterise the way that we think about what we're doing internally.
James 44:53
Oh, interesting.
Nick Bentley 44:54
Our number one value in our company is constant improvement. So every time every time we make a game, according to our model, regardless of the results, the most important thing is to iterate on the model. So like, if you were talking to me a year from now about the theory that we have under which we publish games, it'll look different. And if it doesn't look different, we have definitely failed.
James 45:20
So okay, so now you raise something really interesting, right? Because I mean, we're barely getting to some really more obscureist philosophy at this point. But but screw it, let's try it anyway, the issue is, I guess, if you if you could perform your experiment much more rapidly, you could iterate this whole experiment on the game model, you'd want to do like a 1000s of 1000s and 1000s of times or whatever, whatever number you could pluck out there, but a very large sample size number. And then you would know that this model was a model that was correct. But the funny problem is that you have the same problem that everyone else has actually, which is you don't actually have time to spend 20 years working out whether or not the model works,
Nick Bentley 46:00
Because the world changed in the meantime.
James 46:02
The world changed in the meantime. And this is the fascinating problem, again, of why it's so funny, isn't it, that one of the big problems about and it was why I will just mentioned very offhand way, which we can't afford to discuss, because we're already going on a few tangents here. But why I have quite a lot of cynicism about quite a lot of the social sciences, because I have this problem of like, Yeah, but the whole global cultural context and economic context is shifting so much, that the problem is that coming to stable findings about anything like this is so challenging, because and this is where ironically, why I think people often underrate the power of guts, because they're not seeing that actually the kind of scientific approach in domains like this, you know, unlike when you're studying the fundamental of the universe and the galaxy, oh, great, you've got a lot of stable data. But when you're talking about this is so unstable, it's actually quite hard to make these kind of predictions. So actually, anyway, regardless, you apply these principles in order to be a bit more robust in thinking that actually you're updating the model of darkness.
Nick Bentley 47:06
Exactly. Yeah. So the to the point about gut, I may push back on that a little bit.
James 47:12
Oh, okay. Go for it.
Nick Bentley 47:13
I mean, I do think that there are people whose guts work great, right? Because, because their guts are so aligned with the zeitgeist that they can follow their instincts, and it works. But you, but you have to be one of those people in order for that to work. And there are very few of us like, the chances are that any given one of us is that is vanishingly small. You know, I'm very jealous of them. I know. Like, I know, people who work at Exploding Kittens, and I know that like, the two guys who run Exploding Kittens. Like they just say like, yeah, this, our gut says that this is the product. And there's like, way less vetting that we do, but their gut seem to be so aligned with the zeitgeist that it works quite well. And it's hyper efficient, right?
James 47:58
Yeah, that's, that's really interesting, isn't it? It's like, and I guess in terms of what we mean by gut here, right? Because if you're talking presumably at the level of like, whole game concepts and proposition, rather than so much like gut, I guess I'm thinking a slightly more broadly there. And in terms of its applicability to lots and lots of small individual business decisions that you don't actually have time to experiment on. But I think, what what I think if we go, if we talk in more practical, immediate terms, it seems like what you're doing is really, really interesting, because it's taking like a really core problem to which the answer really, really matters, right? Like, you need to know if this, you really want to have the best possible shots you can add to that game resonated with identity groups. And unless you happen to know that you had, as you said, that kind of hyper aligned to Zeitgeist guts, you just couldn't afford to make that gamble. So this is a critical domain, right? So to really be a lot more certain and not trust gut on its own.
Nick Bentley 48:56
Yeah, one thing you can do, so I mentioned interviews, right? It's not like I just do we just do interviews every once in a while, like we're trying to do interviews all the time. But the consequence of that, is that if the way our customers talk starts to change, we'll hear it. And you know, we'll hear it from from them. And our model will change as a result.
James 49:18
I'm really interested to know I mean, yeah, exactly. you're updating that. But what I'm interested to know, and then more practically, and more specifically, then what these design constraints for designers look like, because it almost sounds like that the constraints you're giving them are like, give me this kind of relationship to concepts. And they're very much sounding like experiential. Rather than say classic ones, when people think about constraints as like, I'm gonna give myself a mechanical constraint or something like that, or a component constraint.
Nick Bentley 49:47
That is exactly right. Like experiential constraints are much more important than the more nuts and bolts constraints because the experiential constraints that's the customer, the customer's experience, right?
James 50:01
Yeah.
Nick Bentley 50:01
That's the thing that matters for sales. The other stuff is, you know, means to ends.
James 50:06
Well, the thing is, it even matters, doesn't it to, on a fundamental level, to how much fun they have, you know, even if you weren't interested, if you if you see this purely, which is completely just about my perspective, if you see as purely as art, rather than business, that kind of still feels like that would be where you were at. And it's interesting how it seems like, people today have more of an idea that that is important. But I don't think even when I started a few years ago, like I felt like, oh, yeah, the experiential constraints would be the critical constraints is something that people maybe were thinking about a lot. And even maybe today, not as much as they could,
Nick Bentley 50:48
I think part of that comes from the fact that like, we're talking about the tension between like creatives and business, like, when you are a creative, one of the reasons you become a creative is so that you can like, sort of follow your internal visions, you know, which are very seductive to you. And they're, so you have to like, it's hard to, it's hard to take yourself out of that as a creative and then try to live inside the mind of another person who's in who's lived experience is very alien to you. That can be I mean, I think that's a struggle that we have a little bit which is, you know, like, we try to, like, be become our customers, like, understand them so deeply that we can think like them, but it's uncomfortable for your creative to go through that process.
James 51:31
Well, yeah, because you're going so completely into inhabiting someone else, and you're putting your own. I think, particularly, when it comes to the self expression aspects of art, you are putting that aside specifically. Because I think to some extent, it's a process to me that seems to fits quite well, with the empathic dimension. I mean, that's something that I find really interesting. It's like, one of the reasons I love creating games is because I like to kind of create something that helps someone feel a certain way. That to me, actually, that's more important than creating than executing my ideas. Increasingly, I'm actually less and less bothered by those, I am finding myself, you know, there are game concerts I've had, which I really like, but I have noticed maybe increasing or maybe I've always been some extent, the way, I am very happy to shoot my own ideas without really a moment of remorse. So and I find that creative aspects of kind of creating experience for people just fundamentally more interesting.
Nick Bentley 52:29
Yeah, I mean, for me, personally, the act of having to get really close to people to understand them. So I've had to practice my listening a lot. And there are moments in interviews that have like made me like, like, almost, it filled me with something that I never really felt thinking more internally, creatively. So like, for example, there's one interview I did with a dad who had set up a tent in his living room to play trekking the national parks with his kid. And in the middle of him describing the setup that they had, and like how it was like, what a sacred space, it was inside this tent, he started to like choke up and cry. And like, that made me choke up and cry. And it made me think, like, wow, my company has played a role in this, like, you know, the relationship between, I'm getting choked up now, the relationship between a father and child is is is so sacred, you know. So like, it's not just products, like, if you can get to that, you can be a part of that. That's as profound as it gets, you know?
James 53:35
Yeah. 100% 100%. I mean, that's, to me, I'm with you that that seems like the real dream. Right? Where you where you're able to, to help people create those kinds of moments. Wow. Like it's gone well, beyond just that was a fun game. Right?
Nick Bentley 53:53
Yeah. Right. Yeah. So once it hits you that there are people out there, who have you you've helped in that way, then it gets a lot easier to leave your own, like internal creative visions. And think, how do I do that again?
James 54:04
Yeah. Because, well, that seems like such a concrete achievement creatively, right. Like, there's not just like, well, I, I talked about something. It's like, oh, I made people feel that and they loved that. Right. That's, that's so real. And I think that's, yeah, I feel like that's the bit that one is really chasing. I mean, that's and I think we, you know, just, for example, in our product development meeting that I was in earlier today, that is very much what we were trying to do we have a kind of feeling that I guess we're trying to recreate, which is that this game is like sitting around a table playing like an action RPG with your friends. Right? And it's, it's creating a particular kind of frenzied flow states that you're kind of all part of. And that's really interesting, because I think like that's not something that I've seen almost any game quite do. And that's very much what we're trying to do with this one is like get that create that moment where it's all there in this incredible moment where they're having that kind of same feeling, they have it like that, of like a beautiful turn in a card game, where everything has just all the effects synergizing at once together. But you're, but you're doing that collectively. And you are doing it all in this moment of like with this time pressure that is on to you, so that you get those kind of like, you know, it's like a like a like a like a moment in almost like a moment in a video game, where you pull off some incredible thing or you jump off a platform, you shoot a guy you somersault, you land on something, and you'll just have this sense of rush, like, like, that is kind of very much what we're trying to create there.
Nick Bentley 55:43
That sounds like a hard thing to do.
James 55:45
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It definitely fits into our kind of ambitious about games mantra, like this is, this is my thing. And again, I think it's not necessarily perfectly aligned to what would be the most commercial thing to do. But it's like, I guess it's like a strong internal value for us is like everything we do, has to be in some sense, ambitious. And I think this one is very strongly like that. It's like, okay, this is quite difficult to pull off like a heavy real time experience.
Nick Bentley 56:14
Have you studied the game Pendulum?
James 56:16
It's one of the ones on my list of things to look out a little bit more closely while in the development process. It's not one I've looked at so far. But I understand it tries to do something a bit like that.
Nick Bentley 56:26
It, I would say it to me, it's interesting, because it tried and then appears from the outside to have totally not met expectation. So I remember, you know, I follow Jamie, like everybody else does. And I remember when he first started talking about it, he mentioned that, at the little mini convention in St. Louis, that he runs pendulum had like the best play tester score of any game they've ever had there. And then, but when it went to market, it's like, it might be the worst selling game. It's not doing great compared to the other Stegmaier games, as I understand it. I mean, maybe if Jamie listens to this, he'll call me up and say that I'm an idiot, because I'm wrong. But that's what it looks like from the outside.
James 57:12
It's it's not tremendously well selling. I think it might be the worst, actually, I think I think it is actually because I remember looking at his numbers, because I was really interested in like crunching them and, and looking at his data to see what you're doing. I think it is, I think I'm an obviously it's worst selling for a Stonemaier product, so it's still things shifted like 17,000 units or something. But But for him, that is a pretty low number.
Nick Bentley 57:30
Yeah, I have I have some con... I was thinking about pendulum. And I like, I wonder if the real time nature of the game itself is the problem. I bring this up, because this would be a concern for you, too. So just for example, okay, so like the first year, your first play experience is a very important signpost to determining whether or not you're going to go online and like say you love the game or not. Right?
James 57:59
Oh, increasingly, dare I say? Critical?
Nick Bentley 58:02
Right? Okay. So one of the biggest problems with board games is you have to learn rules before you play them. Right. So, so the the analogy that I give is like, imagine, if before you watched a movie, you had to read 10 pages of instructions about how to watch it. Like the movie industry would be 1/10 the size that it is
James 58:24
100% Yeah.
Nick Bentley 58:25
Yeah. So by far, the biggest obstacle to board game adoption is learning rules. Now. You sit somebody down and you say, not only do you have to experience the normal intimidation and disgruntlement that you feel with having to like learn all these rules, but now you have to do it under time pressure. That seems to me like a recipe for a bad first player experience for a lot of people.
James 58:50
Oh, my God 100%. It, it's really interesting. So one of the things that we've sort of already designed into the game, is we have a sort of tutorial, mini adventure that the characters go on. And the first part of that is not timed. And I think a critical thing was to to get players to do all of the game mechanics, where there's like a different constraint. That's just for this scenario. That's quite simple and very much like the constraints you get in the real game. That doesn't constrain the time initially when you're playing the learning scenario. Because I think that is I think also right, and I think there's just this general question of tutorials is to me fascinating, so obviously, I am a huge believer that we have to keep trying to crack the rulebook problem.
Nick Bentley 59:36
Yep. Oh my god. Wow. Yeah, we agree we're very aligned on this.
James 59:40
Yeah, absolutely. Because it is a huge problem. Like it's you said it no other space and my talk right now before you watch this movie. You must mandatorily read a document about the making of the production a bit about how to view it about so and things you've got to understand this element of it. You've got to oh my god, as you said that eventually will be nowhere like near the size right?
Nick Bentley 1:00:00
And oh, by the way, when you watch the movie for the first time, you're gonna be cross referencing with the rules the whole time. So you're gonna have to watch it a second time if you really want to, like, get at the fun of it.
James 1:00:09
Oh, god, yeah, a nightmare, right. And I think the interesting thing about this is that is that we and the only reason that we accept this now is because very simply, no one has yet come up with a single consistent approach, and maybe no single consistent approach will ever be found. That solves this problem. And, and all the attempts to do it are all like, let's be honest, I'm going to be completely brutal here, I think a bit inadequate. So for example, the generic solution of learn to play videos, some people talk about those, as if that just solves the problem. Ha, no way does that solve the problem.
Nick Bentley 1:00:18
It does not. Yeah, not at all.
James 1:00:43
I personally hate them. I actually, some of them, by the way, sometimes they're really useful resources. And we had one for Magnate, for example, done by girls game shelf, and Monique was exceptional. She did an amazing job, she got the all of the mechanics across, the core mechanics across in 10 minutes. Brilliant, really great. However, that still wouldn't be my preference, my preference would still be actually always somewhat a friend of mine teaches me to game, that would always be my preference and not a video. And actually, there are times where if the video is going to like 25 minutes teach video, I'm sorry, I'll just bite the rulebook off instead, actually, at that at that point, and even though I hate, I loathe reading rule books, they really annoy me because I still find, However, my brain works despite number of games I played, I find it very hard to imagine how it plays out from the rulebook. And when, and when does when reviewers tell me Oh, I just read the rulebook to get a sense of if I'll like it. I'm like, but it's up to me, that seems like a really poor signal to noise ratio. Anyway, so you have to go through this learning process. And I feel like if there was a way that you didn't have to touch the rulebook, you could just open the box, play the game straightaway, that just has to be superior.
Nick Bentley 1:01:53
Yep, I would say that. So the solution, therefore is not will never be found in making a game and then writing the rulebook after the fact. It's more that you are designing the game so that you can start playing it before you know all the rules comfortably.
James 1:02:09
See, now this is really interesting. Because if if you can, let's say you can truly design that. The issue I guess, a, that would be an amazing achievement, if so if it's a relatively complex game, because I think for some simple games that maybe already achievable. And I know you've been doing some interesting stuff on your on your own blog, where you've posted about the some of the very deliberately hyper simple, abstract games that you've been designing that that I could imagine, begin to breach that territory. But, but I can imagine on anything even slightly complex, that this this would so constrain design space. I don't know, my slight cynicism about that is that comes from I think that if I look at what's happened in video games, they're off, they still have to attack the problem from multiple sides. So they've long ditched manuals, but I've noticed that they do have they do normally got a sort of two punch strategy, where they go one in with, let's make this just as intuitive to understand as possible by using great UX principles about what people are familiar with familiar concepts, but also inevitably tutorializing using some of the content as well.
Nick Bentley 1:03:21
Yeah, you're right. I mean, it's tough. I don't know. Um, yeah, even though we make quite simple games, and even even so we still haven't managed to do this. So I don't really know. I mean, there are examples out there in the world. I remember even like fluxx was kind of like that way back in the day. I believe Friedemann Friese designed a couple of games where it's like there are there's no rulebook I think it was him I don't want to misspeak somebody maybe him designed one where like all you have a deck of cards, you turn over the first card, you do what it says. And and the rules unfold through the cards themselves.
James 1:04:02
I think there's there's definitely he's got one that's that where you the the victory objectives and the structures of the game change depending on what you drew out of the beginning that was like that. I remember talking to another guest, David Weiss over at The Daily worker placement. And he told me very much what he was telling me about one of those games and it was really interesting, as a very much in that kind of like cool experimental art piece, kind of property sector but then again, you know, that's where often you find the the ideas that eventually you can turn into something that's a little bit more applicable more broadly with enough thoughts. I mean, oh, yeah, I find this question about tutorials fascinating. Whenever I did, we did one for magnate. And what's been fascinating about it's been the response to it. So it has been the most one of the most polarising aspects of the game. So maybe the single most polarising aspect.
Nick Bentley 1:04:53
Oh, wow, this is exactly what I would have predicted. This is fascinating. So some people like it, some people don't.
James 1:04:58
So I've, the Comments range, range from on the negative side: How dare you put this in the box? It's a total waste of time. You wasted my time you wasted everyone else's time for a game that shouldn't have a tutorial because it's far too simple. And how dare you long, long criticism and a podcast that I listen to? To: this is a masterstroke, this should win some kind of board game, Nobel Prize, because it solves the problem, finally, have a middle weight game that you can just open and play. Incredible. And it's like, Whoa.
Nick Bentley 1:05:36
Yeah, what do you do with that?
James 1:05:37
So what we've actually done for the second edition, which is really interesting, it's not sorry it's not a second edition, it's the second printing, we're not changing anything other than this one feature of the game, is we put a little leaflet at the top of the box that basically gets players to choose whether they learn the tutorial or the rulebook, and encouraging them to basically pick the one that's going to suit them, depending on what learning kind of approach to learning games they like. So it basically says, on one side look, if you just want to unseal and play, you don't want to do any prep, you don't mind sitting there for for a while. And the first couple of turns are scripted. But you want to understand the game really well. If more of this tickles your fancy, then I think you should pick the tutorial. And then the other side says, Look, if you play loads of games, you quite enjoy reading rule books, you don't have any problem with it. And you don't mind if you get things wrong sometimes, then if more of these apply, I think you should pick the rulebook. And we recommend you don't use the tutorial, And I'm really interested to see. I mean, obviously, this is just our first attempt at doing some kind of like structured learning path thing where we get the players to pick one or the other. I interested to see what the effect of this is one is going to be it's with the sample size that we're going to have. It's not going to be like it's a scientific thing. But I'm hoping to get back some feedback that hopefully people will leave. Hopefully, if it works, people will say, Oh, this is pretty good, because it made sure that I picked it. And then there'll be happy with either approach because also the expectations of the approaches have been set better as well. Like the tutorial is except, the tutorial is better than me teaching magnate. Like honestly, the quality of learning people have gained superior, because it doesn't forget a single detail.
Nick Bentley 1:07:17
Yeah, I would like to see how you did it. If you, I don't know if you're willing to share files, but I would really like to see that.
James 1:07:22
Oh, yeah, totally. I will gladly, I think if it's not already up on BGG, it should be just as a free downloadable file. So I will absolutely share that with you. Because yeah, it's effectively a five player game, that you play the first like two turns of completely scripted. But it what it does is it kind of tutorializes things by getting you to play a quiz. So you you go through it says, right, based on what you know, what is that? Why, you know, how does this bit work? And then people have to decide as a group, and then they flip the next card to reveal what the answer is. So it becomes like a kind of like a because for me, it was like well, knowing I have worked a little bit in education and know making the process a more active learning process would a, be more engaging and b, would fix the knowledge much better. So it turns into a bit more of a mini game of itself, like and so people feel really good about it when you've seen them because like, oh, well, I think the correct number of dice if that we're going to roll is this based on that. And then they flip it and they see they're right. And I'm like, Oh great. Yeah, I understand the game because I predicted what was going to be the rule of how this rule applies. And I was right, and the game is giving me that feedback. And then what it does is it starts going right, well the next round, that's the fight that first round, the second round goes right, we're going to be a little bit more hands free. This time, we're going to tell you what your it's still scripted with what your actions are. But you just got one card that tells you what they are. And it does a little mock bidding round where the information is secret from each other. So you get a little bit of a simulation of a of an auction of a turn order auction.
Nick Bentley 1:08:48
Yeah. Huh. Fascinating,
James 1:08:50
Then it gets to finally right from this round onwards, you are doing it completely on your own flip the last couple of cards, when you come to the end with the bit you need to know about how the end works, that we're not gonna explain to you now and and then it does a little and then because it was running a little bit long. What it does. Now what it also does or has always done is you just basically rearrange the risk cards that trigger the crash and you change some of the board state stuffs to make sure that it speeds the game up. So you kind of catch up, again, to bring it in as little reasonable teaching game length. So that it was it was an enormous amount of work to make it work. But it was a very interesting process.
Nick Bentley 1:09:26
Okay, huh. And do you have you done a lot of blind play testing of this format to see, get a bead on how it's going to work?
James 1:09:36
Yeah, so it was very, it was so interesting over the it was actually in some ways, I think it was weirdly perfect timing for us strangely. So over the pandemic, obviously, we couldn't easily play tests in person with people. So what we did was we sent out again, and then what the people, people would do that lots of encrypted criticisms are so great and so helpful. There's different volunteers, is they would play magnate, we would have a webcam trained on them, and then we would watch them live trying to learn the tutorial from scratch.
Nick Bentley 1:10:04
Awesome. Yeah, yeah, that having that webcam. It's so important.
James 1:10:08
Yeah. Because it was like watching watching people's body language seeing who was engaged who wasn't as engaged, watching like them, like get things right. How long were they looking at some things? are they struggling with others like all of this? And we do that. So we do that loads and loads and loads of times, it was laborious as hell. But it did, it did mean that I think we ended up with something that I think is pretty good. And I do feel like the problem has primarily been about expectation setting for the tutorial, and about getting people and people doing the tutorial who shouldn't be doing the tutorial.
Nick Bentley 1:10:41
Yeah.
James 1:10:41
And I had underrated before we started how much it could piss people off.
Nick Bentley 1:10:46
Right? Yeah. You also, I mean, you're in a difficult spot, because your games are heavy enough that they're played by pretty seasoned and heavy gamers, you know? Yeah, I can see where there's cuz there's conflict there.
James 1:11:00
Like 100%. Like it was. It was it was challenging. And I think because, particularly because magnate is probably more medium weight than some of those gamers expect. I think that led them to choose the tutorial when they should have done because they just assumed it was going to be some super monster, that it's going to be from a complexity perspective and actually it lands somewhere in the middle.
Nick Bentley 1:11:26
That's awesome. Cool.
James 1:11:28
So is tutorialization, something that you're kind of looking at in your games?
Nick Bentley 1:11:31
Yeah, we're thinking about it, but we feel unsure about it. Because it's like, it's another sort of like pedagogical step, you have to get through until you get before you get to the point where you feel like you're really in the flow. And so our games are very light, none of our games have a weight of higher than, like, BGG. Two.
James 1:11:53
Right? Wow. So yeah, really quite light.
Nick Bentley 1:11:55
Very, very light. And so like that. Like, it's more like cognitive load, then it can't like justify its own cognitive load potentially. I don't know, I just don't know, I have to study it more. Also, talking, I think, also, you know, we get in the habit of talking about weight. But I think that might be like a mistake. I don't think weight is a thing, I think what is the thing is sort of the beat by beat experience that happens between opening the box and being fully into the game. And like every, every beat is its own thing and has to be considered as its own thing.
James 1:12:37
Oh, that's interesting. So you're looking at it much more from a kind of journey model, rather than a sort of like this thing is like binary, well, it's not binary. So it's not binary. But it's just this idea that it just has some kind of ineffable complexity level, that just is a certain hurdle to climb. When actually one of the things oh this is one of the fascinating things that I find is that I find actually, what we think about about how learnable something is, is so completely separate to weight in reality that that weight number can becomes meaningless, because well, there's things that magnet is currently rated something like 3.2 on BGG. And now I think number one, the problem is is that the BGG system, you can only vote it like the in the actual voting, you can only vote medium, medium, heavy, or like you can't, you're not allowed as an individual user to give it a more nuanced number, for example, which isn't, which is already not helpful for something that's not really a scale anyway, is the scale is already a poor model for the world. And then you have to put something super, super not nuanced. And that means that for example, magnate's got something like a 3.2. And yet actually that's like point one or point away from brass. And it's just not that heavy. It's it's the problem is is that in magnate, what we've noticed is it has a couple of like mechanics that are genuinely pretty unique to it. And that means that they are a little bit of a hurdle get your head around initially, it's great. This is this right? There is like some really heavy Euro games that basically have sort of 30 different mechanics that but they're all very familiar. And the way that they bisect is sometimes sometimes a bit odd. But it's broadly speaking, let's say as a worker placement game is quite fundamentally modular on some design level, because you're like, Well, I send a worker here. And then a thing happens with a card that's just like every other thing with a card game I've played. Or I go over here and I get a point on a track, but it's like a track I've seen before. Whereas magnates more like there's like two or three chunky systems that are quite unusual.
Nick Bentley 1:14:34
So no one has seen them before. And they have to familiarise themselves with them.
James 1:14:38
Yeah, and I want to get over those humps and actually the tutorial one the reasons I like the tutorial and I still think it's more of a question of refinement rather than ditching it is that it gets people over those humps pretty effectively from even if they're very casual gamers. It can take someone who isn't really, has only ever played Monopoly, and they can play the game competently and be strategizing by the end, that's what that tutorial can do. But what Once you get over the three, you understand the three chunky pieces you go oh! Okay? This is pretty straightforward. And I think that's partly the perception problem that the amongst the heavier gamers that we've had a little bit is that people go, Oh, well this is actually quite easy to do, because they're also looking back from now I've grokked these three systems, I'm looking back at it and going, this fundamentally isn't super complicated, because they're only seeing three systems, they're not seeing, like 50, different interlocking, but actually very familiar pieces. And I think that's another thing where it's like, what dimension is that? Like, that seems like a very different dimension, like how relatively complex individual, and really, actually that's about how relatively familiar individual mechanics are, versus than the amount of stuff you have to learn.
Nick Bentley 1:15:45
Right? It's not it's not just also about familiarity. It's also about, like, the visuals on the table, and how much the visuals allow you to sort of naturally infer what's going on
James 1:15:56
100%? Yeah.
Nick Bentley 1:15:58
Yeah. I talked to Phil Walker Harding once who's one of my sort of game design idols, and he's also a model at underdog for us. And so I'm in the habit of asking game designers like what are some heuristics design heuristics that are really, really important to you, you know, and, like the first one, he said, was, lay like, you should be able to set up the game on the table, and have players who don't know the rules make good educated guesses about how the game is played. So for this last game that we did her story, I was one of the designers on it. And I like I thought about that, like I tried to run with that idea so much for that game. And who is really fascinating. The game is definitely, definitely more intuitive than the other games that we've made in virtue of that constraint. May have overfit on that constraint? I don't know. But it definitely has influenced me a lot.
James 1:16:57
Oh, absolutely. Fascinating. Yeah. I mean, that's really interesting. Isn't it like? That is it's something that I feel like I've heard before. And yet I feel like it's very easy to forget. Because it what it means is that there's an instant weigh in, people are looking at that. And they're going, Oh, I kind of get how this works. And as long as it doesn't then just completely subvert their expectations. And then and then gives them like, oh, I can see what the mental model is, and oh, wait, no, this is something completely different. It doesn't do that, then then it's then that's, again, if you see, you're you're less bothered by like thinking that there's some abstract weight. And you instead say look, this is there's a learning journey here. That's like whoa actually it's probably about step three of the journey. But actually, it's because this because probably step one started when you first saw the box cover.
Nick Bentley 1:17:37
Yep. Right, there's like going back to this idea of beats, there's actually a ton of beats between opening the box, and being fully into the game. And unless you decompose that experience into those beats, you're gonna miss all kinds of critical things.
James 1:17:52
100% 100%. Nick, this has been absolutely fascinating. And I actually feel like we could talk for literal hours, and hours and hours more about this. I don't know about you. But
Nick Bentley 1:18:05
Definitely.
James 1:18:06
So what I would love to do at some point is definitely do a part two, and spend more time discuss these things, because there are loads of things we didn't get to. And some great listener questions this week, about distribution versus direct, which we touched on, I think a bit today. But I would love to spend more time talking to you about and really, really good.
Nick Bentley 1:18:23
Yeah, we didn't know, I know, we sort of plan to talk a lot about that. And then we didn't,
James 1:18:27
Yeah, we didn't. And we talked about your entire product delivery model instead, which was absolutely at least as fascinating as that. And then. And then also, I had some a really good questions about Board Game Arena as well, which is like an entire sphere that I've not even had a chance to talk about. And so some brilliant ones. And I want to make sure at some point, those listener questions get answered, because I think they're going to be really fascinating. So if you would certainly like to come back at that at some point. It'd be great.
Nick Bentley 1:18:54
I would love to yeah, this has been a great conversation. I, your podcast is very savvy, and I just love it.
James 1:19:01
Oh, thank you so much. That is absolutely what I wanted to hear. That's excellent. What things should we be looking out for from Underdog coming up soon? Obviously, we've talked about quite a bit about her story. Does that hit shelves quite soon. Or?
Nick Bentley 1:19:13
Actually this is a make or break year for us. This is probably the highest stakes year we've had yet. So most of our sales so far have come from just two games, trekking the national parks and trekking the world. And, you know, we've been we've been in existence for four years, and those have been our pillars. So we have two more ambitious games coming out this year. First, trekking through history, which is a game where you sort of get into a time machine and visit like remarkable events from history.
James 1:19:44
Oh, fantastic.
Nick Bentley 1:19:45
And then the next one is his her story, which is where you are, you are an acclaimed author, and you're writing a book about remarkable women of history.
James 1:19:55
Ah, so that's the framing you came up with in the end. That's really cool to hear that Yeah. Ah, amazing, fantastic. Well, I'm sure there'll be listeners will be looking out for that one. For both of those actually, they both sound really, really interesting, and I think, especially cool if they haven't learned a little bit about how they came about as well, which is really fun.
Nick Bentley 1:20:13
I do want to emphasise, though, because I'm sure a lot of your listeners are heavy gamers. These are what you would call gateway games, they're very light. You're if you're a heavy gamer, you're probably not going to take these to your, like, your gamer group to play, you know, with other heavy gamers. But you know, if you have family or friends, who aren't gamers who are intimidated by what you'd like you'd like. It's for that situation that we make these games.
James 1:20:37
Fantastic. Yeah, no, I'm sure. I think that sounds like very good advice really for that because as you said, I'm sure the audience does tend to skew quite heavy but I no doubt they'll also just be interested in sort of unpacking how they work, I guess and thinking more about your model.
Nick Bentley 1:20:49
Cool.
James 1:20:50
Wonderful. Well, Nick, thank you so much.
Nick Bentley 1:20:52
Thank you.
James 1:21:02
Producing fun is produced by Naylor Games, if you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter and Naylor James or write me an email James at Naylor games.com. Until next time.
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In this episode, we talk about how he selects games for localization, how his business model works, and more.
Uli’s website: https://www.spielworxx.de/
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James 0:10
I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective.
Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is Uli Blennamann, a German publisher and proprietor of independent label Spielworxx. Since 2010, he's been delighting gamers with an incredibly eclectic range of themes. Occasionally exploring difficult subject matters, from battles for power and fantasy worlds, to Louisiana fishermen, and even to the morality of asbestos manufacturing. With Spielworxx, he aims to give gamers, by his own websites description, the tabletop version of the foodie experience, with a wealth of releases behind him, he's an experienced publisher who still does a huge amount of work himself, choosing to operate on a model that keeps things simple and doesn't require him to have any permanent staff. As someone with so much experience, indeed, Uli has been in the industry in various roles since the 90s, I was keen to mine his brain for as many insights about the publishing business as possible, not least when it comes to localising games into different languages. As a partner of Naylor games, he's actually producing the German language version of Magnate, putting us in the company of Oath and Root, to name but two of the huge English language hits being brought to Germany by Speilworxx. As you might imagine, we tackled a wide variety of topics this week, really getting into the weeds of making publishing businesses work, from how his business model operates, and the role of the secondary market and Spielworxx's success, to how he selects titles and what he would do if he were starting a business today. If you're interested in getting your game design acquired by a publisher, or you want to make a living actually publishing games, this is sure to be of interest. We join just as I've asked Uli, what he was up to the day we recorded in hopes of learning a little bit something more about the real daily life of a publisher.
Ulrich Blennemann 2:06
So you see, this is very good, because you know this, in a tiny company, you are wearing so many hats. So what did I do? I answered a ton of emails, especially regarding the ongoing crowdfunding campaigns. There are two again found in German Speil media. Then the usual business stuff you're doing by mainly by email, I answered a couple of Twitter questions and put up some Twitter marketing very small, of course, because it's Speilworxx. And I looked at the upcoming schedule of Speilworxx, I looked at possible so a cover draft for a new game. I looked at some rules, and I added, did a little bit of rules editing. So you see, it was a day. And this is often on Fridays, where there is, where I tried to do some stuff that I'm not doing on the other days. So on other days, I prefer let's say to have two or three hours for rules or for other stuff. And here it is getting this done getting this done getting this done. I wrote some invoices, too. So yeah, administrative stuff as well. So yeah.
James 3:32
So that seems to be the Friday's you're kind of almost like your cleanup day, where you're doing lots of random bits and bobs.
Ulrich Blennemann 3:38
Ah yes absolutely. Normally, it's actually weekends. Yeah, you should take a break on weekends, and I'm working less on weekends. But tomorrow, I'm at a regional convention. So I can't do any work here at home. So I said, Well, let's move that stuff to Friday.
James 3:59
Yeah, makes sense. That I mean, that's a that's a kind of classic thing, isn't it having to at least sometimes work at the weekend. That's something I'm really familiar with as a, as a publisher, because there's just so many things, I think that just that list of that you've just given me is so familiar in terms of all those very random selection things, whether it be finance related, whether it be related to as you said, but a little bit of rules editing alongside some marketing and and tweeting people and replying to them. That's a huge amount. Would you say that most weekends you end up doing most of your Saturday then or even a Sunday as well to get going to get everything done?
Ulrich Blennemann 4:36
Yes, I basically I work every day of the year. This sounds terrible. And sometimes it's terrible. But it doesn't mean that I'm working each Sunday for eight hours, it's, it can be still just an hour could be two hours can be sometimes four hours when it's necessary. Most of the time I'm enjoying it. Sometimes it's a little bit too much. And you obviously know this, gaming is never totally gone or thoughts about it. I'm thinking about games projects all of the time. And sometimes it's a little bit too much, but sometimes I'm really enjoying it. So yeah. But weekends are needed. And each new year, I'm saying, Well, this year, this year, it will change. I am going now to 40 hours a week, and it will happen. Three days later, I know could be a problem.
James 5:38
Yeah. The New Year's resolution doesn't really last very long. Do you think it would be easier if you had sort of like a team of 10 at Speilworxx HQ? And is or is that even desirable for you to grow it to that size?
Ulrich Blennemann 5:51
Excellent, excellent question. So I don't think I would enjoy to really run a larger team, even a smaller team, let's say of five people would be too much. For me, I'm not a person would like to do this, it is possible. But then Speilworxx will have to change in a big, big way, doing more projects, going for larger print runs, and all this and there is sceptical of the distribution system of social media and other stuff. So and of course, you know this, and if you are going for larger print runs, you need to go into distribution. If you want to be sell more numbers, you have to have somebody doing your marketing. And I don't want to see this. So this is very much my nature. But in the end, it means that I'm working a little bit too much at this moment. But I guess this is true for everyone, not only in the gaming industry, but who runs a company of one we plus freelancers or a company of two plus, freelancers. Yeah,
James 7:13
Yeah. I mean, I think this this is such a difficult challenge. I think a lot of startup businesses, of course, will they will they all face this challenge of kind of when did they start scaling, but obviously, a lot of those feel like a VC backed startup in something in software, for example, even just to kind of seed funding kind of level, then people will give you a lot more money than you can actually realistically make in the hopes of future gain. Whereas if you've got something that's completely self funded, and actually, it's because you do it more for the joy of doing it, then obviously there's there's just not that possibility to raise additional finance. And as that means you're funding everything out of your own revenue. Yeah. And of course, then that becomes, as you said, difficult because suddenly, the thing I think about a lot with physical games as well, in terms of scaling up, what I'm trying to do with Naylor games, is that you you buying a lot of stock upfront, and then you're then taking a financial risk on that. And in fact, in the last podcast, I was talking to Jackson Pope of well formally Reiver Games and now Eurydice games. And they're really interesting because they are a company that do their own manufacturing, as well as publishing the game. And what's so interesting is that he was telling me about how in his previous company he had such an enormous amount of stock that he wasn't able to then sell and that ultimately potentially sank it so I can understand why you know you don't want to get to those bigger revenue numbers that you need to for the team. You need to take quite big financial risks right on like on products potentially.
Ulrich Blennemann 8:40
Yes, absolutely. You're correct and I'm a person who has to sleep well. And if I see this burden if I know there is stock which I need to sell it it has to go now if I need to pay paychecks for my team and of course they deserve it and you know there's in the gaming in the tabletop gaming industry there is not a lot of money, so most people are not even paid well but if I know what I mean now it's the first of the month I need to pay people this would really cost me my sleep so I try to keep it very very small. But of course it means there is also this ceiling you can only sell that amount of games and that is mainly the flip side but for me it will it is working very well if you if you want to get rich quickly don't go don't do this so do something different.
James 9:45
Yeah, I think that's that's very true that's very important thing to keep in mind is that if you ever want to get rich quick Just don't touch board games I think like that's go into finance do something with this huge amounts of money swishing around and even then that's not exactly like that's a walk in the park but it is at least somewhat possible to make larger sums of money somewhat easily, then games is not the place to start with that at all. I think that's that seems like very, very sound advice. How much do you think in the future, you would be able potentially to make use of extending what freelancers do, because one thing that I would say, has been really interesting for me running this business. And I think about how things, you know, could have worked even, let's say 20 or 30 years ago, it would have been very difficult to imagine before the internet, that I would be able to outsource as much as I do. Like, I think about things like even though I do, I think I did about 50% of the graphic design for Magnate myself, the other 50% was various other very talented people contributing to the process that I would not have been able to do that without. And even now also, you know, I outsource bits of more core functions as well, like, fulfilment, there are some of that admin, and now I've got someone doing actually the same for marketing. Could you imagine that? Something where you would gradually outsource chunks at least? Because that seems at least that seems more possible than maybe it once did?
Ulrich Blennemann 10:59
Yeah, I think this is actually very possible. But I'm thinking of this for for quite some time, I just need to make that move to outsource a little bit. But I have my own fulfilment. So I'm not sending boxes of games myself. I'm not doing this. But this can be even done, I think a little bit better with less work for me it can be more automated, because right now I have to send in the orders. So to the fulfiller, and they are doing the shaping of the games. So I think it can be done more efficiently. Also in marketing I can be there's there are certainly in all areas, I can entropy works can improve. The question is, how much do I want to see this? And I'm not doing everything because it is possible. So of course I, I left Facebook and all. I was never Instagram, never WhatsApp, but I left. I don't want to touch a Zuckerberg product at all. So I'm not doing this, although, of course, it would have advantages. Economically, most probably. But I don't want to do this. I was there. I don't want to touch it. Yeah, it is always a difficult question. But I don't want to seem morally superior by not using Zuckerberg, everybody has to see what is best for them. I'm using Twitter, which is not really a lot better. It's easier for me to use, because it's just scrolling by. And it's not at Facebook, war stories. And so and that, of course, Speilworxx could outsource more, maybe it will outsource more.
James 13:00
The thing about the social media thing I find really fascinating. I mean, certainly my personal experience is that I think if I hadn't done this, I was off in, let's say, carried on my career in software, where I was, and maybe gone to work as I don't know, head of product at a advertising company, I actually think there's a good chance that I would have come off all social media platforms. Because for me, I think there's a big question about, I think the thing that it does to people isn't always great. And there's parts of it that are great. And I think it's been really nice. For example, certainly several years ago, I felt very welcomed into kind of the boardgame, Twitter space. And there's still lots of people there that I really like and get on with. And I think that can be a powerful support system. And that's really awesome. But I also think about how much that it kind of pushes everything towards people spending all day getting very upset often about things that they have, like no control over. And to me, this seems like the most damaging thing about social media on the one hand is this amazing transformative tool, because we've basically put a kind of printing press in everyone's pocket, right? We've made everyone into a broadcaster and a publisher now, but at the other hand, it means people get you're scrolling through so much stuff that is not I think psychologically very good for people. And I have this belief that actually maybe this is quite extreme. Are you familiar with the kind of, I don't know if this happened in Germany in quite the same way. But in Britain in the 18th century, there was a kind of gin panic. I don't know if you know about about this.
Ulrich Blennemann 13:01
No, I haven't heard about this but a gin panic sounds awful.
James 14:35
Yeah it does, doesn't it? But basically what happened was was this was that there was like a vast amount of I think people started the technology developed for people to start distilling their own gin. And they were doing in such vast quantities. And this this period was kind of called There's a famous, there's a famous Hogarth painting about this called gin lane, about people just drunk on gin and it became this huge public health problem where there was just people who were just drinking hard spirits all the time from across society and it was a massive public drunkenness, violence, etc. And it was partly this that encouraged lots of laws in Britain to come about around, limiting, distilling your own alcohol, closing hours for pubs, all the kinds of things that in Britain, we now think about are things that were kind of moderating forces on alcohol use. And this, this period was kind of managed as a kind of public health problem effectively. And I can feel a little bit like that about social media at times. You can't uninvent it, but I think we're gonna have to become a little bit more mindful about how it's used. Because I think it yeah, presents some risks.
Ulrich Blennemann 15:36
Yeah, I agree. 100%. And some regulations will be now done in the EU, that is probable, but of course, it's also dangerous, because everybody needs their own privacy. And if a state or, or an organisation can look in your chat protocols, this is also on the other end, it's also dangerous, but moderation at most social media sites is either non existent, or in my opinion, too lax. And of course, at Twitter, as you said, initially, there is a very large or pretty large and very nice and very welcoming board gaming, bubble group, whatever it is, and I feel really welcome. And it's nice
James 16:26
Absolutely.
Ulrich Blennemann 16:26
But we are we are having the privilege that we are white, and male. And I've heard so many stories of women or people of colour, who are really, in board gaming, at Twitter, who were harrassed, and this is, of course, also happening. I'm just, as a white male, I'm not feeling it myself. And this is, I think, different. And, yeah, very difficult. And as you said, you can't stop it at this moment. The only thing would be probably to really destroy the Zuckerberg empire and have smaller sites. But will this be the cure? Probably not. So very difficult to turn the wheel back.
James 17:15
Oh, yeah, I feel really sure that the technology just can't be uninvented. And actually, and maybe in the long run, when we find a new equilibrium perhaps is a good way to describe it. Maybe eventually, they'll we'll kind of find our way through it. I mean, that's kind of something that's happened with several new disruptive technologies. I mean, we can't forget that as much as the, for example, the printing press itself is an incredible invention. And it's suddenly put a kind of like a at the time was welcomed by, you know, lots of church leaders, because it put a Bible in everyone's hand. But that, of course, itself, then led to the Reformation, which had incredibly again, some very positive effects, but some very, very negative, short to medium term effects. So it's just one of those things I think is difficult to do. I kind of with you a bit, definitely about the Zuckerberg companies, I almost feel like it needs a kind of 1920s sort of standard oil treatment, maybe being broken up into multiple different companies that doesn't, that's not currently something that can work in American kind of competition, or I think that's really interesting in terms of how that affects the bringing it back to games more more concretely about access to platforms and well and to market because this is a big problem is I think, even if one doesn't want to use it, it's such a big, powerful commercial instruments that I know that from if I wasn't using it, I'm leaving on the table, so much potential to reach potential customers. And so it's that thing of like, Ah, weighing up, you know, those those issues. And I can see why it's just such a difficult one to make a to make a call on, isn't it?
Ulrich Blennemann 18:40
Right? Absolutely. And I once talked a couple of years ago, one or two years ago, I talked to the CEO of a larger board gaming company are named a year. And that company was suddenly for no reason banned from Facebook. And for six or eight weeks, and of course, trying to get back. And I talked to him and I said, Well, let let it go, let let Facebook go. And don't don't worry about this anymore. If they don't want to see you, then then don't be there anymore. But he said, Well, no, I've built my audience there. It's so important for my company, I need to get back although and he said I hate Facebook deeply. It's very, it's a very, very difficult decision and yah, And we cannot really only take a view from a moral point of view. It's there are so many different aspects. It's difficult.
James 19:45
Yeah, very, very difficult. So that kind of then raises brings me on to another kind of question, which I'm really intrigued by, which is, how does Speilworxx find its audience, because it's a very unique company in many ways. I think about the kinds of games that you produce. I think about on your website, the way you describe the company as the English, the automatic Google English translation, I'm sure it's not quite capturing it. But you have this kind of notion of the idea that there are these sort of positively difficult games. And since they're a bit challenging, they're like, describe them a little bit like it from memory, being like the equivalent of fine dining in the sense of like, it's a, it's a foodie experience, where it's maybe a bit challenging, but it's very rewarding. So I think this is a really cool way to talk about a more niche games. And I'm really interested to know, like, how you find that audience that want the foodie experience, especially given the fact that you know, you deliberately said, look, there are certain platforms I just don't want to work with? How does that audience come about?
Ulrich Blennemann 20:40
Yeah, I think I'm lucky in here that I'm in this gaming industry, already since 1993. So I know a lot of people, so professionally since 1993, and I already founded Speilworxx in 2010. And so that's also 12 years now. And at that time, you know, this, the gaming market was so much smaller. So I was able that let's simply stay with Speilworxx since 2010. At that time, it was so much easier to get some feedback to get known among people and gamers, because there were a lot fewer companies and a lot fewer games. Actually, if let's say it's 2022. And I'm sitting here and I would say are we I'm I was never professional in gaming, and let's do a small game company. Actually, I would not do it, I would not dare it. Because with this model, if nobody knows you, if you are new, I think it can work. So I'm really lucky that I have people who know Speilworxx website, who simply buy my stuff, and I'm really, really, this is so much appreciated. I'm really grateful for this, that I have these people, and that they come to me. But for a newcomer these days, it's so much harder to be hunted to make a splash or to even get any attention these days.
James 22:22
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. So you regard that I guess, then, because you had that early involvement, you were able to build that audience. You've kind of grown a bit, I guess, with the market effectively.
Ulrich Blennemann 22:33
Yeah. Yeah. And this is a good description. And of course, you see, as a small company, you cannot say, Well, I did in, let's say, 2015. In this way, it worked. So let's do it. Today. In the same way. No, Speilworxx, in a way is evolving I started with a German edition of US war games. Then I did some original games, also 500 copies, and I said, Well, let's move to 1000 copies, and both English and German rules included. And then at a certain point, I said, well, and this is getting back to your question, how do I find an audience? I said, Well, let's go to crowdfunding. And you know this. Of course, neither game founder nor Speilish media nor Kickstarter are charity events, they want their market they want their market share. So of course for the service, they get a certain amount of money a certain percentage, this is absolutely fine. But so you could say well, Uli before you have your games and people could preorder them from your website. So you're getting 100% of this money. Why are you doing this? Yeah, because I will reach at games on Kickstarter speed, which means that people who will who haven't heard ever of Speilworxx so it's also for me, it's a marketing thing to be at these platforms in a very limited way. Right now there is a crowdfunding campaign and if you compare my campaign how it looks on the side again for to more professional to larger companies who have their own staff who is just who are just doing the crowdfunding campaigns. It's still small, but at least people are seeing me people who would never ever why will look at my website, they will never find it. So So you need to evolve but maybe two years from now I'm saying, James, I'm now in distribution with all my games. So it is what is now necessary. Asmodee Ivan's Braga, other companies, they are like a supertanker. On the ocean, they go their way straight. And that's what they are doing. Of course, they are changing the course when needed when there is an island, but they go their route, whereas Speilworxx, it's a tiny boat. And if the waves are too big, if there are tankers left and right, I have to try and change my course otherwise, I will go down. So I cannot say what will happen two years from now, if somebody had asked me five years ago, will you do crowdfunding? I'd say, No, I'm not. I'm not doing it for sure. So you can't be sure what will happen.
James 25:38
Yeah, I think I'd seems like very good advice, I think for anyone to consider that is particularly this issue that past successes can't just be copied and replicated, because the environment has changed very substantially. And so for example, what worked on Kickstarter, let's say, in 2016, kind of in the early days of boardgame crowdfunding relatively, it's just not going to work today, you just look at the distribution of the number that the sheer number of projects that you're up against, for example, and what the expectations that backers have, you know, it still quite recently, I was still seeing projects where people would often do a lot of merchandise and stuff alongside things. And maybe it didn't really contribute much to the revenue because it was really that, you know, that was that was from an early an earlier iteration of Kickstarter, where people were thinking, well, it's like a reward things like to offer lots of stuff, rather than today, where it's like, well, this is almost dare I say, become a preorder platform. Yeah. And so really, it's instant crowd, preorder is really what's going on rather than like, Oh, I've got this speculative project, and I'm just hoping some good people out there will give me some money to make it happen. So you're right, it makes total sense. So in terms of terms of that today, so that raises you about distribution. And if it's possible for you to say this, I would really love to know. And I think what the listeners would love to know, is about, for example, how your revenue mix works. So I know that Speilworxx is famous for producing sort of short runs of these of these rather boutique-y kind of games. Is most of that therefore being sold direct at conventions? Or is that most again, distribution? How does your revenue kind of model work?
Ulrich Blennemann 27:09
Yeah, you know, so so let's get one step back. So recently, I, so I think two years ago, I really started doing some German language editions only. So I restarted with Pax Pamir because I love that game , Cole Wehrle is a good friend and all this. And this worked out and now I'm doing a certain Magnate, Oh, I haven't I haven't heard about much about this game.
James 27:41
I wonder who!
Ulrich Blennemann 27:44
Now Magnate, of course, is a wonderful game. So when it really fits, Speilworxx very much. But here, my module model is different. So in order, because, of course, there is also at least an English language addition of that title, maybe in other languages, as well could be Spanish could be Italian, Korean, Japanese, whatever. So my market here is a lot smaller, I can just sell the game in Germany, in Austria, and in the tiny German speaking parts of Switzerland. So here, I need a partner. And I'm looking for partners of these editions. So yes, the game can be purchased direct from my website. Of course, this is my preferred method for it because I get the full amount of money minus shipping and all this stuff, but I need a partner. And so here and these with these German language titles, I'm also in a limited way in distribution, retail and distribution. So of course, you know, this, you are losing quite a bit of money by sending games into distribution, but also it allows you larger numbers. So the it's advantage and disadvantage, but for my own games that are original from Speilworxx, so I try to have worldwide rights, and I will release them in English. And so new language edition in English and German and in one package so that I can sell it worldwide. I can sell such again to Serbia, there may be just two Speilworxx fans in Serbia, but at least they are able if they are gamers to read English language rules. They don't read any German so but as in this way, I can sell it to them. I can sell three copies to Greece, five copies to to Finland, maybe, direct and this all is nice for me with limited runs and I also try to only do a single print run so that people know, ah, there is a certain value in this game. So some loyal customers, they order all Speilworxx titles, and I'm 100% sure that they don't like all of them. So let's say you like, only every other Speilworxx game, but still, you know, this game, if I don't like it, I can still sell it on the second hand market for a good amount of money. Often for this, even if played for the same amount, or for a higher amount, when it's already gone from me. So they are not really are in risk of losing money. Although my games are pretty expensive. That's what it is low print runs, and all that. And these days anyway, with the costs of resources, and paper and everything, games are still under price, but it's still an expensive hobby. So here, my main revenue, of course, is from selling direct. And for me, it's also quite important to sell as fast as possible. If I sell out of a title in 18 months, that's fine. But if I sell out in three months, that's much, much better. Because I can already use that, than money, the income, the profits to pre purchase from the manufacturer on my next game. Yeah, and this is my stupid model. And there are so many more and better models. So at least, it seems so in the EU, that the rates are increasing again. But in the last couple of years, if you would like to borrow money from the bank, the rates were very, very low. But I was never, I never ever I ever went to a bank to ask for money, I could always finance my projects from the money that is inside the company. And I prefer and I hope to stick to this. But again, who knows what will happen in two years, maybe I'm saying I needed to do this, I needed to hire these people. Yeah, but only you, you told me you don't want to hire five. You never know what will happen.
James 32:30
I'm trying to just imagine that in two years time, you're going to have 30 staff, and you're going to be using lots of complex debt products that you would have bought leverage 100 to one on capital, something like that, going completely the reverse of what you say, though, who knows, maybe I think that's really interesting, particularly what you say about your model, in terms of effectively what you're doing by having those limited print runs of your own titles, rather than the localizations is that you are guaranteeing the secondary market value. That's really interesting, because I was reading a very interesting article by Charlie Thiel recently, and he was talking about Kickstarter and the crowdfunding platforms as as having a little bit of similarity to the kind of pay to play models in online gaming. And he was drawing some particularly I think, to the kind of loot boxes, that you find the digital games and saying, Look, is there a bit of casino going on here? Yeah. Which is that the same kind of dopamine reward loop things that that are designed into those digital products. So in some ways, what Kickstarter does, and I won't go in the whole arguments, a really interesting piece, I recommend anyone read it. I love his writing in general, it's brilliant on games, and I would definitely, strongly recommend it. One of the things that came out of it was I kind of hadn't twigged that, for lots of people with Kickstarters, they can sometimes particularly when they have exclusive elements, they can be quite sure that they're all or have a good chance that the product would have a secondary market value. That means they don't actually lose money by backing it. Which is kind of true very big Kickstarters they have lots of Kickstarter exclusive stuff. And then that suddenly made me realise I was like, ah, that's interesting. That's very much not how we approached it because I was very against having any exclusives on the Kickstarter. And what was interesting was was amazing Oh, right. So this this audience of people, some of whom are just going to be huge fans, I think probably for you. It sounds to me based on what I know so far, that they're going to be people who are Spielworxx fans maybe don't love every game, but they want to support Speilworxx in general. But I can imagine the people backing things like a CMON campaign, not because they're like, Oh, I've got I've got such love for this Hong Kong listed public company. But because they're thinking, Oh, this is pretty much a no lose situation because I will at least get the money back on it. And then potentially if I'm selling the Kickstarter exclusives more and I've my first taste of this actually came with Magnate where we saw that some of the versions of it trading secondhand that kept the kicks to offer exclusive back notes in it were commanding prices on the BGG marketplace and eBay that was higher than the price I was charging for a new copy. That was the same for everything except those banknotes. And that I thought was fascinating that that is a part of this market. So, I don't know, it sounds like the it's quite a smart model in some ways.
Ulrich Blennemann 35:19
Yeah. But it's, there are quite a few collectors also, in our hobby in our market, who will who will buy and who will keep it. But for all of us, I think you are absolutely right. For some Kickstarter, or crowdfunding exclusives are very important, I think you can, if you do this, you can make more money. So it's not my model. I don't want to do this. Not Not, not at all. But I think for somebody, it is really important. There and and another thing is what what I missed to mention, I'm not saying if I'm only doing a single print one of each edition, that the game cannot reappear in a second edition, but not from me, I will licence my games, if there is demand for it, it has happened, it will happen in the future. For some games, it can be also that it's not an English or German language, could be just Chinese could be just Koreans around floor didn't have I think that's from 2017. Could be 18. I'm not sure 17 I guess, the game was quite popular. And I've had so many talks to English language publishers, but in the end, no deal came through. But this year, a couple of weeks ago, there is a new edition, but just the Korean edition. So it can also happen but and you also know this was a huge amount of new games, publishers and I would do the same thing. We're into licencing games from other companies, they are very much cherry picking. So they look at BGG. Anything below 7.5 is not good enough, or whatever and forever. So there are so many reasons for it. So it's not that easy. But I cannot guarantee if you are buying a Speilworxx game that in last three years afterwards, there is a new edition of that game. And of course, it may also mean that a new edition is more for lack of better term more modern, because you know this, no book, and no game is ever finished. And no matter how hard you look into it, if you revisit a game or a book, you will find out this is a stupid mistake, or could be our on second thinking, I think we should change this tiny rule a little bit, tweak it a little bit. So the new edition, maybe even in a way I use the term modern or it may be actually better than your Speilworxx addition. But what I can guarantee on this whole planet, there are not more than 1000 copies of this game. And so you have a special game, at least and yeah,
James 38:13
I mean, that's that's, that's very useful. I think that makes tremendous sense that even if it reappears, it will never reappear in quite the same way. So it has the sort of original Speilworxx one. And the thing about the secondary market pricing is really interesting, because that's exactly what happened with me with Captains of the Gulf because I think I played that at a convention in 2018. And really enjoyed it very much wanted to get my hands on a copy. And you were just completely sold out a long time by the time that I managed to. I was looking to buy one. And so I ended up buying a secondhand one I think it was slightly more expensive than the original RRP to get hold of it because again, well it's it's a limited supply. It's a special version of that of that particular game. Well I think that's great, isn't it because and this is how I feel about all those kind of things. It feels like it's the best of both worlds in many ways because if they back it and they join in early on, then they're going to get a special first edition of it. But if it's if it's really popular and it's something which is has has a real potential for a life much beyond the 1000 copies, someone licences again they produce it and it's still possible for other people to enjoy that game as well.
Ulrich Blennemann 39:14
Yes, yeah, maybe you shouldn't close the door completely. I don't like this at all. So why shouldn't product again book reappear if it proves to be popular, it's just not Speilworxx I would do this addition but of course people can if they like, use my graphics, they I will gladly point them to the printer I'm using if they want to have different graphics, different printers, they can do so but you know this. It's more difficult, especially if you need to redo all graphics from scratch again, this costs a lot of money. Yeah, but anything is possible. If parties are, are talking so yeah.
James 40:04
Yeah, that's really interesting. So speaking of localization let's talk about that because you're someone who's worked on both sides of it. So you've you've made German local editions of games like Pax Pamir, like Magnate, which will be appearing later this year. But you've also licenced your games to other people as well. So that's really interesting to have those both of those perspectives on it. Let's talk about the German localization first, how do you go about picking a game to localise? How would you do that cherry picking? What are you looking for? When you're going to localise a title?
Ulrich Blennemann 40:36
Yeah, maybe one of the few advantages of being a tiny publisher is that I can do whatever I want. So I'm looking at Speilworxx is publishing games that I like, and Speilworxx is licencing games that I like, so I'm looking for games that I like to play. That's Pax Pamir and everything that is done by Cole, Cole Wehrle, I'd love to see in a German Edition because these are my favourite games, same to Magnate. In Magnate you could say we talked about this earlier. Of course, James, you could say well, another city builder, ah but why, and it's just an economic game, and at the end you count your money and gone. So yeah. But this game also fits a Speilworxx. The label, I think it very well. Because I love how the game develops. Yes, during the game, you're making more money and you're the prices get higher, it feels great. But you already know, that's a crash is coming is looming. And I love it. It's also, in my opinion, a critique on capitalism, in some ways. And so this is why I liked the game. But if somebody would ask me to licence a game for the German market, and I, and even if it's very popular game, a very popular game. And if I don't like it, I am not doing it. This is one of the few advantages of course, in a large company, you have to see, you have to think in numbers. This is important. And if then somebody offers you a very popular game, you would probably say yes, I'm doing this. I can do a ton of money with this. But yeah, this is one of the advantages I'm having. So that's why I love to do the German Edition of Magnate. Yes.
James 42:40
Well, thank you. Well, thank you so much. That's very kind of you. And I'm yeah, I'm so excited to see it. To see the German one. It's going to be absolutely amazing. I've recently been looking at proofs of the Korean language one. And there's just something completely wild and awesome about suddenly seeing this same cover. Now with in Hangul, on the front, I'm feeling like wow, wow, this is amazing. Like this is this is this is incredible, like and seeing, I think the the currency in the game has been changed to Won. And as a result, the numbers are now in the billions, which is great. So it's like the I think the main bank name is 5 billion Won. Like 5 billion. No, I love this. So really, really amazingly cool to see that. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to that for the same reason to sing with the German one. So it sounds to me like really the primary principle actually ahead of everything else. And this is, again, this advantage against being small of not having like, a huge number of employees on your books. And now you're like, Oh, my God, I'm gonna pay all these salaries, is that you can just choose, Well, actually, the most important first criteria is that this game is something I really like. And then after that, you can go well, presumably, though, and I'm guessing this is also really important. You also have to believe I like this, but it also has to have commercial potential because it does still need to be profitable. But you don't have to be driven by that as your very first instinct because you don't have this vast overhead.
Ulrich Blennemann 43:59
Yes, absolutely. totally correct. And, yes, if I had some games I was interested in on my table, I liked them, but I couldn't make the numbers work. So if I'm losing money, doing it, or the chances to lose money are high, I won't touch the game. I can still play the English language edition. I probably have it down here at home, and that's fine, but it's just not a commercial thing to do. So um, yeah, both things have to come together. And I don't need to do 10 games a year so I can be very picky here too.
James 44:42
Makes sense. Has your output, however, increased quite a bit because it seems like when I'm scrolling through this Speilworxx website now it feels like the pace at which when you add the localised versions of new games together seems quite solid.
Ulrich Blennemann 44:55
Yeah. Yeah, I think the the output has that increase because of the localised versions. Again, this is one thing, but it's a different model. And I'm not really doing that much work on them. So I'm developing a game as you know, it's very time consuming. So from early tests to bring the game to market, of course, I'm not doing this alone. I have freelance people. But still it's a lot of work. In a localised version, the huge advantage is that the original publisher has already done this. And so that makes it easier to do it and this year, I had and they will appear late this year, I had to cold publishing games. So with New Middle Industries that was London Necropolis Railway by Daniel Newman, and recently a case of Amusement Inc. I did Pilgrim. But these are not really Speilworxx games. Yes, Speilworxx is a publishing partner. But New Middle and Amusement, they did the majority of the work. So that was also easier for me to do. And next year, if everything goes according to plan, I will do NES games. But again, let's look at the new year a year resolution and see what will truly happen.
James 46:22
Yes, absolutely. That doesn't have a great track record of coming true. So actually, can you talk a bit about that? Because I find that really interesting as part of a general trend that I'm starting to see. So the company is called New Mill is that I get that right. Yeah, New Mill industries, New Mill Industries, and are they kind of like a design studio then? Or are they a publisher in their own right?
Ulrich Blennemann 46:44
Yeah, yeah, yes and no. So New Mill is, again, is a company it is also very small company. And it's run by Daniel Newman, who's also the designer of London Necropolis Railway,
James 46:57
Oh right, okay.
Ulrich Blennemann 46:59
And of Tony Miller. So they formed a company. And at first they released a few games. All of them were crowdfunded. And late this year, there will be a new game crowdfunded just by them. And all of them are small games, small boxes, one is even a trick taking card game, and so they could handle this by themselves. But London Necropolis Railway, which by the way, is a very interesting story. It's about the the railway that connects London after the cholera Academy in the 1840s, to the new necropolis, which is 40 kilometres or 14 miles away from from London. And so the game is about all this. So the mourners and the coffins you transport them from London to this new graveyard. But this is a much larger game. This is typical Speilworxx stuff, and it has a deck of cards. For four players. It has a play, it has player boards, it has wooden pieces, it has cardboard pieces. So Daniel and Tony didn't want to do it alone, because they have no experience doing this. But I liked the game, because first I think it has a very cool action selection mechanic. And second, it's fitting Speilworxx so well. The theme is is pretty dark with this because you have coffins there, and you have all the the dead people and the mourners who are travelling there. But I think it's it's fascinating story. And this is why this is a Speilworxx game.
James 48:42
So that's really interesting. So you've got a company that's producing kind of lighter games by itself, but they're working as designers, because I know both Daniel and Tony, and they've been working together, they're working on more complex project, they can come to you because I guess you have the kind of experience and I guess the track record through Speilworxx, that means that you can produce that for them in a way that probably they wouldn't ideally want to themselves because, well, I think we both know very well the amount of work as you start making a game more complex purely from things like the art direction of the game and managing all the separate pieces. And then there's the obviously the input financial implications of component cost risk, all the extra project management overhead that starts coming in. I mean, that was something with Magnate. It's a brutal number of components. And it's definitely one of those situations where on some level, I could look back and go Well, that wasn't an ideal first project in many, in many ways to do we could have done something a bit simpler. But hey, for me making Magnate was a bucket list item. That was something I had to do and if there's been a terrible flop, I still would have gone no that was important that I did that. So I think it even though it was on some level bonkers to choose a game with that many components as the first project I had to do anyway, I had no choice I was compelled by my own desire to make that game. But, but it's really interesting that there is just a lot more work. So it's interesting that they should they partner with you to do that? And that that's quite it's kind of like an interesting model, I think.
Ulrich Blennemann 50:04
Yeah, it is an interesting model. And you see for their Kickstarters for their small scale, the Kickstarters. They did the games and the assembly in the US themselves. So let's say at Kickstarter, there were 500 orders for a game. Then they did 550. And they ordered the world, the carts, the small boxes, and they home assembled the games and sent everything out. So they could manage this, but not for a large game. And at first we Daniel and I, we said, well, let's crowdfund this game. But you know, crowdfunding campaigns can be also very time consuming. And I said, Danny, let's look into a 1000 copy print run for this game. And we looked at the numbers, and we sold out already in, I think, three or four weeks, so the game will appear this fall. And it's, it's done, then. Neither Daniel, New Mill industries nor me become rich because of this. But I think it will be a very nice game on a very, very interesting topic. And maybe there's a different publisher afterwards, who will say, Well, this was sold out quickly. We liked the game. Let's do a new edition. And yeah, maybe but if not done and fine. Everything great.
James 51:30
Do you think they'll they'll take it and say, Look, we love the gameplay, but we would like to re-theme it. And now it's going to be about My Little Pony.
Ulrich Blennemann 51:37
That would be nice, but because it's Daniel's game, I would be really surprised if he would agree to this. But if he wants to do this, ya.
James 51:57
No, it's interesting, because I think about his other game. There's a Dead Man's Cabal is another one. So part of the sort of like, it's kind of like, almost like a meditations on death trilogy. I think it's an amazing subject matter. The London Necropolis railway is something I knew about before the game appeared. And I think, I think it did have a special platform. So that Waterloo, I believe, where the where the trains would go,
Ulrich Blennemann 52:19
It is a special platform. Yes, you're right. But you know this better than then, then me bloody German.
James 52:29
Yeah, I've amazing a really cool theme. I mean, that's something else I wanted to talk about briefly is about, I guess, your model lets you do also some slightly more difficult themes. The big thing on my list of Speilworxx games that I really want to play I've not yet played is absolutely The Cost, that I've got, wow, what a subject matter your, as I understand it, make sure I've understood the game correctly, you are an Asbestos manufacturer. And you play over I think a lot quite a long period of time that it represents.
Ulrich Blennemann 53:00
It is it's abstract, the timescale is abstract, but you're right, you and asbestos company, although I get to this later. So The Cost is, in my opinion, maybe my all time favourite, Speilworxx working because on one hand, I think it's mechanically it's brilliant. So Moe Canalis. And his team they they did a tremendously well done mechanically sound game. That is one part. But the other part is topic matter. Asbestos, and you mine asbestos, you redo it, and then you are selling it, and you're selling it also to other countries. And even if your country where you mined and milled it is saying, Well, we are not doing this anymore, because we now know that asbestos is very unhealthy, you can still sell it to other countries who are still taking it, which is in at this moment of time, if I'm not totally mistaken. But two years ago, it was the case, you could sell it to India, you could sell it to China to lots of spaces. And asbestos is still done these days, but most probably not in the country where you are finding it. And you can do so. And on top of that in the game, you can say well, I want to make a profit, because in the end of the game, it's who has most money, is the winner. And what you can do in the game, you can say wow, my miners knows they are quite useful. So I better have some safety regulations in the game. But of course safety regulations will cost money. At the end of the game. As I said, most money you You're winning. So you could also say, Well, I find other workers. So let's do mine and mill unsafely, it's a lot cheaper. And then you pile up the wooden worker pieces at your player mat that workers and you see them. And I can guarantee you the first dead worker, Oh, what did I do? So second one, I don't care profits. And there are people. And this is why I love this game why I think it's so good because the game tells you a lot of stories at the end. It's a game about modern capitalism. And these are now getting back to asbestos. Asbestos is just the hook. Here. It could be almost all kinds of it could be also board gaming. We don't know how the companies or the companies we are using how they work. Is it maybe before a large convention, if you need the game that they are having seven days a week, 14 hour shifts? Are their children working? Of course, they say, well, in our plants they are not doing but we don't know. But asbestos is a hook here. It tells you a lot of stories in the game, and people are talking after a game about this. Some people won't ever mill and mine unsafely, they're saying I'm not doing this. But then they see. I'm not competitive anymore. The others are doing it. I will do the same thing. And the game. It is cheaper. You can win the game by mining and milling safely, but it's a lot harder. So and I got some questions, oh this game is broken, because there is no mechanic in the game, which makes mining and milling safely easier gives you a bonus in terms of money. no because it would be unrealistic.
James 57:07
Haha Yeah.
Ulrich Blennemann 57:08
I and if this wouldn't be in the game, I would not I wouldn't have done the game, I wouldn't have done the game. Because this game is making an important statement. In my opinion, it is serious gaming at its best. And there are other excellent Serious Games For example, there is by Amabel Holland, from Hollandspiele, is Guilty Land, which is about slavery in the US it's a two play again. And but some people and I can understand have commented, and as I love the game that is saying, Well, I totally got to detach from the topic matter in this Guilty Land, I was looking at an area majority type game. And that's what it is. And with some cards, and I can understand, and a game, has to be a serious game especially has to be mechanically sound, if otherwise, it would be just a study. So people would play The Cost once maybe would say, Yeah, I got this. Milling safely is better. You're not losing people, but you're maybe not making more money, but The Cost is mechanically very good. So you are engaged. And this helps you to maybe say, wow, oh, I don't care for my workers. And this is how, of course the economy is working in a lot of ways. So if you get a chance to play The Cost by Mo, it's it's really a wonderful experience. And it's not a game for everybody, if you want to have a fun evening, with some people who normally play lighter stuff. No, it's not the game for them. And again, it's one of the advantages of a tiny publisher, I could do the game. And the game is in quite demand quite a bit of demand. But other publishers haven't touched this so far. Because oh topic matter. We can't do this. Yes, we can do so. Video games, they are so far ahead of board games, because they are touching these topics. And larger publishers should also do this. But it's but it's a great game.
James 59:37
It's it. It sounds absolutely fascinating. I want to play it even more now. It's really sounds really interesting. What you also raise those I think are the fascinating things to sort of just finish on this design point, I guess, about trying to create games that do have something of this in them. It's incredibly hard balance because you need to create a game which is mechanically satisfying that explores the subject matter, but remains very entertaining. And a lot of attempts at satirical gaming, I think often fail because you've got to incentivize the player in a certain way to do certain sorts of things.
Ulrich Blennemann 1:00:10
Yeah.
James 1:00:11
But if you incentivize them very obviously, to have no to be like, right, you're the bad guy. You're incentivized just to do terrible things constantly. Without anything else going on. People will just reject that hard and have little interest in playing it. So you have this interesting thing where you have to make this kind of engaging. And, and I think it's very clever that there is a system you can win by doing things safely. But obviously, of course, it's harder. But absolutely, it couldn't be in any other way. And it's funny to hear people complain about that, because I'm thinking, but that is, that's the point.
Ulrich Blennemann 1:00:42
This game is broken. It's so much easier to do that in this way. Why should I ever do so? Yeah, maybe you think, think about this? Or would it maybe even more satisfying in a four player game? If you have no dead workers, but you still had a pretty good score and came in third? Isn't this more satisfying? And
James 1:01:05
Yes!
Ulrich Blennemann 1:01:06
After at the end of the game of of The Cost, there will be talks at the table. And this is what is also in my opinion in such a way important. And I'm not saying all games should be like The Cost, not at all. We need lots of really fun, quick games, we need family type games, where the whole family can get in for 30 minutes, 45 minutes and have a great, fun time. Playing The Cost can be fun from a mechanical point of view, again, as you said, they need to be engaging. But it's also a serious topic matter. But we have these probably met us in books, we have them in movies, why not in games.
I mean, I couldn't agree with you more. I think it's just one of those things that I guess is still on the frontier of the art form in a way that you said in video games, we've already been exploring this sort of thing much more concretely. So I noticed we're coming a little bit short of time here. So I want to make sure that I've covered everything that that was kind of key, what would be your top three tips for a new publisher who's starting out? Now you said that well, you probably wouldn't necessarily even start out yourself in this environment, given how challenging and saturated things are, if someone says, doesn't matter, I like the sound of that. Actually, I like the variety of the work in publishing. I actually think that the stuff around managing the art, the project management, some of the other administration that goes around bringing a game to life alongside those, that lovely fun product development stuff. If I still really want to do that, what are the top three piece of advice you would give someone in that situation?
Yeah, it's difficult to say. But if you really want to do this, I think earlier this came, maybe this came in too negative. So working as a small publisher is very rewarding job, or spending just time it can be very rewarding, because you are working with so many creative people. And this is just wonderful. So my three tips. So hints. First is to if you want to now start your company, think about it well in advance, a good game that you may have or a friend has given you is not enough. Have a clear vision, what do you want to achieve with this product. And secondly, probably is have as much money for the first 12 months, for one year, that even if you lose 100% of the money, so you're not making a single euro, dollar, pound, sterling, that you are not broke that you can still, so, so in a way you have this money. And if it's gone, it's gone. This is definitely helpful but have a clear vision. And again, be be very flexible. And don't think in terms of Gloomhaven and Frosthaven of the wonderful Isaac Childres who made millions with both games at Kickstarter, and I think quite a few younger people new publisher are I think I have a game that is as good. It's just in a different genre. I put it to Kickstarters and two Kickstarters, and I would get rich quick. No. For every success story that is there, there are 50 games and publishers and companies that are not really breakeven and for a larger publisher, this is not that difficult. It's the usual thing you have 10 projects and you know that eight of them you will be really happy if they break even, but two of them most probably hopefully, they will make a lot of money, you just do not know which two of the 10 projects will bring you the money. And this makes it so difficult. So if you have just a single egg in the basket, chances are that this game won't be that game that that title that makes a lot of money. Yeah.
James 1:05:20
That makes a tremendous amount of sense, isn't it? Keeping that in mind? I mean, I think as you said that, the problem is, they're the stories that we tend to hear about, because it's been so hugely successful, something like Gloomhaven, but they are also very much the exception to what happens, I kind of feel like a slightly better model. For me personally, if I look at a company that actually the one that I think inspires me the most personally, is actually Stonemaier games. Because when I look at what Jamey Stegmaier has done, what I think so fascinating is that he reveals his numbers of units that his lifetime has he sold, which is almost unprecedented anywhere, pretty much I've seen. And what's so interesting about it is it follows the classic distribution, but he's just done them all pretty well, like it was really missing see as the recent numbers that there wasn't a single game he'd made that had sold less than 30,000 units. But it still was the case that more than half of all the games he has ever sold were Wingspan. And I just thought like, if you want an example of how powerful the Pareto principle holds for everything in games, that's such a good example. I mean, he's crushing it on numbers of his other games, anyone would be happy with the other numbers he's doing in this space. But but it's still the case that only one of those 10 titles dramatically leads all of the others in terms of sales. And I think that's something as you said that, yeah, it makes total sense, we have to kind of keep that in mind that, that if unless you want doing it more as a question of just as a hobby and as self expression, if you want to turn it into your it's, paying your bills, it's your salary, at least, you've got to be thinking I guess longer term.
Ulrich Blennemann 1:05:20
Yeah, if you just want to do it as a hobby, or I want to get the I think this game is great. Let's publish it. And then it's done. Then, of course, if you have that money, do so but but this is a different thing. If you want to make a living long, longer term, you should be more careful. And Jamey, of course, is also in my opinion exception. Not only that he that his numbers are public, but he's so Sorrell in what he's doing in how he's doing and modelling the company and growing the company. I think this is outstanding and amazing. But I think most people are simply not as good in this regard as Jamie is. And you have to also see that his company is still very small, there are lots of companies who have more people there who would love to sell a fraction of the head copies that they are doing so so wonderful stuff.
James 1:08:00
Yeah, completely makes a tremendous amount of sense. I think that's really important to bear in mind, he's an exception himself, he's very good at a lot of different things. And that gives puts it and I think he happens to have just pretty much perfect skill set for the job. He takes the attention to detail on the product execution is just amazing. And as you say, like actually, what I think is really cool about him as well as that I like he's obviously quite sensible and cost control because he doesn't have an enormous team actually, like his team is I think, only two or three full time employees, even though he's got $27 million last year in revenue. And I think that's such a good sign of like, yeah, that's quite, that's very typically sensible, basically, rather than like, right, we've had two successful games, let's take on 100 people, you know, let's to the moon kind of thing, which is what some people do, and then I'm not going to name any of them. But I can think of a couple of high profile examples of companies that have rapidly expanded their workforce massively beyond what they really need to be honest, and then paid the price for that. So.
Ulrich Blennemann 1:08:55
I agree 100%. And then, of course, money advantages, or it's simply a fact if you have reached a level of Stegmaier games, Stonemaier Games, no matter what he will do next, people will buy. The distribution retail will buy. Of course, if he would now do crap games two or three in a row, which I'm 100% sure they won't do, then of course at a certain point people won't order, but he has reached now plateau, that people will confidently buy the new games. And of course if you have a classic game, a real classic games, because the term Classic is being used too often in our pretty much new industry. But if you have a classic like Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride and now Wingspan, or Wingspan also and Azul, and a few others, I forgot that, but then you know, at the end of the year I will make money I will make money unless the market is crashing. But these evergreens is classic gaming say, we'll make sure that you will earn money. And Jamey again, his company is so small. So he, I bet he knows, on the first of January that he will have profits in December no matter what will work will happen it simply even if he's not doing in your day.
James 1:10:29
Yeah, I mean, that's the power of momentum, isn't it? Like once you have that going, and you've got an evergreen cash cow like that, that makes such a difference? Really, thank you so much for this. This has been absolutely fascinating. I found this a such interesting conversation. I feel like I've learned loads of things today. And hopefully listeners feel the same.
Ulrich Blennemann 1:10:46
Yeah, my pleasure, James. It's always good talking to you. I tremendously enjoyed this. And yeah, thanks a lot.
James 1:11:02
Producing fun is produced by Naylor games. If you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, Producing Fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at NaylorJames, or write me an email James at Naylor games.com. Until next time,
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James 00:00
Welcome to Producing fun. This week, my guest is Dina Ramse, a game marketer from Finland, it will be fair to say that most of us who get into games do so because we love making them and sharing them with the world. And why not? Games bring people together, make them laugh and make them think. In my experience, though, the sharing part is something lots of people in games are not so great at, we often get so invested in the making, that we convince ourselves that actually getting it out there is an afterthought. Indeed, I think a lot of us would like to believe that if you make a better board game, the world will beat a path to your door. Of course, the experience of releasing any game into such a competitive marketplace, will quickly disabuse you of that notion. The truth is that if you want a game to be more than self expression, you need people to buy it. And people don't buy things they've never heard of. Even a pitch perfect product needs to find a route to market. It needs the right creators to cover it. It needs to be seen on the right platforms, and talked about in the right places. This is where game marketers like Dina, come in. As an agent for small publishers like me, she works exactly on this problem, deploying 18 years of experience across the tabletop industry to meet the very many demands of launching a game, most critically of all, raising funding for it on Kickstarter, or other competing platforms. We took time out of our usual weekly meeting to dive into the details. Understandably, this is such an enormous breach to cover, that we simply couldn't do justice to it in its entirety. But there were so many useful topics to get our teeth into, from the finer points of different social media algorithms, and how to get the best out of different platforms, to selecting media creators to work with, or best practices for advertising campaigns. This discussion is sure to be of interest to anyone with a game to sell. We joined just as I've asked Dina a nice simple question. What is marketing?
Dina Ramse 01:59
It's a methodology. I think I could call it that. And the like how to talk to people on like, ways of communication, and also like the efficiency of delivering the right message at the right time.
James 02:16
Hmm. So this is the reason I sort of couldn't help ask such a stinker of a question is because it seems to me that what's so interesting about marketing, as opposed to maybe other parts of the process of bringing a game to market is it does sort of feel a bit like a bit of a dark art. It's something where the ground seems to be shifting a lot, a lot of the time. So you know, what works one year might not work the next year. And it's very hard to predict up front what it will do. There's that famous saying in advertising, which is, half of my advertising budget is wasted. But I don't know which half. And I think that
Dina Ramse 02:56
is so true, though. A/B testing from day one. Half of it is absolutely crap. When you do scrap it, try new things. And obviously, as you're the human consciousness of like how market is working on them is shifting, ways to market shifts too, in order to always kind of have an upper hand on like the communication that are happening to people. A few years ago, we started to see a shift between b2b and b2c marketing, where like the b2b completely disappeared. And there are still some companies who thoroughly holds on to the b2b idea that over there is such like there that there is a difference between b2b and b2c. But there really isn't.
James 03:40
And when you say that's really interesting, so when you say b2b and b2c are we talking here, about b2b in the sense of I'm selling my games, to let's say, a distributor or retailer.
Dina Ramse 03:51
Yeah.
James 03:51
And then b2c In terms of selling, selling to consumers.
Dina Ramse 03:53
Yeah. And how you sell it to the retailers is basically similar to how you would sell it to the consumers, because the person you're talking to you, you're developing a relationship with them just as much as you're trying to develop a relationship with the consumers who are picking up your game. So the shift there, we've seen the last couple of five years, but really during COVID, that kind of intensified to become a new level because we all brought work home, and everything started kind of becoming a little bit more personal, because it's in our own living rooms, like we handle business, you know, like, people get to see my living room every day and when I had my meeting, so it gets to be on a really more so the human to human contact, we are stripping away from the suits and the ties, and it's, you know, the structure around the communications is less and less formal, which means that how you're communicating becomes less formal too. I think it's really cool. Yeah.
James 04:47
That's interesting. That's very interesting, because in some ways, I kind of wouldn't have expected that because if you look at particularly, I don't know if I think I've got like an archetypal b2b customer, in the world of board games, I kind of think of as being someone who's probably like a retailer, a store owner. And a lot of those people are quite enthusiastic anyway, right? They're quite into games. I mean, I know there are people, I'm sure if you go to really big companies like Hasbro, and Asmodee, some extent, maybe not even Asmodee, there will be people in that business, who are actually more classically supertypes in the sense that they, they do see the business more financially, rather than seeing it as about, you know, making these wonderful game things and taking them to them. So I'm kind of at that's quite interesting, because I can imagine that when you talk about being personal, I would have thought, to some extent, a lot of the b2b customers that was already true of how they thought about things, right, which is that they're gamers first. It's been interesting to me seeing as I've worked with more and more retailers, how many of them, you know, if they put bricks and mortar retailers, they play the games that they buy. And they're interested to try them just as much as their customers are. Yeah but do you think it, do you think it's a bit more than that, like that kind of you think that environment, particularly of like, people working from home has kind of blurred the two? And that's kind of affecting people kind of psychologically, is that is that?
Dina Ramse 06:06
Yeah, some of them is obviously that but also, as we're seeing, like, newer people who are starting companies, and you know, like the rise of the 30 plus right now is like the new entrepreneurialship that they are creating. And as they're growing their companies, they're creating a network of like minded people. And it's kind of starting to be like, we're friends, but we're also doing business together. There's this transaction of how we're doing the relationship. And we're very aware and sensitive to what that relationship is. And it's very clearly defined. And just how that is shaping what we're doing in terms of marketing has been really fascinating for like someone like me to just watch, because I started out with doing like marketing and sales now like 17, 18, almost 20 years ago, and just like, how that has shifted. And me also obviously, shifting with it, and being and creating those personal connections with people I'm also doing business with.
James 07:03
Interesting so and you said, the rise of the 30 plus, is this like an age group, is this kind of more you're thinking of like,
Dina Ramse 07:03
Yeah.
James 07:09
Right, okay, so. So that's interesting, isn't it? That I mean, that sounds kind of interesting, because that's like, I don't think that we think about that much. So most of the people that you're working with, as a marketer, helping them succeed in their, for example, the Kickstarter campaigns, or their board game businesses in general, are all in that kind of age cohort, then or is like, how heavily biased is it towards that?
Dina Ramse 07:29
Mostly yeah, I think also, because me as a person kind of attract a certain kind of people. So the person who tends to go for someone like me versus some of the larger, more established brands, they're gonna want me because of my personality and my bubbly, energetic outlook on like podcasts like this one, because they see me everywhere, and I am always there answering questions.
James 07:55
Okay, interesting. So you think as a result that some extent you could say, well, it's actually a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy in the sense that it's about who you are. So your (mumbled word) people I, the reason I asked that is, because one of the things that it sort of feels like to me is that if I look at the kind of cohort of people in games, I would actually what's interesting about that, is that that there was like, a whole generation of people in those kind of age brackets. And that's not to say there aren't people who are being terribly entrepreneurial, who are much older, I would say, probably not that many, much younger. And I guess probably that's because, you know, classically, you've got the startup capital set of a business, you go out, you try and build something. Most people want to do that. And they got a bit of experience. And probably when you're in your early 20s, generally, that's going to be it's unlikely you're yet going to have the kind of experience to for most people, right?
Dina Ramse 08:37
Yeah, I did have a client last year who was just turning 17 while we were doing his Kickstarter campaign, and it was such a joy working with him. And it was even more fun when we then also discovered that there was another 17 year old same year,
James 08:53
Oh, wow!
Dina Ramse 08:54
Who also came up with a game for Kickstarter, and then trying to connect those two and be like, Hey, you guys are the same age and entreprenurials in word gaming. You should be friends and then finding out that they live like three towns apart. That was like the beginning of a really wonderful friendship.
James 09:10
Fascinating when you say so three towns apart where they sort of in the Australian Outback, where that's like 500 miles, or somewhere a little bit a little bit closer. Where were they based in the US, or where were they?
Dina Ramse 09:21
Yeah in the US? New York?
James 09:25
Oh, wow. Okay, so actually, probably, yeah, indeed, very physically got close. That's really interesting. I mean, it wasn't quite surprising, because one of the things in general that I've sort of learned about founders, and as you look at the (mumbled word) of it, a lot of the kind of popular image about company founders is somewhat warped a bit by Silicon Valley, where you know, the stories of people like Zuckerberg, who in his early 20s, obviously was like creating Facebook and the sort of thing. I think it's something like the average venture capital backed startup founder is something like 45.
Dina Ramse 09:51
Yeah.
James 09:51
Because in reality, I mean, surprise, surprise, what a big complex business that you're going to get billions of dollars of funding for, generally those are experienced people who have done quite a lot of stuff and are being trusted by investors. So it isn't often that many 17 year olds who really do that, but that's actually also really cool to hear that that's got that. I wonder partly about that the 30 thing, just because it does seem to me like there's a bit of an age cohort of people who sort of seem to discover maybe games again, at university that sort of roughly fits with the timeline of having seen board games kind of go through this renaissance in general, really, in the last 10 years or so, especially with the rise of Kickstarter, and the kind of massive explosion of things like game cafes, which, you know, 10 years ago, there weren't really almost any of them. So I find that quite interesting. That should be a kind of a an age group to do things. You mentioned earlier, you talked about methodology. And I'm really interested in this one, because, again, you also talk straight away about okay, yeah, so things change naturally, they stuff they move on, marketing evolves, which of course immediately creates a problem, because applying kind of standardised ways of doing things becomes really hard. In logistics, which I've also been doing a lot of work on recently, there are at least some pretty good principles that you can consistently apply that remain true over time. The same thing is true. For example, for data management, I think about my in my former life as a software product manager, knowing how to organise large datasets in a really efficient way was originally important part of my job. And they actually is now as well, in terms of automating a lot of what we try and do it now against, then the principles of database design basically don't change. So when you talk about methodology, can you expand on kind of what you mean, and how you can possibly do anything consistently over time in this world of marketing?
Dina Ramse 11:32
That's a great question, for me, at least is like continuously and having a routine around like relearning and like, taking myself out of like what I'm doing currently. And then be like, I need to test things, I need to continuously like, look up what is happening and staying in touch with the market and like what we're doing as a marketer, and like on social media as well, like there's algorithm changes all the time. So you kind of always have to be open minded to change what you're doing, you can't become rigid at any point, obviously, with Kickstarter it is quite different, because at the most, I'd probably work with a campaign for six months, not that much changes over such a small frame of time. What we're starting to do is that every time I get in a new client, we look at, like, what is the best way to market this one project right now, to get the maximum result within the timeframe that we have, and then build up as planned, that kind of works for that person. And that specific game with all that the game is and where the game is. And like, what kind of creator is it? What is the creator good at. So everyone gets sort of like a custom made puzzle piece, that it's sort of their marketing plan for the entire duration. But the steps on how it's created, there is a method to it. So I have a board where we go through all the different sort of like phases of like, we need to do this thing this month. And then as we're progressing, that kind of happens naturally. And I think it's really fun when I get to sort of funnel people in on the first calls. And I shape that plan for them. And they get to realise what they're a part of, teaching them as we go, so that when I leave them after the six month, they know what to do, or at least in theory, they would know what to do.
James 13:24
That's really interesting. I mean, I can see straight away that the continuous process of learning would just be so important. Because if you have these shifting sands of what is working or not working, and algorithm change is a really interesting one, right? Because in social media platform world, if Facebook decide they want to reorganise data differently, the newsfeed differently or they're going to emphasise something else, and de emphasise something else, or Instagram, I think you and I've talked before about recent changes to the way the Instagram algorithm works to filter out what it might see as duplicate content suddenly means that could dramatically affect how you're working entirely.
Dina Ramse 13:58
Oh, yeah, I sat in the middle of a campaign where we had like, built up a structure of how we were supposed to do it. It just so happened that this was like the only client that I had out of the 21 that I'm currently working with, where it actually impacted our plan entirely. So we had to go sort of radio silence for a whole week to restructure what we had planned. And then just like, apply a new plan. That was really interesting, because I didn't expect that the algorithm was going to have as much impact as it was having for like what we were doing, because we were already aware, obviously, and I've been tracking this algorithm for quite some time in terms of like when they would like properly turn it on. Just see like going from quite good reach to like, tanked within like 24 hours. And I was like, what!? I'm just sitting there going, like I don't understand, like, I understand, but also like, why, what will happen and like the impact of an algorithm was just much greater than what we thought and just sitting there and we're like, okay, So what do we need to do now? Luckily, in this case, we have time to do it. It's not launching for a couple of months. But it was very interesting to just sit there on the backside and be like, oh, yeah, that actually, that's, that's a thing. And for people who are not aware of like the algorithm change, I saw someone complaining on Twitter earlier today. And I was like, yeah, I know why you're saying that. And I'm like, I could give you a long talk about this, but like, okay, so just like going into DMs, but like, actually, here's the thing, here's the link, you probably want to read this. They were like, wow, this is so helpful. And obviously, that's part of my job, I have to keep an eye on these things. And then being able to help the content creators, we're obviously struggling, who are kind of reliant upon the earnings that this reach and the content that they're creating is giving them. It's an interesting positions to sit in.
James 15:53
I mean, that's particularly, as you said, a huge problem for content creators, because, effectively the social platform, particularly say YouTube, for example, is where they're making all of their money. So it's not even a question of this is a promotion platforms, as it would be say for a game publisher, or game creator, who's you know, it might be one method by which you're accessing your market. There's also conventions, for example, you're signing up to mailing lists, for example, you could be running ad campaigns, this kind of thing as well. And that your natural organic social media reach is pretty critical there for drastically affecting your earnings. That's really interesting, because I think a lot of people get on social media. And so think, Well, okay, what I do is I get on there, and I just start shouting about what I'm doing, and then eventually, profit. And that's tend to be what they, they tend to think, and to be honest, it's probably what I thought going into it as well, which I guess is very predictable. As these patterns, these platforms have become so dominant, and there are so many ways in which people looking to gain the understanding, you end up in this situation where actually there's a lot more to learn about the platform than initially was obvious, right. In the same way that previously media bookings and how media advertising was managed was like through media agencies that sort of had sections that would specialise in what we just do TV, which was understandable, because there's so much to understand about how television works in terms of scheduling ratings, how its how TV spots are bought and sold. But now effectively, even what looks like the easy to use platform that encourage you to share your thoughts straightaway logs in normally has top of the line UX for just fluidly, addictively getting to go through content and produce it, is actually a little bit harder to use than maybe it first appears.
Dina Ramse 17:25
Yeah, while obviously the go on a platform and start shouting can give some results, it peaks quite quickly. I have a bunch of like extra accounts that I continuously run like tests on. And we found if you just go by the go out there and shout on the biggest hashtags, at some point, you know, it will start peaking. And usually we found that, if that is your strategy to just go out there and share a post every day, usually, it takes about two months before you peak, and that's whatever level you managed to reach there, that is what you get. So as you as your channel grow, you have to start applying more advanced strategies in order to continue to grow. So the more demanding is like the bigger the account, the more demanding in managing the account becomes. So it's always like, Okay, how many followers do you have? Where, at what level do we have to start with the strategies? Kind of defines it straight off the bat when someone comes to me. Like, I need help. Okay, how many do you have? Is it 50 people? Or is it 1000? Because that's hugely different, what I need to do
James 18:31
Interesting. So if we just drill into that in a bit more detail, because I think that will be of huge interest to listeners. There, so you've built it up, and you've got your 1000 level, let's say, and previously, maybe you started a few years ago, and you had 50 followers, or something like that, but we could talk about specific platforms here or whatever be useful for the example. What is a good example of something where you would see a kind of shift that you would make at that level? That maybe you would, there was a different strategy that you need to get up to that level? What kind of, can you give me like a concrete example?
Dina Ramse 18:58
Okay, so at anything over like 300 followers is when you kind of have to start applying and being more mindful as to how you're using hashtags, for example. Around the 1000 mark, you usually are more reliant upon actually sharing video content, then when you're at a lower end.
James 19:17
And this is Instagram, sorry, that we're talking about here in this context,
Dina Ramse 19:19
Like specifically Instagram. For Twitter, it's pretty much the same over the board is like, how many times are you interacting with people? At what times are you interacting with the people becomes the most important ones. So a larger account should interact with people when obviously their audience is the most engaging, because visibility is a huge thing. And it becomes more and more important, the bigger you are getting the early adopters and early interactions is very important on Twitter. While on Instagram, that's not as important. It's more the people who are seeing your content, do they interact and stop and watch it? Or do they just scroll past. The more people who have scrolled past your content, and not finding it relevant or interesting, the less is being that content is being shown to other people. Because obviously, Instagram relies heavily on when you open the app, whatever you see first should be the thing that makes you prolong that session. So they want the most interesting that they think based on the algorithm, when you open the app, that should be the most interesting thing, because otherwise, you just close it, because that wasn't as interesting. Maybe you'll do a whole scroll and see the first three posts, and then close it if it wasn't that interesting. So they're reliant upon like, the first three posts that you're seeing in your feed is the most interesting. On tick tock it's more like followers isn't as important. But for stories that they just launched on tick tock, that's mostly shown to your followers, and now that they've opened up for friends too, you can actually start using your followers or friends, people who are following you back more as a way to boost your own content to get it watched more. Yeah.
James 19:19
Okay. So that's really interesting. I mean, even just, for example, there talking about the differences, and as platforms, I feel like it's something that people wouldn't even are often not even really aware of, particularly at the beginning of this process. So when you said about the Tick Tock sort of works a little bit differently, and that it may be that you said, is it followers initially and not that important? Why is that that followers for example, not so nearly important on tick tock?
Dina Ramse 21:24
So when people are using tick tock, it's mostly so like, tick tock wants you to spend hours on the app, longer sessions is considered good. So bingeable content is important for them, as long as your content is funny or interesting, so people will watch and stay in the app longer, the more that content is going to be shown. If your content is not as interesting, and people are not completing your videos, or they're not you know closing the app, or like leaving the app, that means that that content is going to be shown less to people. And it's mining more sort of like what makes people stay rather than what are they wanting to see. It's not content that is meant to fulfil a make you happier or make you informed, it's just whatever makes you stay there. Interestingly enough, that turns out to be very often sort of like depressive content, or you know, like like humour that isn't deep, whatever can be shared, within seven seconds, you can't change the world in seven seconds. So obviously, there's very little informational content on tick tock, while as on Instagram, you can still do infographics and informational content
James 22:38
Interesting! So I find this really fascinating because certainly what you say about tick tock is certainly from my experience of it, this thing was almost this, this constant automated loop of new and new content just constantly, it's even takes the job of you having to really even scroll, it's like even lower effort than that you just keep going. Here's more and more and more and more stuff. So that's really interesting how then it would it, as you said, it's just it's going to algorithmically push people towards the content that's very engaging. It's really interesting cuz it makes me think how YouTube shorts kind of create their own one minute video thing, but a lot of those are like little informational clips, often that are the most popular, whereas that was certainly my impression of Tik Tok was going around it was seeing not a lot of kind of, you know, dialogue or vocal monologue type content of people talking and having like a long, eh, not even like a 30 second inspirational clip that often that kind of thing. I mean, well, we do know, broadly speaking that human beings I think, generally sense a negative emotion is weighted about five times a positive emotion. So that kind of means that this is really interesting thing where it's just rewarding, really unpleasant stuff. So I guess that that doesn't doesn't surprise me too much. So it's, it's really about the Instagram want to get and how that's different. So you said for example, when you've got to like a large number of followers that you say 300, it was more like you started needing to share video content. And why for example, would that be about, why? Why is why does the Instagram platform lend itself to doing that at a certain scale?
Dina Ramse 24:00
It, yeah, so it started obviously, like, the birth of Instagram was all about sharing images. And in the beginning, and they didn't even like you for doing editing on the images at all. So the shift that Instagram has had the last couple of years has been huge. As someone who you know, firstly only promoted like slide posts or picture where you can kind of go through several of them at the max of like nine and single images to pushing more and more video content, obviously, because tick tock is now the biggest social media platform and out wins even YouTube. I mean, it is huge. The Tick Tock team is obviously not ready for this, like it is massive. The growth was very Yeah, skyrocketed very quickly. But so Instagram is trying to lean more towards what Tiktok is doing to see if they can have more of that, sort of have people create more content. And we saw some interesting shifts on like Twitter as well with like, hey, maybe you want to do stories here too. And they were trying to kind of buy into the whole trend with tick tock to get more people create content for it. Because obviously, Twitter is, has a lot of users, but they're not doing stuff there. And they're struggling with retention rates. And on Instagram, it's there's a lot of people who are watching content, but not that many who's making the content. And tick tock is very specific on like, you have to make content here. And obviously everyone wants that. So Instagram has been trying to lean more to what what like tick tock is doing sharing more videos to get longer sessions. Because there's only so much time you can spend on just looking at pretty pictures before you kind of need to engage your brain or you want something else or like a quicker release of endorphins. So obviously, reels became a thing, and then they moved that into its separate app. And they've done a lot of like small little tweaks to how this is pushed, then the explore page was created, which just pushes content from like, random people like we might think you think this is interesting. Looking at like how gaming section specifically, since this is my field, we need to look at what are the biggest creators creating like what kind of content they're using, and the others who are in the same field kind of needs to do similar content, because that's what the algorithm thinks that we want to watch. So that's what gets pushed. It's an interesting sort of synergy with like, the biggest content creator creates this kind of content, we need to also create similar type of content, because that's going to make us be discoverable. And it's gonna create that reach that we're wanting from the platform. And if we don't, we're kind of shooting yourself in your own foot here. So you have to adapt with what the community is wanting. And also like, what is the community making in terms of content?
James 27:03
Yeah, I mean, there's just a tremendous amount to mind there is there, I mean, just thinking about that, looking at all those other creators and just trying to think what would be popular, no wonder that very rapidly turns into a full time job. I mean, okay, so so given this kind of like we've, we've just spent a little bit of time there talking about one specific part of the broader marketing picture for a Kickstarter campaign. And we could have gone on probably for hours talking about just the nuances of the different social media platforms. So given, given that, I'd like to kind of just back us up a step again, to how you work with your clients. So when you talk about, for example, you okay, we're going to do a plan, you've got this one kind of small saving grace, this, which is generally you're working on a campaign by campaign basis, so at least you're not going to have to overhaul the marketing, the entire marketing strategy for this business many times over, it's sort of a, it's a more of a one and done thing, hopefully, unless it is a major algorithm change, it's going to be like a on social media, it should be a fairly stable environment, at least for the period of a campaign and build up to get there. So you said right, can you do a kickoff with the client? It would be great if we could go into a little more detail, I'd love to understand a bit more about exactly how that works. So what are what are the questions you're asking them? What are the really key things they need, you need to have from them? And what did they need to know from you?
Dina Ramse 27:14
Yeah! Okay, the first thing I do is I invite them into, so I use a lot of Trello. I think that's a great tool, just because it's kind of low threshold for participation. I think it's quite easy to explain how it works. It doesn't look too intimidating. You can have firework bursts,
James 28:37
Haha!
Dina Ramse 28:37
when things are done, which people seem to really love. Hahaha!
James 28:41
Oh, I've seen that feature. Yeah people love that. And don't the cards, if they've been around a long time, they sort of like decay don't they. They will like fray around the edges, like bits of paper.
Dina Ramse 28:51
Oh I don't have that one.
James 28:53
Oh that's certainly a feature they used to used to use. Maybe that's because you're doing things so quickly, you're not gonna have time for the Trello boards for the cards to decay? Or maybe they got rid of that feature, because there's too depressing for people. I'm not sure. But I certainly remember it certainly used to do that.
Dina Ramse 29:05
Oh, there's a lot of extra animations you can add to it. I just did the firework because it makes people happy.
James 29:10
Sure enough! It's charming!
Dina Ramse 29:13
Yeah, so what we usually do is that the first things I will ask is, you know, obviously, when is your launch, what is your plan, and it would be anything from six months to maybe a month from when they're talking to me. And what I do is very different from depending on where in the stage, so I'll reshuffle the board based on that, because there's things that we are like non negotiables that have to happen. Like, I always encourage everyone to register their game to obviously like BGG, which they don't always have. There are content creators that will refuse to touch your game if you're not on BGG with it. So that's obviously really important. Noting your launch on like shelf clutter, I think is super important because it's it's a discovery platform basically at this point.
James 29:57
So shelf clutter? I, I'm not familiar with this at all.
Dina Ramse 30:02
It's a discord channel. The content creators are called shelf clutter, once a week on Sundays they create a video on upcoming Kickstarters, they basically give a little bit of a review. They have their preview page so they can see on like the backside before launch. So they know your funding goals and what the page is looking like. And they'll spend somewhere between a minute maybe 3 minutes talking about your campaign.
James 30:26
So I can see why that's super important. Right. You want to you want to make it into their roundups, I assume.
Dina Ramse 30:32
Absolutely. And there's not that many creators who do the roundups, I think I know of like three or four that are like good enough that I would consider it important to listen, and like engage them for that part. So that is something that we always have to do. And for that to happen, you know, it has to be at least one week prior. But if you want to optimise them that the earlier, the better, because they create a separate channel for your game inside their discord channel. So you can kind of start talking about your game, you can share pictures, you can get a engage extra audience, you can funnel people into this discord, and you can use it as a part of your reach campaign for discovery, which I think is fantastic when we get to do that. And then there's like the routine questions, which is which pledge manager are you're planning on using? Is a backer Get Game found that pledge manager? Where are you manufacturing? Who are you manufacturing with? You'd be surprised on the amount of time people are like, Oh, I don't know yet. Who would you recommend? So I have a list of people with like, here are the names and emails of people you should reach out because I know that they will take good care of you. Same thing for fulfilment, I have a list of fulfilment companies that will be you know, good to work with, depending on where they are, and the scope of their project. We always recommend to work with 1 to 3 different fulfilment companies, and there'll be contact information on there as well for those if they haven't ventured into it yet. And then we kind of get into like the framework task, because then when we know where the game is coming from, and how that fulfilment part is going to look like and like the pulse campaign, is it going to a website afterwards? Is it going to retail? Because that's going to also define like, what is the marketing plan?
James 32:18
Right? I mean, that makes total sense. I mean, it's also interesting is there straight away, you're in a situation where you're actually recommending stuff that goes way beyond just the marketing element of this, I guess. So things like, I guess, is this because you have a lot of new creators, but as always, by definition, like Kickstarter is, in its original intention, it might be being used by some companies as a bit of a pre order platform now, but realistic, But, right. It's originaly intention was was to start completely new things off, which is obviously going to skew towards completely new companies, I'm sure probably the modal average number of campaigns that a typical creator has is presumably one, because it's their first thing, and then there are a small number of people who have done a few and then a very small number of people have done loads. So yeah, so it's interesting that you have to kind of help them often a little bit with the manufacturing, how you're gonna manufacture, how you're going to fulfil those are logistics questions and production questions that really, not really related to the marketing, although I can see that things like your channels that you're going to sell through in after the campaign, I imagine that would be pretty important. Getting those right.
Dina Ramse 33:01
Yeah. Yeah, so it has to do about positioning, basically, for me as to why I'm doing this. Because if they're just working with one fulfilment company, and it's going to be best for, say, North America, which is, if they're choosing one, that's usually the one that they're going for, at what point I need to be, you know, using American English, I need to primarily focus on U.S. hashtags, if we're diving into hashtag strategy. There's so many like small things that actually shapes it that most people wouldn't think about, that actually matters. Because as soon as I join a project with an IP here in Finland, and I start doing things on socials, that geolocation matters, I tend to drag with me like 30%, or up to 30% of like their entire campaign from like, Europe interest just because I'm here.
James 34:14
Oh, hang on a minute. So when you say the geolocation do you mean, are we talking about in the sense of your natural network of people you're associated with? Or are you talking about literally, algorithm stuff to do with where it's detecting your location
Dina Ramse 34:25
Algorithm.
James 34:26
Oh, interesting.
Dina Ramse 34:26
Yeah. Literally, the algorithm. Yeah.
James 34:29
So are you using? Like, do you use VPN or something like that for that, then to make sure that,
Dina Ramse 34:35
We've... Yeah, we've done a lot of tests with using VPNs during campaigns or to like post during that, but because it uses the location for your phone rather than the service, it doesn't really matter. So we had a another one that I was working with, to sort of do it for socials, that was in the Philippines, and we were seeing like 40% reach for Philippines. But they were not a targeted audience at all. And they were obviously not interested in what we were selling. But because she was there, we kind of have to get her a US SIM card, because the VPN just didn't do anything for us.
James 34:35
Yeah? Oh, wow. So almost then for, would it make sense then to deliberately try and I guess there's a limit to what you can do with some of the platforms, but with some of that with a lot of platforms deliberately just use your desktop to manage them, and then VPN, the desktop with that thing? Is that something you can do?
Dina Ramse 35:31
Yeah.
James 35:31
God, that's really interesting to think about. That's one of those slightly weird, again, effects about all of this, because of the increasing dominance of social platforms, that you wouldn't have even considered as being an issue that not because obviously, you don't have, let's say, media and creators who are located in a location where obviously, you know, no one knows about you in that country. So, of course, you're not going to get traction there. That makes sense. So to make sure I've really got this clear. She was social posting from her phone or posting from her phone in the Philippines. And as a result, algorithms were deciding, oh, well, let's show this to content with people in the Philippines. And actually, it was maybe a game marketed for Americans.
Dina Ramse 36:08
Yeah.
James 36:08
And it wasn't going to that.
Dina Ramse 36:09
Absolutely. So that's been.
James 36:12
That's mind blowing! That's really interesting. That surprised me quite a bit, actually, to think that that is now going to be a an increasing issue, to think about for these kind of campaigns.
Dina Ramse 36:20
Yeah. Yeah, so I actually have people working for my company that are in the US. So in the cases where we have, you know, like only US fulfilment, which is very rare, I mean, if they come to me, being in Finland, usually they're, I can talk them into doing easier to more, you know, EU friendly, and UK friendly shipping, because that's the kind of scope of of campaign that they want. So in the rare cases where that's not possible, because of the scope of the project, I use one of my the people that are citizens of the U.S., and they will do all the social, so I will schedule the things. But in terms of all the engagement that has to be handled for someone who is there.
James 37:01
Yeah, that's really interesting. That's, God, that's absolutely extraordinary, that that should now be such an element to keep in mind that the whole thing. So okay, so bring into this framework and talking a bit about the marketing side of it. So let's assume they've got the manufacturer in place, they've got fulfilment. And you've worked out what the posting look like, maybe it's let's say, for argument's sake, they're going to run an E commerce site, and they're gonna have maybe their own Shopify, and they're going to be selling continually is the goal on that, and hopefully, they're gonna sell a million copies of their game, you know, that sort of hope anyway, but but bring it back to the more realistic present, let's say that's broadly, what's the setup, what, what's next, how are you going to help them decide what their marketing strategy? What's the next thing to look at?
Dina Ramse 37:41
Okay, so I would go through with the client, like, what are the influencers that we'll be working with? Where are they located? And what is the most optimal way of sending out prototypes. And also, we would be looking at like the demographic of said influencers, because that matters, too, obviously, and like what sort of network do they have, I tend to shy away from content creators who are participating in what we essentially call a pod, which is a group of content creators that are kind of promising each other to comment on each other's posts for extra reach. And while that was a huge thing last year, it's essentially like, a death blow at this point, because the algorithm has shifted in order for that not to be beneficial anymore, because it's creating artificial, sort of inflating the content. And then Instagram goes, no, and kinda just slaps a palm top of it and goes like this, but no more. So when I,
James 38:42
Oh so they're detecting where there's, like, unusual amount of activity of interrelation, between multiple creators,
Dina Ramse 38:47
Yeah.
James 38:48
Who are all obviously trying to boost each other a bit, because obviously, they all signal boost each other, then that's great. Except that that since you could try and game the system that way they're actively trying to detect that now and then down rank it.
Dina Ramse 38:59
Yeah, so when they're coming in from links, or if they're going in through search, specifically, that's when that will happen. But if they're going in through their feed, which means quite a lot of scrolling sometimes, then it's okay. So you have to be like super smart on how you're doing it if they're participating in pods. Usually, this doesn't happen because content creators will think of immediate sort of return rather than long term strategy. Obviously, me I need to think about the long term strategy for the company, especially for going into ecommerce and all of that, while it would be lovely to be able to, you know, hand over an account that has like 200 new followers every month and all that that looks fantastic, but in the long term, that doesn't tend to sustain itself unless you have interesting content and you're getting the early adopters from actually authentic reach rather than inflated artificially,
James 39:57
Okay. So this is this is so the next question is then is this key selection of content creators seems really important. What are you looking for in a content creator to match your campaign? And how would you match those things together?
Dina Ramse 40:08
So I obviously chat with a lot of content creators, like daily, I have a list of somewhere in the ballpark of 3, 400 of like entrepreneurs that I love working with. And whenever possible, I will ask them, like, what is your favourite type of game? If I were to pitch you like your favourite type, and like combinations of mechanics, and then they'll tell me like, Oh, I really love say, worker placement or I love miniatures, and I'll note it down in my spreadsheet. And whenever I have something that matches the criteria, I'll be like, Hey, I have a game for you. You mentioned that you really love this thing. What do you think about this? So I tend to have sort of like 90% on my pitches, that is like an immediate Yes, I'm super enthusiastic about whatever it was. And I think that's awesome. So whenever someone comes in, and we're like, oh, yeah, this game has hand management. And I'm like, Ooo, I have the perfect person for you.
James 41:04
Right? Yeah. Yeah, I see. It makes total sense. That's interesting. And then so after you've got those that listen, what's what's next?
Dina Ramse 41:12
Okay, so let's see, we talked about the frameworks, we have the influencers. I have looked through their folders of like, what is the assets that we're working with? I'll have a meeting with my graphic designer of like, what do we need to make, how is the social going to look? For some campaigns, that means that we're doing essentially what is called a beauty grid, which means that everything is laid out in a particular way. And we will stick to this, the beautiful visual layout of the game throughout the feed. So when someone visited, it's like a continuous journey that kind of emulates how the Kickstarter page is going to look. And we're kind of essentially giving them the Kickstarter experience from the very beginning from the first post. And other times, it's more chaotic, or there will be some, like overarching plans of what it's going to look like. But there's more flexibility, less rigid, and maybe, you know, like, will be quicker to respond to trends, because some games require that. And in that case, you can't really do like super thought up planned grid. So it's really about like, matching it to like, what is the finished sort of result of like the Kickstarter page, so that people feel that they've seen it before. And they know this feeling like creating that attachment almost to the game and way of talking, so that they are more likely to end up pledging and you're creating the you're warming them up as you're going into the pre launch.
James 42:44
And how do you make sure that so I'm sorry when you say a beauty grid, this is a kind of this isn't just the kind of grid on Instagram, when you see like the three by three images, this is a more broader concept than that, in terms of the
Dina Ramse 42:57
It's a whole thing. So it will be like the three by threes kind of blends into the next three by threes. And you can have like the same background going through the whole thing. Or it can be a collection of series of three by threes that have sort of the same visual feel to it. But maybe there's different elements happening. We had a really cool one where there was a lot of characters and a lot of art. And each page would represent a separate piece of art. But it would be like each three by threes would be sections of the game. So same if you have like an Apples to Apple kind of game, one would be like the questions and then the other one would answers and then for each of the three by threes, you swap between the two. So sort of deliver the whole experience.
James 43:45
Right, interesting. Okay, cool. So that's interesting. And then outside of that Instagram, or if we're talking more about how this would apply to something, YouTube or another place like BGG, let's say, how do you broach things there,
Dina Ramse 43:56
Hm, Yeah. So one of the first sort of the first week tasks that I do is that I do a full review and sort of an audit of their BGG page and like socials and websites, where I will create, like, an actionable list of things that we need to fix are like critical, and things that we need to work on during the campaign, like the pre launch, so that when we're launching and people are checking it, they'll be like, oh, yeah, this looks legit. Like this looks good. Or at least it's not being like any red flags be like, Oh, they're they're not even active. There's no forum posts, like why is there... we need that to happen? So it's making sure like, the best pictures are showing that they are tied correctly, that there is a link to the to the publisher, the publisher, artist is registered that the companies and all the people who are engaged has their page in there with information, and beautiful pictures, and if not, you know, set them up with like, you need to take this picture. You need to have this done. All of those sort of small things that people tend to forget.
James 45:01
And then if they fix all these sort of different, smaller issues, and then then things are kind of in good shape. Let's say if we take a campaign because I image there must be a limit. Or if it's a month out, for example, I'm guessing primarily, they'll come to you said, Hey, I'm launching my Kickstarter in a month's time. And I would like to raise $1 million a funding goal, there's like a limit to how much, first time as you tell them, you might want to bring your funding goal down a little bit. But also, there's like a limit to how much you can do other than just make sure the campaign is in the best shape it can be, do some of that really important due diligence about organising your websites correctly in advance. But if you've got a longer period of time, and it's like a six month build up to something, what does that look like?
Dina Ramse 45:42
That means that we would start as soon as possible. So all the small things are done. Usually within the first three weeks, then we started lead generation campaigns. So I have a separate ads manager that handles these things for for my campaigns. So I don't have to because yeah, I'll be busy in meetings.
James 46:00
Right? Yes, we've got those. There's a thing about you know, I used to work in advertising. And there's so many different levers you can pull, things you can do with that.
Dina Ramse 46:10
It really is.
James 46:12
I yeah, I worked on the technology side really heading up to product development. But when I used to see the traders as we used to call them, traders, because they were buying, effectively buying media at one price and selling it for another with the layer of all the targeting and media creative, which we put on top of it, which is kind of value added, it seemed to be that they were kind of strange mixture of scientists and wizards.
Dina Ramse 46:33
Hahaha! It is, isn't it? The fun thing is that most of that hard work is done during the first three weeks of me defining the campaign with the client, and also looking at what the skills to the client is. So say we have a client who is really good at graphic design, for example, we can use that. And there's a particular way that we can use that as a part of the targeting. Because that kind of sets expectation is what can we expect from the client to give us? Or how much do we need to sort of make happen?
James 47:05
That's interesting, isn't it? Like and it's interesting to talk about that, that's being set, a lot that's been discovered in the first three weeks, and we're talking about three weeks of the six month build up right?
Dina Ramse 47:13
Yeah.
James 47:14
And then the lead generation campaigns, can you tell me a bit more about those because I think, for example, when I when we did magnate, and we were doing kickstarter for that I think I do our mailing lists the old fashioned way, we went to loads of conventions, and we just signed up everyone most of that mailing list was people who'd played the game at conventions, which was, meant it was a really high quality mailing list, really, really high quality. But obviously, we actually didn't we did a little bit of a lead generation campaign. But I don't think we added that many that way. I don't know if we had a particularly good lead generation campaign to be completely honest. It's difficult to say at this point. But yeah, I'd like to know a little bit more about the kind of goals of that and what what kind of outcomes you're looking for.
Dina Ramse 47:52
Yeah, we usually estimate a budget of like 500 USD for the first month of lead generations, because there's a lot of things that we need to test in terms of optimising the return of those leads. We tend to land somewhere, you know, below $2 per acquisition, like per email. And as down I think the lowest we've ever had was like, 0.2 for an email, which is obviously amazing...
James 48:19
20 cents an email!
Dina Ramse 48:20
Yeah.
James 48:21
20 cents an email! Oh, and okay, what will I ask them to ask the question, immediate follow up question. If you're getting even, I mean, even $2. Sounds very reasonable to me. What are you, what, how are those, then what's the conversion rate look like for that? On the campaign itself?
Dina Ramse 48:36
We tend to have somewhere between 17 to I think the highest one I've ever had was 55% conversion for the emails...
James 48:45
Sorry, you've got to stop a second there. Sorry, let me be really make sure I understand this correctly. You were getting 65% conversion from the, those emails that had been acquired through the lead generation company.
Dina Ramse 48:57
Yes. That was the best one, obviously, that I think that was in the alien of them. I don't I'm not sure if I can replicate that. I'd love to obviously,
James 49:08
Right. Yeah, that would be I think, I think anyone would love to replicate that.
Dina Ramse 49:13
Yeah.
James 49:14
What will be a more typical rate, that would be for example, more a more average expectation, because I think an important thing for people to know if they're listening to this, and they think you know, I want to run lead generation campaigns is that they'll go away thinking, you've got to pay 20 cents for an email and get a 65% conversion rate guaranteed? Because I feel like that would be not a reasonable expectation. Can you tell me, give me some more typical ideas, because obviously, you can't talk about specific clients, but I'd be really interested to know about what the general trends you're seeing.
Dina Ramse 49:42
Yeah, so overall, so, I've done 40 campaigns now, so far, in my career of doing Kickstarters,
James 49:51
Wow! 40!
Dina Ramse 49:53
40 campaigns,
James 49:54
40!
Dina Ramse 49:55
Yeah,
James 49:55
And how and just so I think again, this would also be good for them to understand your workload. What is the, what, what is the, how many? How many is that over running campaigns?
Dina Ramse 50:05
Over 20? all but five?
James 50:10
Oh, sorry. No, I mean, like you've run 40 campaigns? What? How much time did that? Is that within is that last three years last two years?
Dina Ramse 50:18
Oh time, that time? Okay, so I like over 20 in terms of like, the funding, but...
James 50:24
Ah right, the how long the campaign runs for it has a number of days, right? No, no, I was thinking about how much is to get a sense of like, how many different campaigns you're working on in a time period, because obviously, obviously, Kickstarter hasn't existed for the almost 20 years, you've been working in this space.
Dina Ramse 50:36
Definitely not.
James 50:37
But, so you know, if it was over 20 years, that would be still up to me having run one, that would still be a good amount. But how many years? Are we talking about here?
Dina Ramse 50:48
Okay, so my first campaign was with Green Meadow Games, which was, like, last year, which is like full time, but I really started two, two years ago, February two years ago. I have already done 20 This year, so...
James 51:05
Right, so basically, that's about 20 campaigns a year that is a lot of Kickstarter campaigns. So over that... So it's gonna be a lot more. Okay. Given that, what kind of Yeah, so for those campaigns are all gonna happen quite recently. So this is actually quite good as well, because you're not talking even about, you know, Kickstarter stretching back to like, 2016, when things on Kickstarter seem pretty different, right? Like, what was working then is almost certainly not working now.
Dina Ramse 51:33
Essentially, the start of the like, pandemic. Yeah.
James 51:36
Yeah. So that's really interesting. So that's, A, that's really interesting for the perspective of that itself is going to be a slightly changed environment, compared to previous employment. I mean, even with Magnate, we were running that just literally just before the pandemic started. So was was when we our funding campaign, I think we finished on the 23rd or 21st, of December 2019. So really, really close. This is quite an seems highly pertinent for this where we are right now, what are those kind of average average statistics, and in terms of conversion you're looking at
Dina Ramse 52:04
Somewhere between... So we kind of benchmark at, like we say, 10, but we tend to be more in the 17 to 45.
James 52:16
So it's quite a big fluctuation within that,
Dina Ramse 52:18
Quite big.
James 52:18
But I think I could see where you would with you have a 10. So if say, let's say for obviously, so let's take the low end of that and say, what's often you absolutely can't promise this, but what's often being achieved is around 20, let's say, then 20%. And let's, I'm going to take the upper end of your estimate from before, if you think that's okay, and say $2, a sign up maybe rather than 20 cents, because that seems very, very good.
Dina Ramse 52:41
Yeah. Haha.
James 52:42
So for $2 a sign up, you've got 20% of those are converting, if your average, let's say your, what would be a typical pledge level is like $50. We'll use that because that makes the math easy.
Dina Ramse 52:55
59 but yeah, so,
James 52:56
That tends to be the average. Right? Okay, so $59. So that means I have of that 10 percent of that would be $5.90. So you're looking at $12? Sorry, $11.80. I don't know, hang on, I'm gonna completely embarrass myself by getting this math wrong. I can just tell right now. But if you're 20% of that is converting, even from that list, and each time they convert an effective you pay $10 for a conversion? Because it's it's it's only 20% of them that are converting, but you're only paying $2 A shot. That seems like an incredible rate of return for for that.
Dina Ramse 53:32
Yeah, it's quite fair,
James 53:35
I think I find is quite surprising. I think that's really fascinating. Because it strikes me that then like the difference between a well run and a not well run example of this is quite substantial. Because certainly our experience running advertising was we had some channels that were really good for us. So I think for Magnate, BGG, was actually pretty good channel for magnate. But we had some channels that were just total stinkers. And to be honest, Facebook, for example, we were getting nowhere near that kind of rate of return on Facebook. So that's very interesting. But crucially, these are these lead generation campaigns where you're running them, sometimes months in advance and potentially
Dina Ramse 54:10
Yeah, we are. Absolutely. As soon as we can really, like we're going through to add like all the assets, and we start creating ads as early as we can, because it is quite crucial, because you kind of need, so a lot of people in marketing say that when you bring six people to Kickstarter yourself from your own mailing list, Kickstarter will give you four as kind of the golden rule that people, I see a lot of people throw out. But I don't want to promise anyone that, like I can't promise that we're going to be able to work the algorithm. Sometimes Kickstarter just doesn't like your campaign. And while most of my campaigns do get the project you love tag, and we are able to sit within the top 10 for our category for like the first week, that doesn't always happen. And I always like to plan for like the worst outcome as in Kickstarter does, the algorithm doesn't work. So say we're taking away those four people, that means that the mailing list that we're creating has to be enough for us to still be able to fund within the first day, or at least the first three days, which is, you know, that's kind of when it has to happen. If you're going to have any, any sort of extra reach from Kickstarter, that's kind of the benchmark within the first three days you need to be able to fund. And I always aim towards the shorter side of things, like I want you to be able to fund within the first day. And that's where we work, which means that when we're come, someone coming to me with a campaign, and they're like, we want 20k, and I like okay, what is your funding goal? They give me a number, we start doing the math and I times that with 10, for how many we need on the mailing list, for the minimum required of backers pledging at the smallest level possible, and I say, that's our goal in terms of like, how many emails do we need? So that's usually you know, somewhere between 2000 to maybe 3, 4000 people, because we want to be able to secure that funded within the first day.
James 56:11
Yeah, I mean, that makes total sense. And that's what I'm increasingly seeing that the difference between the quality of outcomes between funding the first day and not, seems to be pretty substantial. That was certainly something on my list, even in 2019, it seemed absolutely critical to succeed in that as rapidly as possible together to get that funding without just doing something silly. Someone sent me something recently, where he said, I funded, he was telling me, someone messaged me saying they'd funded in the first five minutes. And they were, something like, they said, all my campaign was 11,000% funded. And then I looked and the funding goal was $10.
Dina Ramse 56:47
Right, ah.
James 56:47
I was like, well okay, so...
Dina Ramse 56:52
Noooooo
James 56:52
So hang on a second, like no, that's, that's, I feel like you've I mean, I get it, right. But I feel like, that's just not,
Dina Ramse 56:59
I...
James 56:59
If you actually see those numbers, you go, yeah, that's not that's not real mate, that's just you've just literally fixed it artificially low to make that number happen. Come on.
Dina Ramse 57:06
Haha. A lot of the campaign's that I end up running with first timers, we aim at funding with a 30% subsidised funding goal. That means that the creators are able to cover 30%, even if we're like, as long as we're hitting the funded, then they can go in with about 30% of the funding goal themselves to kind of be like the actual funding goal. Because obviously, a lower funding goal, it looks good, and being able to hit that as early as possible is obviously beneficial. But most of the campaigns that I end up pairing with is with people who just want the game out, they want to realise the dream of having someone play their game. It's not the I want to have, I want to get rich on this, like I want to recover all my costs, or I want to be on green within the first campaign. For most people, that never really happens. And I'm going in with about a 30% subsidise for like how much it costs you to actually create the game in terms of like art and your time, and you know, the prototypes and the influencers and all oh my god paying me obviously, kind of 30%. So you have reasonable expectations. It's just kind of worked for us because I make sure that they are able to meet with that. And if not, obviously, we're working with a higher goal, which means that we just have to get more leads in earlier.
James 58:30
Makes sense. I mean, I think this is kind of one of the open secrets about Kickstarter, if one has ever had time to properly delve into it seems to be precisely this, which is, in reality, the funding goal isn't, it isn't so much the actual amount that you really need, and that if you don't get paid a penny less, that's it. It's actually often just a, it's often a big chunk towards it. And normally, so there was for me, the kind of chunk that's the difference between being able to do it or not. But actually, what it doesn't mean is that really, it's funded it completely because if you do that, I have seen several campaigns, including one I saw that was from a client experience creator. But they still set their funding goal, I felt like just a bit above the truly economic cost of production. And what was interesting to see was that the campaign just crawled all the way there. Because actually to get there, there was no way it was funding in the first 24 hours. And of course, because it didn't fund in the first 24 hours, it didn't happen and then turn to fund even more than that. So it's sort of interesting to see those, those economics and I've always thought that that funding goal is almost like a bit of a bet in the sense that it's like okay, this is like the level I'm setting is like my reserve price at an auction. This is the level I will walk away and be happy with. And I got to eat it up if it only gets to that level, but I need to get that level as low as I can tolerate without setting it to a level that frankly looks fraudulent where people just have a funding goal, which is like a non real funding goal
Dina Ramse 59:56
Yeah, if you're funding all doesn't look like kind of realistic from someone who isn't in the industry? Because you can kind of guess, right? A 20k campaign, you're kinda expecting a certain level of something for that funding goal, like the audience is expecting something. So for me, obviously, with what I do is that when we're talking about the funding goal and all the stretch goals, and all the kind of things that comes into your Kickstarter is what is the audience going to expect from the funding goal that you are making? So whenever we are having a funding goal, that is like, this is the game and we're able to do like no fluff campaigns, meaning no extra stretch goals or like elaborate promises, Usually, those tend to have an under 20k campaign, sort of as a funding goal. And the ones that has more elaborate stretch goal tends to be the ones who we need to get over the 20k mark.
James 1:00:50
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, that makes total sense. I mean, there's there's different production situations. I'm really aware that we are starting to run quite short of time. And I feel like we're only just scratching the surface of all of these topics. But there's a few things I want to make sure that we that we can cover because I think they'd be really useful for listeners. So the first one I want to ask is really kind of what your top three pieces of advice and things maybe we've not covered yet, would be for running a campaign because I imagine there's loads of people out there thinking, I've got a game. I mean, something that I noticed actually specifically is it felt like 10 years ago, and 10 or 15 years ago, everyone had like a screenplay or novel they had written, oh I'm actually working on a screenplay, or I'm working on a novel, these days, I meet people randomly in bars, like meeting new people at parties, and they say, I've actually designed a board game. And that's actually quite a common thing now, which is, I mean, really cool. But that's the case. But it does mean you've a lot of people out there don't have the experience looking for, okay, how do I go about running maybe even a really small Kickstarter campaign, maybe just a few $1,000 funding goal, simple card games like that? Or maybe it's a hugely ambitious million dollar miniatures project, I don't know. Either way, they're gonna have the same fundamental problem, which is that they don't necessarily know what the key things to do are. What would you say are the top three things they need to do are?
Dina Ramse 1:02:02
Okay, there's a one thing that I tell everyone, I think every single podcast I go on, I say the same thing, which is, there's no such thing as too early to start talking about your game, there is only really too late. And I think that if anyone was ever to quote me on anything, I think I want people to quote me on that one, because it is so true. When it comes to harvest, like, what was it someone was saying the like, talk to Dina to harvest the potential of social media. And I was like, I was looking at it going, like, you know, like, the really core thing here is just start early, because that is all like, you just got to start. And I know that a lot of people find the threshold to participate as really high sometimes. And they doubt themselves in their ability to actually participate. And just like do it, right. It's kind of like you guys just gotta jump into it. And then try, and obviously my website has has a lot of like starting tips for like how to just get started with like, Twitter 101, or, you know, the social media algorithm kind of breaks down of like, super simple so that everyone can kind of understand it. Because I think lowering the level for participation is kind of the most important thing us as marketers can do when it comes to like social media.
James 1:03:18
And what was that website again, just just people to check out just...
Dina Ramse 1:03:21
MarketingwithDina.com
James 1:03:23
Marketingwithdina.com. Okay, great. So if anyone's needs to look up that anything about that kind of thing, you've got some helpful tips. I think that's just super useful. Just just to start with, certainly that was my experience. I remember reading in one of sort of Jamie's Stegmaier's legendary blog post series about starting a Kickstarter was like, he was like, I recommend really six months or really more like a year if you can. And I remember hearing that and thinking, Right. Okay. I think at this point, it must have been early 2018. And I was like, right, let's get started. We're gonna start the campaign trail. And I think in the end, we had, like, 18 month build up to it.
Dina Ramse 1:03:54
That's fantastic. Yeah.
James 1:03:56
Well, it was great. And it meant that we had this game that to be honest, it's a nightmare first time project in some ways, because this is, well, I right now, obviously, this this Can't, can't hear can't see this. But right behind you, I can actually see a copy of Magnates.
Dina Ramse 1:04:10
I know!
James 1:04:10
And it's absolutely. And it's vast, dominating presence. Now that shelf was big box game. And it's full of miniatures. And actually, lots of people suddenly campaign life. They said, Look, I would have considered backing this. But I just wasn't going to do miniatures, back a first time company doing miniatures. I can turn together. I totally think that's quite reasonable actually, to think maybe I'm not going to dive straight in with that. So yeah, so that's kind of I think that that's very useful to understand it. And what would your other kind of top tips be if that's like the number one supreme thing is like? It's never it's never too early. It's only too late. What will be your other two key pieces of advice?
Dina Ramse 1:04:44
A friend of mine, Joe Slack has written some really great book about crowdfunding for games specifically. And I think if anyone likes to read rather than like, listen to podcasts for learning how to do these things. I think his books are really good. He even has like, a course where you can kind of go to him and be like, Hi Joe, teach me everything you know about like fulfillments and, and manufacturing and like everything that kind of expected from you on like the product side prior to going into a launch. And before you even get someone like me on board for doing the marketing. And I think the other thing, the third tip that would be like, find people that you like, and that matches your energy level, and that you can work with, that kind of fits your personality and like also fits your game and understands it. Because I think that's so important, like in terms of building a team, have people who believe in your game, not just doing it for the money, but who can actually be a part of like, not your hype group, because I don't believe in having team members who are part of your hype. I don't think that's appropriate. But someone who can be more like a pep team for you, as a creator to continue working towards having a launch.
James 1:04:45
Yeah, I mean, that seems really important. Something I'd say is true for sort of businesses in general is that having someone that you're, there's always on on your team. And even if that's just someone who's just a really supportive friend, you can kind of help out and but particularly you should actually know a lot about the business is huge, because there are always going to be bits where you get depressed, or you hear some bad news, I remember the day I started seeing the kind of freight pricing, we were going to pay for magnate, we had estimated one number from 2019. And we had a number that was seven to eight times higher. And I remember just being like to the gut punch of like, oh, we that's fine. We just have 27 pallets, stacked high of games to move. Having sort of people around me at that time to be supportive. And to get through that was was very important to us.
Dina Ramse 1:06:45
Yeah, having buddies basically like find people in the space of our experiences and same thing. So what I like to do with people that I'm working with, is finding them launch buddies, which is something we're working on, like actually putting up like a programme in the board gaming space. So that might be coming later this year. We're hoping, where we're basically like team you up with other creators that aren't just my clients. Because right now, it's just like, everyone I work with, we're launching at the same time becomes launch buddies. And then we kind of have them meet and chat a little bit with each other. But we want to like make it for other people as well. Because the power of just having someone who's going through the same thing at the same time with you in terms of like frustrations over Kickstarter and like page layouts. That is so important. And like the mental health of the people who go through that with someone else you come out of the project a lot sort of healthier than those who don't have that kind of support.
James 1:07:47
Yeah, so starting early, keeping, you know, having buddies around and support and what do you think that the other big one would be? Do you think?
Dina Ramse 1:07:55
Yeah, like read up on things. Don't go in blind,
James 1:07:59
Read up, education, educating yourself?
Dina Ramse 1:08:02
There is never too late for school.
James 1:08:05
It's never too late for school, I like that. Yeah, I certainly think I remember thinking that this was pretty critical and seeing, and actually, the cool thing is, is that in particular, between James Marla's stuff and Jamey Stegmaier's stuff, there was actually already quite a lot online of good resources. But I guess they've also got your website to check out now too with some nice summaries that lead up because the one thing I will say about Jamey Stegmaier's s post is that you should set yourself up for a long read, I feel like this, he did so many!
Dina Ramse 1:08:31
Grab a coffee and like that takes your day.
James 1:08:35
I think I installed a special plugin I remember on my on my Chrome that did like a bulk upload of all of the blog, blog blog posts to a reader, just so that I can carry them around and read them on my phone. And when I was like sitting in the tube and stuff like that several years ago.
Dina Ramse 1:08:48
That is such a good advice.
James 1:08:50
And I just thought because he's because he has got special pages website where he organises them all by different themes as well. And you start scrolling through and you're just like, I'm still scrolling, I'm still scrolling. And it's great because he even got into details about US tax, which turned out to be really important for us because we decided to end up incorporating a company in Wyoming, which is a subsidiary of Naylor games limited. So already that international for that, you know, and it was very helpful reading something about US tax treatments of things that, you know, as a British person, I wouldn't necessarily have any inherent knowledge of, that I needed to look up so that's really great. Well, I think all of that is going to be super, super useful. Like I said, God there was so much on my list that we didn't even remotely get round to. So you so if if you would like to do so it'd be brilliant to have you back as a guest again. And yeah, thank you so much for for speaking to me.
Dina Ramse 1:09:41
I mean, thank you for having me.
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James 00:00
Hi I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective. Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is Matthew Dunston, a product based Australian Game Designer with more than 30 published titles to his name. Believe it or not 13 episodes in Matthew is the first ever guest who worked solely as a game designer. When I started producing fun, there were so many game design or detailed game review podcasts already, I was keen to avoid duplicating the great work they were already doing. Instead, I wanted to do something fresh. I wanted to highlight the stories of all the other people in the process, and all the amazing things they do to bring us the games we love. So why did I interview him last year? Well, Matthew is someone with a passionate interest in the product side of the business. By his own admission, the longer his career has gone on, the more naturally product orientated he finds himself exposure to working closely with many publishers and editors. Now has him considering product questions from the very beginning of his game design process. How will components and component count influence manufacturing cost? What's the marketing potential of the idea? How will the game fit into an existing product line? Indeed, he's so product orientated that when I veered off into some interesting tangent on game design, it was Matthew, not me, keeping us on track and focused on the questions that actually determine how successful a game will be in a market. This was a brilliant conversation, and a valuable opportunity to explore some really interesting trends in the industry. Its natural evolution towards various forms of the studio model, properly defined product roles in successful publishing houses, the rise of what he determines the detailed familiar, or domestic themes in game design, and the unique power of the long term collaboration. We join, just as I am in utter disbelief, about the number of games he has already had published. I've looked on BGG, and it says that you have 51 games published? Is Is that an accurate number?
02:24
That's not not to throw some shade at it. BGG to start off straightaway, can we can we trust this data? I mean, yeah, it's slightly humbly, I'll say that it's closer than I then maybe other designers in that. I mean, of course, BGG has the thing that it lists every single promo card and expansion as a separate item. And, but actually, the number is probably in the, I would say in the 30s somewhere, or, you know, sort of 30, mid 30s 40. There's, I mean, it also includes Brett, Brad Gilbert and myself. So maybe we'll talk about that later, pretty quick code is on our mind. And we did some free print and play games called the good little games, that's also counted, you know, within my amount. So that's kind of self published. So it's also slightly cheating. But yeah, it's sort of 30 to 40, I would say, as a rough game,
James 03:12
and that's 30 to 44 games, or does that study for that including kind of boxed expansions? If we leave promos out of the picture?
03:20
No, they would be full, full different games, in fact, very, I'd actually have very few expansions. I mean, I think that's the thing that often in those numbers, you'll see, designers, I guess, with that number of items on BGG often will have one or two games, which may have many expansions or many entries. But for lack or not, I haven't had many games that have had, you know, many expansions, although I do have a few games such as the adventure games, which are scenario based. So you know, there's there's five or six different adventure games listed. They're not expansions exactly, but they're all the same game systems. Similar mix of things,
James 03:56
I find that absolutely credible. So obviously, the listeners can't actually see you. But I assume you're not really a man in his 60s, he looks absolutely incredible for his age. So how have you produced that number of games, I can't quite imagine being able to design just the volume of that myself. So I'm just really curious to know, like, what part of your process just allows you to design that number of titles?
04:19
I can tell you're really just trying not to ask like, how old are you? Well, I mean, I think that's kind of the key things. What is that I started, I think I was lucky to start during my PhD studies. So, you know, I think when you're studying, it's sort of a good time to get into game design you you don't have a lot of financial pressures, you know, you don't have a day job that takes up so much time, you have a lot of flexibility, which is very important, you know, so I could travel to conventions and things on a weekday if I needed to, and that was fine. So I think that really helped. And I guess that's when I got my sort of, you know, you hear the colloquially the 10,000 hours that you have sort of put into design and things like that, and I think I could sort of build lit up at that time, when I, yeah, I didn't have pressure to make games, I could do it, if I wanted to, I was very lucky to be in a very creative environment. I was in Cambridge, we had started a design group there that at the start was just Britain myself meeting at a pub once a week, but it quickly sort of grew. And in fact, the group still is going about 10, or 11 years later, and we had a really great group of designers come through that. And the other reason, which is connected that is I collaborate on many of my games, very few of my games are solo designs, many of them are designed with with at least one other person. So that helps that the output so to speak, you know, I'd say one of my strengths probably is something like project management in a way, which I think is maybe not something that all game designers, you know, I think on a publisher side or distributor or someone in business, I think it's incredibly important, you know, to have those project management skills. But, you know, for my PhD, it's a very similar way of actually to work at a PhD, you're trying to balance or end in academia, in general, you're balancing lots of different projects, and they're all at different stages. And you have to, you have to plan your time around that. And you know, your day might consist of three or four different tasks across three or four different projects. And I think that just made me pretty well predisposed to work on lots of games at the same time, and being able to sort of keep pushing them through. So maybe I'm a bit better at that than other people. That's why I've been able to publish them. And
James 06:20
I find that's really interesting. I think something about being a formative environment where you can sort of safely explore stuff, I can see how that's a huge advantage is being able to get your sort of 10,000 hours. And as you put it quite early on, although of course, I'm sure people would say the opposite, because I want to be true, which is that without the external pressures of deadlines to go, you have to do this. Some people obviously, struggle a bit, whereas it sounds like obviously, your natural way of doing things is to be quite organised anyway, I would say maybe, in a way, a bit different to many students, perhaps that's been hugely helpful in being able to being able to produce quite a lot of that content. You mentioned,
06:54
there were sorry, there were deadlines as well. I mean, I think that the other fortunate thing of being in Europe generally is that you have session essence feel and, and it's relatively easy to go to guys like it, you know, I was privileged enough to be able to sort of be able to go there, timewise and financial worth. And actually, I'd say that was a really great deadline every year, you know, I think, for whatever reason, from the very early time of going to Essen I always wanted to go there with at least five or six different games, but no real rational reason, I wouldn't say that you make better games by trying to, you know, I'm not saying quantity is better than quality. I don't think that's true. But for whatever reason, I had a sort of some intrinsic thing of like, I must have five new games to show to publishers, every essence. And so I think that that was a good deadline to push me to finish them.
James 07:36
Yeah, I mean, that makes a tremendous amount of sense, actually, to me, even if it is somewhat arbitrary, because I think giving yourself that arbitrary deadline of this is interesting things to talk about. So you must have known from quite an early point, and that you really wanted to get into the design side of things rather than perhaps other aspects of game creation.
07:50
Absolutely. Yeah. I've never had any interest in publishing or not even particularly development, I'd say actually, actually, one of the great things when I collaborate with Brett and he's the one I've designed the most games with would have been published, you know, at least probably 20 games, I think one of the great things Brent is is good at is it's a sort of the later part of the process that I'd say getting closer to development to editing these sorts of things. And so because that's not what I naturally tend to So, so you know, those skills are particularly important, of course, no publisher and developer, so I yeah, I've never, I think I've been quite fortunate that I found my place quite quickly. And what I enjoyed, I guess the I like finding new systems, I guess, is a sort of an intel that sounds incredibly abstract intellectual, but it's about trying to discover something new that already exists out there, I suppose, you know, compared to scientific research, you know, there's there's kind of laws of the universe that are out there they exist, but we just have to kind of find them or understand them. And I sometimes I think, as a game designer, your job is to just uncover the things that already are out there, or put them in a way that people can, can enjoy them and play them. And so I enjoy that, that exploration.
James 08:55
That's very interesting. That requires does it not as sort of degree of mechanical imagination, because that's something that I see as a theme that comes up quite a few times to me is that I think about people's different starting process. And people got to throw around the idea of theme and mechanic quite casually. But actually, to me, it seems like the starting place of starting with with a very particular game theme, where you want to simulate and recreate something versus discovering almost the way that you put it discovering in nature, almost like a mechanical system that maybe exists and you're finding it strikes me as very, very divergent starting places.
09:33
Yeah, yeah, I think it is very different. I think actually, and leading into of course, what this podcast is about, I think sometimes it is a very mechanical starting point. But more and more I think in the latter part of my designing or more recently, it is product focused I mean, without saying the easy answer for this this podcast but you're looking to replicate you know, a product in the market or iterate on a on a product or you see a particular space Same type of game or experience, and more and more from the very early point, you start to pigeonhole and go, Okay, this is, you know, this is going to suit, you know, for example, these publishers or is going to suit this style of player and all those sort of questions are really kind of product questions in a way that you're trying to fit a particular demographic or you're trying to particularly, you know, a particular price point or, or type of component, things like that. And I think that, I find it a really great way to start, because actually, you sort of have the benefit of having a lot of great examples out there, you can sort of build on but you're never, you know, with themes or mechanics, if you if you took a mechanic that already exists, and just go, Okay, I'm gonna get another game with that veganism, you can have the problem of how do I make something feel new? Or how do I, but if you say, Okay, I wouldn't make a game that appeals to people who don't know, like deck building games, or something like that. There's a great library of games to build on for you to learn or to think about how, what is that space? Without you're worried about, oh, it's gonna be a carbon copy of things that come before because you're you're not trying to emulate the necessary mechanics, you're trying to emulate the sort of experience or what the players who liked those games might enjoy in it.
James 11:08
That's interesting. So actually, in some ways, I find this quite surprising, because I don't generally think of designers as being especially focused on those product questions. In fact, to the extent where I feel like a lot of people that I meet in the design world, and a lot of products themselves seem to me to suggest that they haven't come from that perspective, right? Like, there's this thing that I tend to find a lot, whereas there's some maybe re mixing going on, where people say, Oh, this game exists, I'm just going to go for it. But without knowing the consideration of the fact that, well, of course, it is just a clone of that thing. There's probably almost certainly no marketplace for it. Whereas almost that product thinking requires familiarity, but also, from the very beginning, you need to have some sort of differentiation as well. So when did you start thinking about doing things and more from the product perspective, then?
12:00
Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think it comes from the start, I think. I mean, I can't speak for all designers, but I think designers, you know, sort of inspired to start designing. And yeah, you're not thinking about products, you're thinking about a game, it's certainly my first game. I wasn't thinking about how we would fit some product thing. I was like, I wanted to make this game, this particular mechanism. And I did, I think it comes I think it comes later in the process, I think, you know, especially, I think there's two main things in my case that have led to it. One is that, again, I've had access to sort of these bigger conventions and a lot of opportunities to pitch to publishers. And I think just naturally, when you the more times you're pitching to publishers, the closer and closer you get to that product question because of course, they're asking, they're coming in from that angle pretty much all the time, you know, that's, that's what they are, they're kind of seeing the lens through whether they want to publish a game or not. And so I think just you just can't help, but it rub off on you, when you when you have more and more of those meetings. And you sort of sense how they go, you sort of go well, okay, next time, I need to, I need to fit into what they're looking for. And of course, that means you have to concern by product. I think the other thing for myself, and I don't think it's unique, so myself is I'm a voracious reader of pretty much all media around board games. I mean, it's, it's quite bad, because I've had said, you know, a hobby and an interest into more and more of a profession. Yeah. But, you know, I think designers had differing sort of interests, or in that kind of side of things of like keeping up with what's the next new 100 games that have come out? And what's the latest game by designer x, or, you know, what's the new hotness or trend, and I think my tastes are sort of wide enough, which means that I sort of consume as much of it as possible. And I think that means you, you just have more data to sort of go on when you're when you're trying to make those those brands and users or you have a better, you're more likely to find something in all that information that kind of strikes a child somehow in that kind of, you know, the inspiration statement, you say something like, Oh, yes, I can I can I that idea, and I put it with this, and then okay, that would make a great product. So I think those sort of come together, but I think it's, I mean, if you looked at a sort of a histogram of board, game designers, the number of designs, I mean, there's a lot more designers who have made one or two games, then then lots of games, I think, and it just means I guess that for whatever reason, there are fewer designers who get to this point, because they've just had as much, you know, meetings or games published. So I don't think it's particularly innate skill of mine, I think it's just again, that if you're fortunate enough to be in a position where you can pursue this for as long as as long as I can. And you can start thinking about and I think I said, I said it quite a bit, but I guess I should just make it really, really clear is that, you know, I was in an academic career, which led me gave me a lot of flexibility and freedom, while having a lot of financial support to essentially, you know, put a lot of time and a lot of travel and a lot of work into making these games without me ever have to worry about you know, could I put a roof over my head or would I get fired for you know, taking a day off. So, you know, it's an extremely privileged position to get this point. So I think you know, it And there's many, many segments segments or the population who do not have these opportunities. So I think that just needs to be very clear.
James 15:07
Yeah, that makes total sense. I think, as you said, it's an unusual career in the sense that you genuinely have quite a lot of control over your own time, it's quite normal to go away on places like conferences and that kind of thing, as you said, and you have that financial support where it's possible to to follow this kind of thing more easily. Whereas some jobs, certainly, you've got long hours, it's very challenging to take the time out to do these sort of things. One of the things that really struck me very much during this whole process is that I don't think I can quite imagine how I would have gotten magnate done a list of standard, it's done without having taken some time during a deliberate career break where I just wasn't working for anyone else. Like there were periods where were months would go by where I had nothing to do in my life, other than various personal commitments, and magnetic there was no job to worry about. And I think like that is a is such an advantage, because I think without that just the volume of work of the design, and all of the publishing was absolutely vast. So I think having something like that makes it does make tremendous amount of sense. So from what you're saying, Do you think that is it true to say, because then, if you feel you can say this, as designers get more experienced, they get more product orientated? Is that a fair?
16:19
I think so? I think so I think if you, I suspect that publishers, when they consider designers, I think you're going to be more successful in selling your designs to publishers, if you're, I mean, I think I've got a pretty good track record, if I finish a game, that I'm able to sell it to a publisher, you know, a lot of people throw around the kind of like one out of 10, you know, sort of like one out of 10 at every stage, you know, you make 10 ideas, and then you will make one prototype or you make 10 prototypes, one will get to a final prototype, or you have 10 vital prototypes want to get published. I think I'm a bit ahead of that. And I think if you present things in an easy way for a publisher to consider them as products, and that means you've thought about it as a product, then I think, yeah, you're just increasing your odds. I mean, and that's that's kind of, I think that's the that's the name of the game for this type of being a designer, where you're you're still going around pitching your wares, and you're not being contracted out. You're not there's there's not enough certainty. So you're, you're just trying to increase your chances of being lucky, I guess.
James 17:17
Yeah, that makes complete sense. I mean, certainly, dare I say, it is almost stunningly obvious from my perspective as a publisher. Because I think now one of the things that I find so interesting and curious about this, this industry is precisely that is that so many people are doing things in ways that are not very product orientated. And they still say things to me, like I hear things all the time, like, Oh, you don't worry about theme, because the publisher will slap that on. Like, that's the kind of phrase I still hear you talked about quite a bit or, or I shouldn't be too worried about this side of it. Because you know, this the publishers problem, whether it's a final product, and I'm thinking, Oh, my God, I can't imagine picking any of these designers to work with. Because to be completely brutally honest, I'm thinking but the thing that comes to life as a box product that people buy, and if it isn't capable of being that in a compelling box, it doesn't matter. As far as the game design goes, if you want to publish it, if you want to self publish it, it's just purely a matter of self expression and artistic self expression. Go for it, do what you like, that's awesome, it really doesn't matter. But if you want to get it made by someone and sold, and theoretically make any money off it whatsoever, even if it's just 100 pound royalty check once every decade. It does strike me as kind of, sometimes I'm gonna be completely honest, and maybe a little bit tough, but kind of mad that people don't even think about it from that perspective. And yet, the reason I guess I seem a bit surprised it's kind of worth talking about this is because they'll seem to be quite uncommon, because people think I'm just this cog in the wheel at the beginning of the process that's about maybe a kind of design vision, rather than thinking about about the rest of
18:51
it. I should, I should say, at this point that because I'm sure there might be some play testers who I work with or listen to this. You know, as much as I do, try and think about this, that doesn't mean that there, I think there are many aspects of products. And I think it's important to work out which ones that you need to work out or at least present a coherent vision for and which ones publishers will naturally, themselves kind of bring to the table. Because, for example, I know for me, the theme is, I guess I didn't really talk about theme, I think I think about a setting or a group of themes, or even just a feeling that I know fits the game. And it could be one of x, you know, one of these five themes or, or I might, in fact, even in the prototype presented actually in a very generic way. But that's I think, with the knowledge of the publisher, I'm seeing a may publish games, again, with similarly generic themes. But in this case, it's not a theme LED product, I would argue like nobody's buying that game because of the theme. Yeah, they're just looking for something that actually in some ways, actually comfortable or known enough. And it's always very similar to previous games, even from the same publisher. Because that's a little signal to them that's like, Okay, this game, this view, it looks a bit like this other game, it's, I think you, you don't have to get everything right, you know design, I think I think you got to choose which which parts of that product, you're going to focus on which ones you're really going to sell it on. And that doesn't mean that they're going to be other things which you, you still say to the publisher, look, you know, there's some openness here, there's some flexibility, there's some, this is where I kind of can see it happening. And it could be like this, but you don't want to forget, as a designer, you still have a lot to I mean, the publisher has so much off for a developer so much to offer to do their product, you don't want to be inflexible or rigid. So there's, there's obviously a balance there as well.
James 20:36
Oh, it makes total sense. I guess what it sounds like it's more like, and I think what this is, what the that makes sense to me is is Have you considered the question of theming. I mean, certainly the exact opposite problem of a designer who has decided in advance what printer you're going to use, and exactly what the who's gonna be doing the sculpting for the coat for their miniatures or things like that would be an equal sized problem. Because inevitably, as a publisher, you have to make all sorts of compromised decisions all the time. And actually your vision for it might be quite different to the designers, very specifics. But it is that element, it seems like it's really crucial to have considered the question of those things. So like, Oh, here's some theme possibilities of what would fit and why I guess. Or indeed, when you're actually doing something completely abstracted, where you've said, well, actually, no, it shouldn't be highly abstract and not be very themed at all for these very good reasons. So I think that's really great, then. So let's, let's run on that a little bit. Because I think this is this is going to be so useful for the designers out there who are looking to pitch things is because it seems that increasingly, your firstly, your very considerable experience, my limited experience with this is how important nailing these products elements are, in terms of like the level that you need to go to as a designer, and the levels where you maybe really don't need to be involved, like manufacturing, for example. So maybe if we drill into those because that because you said, I think you said something so true that when you said, products is a broad term, because the thing I'm finding all the time in conversations with people is that the definition even if this is really different. So for some people, the definition is really literally physical box. So they think about it purely in terms of things like the cover art, maybe, and then the packaging, and some of the physical components. But they're not even really considering which are critical for me things like the overall game experience, which for me is absolutely vital in terms of product. So if we if we start with theme then so question of theme, what else can we say are your most important product considerations that you're thinking about as a designer,
22:31
I thinking in terms of product as a relative thing, compared to the other products a publisher has made. So I think of it as a sort of a continuation of of a product line. So that is the one driver that you're always going to think about when you pitch to a publisher, like why am I pitching to this publisher. I mean, sometimes you just want to work with a publisher, because they're fantastic, and you might but but of course, the best way to ensure success is to have a game which can they can see will fit in their line as a product. I think this goes across things like theme or play account or player demographic or game laying. So there's, there's all sorts of different publishers sort of define their product lines in different ways. You know, they're sometimes, you know, you can think of plan B and the the sort of bezel and the next move, you know, there's sort of, there are a lot of rigid rules, right. And for them, it's, you know, they have to have some sort of tactility. And, you know, the kind of actual manufacturer is very important, I would say the kind of the level of the game is very important in terms of the kind of the rules overhead or you know, it has to be very brief and, and the fact that actually, it is very frustrating, I think your point about it is sort of almost purposefully abstract. So that for them is very important for the product line. But, you know, you could then swing over to say, you know, look out or Cosmos, you know, the two player lines? Well, they're driven, I would say primarily by the Play account that, you know, they have such a diverse range of themes, you know, yes, they do have to fit a certain kind of price point and box size. But even within that there's a lot of variation. But the thing is driving is really like this is this very specific audience and you have to your product that's in that product line. So I think you have to understand, if I'm pitching to this publisher, how can I make the case that my game fits in what their fits in with what they're doing? And how can they connect it to their other games? Because of course, a publisher, I mean, you're a publisher? I'm not so yeah, I mean, they're trying to build an audience who can sort of go like, Oh, I loved your game X that this publisher just did, oh, I'm definitely gonna buy the next one. You don't want to disappoint them when they buy that next game, if possible. And that's a point of product line. So you have to think about how you're going to satisfy the next people in line, I guess. Yeah,
James 24:37
I mean, that makes tremendous amount of sense. I think it's really interesting. You say how they define them differently. Because I think that's very true. It isn't just the case of there's a kind of uniform structure for how to even think about your products consistently because he those are really good examples. Another one that occurred to me was something like level 99 games. Their games are quite different. But again, they all have this more thematic kind of video game tie in kind of I'd like it's a certain feeling thematic feeling that they all have in common, which I think is a kind another good example, within that kind of a product line fit, what else do you have to think about? I mean, this is surely something about component count must be something that you consider, right.
25:14
Yeah, I think generally price point, then you start thinking about well, I mean, because we're still driven by physical products, and publishers tend to make games in the same kind of strata, if they, you know, they have their kind of $20 boxes, they're, they're $40 boxes, they, you know, so yeah, I think there's, there's a natural concern to, to think about the price where they go, I guess the probably the key question all that is just does the game experience match the price you're going to sell it for? Because there's no, of course, there's no one price point, there are many games that have made it all up or down the spectrum? Yeah, it's just that you have to make sure that there is a fit between the game the audience and the amount of money that people are willing to pay for the game. If those things are all working together, then you will, then you'll have hopefully a chance of successful product. But of course, if you if you have something that's out of kilter, if you have a very light game at a very high price point, then you have an audience that might love that kind of like game, but they're never going to spend that amount of money on a game or, or vice versa, you might have a very, very thinkI very strategically rich small card game for $10. But, but actually, the you know, that maybe the honest man isn't going to see that. I mean, they're not as much as we make fun about, you know, lots of empty box, you know, empty space in boxes. I mean, that's part of that, kind of, like, blinking of leading players towards the products that they there's over them, like it or not, box sizes, sort of is one of the things that helps people get a sense of like, what style of game it is.
James 26:40
Yeah, I think that's a crucial thing. And I think, and obviously, there are some sound reasons for wanting to shrink boxes in general to the more to the size, where they're adequate for them components for both environmentally, I think that's, that's one good reason for it. And just because it's just kind of takes up extra space, you don't want to spend I mean, I think particularly, you know, particularly probably slightly less in North America, because I see loads of massive games rooms that people have, because I guess the space, particularly outside of the coastal cities is like way more plentiful. But in Europe, Japan, in loads other places like Spain has a real premium, certainly, you know, here in London, and definitely is and and so there's more space, but as you said, like it or not, it does have interesting signal. And this is a question I'd like to dig into a little bit, because I think this is a really interesting question. Because what that signal is, doesn't necessarily seem to be entirely dependent on exactly complexity. Although that's kind of correlated with it. It's something about because it's easy, both have a number of components themselves. So for example, there seem to be some miniatures games that are quite successful, that are much bigger and heavier looking than some Euro games, even though they're actually simpler. And then the other end of the scale, obviously, you can get some quite funny little smaller games, sometimes. That's, I would say that's less common than the other way around. What is it that makes an experience tied to like a price point?
28:05
I would think about what does the publisher so on the back of the box, you know, what are they highlighting, you know, because I'm sure in those miniatures games, they're definitely highlighting the miniatures on the back of the box, right, and they won't be talking very much about the gameplay. And of course, on the flip side, you could think of a, you know, I don't know, a strategic Euro, you know, 60 to 90 minutes or something that, that may highlight a mechanical point, or, you know, on the back of the arrow and might very highlight the designers bio, because that's, that's something that, you know, I know, this designer makes games of this type and, and that's what they're really trying to define the audience by, you know, Stephen builders may be a really good example of, you could basically put his name on a box and nothing else, and you would get exactly the right audience for the game, pretty much. So then, of course, that has nothing to do with box size, or art or theme or bonus. So it's, again, it's like, what is the kind of I think the driving the selective part of product is gonna be different for different audiences. I think the one I'm actually more interested in is the ball sort of lighter, casual audience to games, because I think there is more variants there, and the types of games that they might enjoy, usually, because members of veterans have just played fewer games. So they're actually I think, more willing to take a chance on new things or be surprised or play something sort of, outside of what you might think, you know, a casual, inexperienced gamer would play. And I think there's a lot of, I actually think that's the big audience where there's a lot of growth, there's a lot of opportunity, because, you know, there are just more I would say, there are more people in that category than there are in the kind of entrenched, you know, Euro gamers or you know, miniatures, miniatures game and so, that that is more fascinating, because it's kind of a bit more unknowable that there's less there's less of a certainty of saying like, Oh, yeah, I need to put X on the back of the box or I need to have this type of theme and that will reach the vegan and you see it, I think in the because, of course, if companies could do it, they would win this We'll just hours every year or something. Yeah, I can't. Yeah, it's very difficult to do that. But I think that's why, for me, it's actually quite fascinating to see that. And how do you signal to those audiences that this thing that you don't really know, and maybe isn't exactly like what you've had before? It's still going to be for you, you're still going to enjoy this?
James 30:16
I mean, that's really fascinating question, because I think I think I'm completely with you. But it seems to be that that's entirely where the growth is, because the growth of this is not going to come from a small number of hobbyists who already own massive numbers of games, it's all going to come and it is coming from people who are a bit more casual, because that for me, and that's wonderful, because the reason why this this renaissance is going on is because more people are discovering that modern board games are great. No surprise, the most successful ones aren't heavy Euro games, they are they are considerably lighter. I think it's really single point about the idea that there's also almost interestingly, this is almost a more interesting space, in the sense that that, as you said, people have less clear taste. And I don't know why like is is heavy economic URIs, something that's really specific kind of banded idea. They haven't got like a specific taste yet, in a way that kind of connoisseur kind of begins to know what their taste is, that it's that it's broader. How do you personally go about trying to approach that? Like, if you're trying to solve that problem, we're trying to come up with games that more fit in that kind of casual gamer? I think gateway is not quite the right word. But it's kind of in that in that ballpark? How do you go about doing that?
31:29
There's a couple of different ways one is emulation, I would say. So sometimes I look at a game that I think is really successful in that space. And I'll try and sort of understand what what is it that people are enjoying that game and and then I would try and make a game that maybe hues a little bit closer to that. And that it's not, I suppose it's sitting in that space where maybe the signals are much more clear, like you could put it in a similar sized box, you can have similar kinds of components, similar themes. And it's easier for for a person who maybe only owns that game to go like, Oh, yeah, I can see this one. But yeah, I'll give this a try. And, and they won't be sort of surprised. But I think the other ways taking inspiration from outside of the board game space. And I mean, of course, you know, great examples micro macro. That one was really Jr's and the crew, I would say, because you know, things like trick taking isn't really thought of in the hobby. I mean, there are a lot of people love trick to games, don't get me wrong, that it's not, it's considered a little, it's kind of a slightly different sphere, I guess from from the hobby game industry. So I actually like, you know, some of my success, especially in recently developing more sort of narrative games that often come from the digital space. So I've played digital games, or they've been certain aspects of digital games, that casual audiences as well might be very familiar with, because you know, they might be more digital games, or for whatever reason, things have been advertised better in the digital space, it's a bigger market. And I've heard of it. And so they might be more open to that kind of thing. If you give them the pitch through the digital world, like, you know, I, for the adventure games, we always say it's like the old point and click PC adventure adventure games. And that is a point of residence for a lot of people, even if they haven't really played board games, or they wouldn't consider it, but they're interested in and want to try it out. So you can think of it like that to come in sort of a different a different sort of touch touch point. I think, I guess the other thing that we're seeing a lot of rise on this theme, especially themes, which are sort of I would say it's the it's the kind of detailed familiar, I don't really know how I'd love to come up with a good term for it. But basically, it's the, it's kind of the wingspan effect, I would say, which is I think, I think there are a lot of very realistic themes that are familiar to people firstly, so that they can kind of connect with them in their real life, but also that they don't necessarily know a lot about or that they're kind of, there's enough curiosity or detail in that topic that they can kind of explore and they can feel like that they can. And of course, we expand doesn't need a particular way, there's more detail, but you know, sort of look at games like I don't know, Calico, or like, Patchwork, possibly patchwork is the kind of world switch, if you sort of talk to people about the theme. Yeah, we all know what cross stitches or eating or cooking or whatever, but not so many people like would be considered themselves experts, but they're very open to sort of like being in that kind of space. And in fact, might be quite interested to kind of, you know, have a kind of introduction to that or to kind of explore it in some way through again, or maybe not like making myself so clear. But no, it's yeah, sorry.
James 34:29
You're gonna say, oh, yeah, I was just gonna say no, I think I know exactly what you mean. It strikes me that quite a lot of these themes in particular maybe are in some senses detailed, familiar. I like I think it's going and getting in that that grasping at what that is, I know you mean, a lot of them are quite domestic in some sense as well. They're about things that are very common in ordinary life. When historically when we think about so much about board games, they tend to be quite fantastical so on the Euro side, tend to be somewhat historical. I would say mostly a lot about settings in the past whether it'd be about knights were Whether it be about the Renaissance as always seem to be internally popular about being merchants or the Renaissance. But and then on the the more kind of was once called America trash, I feel like that time has faded now for pretty good reasons. Kind of games tend to be like science fictiony, or fantasy battles. And a lot of this stuff like someone wingspan is such a perfect example something which is actually hugely popular. I remember reading, probably about 10 years ago that bird watching was the number one hobby in Britain, something like that. So actually hugely widespread, really super familiar, like compared to people who are like massive nerds for a particular science fiction franchise, probably much bigger, nationally has an audience that you can then bring in again, theme to the strategy we don't think about, which is weird, because they've they're actually things that are hugely popular and familiar to people. And suddenly, that's, that's starting to connect with people in a rather new way. So yeah, that deep, detailed, familiar, I like that. I think there's something there's something in there as an unsaved once
35:59
and they want some fidelity there. It's also I think, I guess, when I think about it, it's not just a coat of paint. I think a lot of these games are really nailing a real a deep appreciation for the theme that they're or the world that rabbiting. Yeah, like, whether it's bird watching, or whether you think of like parks, for example, people who like national parks, and that kind of, there's a lot of work that goes in from the publisher side, or from the designer side, or both, to really express that theme in a meaningful way that, you know, resonates with the desired audience. And that's, you can't do that by just slapping a coat of paint over something, you know, even if you have the most, you know, another one I sort of think about is dream house or dream home from the rebel, you know, I think they absolutely nailed this kind of, you know, it was aspirational part of moving somewhere, or, you know, the kind of, you know, cartoon s thing, and they match that with, with how you, it's a very aspirational way of building a house, you know, it's fairly easy, you know, I get to put the things together that I want, and there's a lot of character there. And but it's all those little details, all those little touches that come together to give that experience to give that, you know, Marathon scene or whatever sort of feeling.
James 37:11
Yeah, it is a little bit like me, as I'm saying, isn't it like I think that's, that's also a kind of good term, I just want to think about film quite a bit, because that was a huge interest of mine, at one point want to be a film director. So film compared to that sort of thing. I think, like a lot of sense of the economy's on sand, I guess, as you said, it's just like, it's the construction, that gives the effect. So this, this is really as I hear you talk about that level of interest in how the theme on product will hang together. Because do that even be thinking in those terms, even if you're not, you're definitely dictating the publisher, but you're kind of coming to them with this is how I see this can go down, is quite extensively deep in terms of thinking about particularly how theme comes to life, because I'm with you there this this element seems really critical is that the idea of you know, painting it on is never going to yield the same results. Something as you said, nice, detailed, familiar games, were actually you're capturing something about the feel of the experience. So the home one, I think seems like a particularly strong example of all the ones that you've said, of like, I'm creating something, there's an aesthetic quality to it. Like I get to arrange things like I would in real life. And I get to have that experience of a rather ritzy, maybe nice kind of like rather Deluxe environment and they go wouldn't quite build for myself, personally, in my own home for valcambi or for sorts of reasons. But I can create it there. Which is yeah, it's very intriguing as a kind of approach. So you would say probably, you're increasingly trying to think to that level when you're designing something. Well, yeah,
38:38
I think Well, I see it as that's where the in the really concretely capitalist way of thinking that's where the trend is, I would say like, I think people who play games have now been shown that this is possible. There are examples of games, which can do such a great service to something that I think you're exactly right, that it's both familiar, and also aspirational in some way that you feel like it's sort of possible. So because you have those examples, then you kind of it ups the bar for what you have to be able to deliver or, or rather, you know, you can certainly, I'd say you can definitely get games, you might be able to get a game published, but it's not going to do very well. Because if it's if it's not firing on all the cylinders, because we're just just like, I would say, and just the overall quality of art or components, the the kind of the bar has shifted in the last year or five or 10 years or whatever. So even if you're able to make something even go to publish it that the consumers are expecting something different, they're expecting more, and I think they're expecting more as well and the experience and I think maybe it also generally just speaks to something in the zeitgeist, I guess in terms of like, I guess comfort or the need for the I think your point about it being domestic and us looking to something closer to ourselves that that makes us comfortable or at ease because we sort of don't have control. Now this is just often the pop psychology I guess, but I think that games have not spoken to that. Feeling very often they haven't they haven't, you know, they haven't been thought of as meditative, for example. And now we have, you know, a gentle rain from Kevin Wilson, for example, and exercise, which is basically described as, as a meditation, you know, the playing of a game situation, I think we're going to see more and more thinking in this this way that as you said, it's going to bring new people into playing board games.
James 40:23
I think it's fascinating. I think it's important to speculate on these things anyway, because I think even if you as you say is different, come on, this sort of thing is basically impossible to prove. Yeah. But nonetheless, I think is worth considering if you're serious about thinking that way games are going. So I think this is this is really fascinating. The next thing I'd like to talk about a little bit about your relationship with publishers, then and obviously, where you can give me practical example, I think that's really cool. Let's say you've got a game, you've already considered a lot of this kind of thing upfront. And you've picked something and someone has, the publisher said, it's great. I really love this, I want to sign you. Practically speaking, once that process has begun. As a designer, what tends to be your involvement now in the process? Are you mostly done at this point? Are you quite quite in there with the publisher and how specifically you kind of workshopping things with them to get it to the final hurdle?
41:12
It really, really depends on the publisher, I think, I think I realised that there's more responsibility on my side to try and be as involved as possible, in that I have no sort of responsibility. But if I want to gauge the speed, I can't just sit back and sort of, it's not about not trusting a publisher, but it's about applying, you know, an extra set of eyes at every point in order to maximise the thing we're going to make together. So the more I can devote to that process, there's a chance that I will be able to contribute. Now, it really does depend on how the publisher works there. And it just it's, you know, basic things like communication, and even things like timelines, even language barriers can be different. You know, if you're working with publishers, who aren't native English speakers, unfortunately, I'm a very lazy native English speaker, it doesn't speak any foreign languages, which, which is on me, because obviously, the position I've worked with, or at least bilingual, you know, many times. So, you know, I try to be as bold as I can. And I think I again, realise that I can't, I can't blame anyone but myself, if I'm not if I'm not trying to do that. Now, of course, there are some times when it's just not possible. And a publisher doesn't work like that, and they will, and you just have to go, Okay, well, but that comes down to I would say, that's the decision, when you sign that contract, you have to be happy with how you, you know, you're going to work with that publisher. And I think, I would say to a lot of designers, especially, you know, don't have as much experience, you know, at that point where they offer you a contract. That's the point when you definitely should ask questions about the product, how do they? What's their vision for the game? How do they envision, you know, deadlines and timelines of the project? How do they envision that they're going to share progress on the game and ask for your feedback, you know, academically understand, and I was there too, when you're, when you're offered a contract, you're like, wow, it's I get to publish a game? Where do I sign kind of thing. But to realise, much like any other kind of negotiation in life, and for jobs, or otherwise, like, you have a lot of power in that moment, the moment they say they want to publish your game, like they want that game, there's no problem with saying asking these questions, these are not really saying I don't want to work with you necessarily. They're just, it helps to set out a good way that you might want to work together. And if you don't know, they'll publish that, well, it might help you even make the decision whether you want to publish with that publisher or not. Because if they can't tell you, well, we don't know how we're going to work on the game, or we don't know, we don't have a product vision for the game, you know, sometimes that you hope that a publisher sees who is this going to be forwarded, they have ideas of what they're going to do with art or components or, and you need to have those conversations. I think, once you've signed, hopefully, like all these concerns about how involved you're going to be you've kind of been able to consider them at that point. And then you can you can work in, in a meaningful way. After that. Yeah, it's, I can talk about a few specific examples just to show the kind of breadth because, you know, we're still a fairly boutique industry that, you know, public was working in many different ways. Yeah. Monuments, also, monuments was a large Kickstarter, you're probably the largest game ever designed civilization kind of game, lots of minis on Kickstarter, and did all these sort of things. But I originally, you know, I pitched the game as a as a card only game effectively. And yeah, and fun forge had this amazing vision for the game, which was part of the kind of initial conversation that they had this vision for a much bigger world to get into get lost in and figures and tiles and things. But that meant that I was much much more involved with the game in the kind of after the signing stage, because they came into that saying, you know, this is our vision, but we need you to also work with us to get there because that we need to make sure that the mechanisms how the game works, needs to match that vision. We need to you know, all those assets need to be in harmony and the final product. So I was much much more involved in that kind of developing that and sort of holding the gameplay on Long with their kind of more creative kind of concerns or thematic visions sort of things. Although, of course, on the other side, sometimes you'll work with publishers. Sorry, not on the other side. Another example is that, you know, I've been really lucky to work with a few very established publishers, such as days, wandering Space Cowboys, both, you know, and in those companies very well established editors and product managers. And one thing I'll point to is, is in face cowboys, so those, especially outside the French speaking world, I don't think it's as widely known, but you know, these are the founders of Asmodee, effectively, you know, these are the, you know, the folks that the Senate has been a, you know, 2030 years ago, as very small publisher. And, you know, once as they became what it is, you know, they set up their own kind of thing to make the games they want to make, but actually, you know, each each of the folks there has a real talent for something. And actually, when you make a game with them, you very quickly, they're very open to collaboration, very open to feedback, but actually, you get such a benefit from their expertise, especially say, of one political Philip Moray, who I don't think is very well known outside of the French speaking world, but he is one of the, you know, the main people that Space Cowboys was asked for, and he's a product manager, you know, he's his talent is product, you know, in terms of, you know, managing, you know, costs, managing artists, thinking about components, thinking about UX, that is his he has a talent for that. And it's been honed over many decades. And I think if you were looking at any of Space Cowboys games, I think you see that you don't necessarily know it, because I think it's something that when done well is very intuitive. It's not necessarily, but you will see in all of their games is always a little touch, which is just, you know, like the chips in splendour, like they didn't have to be focused. I
James 46:48
was going to say that straightaway. That was what I was thinking as well. Yeah,
46:51
exactly. I think that's fit. That's Philippe, I'm pretty sure. Although it may have been a group group decision. You'll have everyone one time, but yeah, well,
James 47:00
he will be Oh, God, I'd love to Yeah, be faster, or the,
47:02
you know, in illicium, which was the game we made with them, he was the one who managed the eight honours. So each artist did one God. And that's a really defining feature in that game, because, you know, you have a Dex, and you're gonna choose five to mix together. And each of them has their own real theme. And he was the one who thought, let's get eight separate artists to really give their own style to that thing, and more. And he managed all of that, and made that work. And also, you know, they're all usually have amazing inserts, you know, like, Blackfeet isn't like a skull and bones and the insert, like, Elysium has this great, sort of, like, Greek temple. So I guess, the point about working with publishers was that sometimes you also, you just better I mean, you sort of lucked out as a designer, that it's not that you take a back seat, but it's that you, you're really, really fortunate to work with people who have and it doesn't have to only be the people have had decades of experience. There are also some very, you know, publishers who haven't been around for very long, I think of people like Keymaster, for example, who did parks, I'd very, very much like to make a game with them, because I think they also understand product very well. And you can see that sometimes for the background, the company's big potato games, I think it's a really nice examples. Well, they, as I understand they came from, not from really the game space, I think maybe more from the events or advertising kind of space into games. And again, I think you can see how they conceive a product. So I'd say to designers, like, look for the you know, the best way to do it is for you also to be involved, but to partner up with people who have complementary skill sets and who have a knack for that kind of thing. Impossible.
James 48:27
Yeah, well, I guess that's something and it's something which you can see. And then as you said, like it is it by its nature. Often it's subtle, like it's not something that's like a single obvious thing. But it's something that comes across in the final product design out of interest in Space Cowboys, is his job product manager, is that his title or something else?
48:46
I mean, I think it may now be something even more senior than that, because I'd been there for years, effectively one of the dodos to hit it, he might be head of studio now. But that that right, okay, sort of what we did as Vinay would have been a product manager. Of course, even the word Product Manager is a bit tricky, because sometimes that can really mean something close as a project manager. Because if you think of products as games, and each project is a game, then you can also kind of be a project manager. So like within that job, there's lots of diversity, but his his skill, I think, is the actual creation of the product and the things that go into that, but also good at the kind of organisational stuff as well.
James 49:22
That's interestingly, that's not a thing unique to games, I think, is a confusion because that's very much the case in software, which is where I came from my background is obviously being a product manager in software. And the difference between projects and product managers, there isn't always clear because some product managers are not really given much in the way of true autonomy to decide the vision of the product, and therefore they're really just project managers. And most product managers have to do some project management. It's very rare that you get to be the visionary and you aren't also doing quite well project management as well. That's that's you really lucked out if you're that person, but that's very rare that companies have those roles. So that's, that's super cool, because that's the first time I've heard of any other company doing that. That's exactly what I would do. If we got to a point, hopefully, maybe in the future where we're scaled enough that we need more than me to do that, then a product manager is exactly the kind of person I would have. Because cuz I think because just think considering it from that perspective, that's a way of partly making sure that's the case by framing the role like that.
50:18
Yeah, the other the other one that comes to mind is conco, games and Prospero because I think, if you want to think about delineating player roles, I mean, I think they are, you know, a fantastic model for that. In terms of product managers, and designers, and illustrators, and testers, they everyone has roles within that company, and they all work together on a project. So yeah, that also probably be great for you, you should should get one of them on.
James 50:44
I would love to, I think this is something I really love to do, and maybe introduce to people who have Yeah, particularly the role of product manager already in a publishing company would be actually brilliant person to bring on and it's something that yeah, I generally don't hear of it, the title use very much. So I think that's really cool. On that note, and in terms of how things fit together, this is a really good point talk about I think, your collaboration and how you work with other designers. Because, obviously, we've talked a lot about we've used words like vision, we've talked about a lot of you personally involved in things, but I can always, always the first thing I think of when you're working with other people, and you've you've published pretty much every one of these titles with at least one other collaborator, it's very easy to talk about vision when it's like a single visionary having thoughts about how things should fit together. But if you're designing something even quite early on with someone else, they're not just coming on later, as a developer to tweak a few things in the process. How does that work in terms of having a coherent vision and hammering that out together? And I'm really curious to know about how your regular collaborations
51:33
work? Yeah, I think, at the basis of all of that is some sort of underlying sort of trust or understanding that you kind of are on the same page, almost like irrespective of the project, or irrespective of the game, I think you tend to make more games with a few people then then one game with lots and lots and lots of people, because there is something about, you know, like a friendship or a or any sort of partnership, you fall into a trust with each other that even in a very early point of the project where maybe one, you know that always at the end of the project, it's going to be more one person's head than the other, I just, I don't believe that ideas can be simultaneously worked on, especially at the early stage. You know, I always think when you have a first you there has to be one person or make the first prototype, that at least that's my viewpoint. And of course, at that point, it is purely in one person's head. And of course, the other person kind of say, oh, yeah, that's what I'm thinking. But actually, until it really exists, and you kind of play it, they might not even know what it is. Or you might not even be thinking about the same thing, you might think you know, what you think about but like, when you have a good working relationship, there's sort of a trust that even if I don't really understand that the start, I know, we're going to build it towards something that we're both happy with. And then there's even as sort of an internal kind of pitching process in that, you know, one side will kind of pitch to the other and say, like, oh, this this, whatever idea is sort of sound like something you might be interested in working on, you know, is it the kind of, and you're kind of sounding each other out, but it is something that fits. And I think, you know, once you get past that first point, you have a kind of a working prototype, then then it's, I think, I think, to be honest, it's just so much more about the relationship than it is about the game. Ultimately, like the fact that, that I publish games with people speaks more to them as CO designers, as people to work with, then about the game itself. Because that ultimately, I think, is what determines whether a game gets finished or not, you can have a fantastic idea that you're both working on. But if you can't figure out a way to kind of work together in a productive way or find, you know, there's not one way but if you can't pay in a way, then you know, you're not gonna finish a game. So I think it's sort of teasing out from each other. What what do you bring to the process? How does it how do you bounce off each other so that you're always bouncing towards the finish line, rather than bouncing back towards the start or something. And there are people that I tried to work with who I you know, kind of friends in real life or acquaintances, I get along very well with them. And it just doesn't work for whatever reason. And it's sometimes hard to really point to exactly what's lacking or what I think difference is actually quite important. I think some I think it's very, very hard to design a game with somebody who's very similar to because then you're not really gaining much from working together you already have the same bases covered I mentioned earlier. We're good bread he has he's fantastic at this sort of editorial binding comes from kind of book publishing actually and I think he's a he's a fantastic place has a very there was a thing that went around in the Cambridge group that you know, your has your game being played tested by Brett Yeah, because it's very, can be very blunt in his feedback, but
54:34
he that he has a very sort of questioning mind and he will question even like the most basic assumptions of the game that like why are you doing it that way? Of course, that's incredibly valuable to to improve upon a game and I know I can rely on that when I'm working with him. The flip side of that is he's not very good at necessarily coming up with new ideas when I said that, you know, I'm very plugged into like board game media and I like once again, reds very different. He doesn't really like keeping up with things he doesn't like not on Twitter, for example, with this other is the CIO actually I bring something to the table and I have a much either bigger boat to sort of draw from and I actually most of the games are usually my ideas first. And that's, that's how we work together. And that's, that's our kind of complementary talents. But that's just for us. Another example is with Dave Neal, who I've made some narrative games, we've just had these echoes games published by Robins Berger that just come out, which are audio mystery games. But Dave is also known for he designed the latest, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective box, oh, cool. The new the new one, there was a new box, basically, because obviously, the ones they publish are rolled up. And so he's, he's a writer, really, I mean, he also was a good designer, but his strength is narrative and constructing narrative. And so the way we work together very much is that I usually have a mechanical kind of way to sort of think about, like, how do we put a little twist in this to make a new narrative game? And he kind of sort of take that kind of skeleton or that structure? And then how do I tell a compelling story with those constraints? Or how do I tell a compelling story with the way that I'm going to reveal new parts of that story? You know, because of course, in games, you're you're always kind of experimenting with how a story is going to be told it's a you know, is it linear is fragmented isn't isn't a mystery, as you know, there's things and he has a fantastic talent, sort of take that, that traditional writers, you know, narrative mind and, and be able to kind of, meld it over this sort of weird skeleton of game mechanics, that, that that gives those games and things. So yeah, that's, that's an earlier so yeah, again, a different a different set of ways to think about things, a different set of skills is vitally important.
James 56:38
Yeah, that I find that that's really, really cool, I think to hear a little bit more about about that. So it sounds like to me, you're sort of thinking about your more often the one that sounds like how coming up with initial ideas, maybe maybe not so much in the narrative ones, but certainly when it comes to the most of the games that you work on. And then you, for example, you talk to someone like Brett because you feel like it's it might be a match for him, you'd have this kind of internal pitching process. And then at any given point, it sounds like there's generally someone is taking the lead in the process. So it's like I'm driving towards a prototype, and then someone else is responding to that to what's been created. So there's a kind of like, and there's sometimes there's it swapped, so sometimes will Brett then say make another prototype version back to you? Or will it? Like will it operate like that? Sometimes?
57:20
Yeah, actually, there's there's a few definite, I guess, milestones that we don't talk about myself, but I guess you could think of them as milestones with with Brad, is that he also fantastic kind of graphic designer thinks about it very good about information design, I think he has a very, so I mean, one example. So listeners might know about Snowdonia, it's sort of a Game by Tony Boyle. Oh, yes, yeah. And one feature is that the track goes around the edge of the board. And the the action spaces are there's there's a workplace, we get in there actually spaces, sort of numbered lettered a through to F or G, with the idea that, you know, a results before the results will see. And actually Brett's contribution in the playtesting event is just a play tester was to realise that if you, you know, even just how you arrange the action spaces in this kind of following the track around the board just helped the flow of how people thought of how does the game work, you know, and it was the order of things that and of course, in retrospect is just, it sounds obvious, but it wasn't like that initially, and has a knack for sort of being able to, you know, simplify things visually think about how information is presented, which is really important, really important to the prototyping process. And when you're pitching to a publisher, because you know, that just like a big gap in trying to sell a game to a consumer, is that gap in the rules, you know, like, how do they understand the rules? That's also the gap. When you're pitching to a publisher? It's like, how do they understand how to play your prototype effectively. And so the same tricks, the better you can put that into the prototype, and you're just giving yourself a better chance. And so there's always a point in the prototype process where I've been making the prototype from the start. And there'll be a point where it's either settled enough or it's necessary enough that Brett will kind of take over and then he'll be taking over the prototype, at least, like the file making, like maybe I'll be won't be on the content or the or the lead, but he'll be handling the kind of actual, like, how do you make the PDF or put things in Illustrator or whatever. And another point is also the rules. So Brett, is there's always a point where I may have written some rules initially, or, or they're just being spoken. But then there's a point where they sort of codified and again, Brett, he's also extremely talented rules, right? Again, I think is very directly connected with his experience in book publishing. thinks it's just very good at writing that kind of that, you know, I'm not sure if you can remember if you had the rules, right or on the on the on the podcast as yet, but it's a very specific skill set anyway, and he's very, very good at it.
James 59:41
So we had Paul Grogan on
59:42
of course, sorry, I listened even listen to that. Yeah. So
James 59:47
yeah, absolutely. And it was, but it was great talking to her about the editing about person for precisely that reason. Like and I think you're completely right. It's like such an incredibly it's incredibly important part of the process for creating something interesting which can which can really work like that. So that's fascinating because it's almost like the role that Brett takes is almost more like, what it sounds like. Anyways, it kind of is almost like a mega developer. In some ways. He's sort of like he's so involved in a way that some developers often aren't, they're more looking at a more narrow slice of it. Like he's thinking more broadly about a whole thing about UX about rules about like everything. But as you said, it's like, it's more of that part of the process, where he's responding, enhancing and clarifying, and all of those things that take it from you and your initial concept into something that becomes and your and your initial design and mechanical ideas and giving it breathing it full life into it. That's really cool. It almost sounds a little bit like the way that you work together is a little bit more like a game studio. In some ways. When I spoke to Sofia and James from MIDI cat games, it was really interesting, what because I wanted to talk for hours, how much the industry seems to almost be evolving that direction. Because if you are a publisher, I know I'd be thinking very straight, simple, simple. If a designer comes to me, and they've thought about all of this stuff already, and they've really thought about it, and you've got, you know, it's like a draft version, because I'm picturing yourself and Brett were, together, you've taken it that it's mechanically satisfying. It's it's it's a great game experience. It's well laid out from a UX point of view, the rules make sense, it's tight, it says all those things. So much easier for me, because I was really thinking great. I've my job is done, the rest of it now becomes more about finance and marketing and production design. When it comes to the art execution rather than that side of it, the more that I know that the project, I can be more sure that this project is going to be a winner because I get to see it complete. Before I started, the better. So do you think this kind of more studio approach is going to become more than norm? I don't know.
1:01:45
I would hope so I did it. I think I think I'm very, very fortunate that Brett's still happy to work with me, like I bring as much to the partnership season because I think you're right actually like he's actually feeling you know, if you thought about filling roles in a studio, he's, he's, he's wearing a lot of hats. And he's, you know, very tight. I think your point about the rules is very sad. There are many publishers who will not only take Brett's rules pretty much, you know, or will even he will effectively be editing them with the publisher, because he I think the other thing, you know, that we should forget, it's still, you know, we're both involved in the actual game and the gameplay and a lot of it is is convincing Brett that he enjoys the game or that it's because it's not it's not we do sort of have different tastes or at least different like tendencies, I would say like where you sort of fall back on it and design and and the really great thing and, you know, earlier sort of talking about aiming for this sort of slightly more casual market. Great thing about designing was bred is that yeah, he will he'll tell you like this, this is just too complicated. Why do I care about this? So, you know, you can't just you know, much like, you know, Euro game as you can just sort of go like, Oh, here are these goals? Like, yes, you should care about them, because they give you points, obviously. But you know, Brett will sort of throw those assumptions out the window. So I think that the studio, I mean, it's just shown to be better, isn't it? I mean, it's just you look at the quality of games coming again from Prospero and Hunger Games, I think it's just a fantastic example. You've got team Kodama in France. So that's Antoine Bowser, Ludovic on Blanc, Rivera, and current and LeBron, they may draft a source together, for example. It's they're they're they're much more similar design studio, I would say that, you know, but between them, they've got lots of different experiences with with publishers and things to think about. So yeah, I think it's, it's a great model, I guess the only sided downside is that maybe that the financial side of it, or the kind of the feasibility of it, I'm not sure if it's completely ironed out. But you can sort of understand this is how I can set it up. And it can work, you know, we don't have enough data points to sort of go like, Oh, this is this off the shelf way to set up the studio and make sure you're, you're you're going to be able to sort because of course, like when you design co design, you're having your royalties, you know, effectively. And I always think that that's, that's worthwhile because I think that I'm getting more than double the number of games finished than I do having the royalties, if that makes sense. Like, I'm sort of, you know, the sum is greater than the parts or something, when you talk about studios with, you know, three or four people or whatever. I mean, that's great. But I guess, maybe the professionalism in the industry, or things about how things are paid, or those kind of structures haven't quite evolved to support that, I think, or at least from my kind of very limited view, because obviously don't see it from the kind of Publisher financial point. So
James 1:04:30
that's a really interesting, interesting point, because it does strike me that the vast majority of these different studios also work very differently. So like, for example, your collaboration with Brett is really interesting. It's quite it's very different how Sophia and James work even though they both fit in that kind of broad studio universe in terms of a way of operating with very different models. So even even just that is obviously far from settled. So in any in any sense of what the best way and then probably it's one of the things that probably never will be It will be a little bit different between because people are different. So they're going to have different ways of working. I think in the knowledge industry particularly, that is likely to continue being the case. Because actually there's there's always like basically no costs or lack of standardisation, between those different ways of working, it's just about finding that the way that works for you. I mean, I think it's really interesting I think about so for all the games that I'm working at the moment are, as is often the case with startup publishers, all developed, have very strong in and of myself and Jaya in them. So we at the moment that this second one that I'm working on learning is going to be the first time we have anyone else really involved in the process, any great degree at the design stage. And actually, the next two after that, if all goes to plan, we'll be back to just Jaya and myself really driving almost all of us that development. So we're we're also a bit like a studio model as well. It's just that we're also the publisher at the same time and doing all of those pieces. So yeah, I think it's really fascinating that the whole the royalties thing, I do wonder about how this will fall out sustainably, I suspect the answer is brutally, that it will be either a fewer number of games, or a smaller number of more and more high selling games, with the royalties divided effectively by being bigger chunks, by each being a chunk bit of a bigger pie. Because I think that marketing is going to become more and more important in terms of marketing spend to make games successful. Because I think anyway, there's no way that the market could remain the shape that it is at the moment where there's still like a very large number of moderately well selling games, whereas I think it's gonna go more long tail in the sense, it's gonna, it's gonna be more classic and internet distribution, where you have a smaller number, a fairly small number of very, very successful games and a very large number of games that are not commercially successful at all. And that's kind of how it already is, as I understand it. But I think it's going to get more pronounced because I don't think it would be sustainable any other way. And then I would guess the successful studios would be sustainable in that model. Precisely because a pretty big pie even divided four or five ways is pretty good. Compared to a, you know, being one designer, and you have 100% of something close to nothing, which is not good. And I can see completely why. Because you said for you personally, it completely makes sense to say, Well, I'm getting so many games made and you are getting an enormous number of games made. And some of those are being really, really successful means that it totally makes sense to divided up between more than one person. That's really cool that that really answers actually one of the listener questions we had this week, which from Alex, and he wanted to know about why the collaborations have been so successful. And I think to me, the way you describe it, I think all of that speaks to why that, that sounds like that works from certainly all of my experience looking not just in games, but way beyond games in terms of collaboration of products in general, before, you know, before I got into this industry. So I've got one of the listener questions I want to get in before we have to draw to a close today. So and that's how do you get yourself into a mindset to sit down and design and not procrastinate, because you are hugely productive? So that's Mike asked that question. I'd be really curious to know what your answer to that is.
1:08:02
I think you can appear to be very productive in the board game industry. But that doesn't relate to hours worked. I would say firstly, because as you said, it's a knowledge industry, right? Not that I think you have a probably a bit of knowledge. I haven't heard that term that much. But it makes sense. In that, you know, an actual, you know, person hours to make a game, there's not very much if you think about it in terms of what you're potentially able to earn from it. It's not like I'm, you know, actually asked us Antoine buzzer once, almost the first time I met him actually, he had just recently gone full time. At that point, I think it was I don't know how many years after seven wonders was but I said how are you more productive since you went full time? And he said, No, I do about the same amount of work. Because, you know, I used to be much more efficient, I really get into the spare time I had. And now that I have all this time I just procrastinate a bit more. And in terms of I think, I think deadlines definitely help in terms of, but I think this question is probably aimed a lot more at the kind of early part of game design because I think it's, it's a little bit easier when you have a game that's kind of on the go to kind of keep going with it. There's lots of you know, like, you've got a play test and another time or you're going to pitch it or you've got to make the rules there's there's lots of little kind of tick boxy things that can help you give that sense of forward progress or momentum. And I guess you could look at the progress light for those those tasks, but they're, they're at least fairly well defined. And usually they're, they're exactly what you want us to be there. They're kind of like, you know, small enough chunks that you can kind of understand that do and but when you kind of have to like come up with a game as this big, you know, amorphous thing that of course, you're going to procrastinate because how do you even How do you even bite off a chunk of that? How do you you and I think all the techniques that people talk about in in making achievable goals I think applied to how do you not procrastinate at that point? How do you break it down to like, I've just got to get this first prototype done, or I'm just going to get 20 cards of this done or if it's so horrible. How do I get five cards done this morning? Or you know, you know, there was a game where I knew I had to make About 60 cards and, and I couldn't use my normal tricks of like, you know, I make 20. And then I tripled them all and make the deck out of that or something, I knew there had to be different. And I knew I needed to take the time, even at the start to try and you know, because the game experience kind of hinged on these cards being different. So I literally had to force myself once every morning, I just do for lifeguards, because that's I hated it. And I and I, you know, it wasn't fun. It wasn't, but but I found, you know, just breaking up those small chunks that I could, you know, and I found some sort of, I'm a bit of a creature of kind of habit or schedule, like I, you know, I got up about the same time every day. And I and I did that. So I think that's one thing, it's sort of that getting in the mind space, I guess it's it's planning how you're going to get the time or how you're going to, you know, I don't really know where my head's going to be, but at least I can kind of put myself in front of my desk and, and give myself a close enough goal that I might work towards it. It just doesn't happen. And I think that I'd actually say the flip side of this point is to just be a bit easier on yourself. I mean, I think it's I mean, it's it's not just in games, right? There's the internet, social media, and blah, blah, blah, there's all these examples of like, oh, designer X is doing, you know, they're, they're releasing another game or publisher, so they've just sold X copies of this, and now they're coming out with the next, you know, amazing thing. And it's this sort of barrage, and, you know, you just don't see all of the many, many years of work and, you know, delays and, you know, you know, as a publisher, you know, you're maybe just sitting around for a year, just waiting for your game you get on a boat or something, you know, it's not Yeah, or whatever, you know. So, as a designer, you can feel very much like, oh, my gosh, I'm just wasting my time, you know, like, Oh, look at all these things happening. But you don't see that. I'm sure. Majority designers procrastinate just as much as anybody else. And I think just being a bit kinder to yourself in that, I think is actually the most valuable thing, you know, you get to the end of the day and say, Look, I've made the best of the day I could, it's over, I'm okay with that. I think my thinking would be as if you're able to sort of be able to do that. I think, game designing, however it's going to fit into your life is the most sustainable thing, because you can sort of live with it, regardless of whether you finish a game or not, you kind of find that the the enjoyable part. And except that procrastination and time wasting is is part of it. And I don't think anyone really comes up with a new game when they're attentively writing a rule set or or doing this sort of heavy analytical task or sweating at the table trying to do something, it just comes from so many random other places that you don't you don't need to work 100% of the time, you know, to get there. So, yeah. A bit of a ramble, I guess.
James 1:12:44
No, I think I think it makes a lot of sense. I actually think that that time to be open with not doing something specific is so important. Because as you said, like I think it's it's the procrastination is along for the ride. To some extent, I remember reading a really interesting article by a guy called Tim Harford, who's the undercover economist, from the ft. And he writes some interesting things. And it was a piece about creativity from his book messy, which is really, really good, I think conservative creativity, that showed that the people who are the most likely to be distracted, or on average, are the most creative. So there is that thing, where it's sort of an inevitable part of being the kind of person that gets to be distracted. And the frustrating thing was, was that the people who are most productive, who also creative with the people who tended towards being distracted a lot, who were able to bring themselves back on focus again when they needed to. And it wasn't about not being distracted. I'm not procrastinating. Sometimes it was very much about how you kind of just keep it under control of it. Yeah. And I think that makes a huge amount sense. Yeah, and
1:13:45
it just to go on to that a little bit. I think it's finding, I think there is one thing I could definitely say that it maybe is a little directive is it's finding, I think everyone has some Yeah, way that puts you in this sort of, sort of distracted yet. It's also talked about, you know, the two sides of the brain, you've upkeep one side, so we're happy to let the other one kind of think of it. And so, for me, I know and I now know it very well is if I need to go for a walk, I need to walk around a blog, I will walk the same route, I've always walked basically, wherever I am staying, I always know a route. And I will do that same route or one or two routes. And I just know that somewhere along that if I do it enough time I'm going to solve the problem or I'm going to think of the thing or I'm going to and of course that's not the same for everyone. Sometimes it might be you know, you know that if you're in your favourite chair or something and a cup of tea or people's brains work in different ways to do that. But I think if you know, if you could somehow, you know, test experiment with yourself to find that. It's not about a mindset, I guess it's about some combination of activity or place that gives you that that is retracted and it's in the it's hard to be away from the theatre. I can't be listening to music. I mean, I think I sometimes wonder about having an iPhone actually is it was bad When I you know, I had to be on a train or a bus and I couldn't really do anything, you know, if I, you know, if I if I didn't want to, like put an effort and like read something, for example, as as amazing as podcasts are, I'm not going to think about a new game when I'm listening to a podcast. That's it. I'm not distracted. I'm attentively listening. So, you know, it's not taking my phone out when I'm on the metro and trying to remember that if I can, and maybe I'm going to have a chance to, like, have something in the five minutes awaiting something or, but yeah, that all took off. We're going for a walk where I'm not listening to anything. I don't have any digital things. You know, I have some internal monologue that's going but it's almost like a not exactly meditative. But it's not sort of attentively thinking it's just sort of churning over things. So yeah, if I find your way, I guess would be the sort of, what does it says very global something,
James 1:15:48
anyway? Yeah, completely? No, I think it's about doing that. And I think that's really an interesting point about not always being able to be attentive, I think this thing about boredom, being actually really important is definitely something which is underrated. And I don't think it's just over. It's not just us already going, Oh, back in the old days, things were better. Or you could meet these kids with their smartphones or something like that. But, but I think they I think there is something much more material there. Because certainly when it comes to more literary stuff that I used to be more interested in, right in doing sort of writing short stories or things, I haven't done that such a long time. And I think partly because I am no longer just sitting there and just thinking up stories and thinking about a narrative in my head on a train somewhere doing nothing. And I think that's the impact of that socially, is something that I think we're not even going to understand yet. It's going to take some time for us to realise it. So I think it's good to be getting on that early and thinking Hang on a minute, that might have been an advantage to that boredom that we're there just by alleviating it all the time. We're probably missing out on something. You know, I feel like so much of almost everything about human nature is like that, to some extent, like there's a reason why it's the way that it is. And it's not completely arbitrary, which is really critical. Awesome. Well, this is this has been absolutely fantastic. I really enjoyed chance to get stuck into the product questions. What should we be looking forward from
1:17:06
you coming soon? Yeah, so I guess the very few things is that there are these new echoes, audio mysteries for Roethlisberger. There are the audio. Yeah. So they they use in an app which in which you have cards and your the app will scan a card and then play out a sort of an audio memory that it surrounds that object. And you have to use those fragments as audio fragments to determine the kind of order of objects in the story. I'm really happy with that. And this is CO design with David Neil. It's just been released in German, I think it should be available in English soon. It'll be definitely very widely available from September, but you can probably get it from few places even now. And I guess a second thing is I have a Kickstarter for a game called the gardens section kind of, weirdly, personally, we're talking about sort of specific themes. I think this is a really great example. It's because it's with growl games. They're an Australian publisher. I'm Australian as well, though maybe people don't know that. But this is both a place where both from Sydney originally, and it's a place at the city botanic gardens that we both know well. And they've taken a game that we pitched as a as a sort of a stately Victorian garden game for at night, and have really strongly given it a sense of place, and a sense of history and lots of beautiful, wonderful details. We've developed a little bit more with them. So that game is coming to Kickstarter in August. But if you you can look on my Twitter feed, I think I've definitely shared details you can sign up and to be notified for when that Kickstarter will go live. So yeah, those are the main things.
James 1:18:30
Fantastic. I will keep an eye on those the idea of integrating audio, these kind of things more into board games. So cool. I'm always fascinated by like that, that sort of new media side of it, and how that all kind of interacts is something I think that there's so much more yet to be done with that. That's really cool. And yes, thank thanks again, so much for joining me, was brilliant dive into that. And hopefully people typically will find it really interesting from a perspective of as designers what to be thinking about, I think when they're when they're approaching publishers who you know, are looking at some of these products. So that's really great. Thank you so much again, thank you Joe's producing fun is produced by nailing games. If you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at Noah James and write me an email James at Nayla games.com. Until next time.
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James 00:00
Andrew Navaro is the former Head of Studio for Fantasy Flight Games where he was responsible for leading the aesthetic execution (illustration, graphic design, even story) of their famously gorgeous looking titles. Now he runs Earthborne Games, a new studio setting out to Kickstart Earthborne Rangers: a sci-fi, environmentally themed card game in the mould of Arkham Horror that embodies its sustainable values in its physical production and manufacturing. In this episode we talk art direction, licensed artwork, building story rich card games and the business challenges of creating environmentally sustainable products.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames/episodes/Andrew-Navaro—Creative-Director-e14rlqi
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Earthborne Games: https://earthbornegames.com/
Earthborne Rangers Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/earthbornegames/earthborne-rangers
I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective. Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is Andrew Navarro, Creative Director of earth born games. Andrew is an industry veteran in the world of art direction, and is perhaps best known as the former head of studio at Fantasy Flight Games. There it was his job to oversee the entire artistic direction of FSGs numerous blockbuster game titles, encompassing everything from graphic design style to endgame writing, specifying and shaping the incredibly high level of artistic execution that FFG’s titles are known for now running his own studio, he's setting out on a very different but equally substantial project, launching earthborn Rangers onto Kickstarter, a story Rich Card game in the tradition of Arkham Horror with a science fiction environmental theme. anyone who's designed such a game will know the huge complexity and volume of work involved in creating balanced story driven card games like this. This already makes them seriously ambitious projects. But that's not enough for Andrew, he wants to go even further. In the first ever example I've heard of the blending of theme and manufacturing process. He wants the product to embody the game's values by making every element of the physical production itself as environmentally sustainable as possible. In this conversation, we take a deep dive into our art direction, and more importantly, good art direction works. Briefing effectively to artists How to Choose the Right artists for the right projects, and how even props can lead to better results. We get stuck into the sometimes heartbreaking lifecycle of licenced IPs, how earth born Rangers subverts players natural inclination to kill everything in sight. And the tough business end of bringing environmentally sustainable products to market. I personally learned more in this episode than I have maybe ever done in a single episode of producing fun before. So if you have any interest in art direction, or sustainable manufacturing, you may too. We join, just as Andrew is explaining how his career got started. In customer service. FFG
I told the story a few times. So I get the short version. I started there in the customer service department. So I did parts game parts replacements I also handled, organised play, price support, and I answered the phone when the phone rang, and I just started there. I just looking for a job I had there were local to me and I had contacted them previously, like trying to get freelance illustration work, didn't really work out. But then when I was looking for a job, my wife suggested I'd check the website and see if they were hiring they were. So I went and interviewed for the job got it worked in customer service for about two months. And then a graphic design position opened up. And then I applied for that whipped up a portfolio over a weekend, showed it to Christian Peterson the next Monday, got that job. That's really where my career there started to kind of really just take shape. So I started working on just some smaller projects. And then eventually I got put on like bigger and bigger projects worked on a lot of really, I think a lot of really influential games on the current marketplace at the time, you know, the first version of dissent and horror line of work and everything but the core game got to work hand in hand with a lot of like really great designers worked on the Game of Thrones card game. Then eventually started working on games workshop stuff back when we got like the workshop licence. So I did a lot of graphic design for that.
This is when they was they were licencing out different games. Yeah, a lot of them were games that were from the 80s that they'd made right, they wouldn't do a kind of one thing to rerelease and get another company to breathe life into.
Yeah, so I did work on the the FFG edition of warrior knights. Also that that was the addition of theory of Dracula.
Cool. That was original Games Workshop game. Yeah,
uh huh. Yep. And then the actual like GW stuff proper, like the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k stuff, a lot of graphic design for about six years and then transitioned into being the managing art director. So until that point, the art burden on the company kept growing and growing as we were working on the living card games in particular, card games, living card games like CCGs require a lot of arts as we added more and more living card game lines that art burden just could continue to grow. And then we are also doing more and more RPG lines with Games Workshop RPGs where we just kept adding one every year, and it's not like when we added one we got rid of one just kept adding them on. So the burden just kept growing and growing.
How many art pieces would each of these lcgs and CCGs need,
we got a lot of use out of pre existing artwork, especially for the Games Workshop stuff. So we were able to pull from the old Sabre tooth for those from those old like Warhammer CCGs. And also from Games Workshop's own art library must have been very useful. Without that would have been a lot more, but games like Game of Thrones or like Call of Cthulhu we were commissioning art for all those sets, I use to know all these numbers off the top my head, it's been a while since I've really thought about them, you know, for like a CCG set, it was approximately like 300 pieces of art, we didn't work on CCGs. At that point, it was all lcgs. So it was about 180 ish art pieces per cycle. So that's like every six months, we do about that many pieces of art. And then if there was a deluxe expansion in there, too, there'd be like another 40 to 50 to 60 pieces on top of that in that period of time.
That's also a lot if you think about, like level of execution, right? Because a lot of those pieces of cardboard include characters, and it seems like one of the things I'm only beginning to learn now really, is that that is a lot more time consuming than something like a landscape or like a still life. Generally, or maybe not.
No, no, no, not I would, I would not say that. I think the speed with which a piece is completed depends pretty much entirely on the person who's working on it. Oh, interesting. And the level of communication and the relationship between the artist and the art director. So that's a big part of, of art directing, and art directing at that level, when you're, you know, required to get that many pieces in a relatively short period of time. As I say there's like, you know, 160 180 pieces per cycle, that's for one game. So at the time, when I took over as the managing art director or position was created, then a woman named Zoe Robinson, who taught me so much about art direction, she's really amazing. She, I wish I knew where she was working. Now she's working at an RPG company, doing art direction for them. But she is extremely knowledgeable, has helped a lot of artists along the way. And she really helped me a lot, kind of like teaching me the ropes of art direction. She's just very intelligent. Like before she got there. The art FFG was it was fine, it was fine. It was good. But like when she got there, the level of artwork ramped up immediately. Interesting. So she was really able to go out, find artists who were good at doing specific things and then get them assigned to proper pieces. So that we could like take advantage of their talents.
So what year was that approximately?
That was around 2009 or 2010? Right there. Yeah, that's when I, that's when I started, like she started there around 2008. I think 2007. When you're commissioning a piece, you really need to consider you know, the artists skills, and make sure that you're giving them something that is appropriate to what you're looking for also style wise, as long as you there, as long as they're working in a style that you like, they'll be able to work faster. But if you're asking them to adapt their style to something else, or something specific, that's maybe not exactly what they do naturally, that'll make things sometimes more difficult as well.
So it could be that, for example, where I've had some recent not challenge, actually, because the outputs been incredible. But we've been working, for example, with an artist who certainly all the character work seems to take much longer, it's probably because I guess maybe that's just not quite there METI a, in the same way that it might be for another artist, possibly,
it's possible, it also might just be their process, you know, some some people just take longer, it's difficult to rush, what for most people is just a natural process. If you're used to working a certain way, it's hard to change. And I think that's, that's true for anybody. It's true for artists just as much as as for anyone else, like artists had habits, just like everybody else does. In trying to break those habits or trying to push yourself into an area or a speed that you're not necessarily comfortable. You may sometimes end up like wasting more time than gaining time. So a lot of it's just getting getting to know your artists, and having a good pool of artists that you can pull upon draw upon and knowing like oh, and I see in artbrief Oh, this would be perfect for this person, or like, oh, this person would love doing this art piece. And that just makes the whole process go way, way smoother. If you can hand an artist to brief if you feel like they'll understand it implicitly. And then they turn around and give you something great. And you can say Oh, that's awesome. Done. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, there are definitely times when you're working with artists where you know, you send them a brief and maybe it doesn't come back quite how you want it. I mean, obviously you do sketches and thumbnails and do as much as you possibly can tell, avoid a bunch of irritating for everybody irritating revisions on final artwork, give someone something that comes back like nearly perfect, that's like great. And then that then frees you up to do the more delicate and dedicated art direction on pieces that maybe need a little bit more work. You know, when you talk about you know, character pieces taking a while longer, you can get, again, depending upon the art director like and how picky you are, I tend to be very picky. Some things I see and I can't unsee them or I want them a certain way. And I really want them that way. But you know, trying to maintain like an open open communication with artists so that you're, you know, you're not irritating them too much usually helps. But we know we're working on like perspective and proportion and foreshortening and all that stuff with figures. You know, if you're trying to do like a piece where like I'm reaching forward right now for audio listeners, you know, if I'm reaching toward you, and I have like a hand like coming at you whenever the hand like behind me like wielding a sword, and like my head's thrown back. Like the more complex the pose gets, the more the artist needs to understand and have an implicit understanding of anatomy. And use reference to make sure that nothing's looking weird. The biggest danger whenever you're working on pieces, and trying to do something ambitious with poses, or perspective, or foreshortening or like point of view, is making sure you're working off of reference. And if you're not working off reference, you just kind of winging it, it's gonna be a lot harder.
Speaker 1
11:31
It's really fascinating. You say that I had a previous guest on the podcast, Annie, who runs a miniatures company in the UK specialising in this sort of believable female miniatures. One of the fascinating things she said that part of her process was taking a selfie of herself when she's briefing into her miniatures sculptor, so that she could make sure that the pose was an anatomically possible pose. I don't think outside of this, I would ever have just thought that Oh, right, you might take a picture of yourself just to show that it's possible. But since then, she started noticing how on some people's models, they really haven't done anything like that. And he was human arm can't do that. Things like that. And so I can see how it could be a real trap in a way that again, I would expect people wouldn't necessarily assume I wouldn't assume from the outside.
Speaker 2
12:16
Yeah, well, FFG we had an art department eventually, it took a little while to gather all this stuff. But we eventually had like an entire like weapons closet, like spears and axes and swords and guns and
Speaker 1
12:29
actual props. Yes to take to take photos with that. Oh, my god, that's amazing. Yeah. Did you ever just occasionally use it to go laughing or something?
12:40
I never did no. Yeah. Wow,
12:47
that's amazing to think you're using props to kind of accelerate the process?
Speaker 2
12:50
Yeah, no, it's every, the more you can communicate and more I have time to communicate, the easier the process will be. If you just dump a brief on an artist and let them go to final without any direction, that's fine. But you need to be happy with what you get. Because it's not really fair to the artist to go back and say, Oh, I actually wanted this thing like, it has to be back and forth. But in my experience as the managing art director, and then later as the creative director, whenever I would direct pieces, like I was almost always directing really key art pieces, and the packaging, artwork and all that stuff. So I was always personally responsible for, like the big marquee pieces. And some of that stuff, I've worked directly with artists on it, I just kind of go through one of the other art directors as a kind of a conduit, so that if they ever needed to blame anybody, they could blame me and then they could, you know, it's it's just helps kind of smooth things over.
Speaker 1
13:42
So you act as a bit of a bit of a shield in some ways as well.
Speaker 2
13:46
Yeah. And I found that very helpful. But there were a few artists that were were pretty relaxed, and we had a good working relationship with where I just work with him directly. But I sell that because I was fortunate enough to work with just some of the best artists in the industry, really, really amazing artists. So directing them was pretty easy. All told, their dedication was like top notch. They're like just amazing artists, they're really professional. They want to make it right. And they're excited to work with direction because it helps push them in ways that maybe their imagination doesn't go naturally. So I found like the artists who I've enjoyed working with the most, it's always been more of a collaborative process where it's a it's a back and forth. Well they'll they'll put some stuff out there and they're like, oh, okay, that's cool. I thought about this and like, oh, yeah, that's cool. What about this and it just keeps making the piece cooler and cooler. I think a really great example of that is the dark heresy role playing game second edition cover that I worked on with Matthias Collaros we I think we did a I think we did an article on FMC website about process of that. That piece like started as like a single panel, you know, eight and half by 11. And then eventually turned into this big like wraparound double wide thing with all these amazing embellishments all over it. It was really fun to work on, I kept, you know, dumping more money into it to ask him to do more stuff. But I think the end result was really, really great. It was it was really fun. And I've had a lot of experiences like that working with a lot of amazing artists,
Speaker 1
15:21
that must be a bit of a challenge on your position. almost seems like if you have that many amazing artists around? And is it, it gets to a point where you're thinking, Oh, God, I could kind of go overboard here and I could commission all this incredible stuff. But I have to work within a within a budget. Is that? Is that a bit difficult? Sometimes?
Speaker 2
15:39
Sure. Yeah, it will you do absolutely, absolutely have to work within a budget to a point in the art budget. And you know, putting up air quotes was always something that it was an easy thing to blame for, like, Oh, why is this project so expensive, all it's the arts fault. And that was like, it's something that we had to fight against for many years and eventually won that fight. Because at the end of the day, arts also sells the product. So if you're not paying for the art, then you don't really have an attractive product. So at the end of the day, you should pay for it.
Speaker 1
16:15
It seems like a pretty straightforward investment to me. Like certainly like I mean, every time I looked at it, the spending on art, which obviously can sometimes be quite substantial. Oh, yeah, it is. But I look at the end, I think about the the actual how much the product will sell for what's the key part that is it? It seems like a very, very good investment, relatively, that will pay back huge dividends.
Speaker 2
16:35
Yeah, you know, obviously, you need to work within your own budget, right. So like, I'm working with an artist right now who's on staff. He's my one, my one staff member that goes to show you like how much I value artwork. I'm not being paid right now he's being paid. Yeah, absolutely. But you know, he's not gonna be able to do all the artwork for the, for the game we're working on, eventually, I'm going to have to go out and, and commissioned some artwork from additional people, I know that my desire, what I want to be able to pay is not what I'm going to be able to pay. So you know, make sure you're finding artists who believe in the project, you can offer them things beyond just like a straight dollar amount per piece, to help kind of offset the expenses. And something you can do as a smaller company, you know, that, that I've been doing with artists I've been working with is not really putting any limitations on what they can do with that artwork, once it's made, they can sell art prints, they can do whatever they want with it, you know, they can't put it in another game, but they can continue to use that art piece to generate income for themselves if they if they want to. And that can make a really big difference, especially when eventually when people are going to be able to go back to shows I know a lot like a lot of artists, I know like they make a lot of their income on going to like game conventions and, and selling art out of their out of their booths.
Speaker 1
17:59
And these tend to be sort of game artists.
Speaker 2
18:03
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So like, that's, that's a huge component for them. So like, it makes it challenging when they're working on games that are licence, like for Lucasfilm or something like that, where technically, they're not allowed to do anything with them or sell them afterwards. So in those instances, you know, we'd always try to pay more, knowing that, yeah, they can't really do anything with this RPS other than just we'll print it here, and then we own it, then we, you know, FFG doesn't even own it, then, you know, the licence or owns it, there's really nothing you can do with it. So always try to make those little bit more commission rates.
Speaker 1
18:40
So that's actually that's an interesting question. So when you are creating something for licencing, because obviously FFG had so many different licence properties. And I think it's, is it the exclusive licence holder for Star Wars and kind of tabletop games? Pretty much? No,
Speaker 2
18:52
no one does exclusives anymore? Yeah. I mean, Hasbro has that licence, mostly FFG, eight, or I don't, who knows? I don't know what their what their current relationship is. But they had a sliver of it. But the world of the exclusive licence is kind of gone by the wayside these days, as evidenced by the the raft of Dune games that are coming out. Oh,
Speaker 1
19:15
yeah, exactly. An archive of things going back to the 1970s that are just suddenly reappearing. Yeah.
Speaker 2
19:22
Well, you know, and like Marvel's a good example to like, looks like everybody has the Marvel licence.
Speaker 1
19:27
Yeah, that's true, isn't it? Because there's there's FFG. Make what make an awful game, but loads of other people make multiple games as well.
19:32
Yeah, exactly. Yep.
Speaker 1
19:34
But in this situation, the licensor. If the artworks been created for the licence property, the artwork as well goes back to the owner of the owner for the licence. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's it. See, now I hadn't realised that at all.
Speaker 2
19:45
It's really depressing. I remember when, when the Games Workshop licence left FG, I had to gather up all of the art that we had done, put it on a drive like a giant like, I think multiple drives and then I ship it back to GW years of work we've done like, hundreds of 1000s of dollars poured into artwork. And it's just like, here you go, here's some amazing artwork for you. It but it was also like very flattering then to see like, you know, because Games Workshop obviously is like, I hold them in very high regard when it comes to art very inspiring to me, especially like growing up. I wanted to be an artist for games workshop when I was young, to see some of the art that we helped make them like turn up as our prints that you could buy on their website. It's a pretty high honour.
20:36
Oh, wow, that's really cool. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2
20:38
not a lot of stuff that that we made that they've been turned around and then presented for sale. But there's been a couple. So like, those couple is like, Yes,
Speaker 1
20:48
we did it. Oh, that is very cool. So a little bit, it's a little bit like watching your children kind of go out the door, and they're going off to university, they've left the home, you know, around anymore. But sometimes you're seeing these pieces get, you know, getting given pride of place sold directly as art prints by games workshop. Yeah,
21:05
so that was very cool. That was very cool. With the
Speaker 1
21:07
art direction, How much stuff do you do yourself in terms of creating the art and the process? Because I've often wondered this, it would obviously be very helpful. For example, if I had a little bit more illustrative skill, I think when I was briefing things to artists, I'd be curious to understand how you did that.
Speaker 2
21:24
And FFG, you know, we worked on so many games, we had just so many titles that we were constantly working on, at the height of the art department, we were getting in roughly like 3000 art pieces a year. Wow. And then, and then being responsible. You know, for the for the covers of the games. We've been working on multiple of those at a time, too. So sometimes I'd have like a very, like crystal clear idea of like what I wanted for a composition. But other times, it'd be like, Man, I don't know, I go to the developers. Luckily, if you're surrounded by creative people, there are no shortage of ideas. So going to like developers and writers and saying like, Hey, can you give me some some options for what we could do on the cover here. And then they'll like sometimes I'll put together like, you know, three or four things and send them to an email and they might not ultimately be what we use, but it's like a good starting point. And then you can, you know, kind of get your brain going.
Speaker 1
22:23
These just be like ideas, like kind of verbals for concepts.
Speaker 2
22:26
Yeah, yeah. So like more like so like a written brief. If we didn't have like, really anything like super solid, we provide a written brief, but almost almost all of the cover illustrations that I directed, I put together a sketch first, like a thumbnail sketch, and then hand that off to the artist and gives you a humungous, like Head Start on the process. Because that way, you don't really have to futz around too much with you know, figuring out what the composition is, and moving things around. And you know, what have you, they have a good start starting point, and then they go from there. So like, sometimes those would be like, really, like, relatively detailed. And other times they'd be, you know, just a couple little scribbles. But I'm very, very visual director, even after I would hand off those thumbnail sketches. As the art comes in. I'm constantly like, cutting things out in Photoshop, moving them around drawing painting over them, changing details and stuff, trying to be very, very explicit. In my direction,
Speaker 1
23:28
was you even you'd be you'd be saying taking a copy of their work and you'd be adapting, but when sending it back.
Speaker 2
23:34
Yep. Oh, interesting. Yep, yep. And then and then astronauts in that because think of my first year, art directing, I was working on a piece for the Deathwatch role playing game artist named Michael Philipe. Did all those covers, most of them. There was like one instance where we've gotten the cover, like almost it was it was done. And then I went back to him was like, Oh, actually, can we do this? And like I did this, like really big invasive thing. He was like she was not happy about. I can imagine not from that moment on, I made sure that anytime, if I ever needed to change after a certain threshold, that always meant more money, along with the revision. It's almost less about the money and more about like, I thought this was done. And now I'm still working on it than anything else. Because they have schedules to keep to because they have other clients out of respect for the artist process for their own personal schedules. Like I said, I worked with very professional people, just trying to be as clear as possible with every note so that there was as little room for interpretation. If I knew precisely what I wanted. I'll ask for precisely what I want instead of just writing out in general idea and then you know, putting ours hands and it comes back and then I need to do it again. But if there's something that that's going on that I don't necessarily know the solution to kind of circle it talk about what is not feeling right to me about it? And then, you know, give it back to the artist as a question. You know, like, what this is what I'm feeling about this space? What can we do here? And then kind of creating that dialogue. It's a lot of fun
Speaker 1
25:15
that yeah, that it does actually sound sound really cool. It's really interesting to hear this because there are so many aspects of that, that I've done in terms of the artistic process for both magnate and the new game that I've got coming out. I'm hoping to announce fairly soon, a bit later this year. That one's been interesting a second project, because it involves an enormous amount of art. So we're starting relatively for me. So we have about 80 pieces of card art we're doing for this one, when when you were telling me about the the amount needed for LCD or 3000. I think, before getting involved in this and someone said 3000, over like 3000, it's a big company, they probably could just go through that easily. This time around. I've worked briefing in 80 pieces with someone who I've got a great relationship with you super easy to work with. And even then the volume that that represents to properly conceptualise all of those pieces, brief them out, and then go through that iterative development process so much work.
26:11
Yeah, it is a lot of work. So it's great to
Speaker 1
26:13
hear, to hear your your precious that sounds really exciting. I definitely think some some useful tips in there for me certainly think about in terms of how you annotate and getting really close with the pieces of data, right?
Speaker 2
26:24
Yeah, and it's like an investment of time, right? The pieces I was working on are like V pieces, like, that's the piece that's gonna live on the shelf forever, you can spend the time working on that it's really important. Because that's the thing that's like selling the product on the store shelf. When it comes to the individual pieces. Now you really have to be making sure you're budgeting, you're budgeting your time, and making sure that you're getting it as good as you can get it in the amount of time that you feel like you can spend. Otherwise, you know, you'll be working 24 hours a day, having a support system around around you, when you're when you're doing projects that require a lot of pieces is invaluable. Part of the process at that Fantasy Flight was especially at the end, which we got into like, as you can imagine, like over time, we eventually gotten to like a very regimented schedule, where everything, I wouldn't say it worked like clockwork, maybe like a rusty clock. But eventually everything worked. Where the game developers would put essentially put together and the producers on the game would put together the first draft of like all the art briefs, and then those would go to the art department. And then whatever art director was working on that project would then review all the art briefs, ask questions, make sure that they had proper reference for everything. And then essentially like groom those, the grooming meeting before those then were passed along to artists. So then it looked at the briefs, and figured out you know what the needs of the set were, and then they go to solicit artists in batches. So that was always done with a essentially like a blast email out to a curated list of artists that we thought would work well in the project. They'd respond, say like, Yep, that sounds cool. I'll take three pieces, or some people always or I'll take 20 pieces shouldn't do that. Usually,
Speaker 1
28:17
I have to be careful not to give these people what they want, right? Because I guess they're probably going to overload themselves quite easily.
Speaker 2
28:23
Exactly. Well, sometimes, you know, a lot. Some for some people, it's just like, you know, they look at the rate, they multiply the like, I would like this much money. So I'm going to ask for this many pieces. But anyway, you get those responses back to the artists. Then you take the artists list that you got back and responses, which usually like about 50% of your list will get back to you. And then you take those artists and then start to apply them based on their skills and portfolio to the art briefs on the project.
Speaker 1
28:49
That raises a lot of different questions for me, because there's so many more people in that process obviously then involved than I am at the moment.
Speaker 2
28:55
Yeah, it's that's like big business, Art Direction stuff like art department stuff. It's not typical at all.
Speaker 1
29:03
So first thing kind of to note from that is that it seems like nearly all of the artists are contract, whereas you're the developers and writers tended to be in house. Yes. Okay, interesting. Why particularly Did you follow that approach as a business rather than have like a small, like permanent salaried art team? Well, it
Speaker 2
29:23
was never my decision. I always wanted to have more artists in house. Like I said, I the first hire I made with my own company was to hire an artist. So at the time, they had one bad experience hiring an artist. There's a lot of things done at FFG that were like this one thing went wrong once so we'll never do it again. And that's kind of what happened is that they had an artist on staff didn't go great. And then they just never did it again. It was just given the sheer volume of art that needed to be done. It's not really practical to have artists on staff doing all that work. Eventually, during my tenure there, we had more and more art directors who were also artists. You know, I worked with a lot of a lot of great artists slash art directors like Taylor Emberson is one of my favourites. He's gone on to be a senior art director at Wizards of the Coast who worked on magic now, which is very cool. I was very sad when he left to work there. But it was his dream. And I was like, go follow your dream, but I can't tell you to not do that. And Preston stone, I'm not sure I'm not sure to work there anymore. But he's another great artist, and Jeff Lee Johnson, very talented artists, also good art director and really amazing person. So I would always look for opportunities for those individuals to also do artwork or helping form or would be commissioned more through their art. With Taylor, I tried to get him to do like more of his own stuff that we could then pass off to artists as reference so that his style could then kind of permeate. Preston ended up like working on the character illustrations for descent, Third Edition. And he did some more art in there, too. I don't know that I left before that project was complete. And Jeff is an artist, he he started as a contract artist, and then then came on board as an art director. So his art is, you know, all over the place. And he stuff, I think he would do a piece from time to time just to kind of fill in the gaps. But it's also really handy to have artists on staff to like address licensor concerns like if, you know, submit a piece to Lucasfilm they're like, oh, yeah, we want the Stormtrooper like, right. Sometimes that feedback doesn't come back for months after the artist has already moved on, right. And sometimes they, you know, say like, oh, you know, that art piece we approved two years ago, that's no longer approved, we need to change this thing. So having artists on staff who could then do that work on the piece that we have on hand, it was super, super helpful. So that's where like having artists, on staff at a company of that size is valuable, to help kind of inform the arts that you're going to then commission or to help six art pieces, if they need to be adjusted, after that artist is like, you might not be available to make that adjustment themselves or have the time or the will or energy to do it.
Speaker 1
32:18
That sounds enormously practical. Because if the sometimes the approval process with the licensees or the licence ors, I think technically are the ones that are taking that long. Yeah, that must present so many challenges. The whole process having constantly waiting around for the idea owner to get back to you to say yes, there's this Stormtrooper looks okay.
Speaker 2
32:41
Yeah, well, it was a lot of back and forth like it's kind of constant back and forth. There's we had weekly meetings with with Lucasfilm to do approvals. The danger is that they can always rescind their approval at any time. So even if it's something was approved, in a moment, when the rubber hits the road, they might end up disapproving it and you know, have like last minute like the things about to go to prints, you got to change it. And there's no time to wait.
Speaker 1
33:07
Oh, wow. Did you ever get that process happen after the print run had begun?
Speaker 2
33:11
No, no, no, no. All that stuff's approved. That that's on them after that. Yeah. Yeah. We've had to like retro actively change things after the things have been printed. But yeah, they, it would take a lot for them to say no, you got to, you know, burden that production.
Speaker 1
33:25
Right. Yeah, that makes that makes total sense. That makes total sense. Well, there are so many more ins and outs that I would actually love to explore another time with you, and spend a bit more time talking about how FFG works is you talked about for example, like a producer role. That's what I've not heard before in relation to board games. So I'd be really cool to explore that another time. But I'm really aware that today, one of things I'd really like to talk to you about is your project. So Earth born ranges. Why don't we just start right at the beginning and tell us what what the whole project is all about?
Speaker 2
33:51
Okay. So earth born Rangers is the first game from my own company, my own studio earthborn games, founded on the principle of making board games sustainably, and putting, like environmental sustainability at the forefront of production, instead of it being kind of like, oh, yeah, we could maybe do a little bit of that. And earth born Rangers is a game that thematically fits within that as well. For the first game, I wanted to try to do something that was what I felt would be, you know, relatively easy to accomplish sustainably, so I chose to do a card game. If people are familiar with games like Lord of the Rings, living card game, Marvel champions or Arkham Horror, it's a game that's very much in that same lineage. It's it's a similar style of game.
Speaker 1
34:42
A LCG sets a living card game, the idea would be to release multiple expansions over time for guys to plan and it's a co op game with a small number of players.
Speaker 2
34:50
Yep, it's a co op customizable card game is not a living card game is that is a registered trademark of asthma day. Ah, of course it is. I forgot that. Yeah, it It doesn't really mean anything anyway anymore. Living card game, really all it really means now is it's non collectible. And it's also a style. It's like a CCG style, like level of complexity, it's texts on cards, and cards do things and that the tradition of like the CCGs of old, all descended from, you know, matches the gathering. I had originally envisioned it as a, you know, hey, this will have like monthly releases. But as I just explained, like all the work that goes into, like making something like that possible, I don't have those resources anymore. So, so the game is right now, and honestly, if it does, well, yeah, I'd love to do expansions on it into the future. But for the time being, it's going to be a course and an expansion that'll be available during the Kickstarter, which is, which is pretty exciting. If that, you know, that takes off, then we'll, obviously we'll do more. Yeah, so the game takes place in the far future of Earth, year 4441. Humanity has not very long from now essentially, like, come come together to undo the harm that we've done to the earth. It's a sci fi game, it's a sci fi setting, instead of it being like, kind of like boring solutions, like we do now. Or it's like, oh, yeah, well, you know, we'll just dredge the ocean and, you know, pick up the trash. It's more about like, creating, like Cool Science Fiction projects. So what ends up happening is that the people Earth, they agree, like, oh, we gotta, we gotta turn this around, or else we're not going to have a home to live on. And then they kind of like break off into their own communities to create these, these projects that will then sustain and clean up the Earth called, like, the generational projects, these last four, take hundreds of years to complete. They result in all sorts of like fun, sci fi things like you know, weird creatures that then go around and like eat up toxins and things like that, or like the like geothermal generators. And these large arcologies are self sustaining. People have played SimCity or whatever I apologise, yeah, are, you know, just like large scale, self sustaining cities that are completely encapsulated within themselves, and are completely like, essentially neutral in terms of their impact on the environment. And then people kind of just hunker down over the next several 100 years as Earth heals itself and goes through a lot of tumultuous change. And then years and years and years pass, and eventually, people leave the arcologies as they start to break down and then kind of resettle the earth. The thing that was really interesting for me and for Sam, Gregor Stewart, the guy who worked on creating the setting with me, was trying to imagine a culture that what people would be like, you know, if it was ingrained in us as like a core belief that, you know, we need to care take the Earth, we can't live without it, we're part of it. And how different would we behave? What would we value, if that was just kind of ingrained in everybody. So trying to get into that headspace was really interesting and fun, then that led to us creating this culture that the game is based on who live in the, what used to be called the Rocky Mountains, called Rocky Mountain. They're called Rocky Mountains in the future. They live in this mountain valley that is relatively recently settled, they've been itinerant up to that point, and they've settled there a little over 100 years ago. The valley itself, it has a lot of like really cool secrets in it. It was like home to an old like science facility that fell into disrepair over 1000 years ago. So there's all sorts of vices really cool, cool, like weird structures and ruins and you know, the ruins but they're weird sci fi ruins. And the valley itself, in a world full of strange creatures and mysterious ruins. The valley is like, is even more so trying to get to the bottom of like, why the valley is the way it is, what the creatures there are like and what they're doing and, and living in that environment and trying to be in harmony with that is really at the centre of the game's narrative. You know what I said? It's like those other cooperative card games, how it's different is that it's not a game. That's where you're going to sit down to play and immediately be assaulted by everything in the environment. It's not a game that prioritises violence, you can respond to situations violently if you want. The idea is that you will be able to work with your surroundings and achieve what you're trying to achieve in a different way. So it's been really interesting to watch people play Who are you know, familiar with games like Arkham Horror, where like, like an animal like come down and like be in front of them? Yeah. And their first response is like, oh, I need to do to kill it.
Speaker 2
39:49
You don't need to kill it. I mean, you could, but you don't need to. Oh, yeah. So like, it's been really fun to watch that dawn on people. It's a play because you it definitely provides a different experience. So what you'll be doing in the game, like I said, there'll be a narrative campaign to it, it kind of has a thing, kind of different that it's bringing to the table is it's a kind of like an open world video game in a way where you'll travel around the map. And, you know, if you're familiar with the Lord of the Rings card game that was like plot the those like plot decks, or like the, or like the agendas, I always forget what, what the bad guy side of the Arkham Horror deck is, yeah. But anyway, it has those stacks of cards, right, where you're kind of progressing through them, and you're kind of progressing the narrative, this is different, where you can imagine the valley itself is like a giant stack of cards, it's like, you know, like 40 ish, different locations, you can go to, each time you go to a location, you're putting all those cards into place. So you'll, you'll be making progress on those locations and exploring, you'd be pulling cards out of the deck, it very much in the same fashion as you do in those other games. But when you complete a location, you can then go to one of the other locations that's adjacent to it on a map. And based on the trail that leads from one place to another that'll inform the deck that you're that you're going to be playing, right,
Speaker 1
41:09
that this is very cool. I mean, to me, that sounds a little bit like seventh continent, in terms of some some ideas that are a little bit a little bit similar to that. Yeah,
Speaker 2
41:17
well, so seven continent, you're building a board, you know, so like, that's a card game, but it's kind of a board game, because you're creating tiles, and you're tiling those out. And it's also like seven continent has a very fixed narrative. This is more there's a, there's a main story to it. I mean, there will be like main quests, and that will proceed in a nonlinear fashion, there'll be branches along the way, but so that'll be the thing that kind of pull you through the valley and take you on the big journey, you know, top to bottom. But there are also, you know, side quests and things that you can do on the side, and there's emergent gameplay that comes out, it's not as fixed as like a seventh continent, where you're like, oh, there's that thing there. And like, Oh, I'm gonna do that thing. And then the next time you find it, it's like, it's always the same, the story will kind of change and evolve based on what you do. Right? There might be things that, you know, you might play through a campaign of the game, and you just might never do with a certain quest, or meet a certain character, it's entirely possible or, you know, like, the order in which you might encounter them can also change the way that you perceive the game. More like
Speaker 1
42:21
a kind of computer game RPG, right? Where you there are whole bits, you just might never see it like something like a boulders gate where there's like, so much stuff, you might never do all of it. Right. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 2
42:29
if you wanted to, you could just do critical path and just do the main the main story and you know, just go from point A to point B, and you know, you'd have I think you'd have a really good time with it. But the game also tries to encourage exploration, and reward you for when you spend time in a place and kind of dig through the deck and, and find what's there and then interact with the people or like explore ruins and, and things like that.
Speaker 1
42:51
It doesn't sound very ambitious from a component perspective and has the cards. But from a design perspective, that already sounds like a pretty chunky product. Just yeah, the game design and writing needed to pull that off, especially if you've got a lot of flexibility for players. That's so much work. Do you have other people working with you on that bit as well?
Speaker 2
43:14
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I'm, I'm the creative director on this project, which means it means more than it's meant to ever on any other game I've worked on. I've been creative director on lots of projects that, you know, I've had varying levels of responsibility, like on Arkham Horror, like my main responsibility, there was the fiction, and the artwork.
Speaker 1
43:35
So the writing as well as the visual stuff. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 2
43:39
was for that was all part of my thing. So but you know, like, I was writing it myself, we just work with the writers, we talk about what we're going to do, and then they'll submit it approve it, but it was your job to kind of bring it together into a coherent vision, though. Yes. Did submit visions and then we talked about it, we'd get approve it and there's a lot there's paperwork. There's less, there's a lot less this kind of paperwork. I've done a lot of contracts for this. So I've had that paperwork to do in this game. I've been very involved in every aspect, you know, from design to writing to the artwork, everything. So yes, I'm working with a lot of other people. So I started off working with Adam and Brady Sadler, veteran designers, they worked on street fighters Ultra quests, Warhammer quest, the adventure card game. Brady Sadler's like a big cooperative card game fan. So like I knew right away, I was like, Hey, let's start with them. Let's get design go and see what we can do. So we had like a core design from them that we started working on or working with someone who I'd worked with in the past at FFG. Named Brooks Pflueger, Levitt, brought them on to work on the content for the game. And then while we were working on that, like it, which I've done multiple times of the project, got pretty dissatisfied with where it was, and then I went and then I did a redesign of the project of the game. And we worked on that version for a while until this past winter. And then kind of at the end of the winter, beginning spring, I brought on another veteran designer Andrew Fisher, who I worked with a long time at FFG. And he's taken over the design at this point has really helped it become really what my original vision for the game is, which is this kind of like this open world exploration game that focus more on story and exploration than on being oppressed by a foreign entity. That was like trying to ruin your day, which is kind of the biggest difference between. Obviously, I've described a lot of differences between this and those other games. But I think the fundamental one when it comes to like the structure of the game round, and the experience is that there is no opposing force. There's no mythos there's no, from Arkham, there's no like Celeron and Lord of the Rings, there's no villain from Marvel champions, there's no one trying to wreck you, and ruin your day and make you lose. It's more about exploration, and challenging yourself, and trying to accomplish as much as you can like in a day. And a day is like a game term, as much as you can in a day to push the narrative forward.
Speaker 1
46:14
And there's some in the story, presumably objectives, the characters are trying to trying to compete for their settlement, their village, whatever they're trying to go out and achieve something in the world.
Speaker 2
46:23
Yeah, there's lots of exploration like going out and finding things. There's search and rescue missions. There's all sorts of like fun things, as the community tries to be unbalanced with the world around them, and sometimes making mistakes and needing to rectify them. There's also a lot of like, more traditional kind of adventure elements to it. There's an adventure II style story that happens, but I don't want to spoil any of
Speaker 1
46:46
that. Oh, of course. Of course. It's I mean, I have to say, that's very, very cool, though, certainly as the way you've explained, it has made me just only more interested in it as well. That's really cool. I think, whenever you sort of have, the future has become the past. I think that's, that's always very rich, creative veins mind because it gives you all that really interesting things to play with around this sort of forgotten technology that's already way futuristic compared to our time, but is the ruins of their world. That's so cool. And I can't think of another certainly another board game like that, that comes to mind that has that kind of setting, which is really, really cool.
Speaker 2
47:24
Yeah, yeah, it's a it's been fun to have this like mix of technology and nature, the property that's probably you know, closest, and the in like, popular media is probably like Horizon Zero, Dawn, that's still trades a lot in human misery and people being awful to each other. And that has technology in it. But it's often treated with suspicion. And this is more like, technology has just evolved to be very practical. The technology that these people would have is, is also very advanced. But it's all in service of working with their hands and doing things directly as best they can. So like I was talking to Sam about making is like imagine they have the most amazing farm tools, whatever tools you need. It's like it's the most incredible tool you've ever seen. It's like It's like almost like space magic. How cool technology is. It's definitely kind of in that. I wouldn't say it's a hard science fiction setting. It's definitely more in that kind of like Star Trek realm where there's hints of like real technology and in modern thought in there, but it's been taken to the nth degree to make it a cool like fascinating, fantastical thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1
48:38
because that that lets you tell sort of interesting human stories and lets you tell, again, a more compelling adventure narrative, and if you have some very hard sci fi, where everything is very realistically extrapolated, but it ends up in some very weird, challenging places that make it sometimes hard to tell stories. I mean, it's funny, you say this, I've literally just been rewatching bits of Star Trek Next Generation, and keep stumbling over the fact and like, boy, if these transporters really existed, I just don't think their society like this routinely back people up. That's the first thing that I don't I don't quite understand so. So I think your your that makes all the sense that if you approach it approach with that deliberately soft science fiction approach, and I think that sounds unbelievably cool. Oh, it's awesome. Can't wait to try it will be the first time it'll be possible to play test the game or play it in any form.
Speaker 2
49:28
So we'll be showing playthroughs of the game during the Kickstarter, we have a what we're calling a vertical slice of the game, which is a, you know, not necessarily like anything that will be in the final product, but it will give you a very good idea of how the game will play it. You know, I mentioned that large map. It'll be like a smaller portion of that map that will kind of contain the demo to once those rules are in a more digestible form for the for the general public. I think we may make that Available on Tabletop Simulator. We haven't on Tabletop Simulator right now, but it's really unattractive. I don't want to show it to anybody. But we'll have, we'll have a pretty nice printed version that we'll be showing on the team covenants. If you're familiar with Team covenants, they are a American retailer, they do a lot of awesome card game streams are probably like the most experts in card games on the internet. I've they know everything about every almost every card game, it's amazing. So they'll be doing live streams of that every Monday during the campaign. So people will be able to watch and check it out. And then yeah, we might make that demo available later on. But this is a Kickstarter, this isn't like a like a seam on Kickstarter where the product is done. And you are pre ordering finished products, and you're just, you know, you're gonna get a thing, and it's gonna look just like the thing. No, this is the people who back this project are actually backing the project, you know, if it's back, if it's successful, the better we do, the more amazing we're gonna be able to make it. We'll be finishing the project over the next several months, hopefully being done, you know, by the end of the year, so that we can deliver the products next spring, summer.
Speaker 1
51:11
And so yeah, so probably what you're doing, presumably have vertical slices, because there will be actual content that you're creating on the back of the Kickstarter, like the artwork and some of the scenarios and the storyline elements of those.
Speaker 2
51:23
Yeah, yeah, we have all the storyline built, we have a lot, we have so much writing done, we have a lot of cards done, you know, a lot of the work is done. But but the playtesting for card games is really, really important. There's a lot of interactions, like in every card game I've ever worked on, changes often throughout development, sometimes up into the last minute, because you just need to make sure you get a feeling right. Right now it feels very, very good. But you know, we have more content to make, there's so many interactions with the different cards that come out of the deck, there's so many ways that you can build your own decks, yours really need to carefully play test it so. So we'll be starting that up again, shortly after the Kickstarter, like this fall, once the dust settles on, it will be starting up playtesting again, so hopefully, I've already gotten a lot of people asking to play test, I'm building a list. So hopefully, after the Kickstarter live even more people who will be interested in playing, because the more people we have on it, the better. Luckily, we have a lot we also have a lot of art to do. So that'll take time. We have a fair amount of writing to do, they'll take less time. But there's there's plenty of other things to do follow that testing and development is happening makes
Speaker 1
52:38
makes tremendous sense. Yes. I mean, think about it, as you said about card games, even what little I've been involved in development of them. The complex interactions, as you say, means that there's just a vast amount of what I like to call empirical playtesting, which is just literally play testing the game through observation, you can't just sit with a spreadsheet mat out and go, well, that will balance because you just don't know. And then the other way this project is is ambitious to come back to this point about the production is this really interesting meeting point of theme and production process, which is kind of a new one to me, right? Because theme and mechanics. That's something we're very used to as a discussion. But it's a game about a future concerning questions about sustainability in the environment. And you also want to try to produce the game in a way that is sustainable as possible. Exactly. What's your kind of battle plan? Dare I say? For that bearing in mind? Yeah, the quite a few challenges to making this really work?
Speaker 2
53:35
Yes, no, absolutely. I've been talking to several manufacturers over the past year, seeing what's possible, like through like, the main channels. So you know, I've spoken to like, you know, manufacturers in Germany, and in the States, both both of whom are relatively green already, you know, so they do a lot of things on their own. And I think that's really good, like whoever we work with, will all want to be able to say that they're, you know, carbon neutral, or maybe they use like alternative energy sources, or source their materials from suppliers who do the same. But you know, working with those larger, more established printers, it's a little more difficult to do things differently. Like if there's like one component, like if I say, Hey, I would thinking about doing this cardstock in an alternative material, the response is like, well, this is our cardstock so because you know, they're big, right? So they have to but they buy that that cardstock in massive quantities and that's what allows them to do the pricing the way they do them. So there will be challenges there for sure. My hope is that we'll be able to look at every component in the game and know where it came from know what went into its, its creation like know where that if it's, you know, if it's traditional Paper, what forest did that come from? What supplier gave that to us? And what was their process for harvesting those trees, creating that paper stock? How was it shipped all that stuff, I'd love to be able to say for each of those things, this is how it was done. Like you said, thankfully, it's a relatively simple production. Insofar as that where there's not a lot of materials like we'll have the cardstock, we'll have the material for the rulebooks, the material for the rulebooks, I think you'll have a lot more latitude there to try to do different things if you wanted to maybe do like an alternative fibre. That wasn't paper, there's a lot of options there. We'll have chipboard for the for the punchboard. There are options there that that could be recycled, that can also be native, also sustainably sourced FF done SSC, or even done through an alternative material. And then we'll have the packaging. So the idea with the packaging is that we'll make it as as streamlined as possible, the core set will will also have a little storage system in it. So the course that box intentive it will be that's where you store your collection. But then the additional products like we have two additional card products, one of them is the ranger card doubler. So in traditional copy of card games, that the coppers card games that that FMG is produced, or you know, any of those lcgs. Oftentimes, you have to purchase two core sets, in order to get to get a full play set of cards, for earth born Rangers, we'll have a full play set of cards in the standard core set, just like Marvel champions does. But you know, kind of similar to Marvel champions, Marvel games is a little bit more diverse, because you can't actually make all the heroes with a core set, you can only make four in earthborn Rangers, you'll be able to have everything you need to play with four players. But when you get to that fourth player, their options are going to be very limited. Right? Yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know if but so if you want like a lot of customization, and you want to be able to like double up your ranger types you want to be able to because you're part of the game is also you're creating characters instead of playing as predetermined personas. So you'll be able to create characters that have more commonalities between them if you want to experiment with that type of thing. So the Ranger doubler is ranger card doublers. there for people who want that the single player two player experience, you probably don't need it again, unless you're like a big time enthusiast, and you just never like to like break up your decks like that's also good for that. But it allows you to have those cards without the waste of purchasing a full core set.
Speaker 1
57:36
does the auditing of the supply chain. Going right back to things like the forest, as you said, there's the energy use and the supply chain, which is something it's really interesting think about in terms of where are the different partners in the process, all deriving their energy from because the thing that big companies have struggled with a bit around to work out whether they're like net zero or not on carbon emissions is like, fine, we are on our own production process, maybe even our energy sources, but what about our suppliers, energy sources? And then the third part is that as you said, there's really two things. There's a product design question, and how do you design the product to actually you're really smart about it to minimise waste. And that makes total sense to me the idea of saying, Well, look, if you're a super fan, you probably want this extra thing. And presumably you can design that with quite minimal packaging. And then if you are a regular person don't feel they have to buy two boxes, and one of the boxes is going to end up just being immediately recycled or thrown away. Because it just is all a bit surplus to requirements when really most players. So the non STL level players. I actually don't need all that extra content.
Speaker 2
58:40
Yeah, exactly. So we'll have that net, like you said, that will be in a very minimal box. So that'll essentially, it'll just be a brick of cards and a very simple package that will be 100% recyclable or maybe compostable, that'd be great. And then we have the campaign expansion, which is similar number of cards to the ranger card doubler. And that will come with mostly it's just cards and then there'll be an additional book with it. So like that, that's the one thing that I've been, whatever we do with that, I want to make sure that that packaging is as minimal as possible. And the book is the is the thing that makes it complex, because we could just do another brick of cards, but then there wouldn't be a book, the book itself, you know, is much much larger. So trying to figure out a way of of doing that. So that maybe it's like super flat and like the cards are all kind of like in a grid or I'm not sure the best way to do it, but you know, something to try to make that like super, super compact whenever we do. And those are the those are the main products and we'll have a few add ons and things too. But I will be doing some play mats, those will be all natural rubber. Instead of neoprene. We're also going to have an add on for some Deluxe tokens that will do it in a in a bioplastic. That's relatively easy to do.
Speaker 1
59:52
This would be a one that would break down the natural environment quite quickly.
Speaker 2
59:55
Yeah, it would break down the natural environment. It's it would have no petrochemicals. custom tooled and moulded bio plastics are pretty much indiscernible from from petrochemical plastics. At this point,
1:00:08
I'll be a lot more expensive or similar kind of price.
Speaker 2
1:00:11
They're a little more expensive. Yeah, that definitely everything's more expensive. I know how much this cost to do in China. I looked at the price and like, oh, my gosh, this is like, why am I doing this the hard way, but it's good. You know, I think it's important. I feel like that's where a lot of people kind of like break down the process is they look at the cost, like, oh, we can't do that. So I'm trying to hopefully prove that, yeah, we can do that. And people are willing to support it and happy to support it. How much? Hopefully that's what will happen, how much
Speaker 1
1:00:39
do you think it will change the price point of the final part to the consumer,
Speaker 2
1:00:45
it doesn't really change the price point a whole lot. Honestly, the price point for the course set, we're going to be offering it for $80 in the Kickstarter, but it has about 500 cards. So like, you know, by comparison, like a Marvel champions course that maybe like 350 ish cards, this has, you know, a couple 100 more cards. So it's like 20 extra dollars, if you actually like do like the dollar per card math on a, like a cycle of, you know, LCG cards, it's less expensive, but their retail, the retail price will be $100 USD. So it will be more expensive. But it's also costing a lot more to make. My the margin on it is not anywhere near. And when I say margin, like the the profit margin for the publisher for scoring games is nowhere near what it is on a game like Marvel champions that's like mass produced in China. That's one of the biggest things that gets in the way of other companies going this route is that they see the expense one, they're not interested in making less money. So they're not going to make that decision. And two, if they were kind of okay with making less money, they're really afraid to charge what it's worth. And to ask fans for support. If you you know, buy a copy of this game on Kickstarter, obviously, if you back at you'll, you'll be saving, you'll be saving money. But you know, even if you were to purchase it out in the world, you'll know that you are supporting something that is that is really good. And it was done thoughtfully. And that was done with a lot of attention to detail about every bit of the process from beginning to end. And you can feel really good about the thing that you bought. And on top of that, it's gonna be a really cool game with a lot of really amazing content, which has value in and of itself. So yeah, so So yeah, so it's it is more expensive, but I'm hopeful that people will be, you know, supportive of it because of what it stands for.
Speaker 1
1:02:41
Completely. I'm sure they will I'm sure they will I was just intrigued to hear that you actually do plan to do it as a silver as a retail product. In some ways I can imagine that's, that's challenging. Because there's a question about box size and box, look in the kind of box you have to do generally, generally, always generally considered that in return anyway. And secondly, if your margin is a lot thinner, that can be really hard to meet, like distribution or retailer margin points. With something like that, because even with a regular game made in China, people often don't realise that the publisher is not seeing like very much price at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So he just just going to take a bit of a hit on the retailer side of it, and and then just and then the packaging wise, how'd you how'd you kind of go about navigating that
Speaker 2
1:03:25
one, not really gonna change anything, what I'm planning on doing for packaging, there won't be any excessive packaging. This is still envisioned as something that is more envisioned as a direct to consumer product. But I am open to working with distributors who are supportive of the vision, whoever I work with on it will also need to support the vision and get down with what we're trying to do. But I feel like I don't know if we can actually, you know, support, like the distribution model, at least not in the States. I do feel like it can support working with individual retailers, three, not three tiers, but maybe two tiers, I think it'd be worthwhile. But obviously the the more that we can sell direct, the better. That would be really, really helpful. But you know, starting off as like a your own Web Store, your mileage is gonna vary how much you know, traffic, you get how often people actually come and purchase from you directly. So long term, I would love to be able to sell like more direct, short term, I feel like the message behind the game, the message behind the mission is really valuable. And the more that we can get that out there, the better. So if there are retailers or distributors or foreign publishing partners, like just announced today that we're going to be offering a German edition of the game during the Kickstarter, from frosted games in Germany, who also share in this vision of sustainability partners like that, who really care. getting them on board, I think is is really important. So yeah, I'm willing to do that and you know, maybe taking a little bit of a hit in the short term and in service of the long term goal of, of hopefully changing changing the way the industry approaches these things?
Speaker 1
1:05:01
Yeah. Oh, it's very cool. And it's very laudable. It's something that I do think about a little bit occasion myself thinking about how we can do certain kinds of projects. I think, certainly for some of them, like with magnate was just far too complicated to explore to do that one. And unfortunately, in, in Europe or in the US, for example, certainly, I would love to explore some of those kinds of options, just because I think it's, I agree with you. I think if we can make these kind of changes and make them work, I think it's so positive. I think it's such a cool project. I can't wait, this Kickstarter. Sounds really exciting. And I can't wait that long.
Speaker 2
1:05:34
It's not long now. Yeah, we'll be launching on the 27th. So yeah,
Speaker 1
1:05:37
fantastic. Well, absolutely. I just want to say thank you so much, again, for joining me today. There are so many questions that I still have for you. So we'll definitely do another one. And yeah, when we do, maybe after your Kickstarter launch, or wait, the manufacturing process, it would be really cool to see how you're getting on both in terms of sustainable production, and that kind of development process as you begin hitting all of those kinds of issues and working out how to get over them. So please do come back again.
1:06:06
Yeah, thanks for having me, James. It was really great.
Speaker 1
1:06:13
Producing fun is produced by naylor games. You enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product, and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at NaylorJames or write me an email James@Naylorgames.com. Until next time.
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David Digby is a game designer and developer based in the UK. As a developer, he specialises in developing solo modes for existing game designs. Within only a few years he’s established a very strong reputation for his work, collaborating with a string of famous names (including Martin Wallace and Reiner Knizia) to create 1 player versions of their games. In this conversation we do our best to cover all the critical elements of creating a compelling solo game product.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames/episodes/David-Digby—Solo-Mode-Developer-e14cuqc
Listen on Youtube:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/boarddigby
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidDigbyBoardGames
I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective.
Speaker 2
0:23
Welcome to Producing fun. My guest today is David Digby, a game designer and specialist developer of solo modes for a number of popular games. I first met David a little over three years ago at handy con, a small UK gaming convention taking place in the southeast. Now that time, he was demoing multiple game designs of his own creation, as a hobbyist designer on the UK convention circuit. Since then, he's become a fully paid professional part of the industry, with a frankly incredible eight solo games already under his belt. If you told me five years ago that it would soon be someone's specialist job to make one player versions of existing board games, I wouldn't have believed you. Solo gaming isn't something I even discovered until very recently, when I first found out about it, I was incredibly sceptical. After all, if the primary benefit of playing board games is you get to enjoy a collective real life experience with friends and family. What's the purpose of playing what essentially amounts to a $40 Deluxe Sudoku set, especially when many of the best video games are already powerful, high budget solo experiences. But it turns out my past self was wrong. Solo games are booming. And having now played multiple games solo myself, I get it. A lot of these solo games are way more enjoyable and fun than old fashioned puzzles, and they fit a particular niche that makes sense when you understand it. After all, these games are beautiful objects and beautiful objects are just fun to interact with. They give many of the same pleasures of video gaming, but without the same powerful dopamine loops that make those kinds of games addictive. They don't steal concentration in the same way. And I want people to play more safely when looking after small children. And let's not forget the solo modes of multiplayer games that you play one of your favourites when there aren't any other players around something especially useful in recent times. All of this, and the intellectual challenge of creating a compelling solo mode is a big reason I ended up putting one in magnate the solo mode actually got David to consult on the commercial arguments are increasingly strong here as well. Publishers claim that putting solo modes in games is uplifting their commercial prospects, perhaps by as much as increasing a Kickstarter fundraise by 10% Now when games don't have solo options, people will vocally complain in a way they would never have done before. These factors make a job like David's at one time, impossibly niche, a clear well defined industry role with a clear contribution to the bottom line. So as a subject I felt absolutely compelled to cover on producing fun. What results is a conversation with incredible practical value. David is a no nonsense open book character with a clear view on what works and doesn't work in the realm of solo modes. His considerable track record developed in no time at all by dint of his own furious productivity makes him a voice really worth listening to. If you're designing or publishing a solo mode, I implore you to listen to this episode, you can make no better time investment here. We join the conversation, just as David is explaining the auction system for the Martin Wallace game tennis trail. A recently republished game that David designed the solo for
Speaker 3
3:26
one of the things that we've done the redeveloped version. And the new version is the way that we've introduced the card play into the game, where previously it was rolled some dice, get some stuff, congratulations, you've rolled high well done you. There's now an element of card play and hidden information and the value of information. Yeah, I know it's gonna be in that area over there. auction that for five. Oh, what does he know? He knows about it. All right, must be good, then seven knows rubbish. But I'll just make probably seven for it.
Speaker 2
3:56
Oh, interesting. That sounds like quite a big departure from something that was just pure dice orientated for the sort of resources originally.
Speaker 3
4:03
Yeah, I mean, the way that we've added is very, very much Martin's concept. But the way that we've used card play to add in hidden information and give hidden information of value into an auction game was really interesting. And I was then able to use that card system. The fact that I had cards, and we were going to use cards meant that I went, Okay, well, now I can make this work for any player account. Because I can use the same card system that we're using to deliver some hidden information or partial information, I can use that system to make auctions work with two players. And if I can make it worth it to them, I can make it work at one.
Speaker 2
4:39
So that helped a lot in terms of designing this the two player the one player version.
4:43
Oh, yeah, yeah. Without the card system, it would not have been possible.
Speaker 2
4:47
Why is that of interest? Why can't you just like adjust the number of dice or something like that?
Speaker 3
4:51
But it's the it's the auction thing. How interesting is an auction between two people
4:56
fairy doll indie
Speaker 3
4:57
generally, just not very exciting. But by introducing a canned system, what we had is we had the, here's a little bit of information about this area, and the minimum prices for
Speaker 2
5:08
all. Okay, we've got to
Speaker 3
5:11
be at least four. But I only know that much information. Now that much information is good information. But what if the rest of it is rubbish? Is it really worth four? Yeah. Oh, no. Okay. Now, alternatively, I can play my card. And then I know 100% of the information, but I'm setting the minimum bid price, or our gamble. And I'll just draw a card from the deck and see what I only have that partial information. So that was the real key to making that work.
Speaker 2
5:39
So you said the auction obviously makes it more interesting. If, if this sort of system from a sound a bit like that, then you would have normally between two players, although I will say having played another Martin Wallace game is actually my favourite game of all time, which is railways of the world. The auctions between two plays and that are actually surprisingly tense. Because it's absolutely brutal it coming down, you have to pay pretty much work out exactly what the right price is. And if you go one step either way wrong, you can lose the whole game on that. So it can work. But But what we're interested by is how you manage the auctions that in one player because that there isn't, is there an auction in a one player mode? Yeah. Ah, okay. Curious. Tell me more about that.
Speaker 3
6:20
So one of the things that kept that that's in the original version tennis trail, is there's three resource dice with different dice distributions, right? And whenever you get a mind, you roll those three dice, and you go, I've got that much copper, that much tin and that much water. So you've got three asymmetrical dice with different distributions and different values between zero and four. Oh, look, I've got an I've got a variable auction system that works between zero and four, because I've got these does. Hmm. So what the bot does is that is that it takes the information on the card and goes right, okay, that's the base value. And now I'm going to beat a certain amount based on the roll of a die. Now, which of those asymmetrical dice are use depends on the how valuable the bot assesses to be that particular area? So if it goes, Okay, well, the information I have available says that the area is worth this much. And it's next to one of my other areas. That's good. And it's got lots of things in okay, I quite like that one. I'll roll the blue dye, which rolls higher numbers, and that will be added to my minimum bit.
7:25
Oh, interesting.
Speaker 3
7:27
Oh, it goes I'm not fussed by that looks rubbish. I'll rather white. Interesting, which has got a much lower distribution on it. Interesting. So
Speaker 2
7:35
it still says that makes the AI rules quite complicated for the for the which which die to pick
Speaker 3
7:41
Speaker 2
8:10
Right? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 3
8:13
It was always gonna be flip a card, look it up in the rulebook work out? Well, this rule? Is there not don't do that, then do this. Don't do that, then do that. Do this, do that. Okay, that one. It was always gonna be like that.
Speaker 2
8:23
That's interesting, isn't it? I think that immediately makes me consider the limits, I guess of what you can do in terms of keeping certain parts Simple, I guess, right? In the sense that is this quite common then that you have to just accept a certain level of kind of flow. chattiness
Speaker 3
8:41
is very much dependent on the game on the solo experience you want to create, you have a design budget, or a crazy creativity budget. Hmm. This is how we look at the sort of solo design things as we go work out how big our creativity budget for this server, or how big the design budget. Great, it's a Martin Wallace game. It has a heavier audience. It's a fairly heavyweight Euro. It's been out before so people know the nuances of the game. They know how to balance the economies and things Okay, well, I budget really high because we can pack all of this in because what players want is a really realistic and interactive experience. And they will cope with a heavy ruleset flip the scale on his head, dice theme park. Now there any cap product, Kickstarter, the same period also has a solo mode. Solo budget, correct solo design budget, Tiny.
Speaker 2
9:30
Because it's a much lighter game, I assume it's the same kind of way to something like dice hospital.
Speaker 3
9:34
It's a much lighter game. It's heavier than does hospital, but not by much. But you know, it's a light to medium weight game. It's very, very low interactions. So you want a fast game that's all about your turns. We ended up not using an automated opponent even though I don't want that we chose not to use it. We went for a challenge based system where you're completing certain goals jumping through certain hoops so that the whole game is based on your turn nothing else, because the budget, the design budget is so small.
Speaker 2
10:03
Is the design budget the same thing as a complexity budget? Or it's not? I guess it encompasses some more ideas? Or is it really much the same thing?
Speaker 3
10:11
It's pretty much the same thing. Yeah, it's just whatever whatever terminology you knew you look at really. And publish is great. When you're, when you're commissioned by a publisher to do the solo mode, or more designers put you on board to look at it from a development point of view. They're really, really good at giving you a production budget. We have this much space left on punch board. And there's 18 cards left before we reach another printing, that is your production budget. Oh, wow. Cool. Okay, well, I worked with 18 cards, and a couple of a couple of inches square A punch board. That's cool. I'll work to that. No problem, vision, physical limitations. And publishers are really good at being able to give you that limit, because they know it all. Because, you know, you know, from yourself, from a publishing standpoint, you have a plan within those very tight margins, you know, two extra tokens, and suddenly the whole thing falls apart. I don't I don't think a lot of people really appreciate how careful that balance has to be for production.
Speaker 2
11:05
Well, I mean, that's a really good point, isn't it? I mean, he raised for example, things like tokens or cards, they're the way that cards are printed. For those that don't know is that there is a you have a certain sheet size, there's like a standard for a different kind of size, like whether it's a poker size, or a bridge or a bridge size card, there's X number of cards on it, you go over the sheets, that actually means you have to buy an extra sheet effectively of paper, which means that very practical form of an extra sheet of paper, just one card on is monstrously inefficient. And it's going to cost you way more money, it might cost more in setup fees, but it's going to cost you more in terms of the unit production cost. That's really fascinating, because that's what what you get is a kind of super exaggerated version of what everyone in games is facing. So we've got a few pipelines projects in the pipeline. And then there are games. With all of those, obviously, we think from the very beginning about production constraints in terms of components. So there's certain things you can and can't do. You're negotiating that with where the game weight is, and where it's going to sit in its market. Obviously, we've got a wrote about freedom, because early in the process, nothing is yet fixed. And it's and it could be that we could decide to make it a more premium product or a cheaper product, and then cut it to the cloth a little bit, but you're getting to the end and you're like right, you've got the rest of one sheet mate. Design me a compelling solo experience. Having that incredible degree of constraint was literally like you're down to these other components that you have David, that's it. Do you find that more rewarding or less rewarding than the kind of design what you were doing on your own games primarily before this?
Speaker 3
12:28
I don't know. But rewarding wise, I think it's probably the same. It's certainly a different way of thinking. Hmm. And in the era of TTS designers, and I take myself with this brush very much very much that as well. I've just got TTS crackers in terms of building prototypes.
12:45
Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 3
12:47
Oh, hang on. I know. We're running out of them halfway through a play test. Okay, I'll just clone 30 more of them. That's no problem. Yeah, but that's just cost 18 pence per copy. Yeah. And then you suddenly you get to the end of the design process or not the end of the design process. But I point when the design process we go cool, right, I'm ready to write a sell sheet. And you go, Oh, bother. That's that's got a production cost of $30. I've designed and $95. Like Phil again, for families, that that's not going to work.
Speaker 2
13:23
That's so interesting, because I don't really use TTS for prototyping, to be honest. Because I've been very fortunate that obviously Jarrod and I've been continue to work together. And most of the products we've been able to do, perfectly happy testing it like to play account. And then turns out the rhythm of this whole situation has meant that when we've needed to test with more people, we've actually been able to, in terms of the timing very, we were very fortunate in that sense. So I've kind of avoided using TTS for any prototyping of my own projects, although I've played other people's. And I'd never considered that before that actually, there's a real risk that it could it actually makes it easier to become a bit lazier and not think about that real world constraint was if you have to go and print something off your printer and cut it out, your monkey brain almost is a little bit like no, this is bad. I don't want to do this. This is like extra crap. This is wrong. I've been confronted with how this doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3
14:09
I think that's where I might have a slight advantage is that I am so rubbish with computers, that it takes me as long to do something on TTS as it does in real life. When I designed the game that's got 58 Polyana mo tiles in it, it takes me as long to draw them in InDesign and get them to work on TTS as it does to cut them out and getting them onto Mt. clever people would just go Oh, yeah, no, you can put this into a spreadsheet, turn into a CSV file and do a Data Merge import that as your tiles. Oh, great. Well done you.
Speaker 2
14:41
Yeah, it's not very constrained has actually benefited you here not actually feeling too confident with using all the tech has actually made you much more resistant to add random extra bits of crap into things. Yeah, because it takes
14:53
me so much time to do so. So
Speaker 2
14:55
you said it's not something more rewarding but it is different in kind of what ways would you describe it as quite Different kind of process.
Speaker 3
15:01
I'm someone who always writes design briefs, the one of the first things I will do is I'll go, ah, had a really interesting idea about a game that involves chickens. And within a few hours of having that idea and sort of forming all the ideas together, I will go, this is your design brief. It is a gateway game for one to six players with a campaign mode with this, that and the other a production cost of this that I've written a brief. And then whenever I'm doing play testing, whether I'm doing development, and especially when you're doing the sort of early start a play test, where you're just getting all the feedback, ever from everyone and writing it all down, is that you can kind of go, that feedback doesn't fit my design brief, gone. That feedback, fix my design brief, I'll pay attention to that. You've got some sort of constraint that's keeping you sane, because if you have nothing, then where does it stop? Suddenly, you're like family gateway game about chickens has got 490 miniatures?
15:58
Exactly, yeah. Because someone
16:00
told you, you'd make more on Kickstarter. If you put miniatures
Speaker 2
16:03
with like different like, like a cyber, chicken, miniature and Zulu chicken, and a few other things like that, or medium resin, something.
16:12
Chicken, that miniatures legacy game, and suddenly you've got
16:18
the 20 pound family my game was turned into that.
Speaker 3
16:21
I think working within a constraint is a good thing for designers to do. And I think that's just magnified when you're talking about solo design. Sometimes you got complete carte blanche. And at that point, you sit there and you can kind of there's the element of sitting there feeling a little bit lost as you can kind of go, oh, I can do anything. Hmm, well, I'm gonna have a massive great big dice tower like construction that's made out of punch Borden, 48 carbs and a triple layered player board and then you just go now, pillock just use 12 cards on a dice.
Speaker 2
16:59
So that way, you can it keeps you very reined in. And so actually, it's not so different that says that you as a designer anyway, have your own games of creating quite a tight brief for yourself. I mean, I find that interesting, isn't it? What I do is well, what I tend to do is we tend to write a brief quite early, we'll have like an exploratory phase before we actually tighten that up completely. And then we obviously tighten it down quite a lot, because I think it's very helpful to do just to provide some constraint. So in some ways, you said I guess the sentiment is just like it is even souped up version, where there's even more guardrails? Does that not the times just get very frustrating, banging into the into the walls or those guardrails all the time? Not so much.
Speaker 3
17:35
Really. I mean, you know, my professional career outside of games is very much about problem solving and finding the right solution and making the right decisions and things. That's what I have to do for a living. This is running theatres, right, yeah, technical manager for theatres. And so it's very much that, you know, at the crunch point, within minutes that you've got this problem, then one department will come up and they'll say, I don't know the way we need to fix this, like this. And then somebody else, none of them, oh, that's rubbish, fix it like that. And then someone else goes, I've done this before, we'll fix it like that. And then what you need to do is you need to go 18 minutes till we'll do that. Oh, but Shut up, do that. It's that sort of pressure cooker style atmosphere, because it's very much about working to fix deadlines.
Speaker 2
18:17
Yeah, so you have to be very decisive in that situation anyway.
Speaker 3
18:20
I mean, one of the critical judgments when you get to the management level, is knowing when you have to make the decision. If you've got out as you can kind of go okay, well, you all go away and think about it some more, work out and have a bit of a test, and then come back to me when you finish. Or if you've got minutes, you just go down to the neck. Yeah, yeah. And it's knowing how much time you've got to make decisions. But it's the same as running a development job, in the sense that, you know, the publisher will give you a deadline, say, right, we need all of the component details by this study. And after that, or you can change the rules. Okay, so you can call it that's quite common, particularly with solo design, is that they'll give you these these when we need to send all of the art assets, all of the art direction off to the artist and the graphic design, because it seems like we're forever working around deadlines set by artists and graphic designers.
19:09
Interesting.
Speaker 3
19:11
You know, that's that deadline. But after that you've got another six weeks, we can completely change all the rules, there already confused.
Speaker 2
19:20
That I mean, to me, that almost seems like a trap in the sense that if you can, if you can change anything after the things have gone to press artwork wise, doesn't that just potentially encourage you to end up making changes that are just fiddling that aren't the real changes that are substantive ones? Because most of the time, right, you should be done on any substantive changes right by then, or are you actually finding that in that six week window after the arts been gone that you're finding genuinely like useful improvements that are being made off that point?
19:48
That's an advantage of being too busy?
19:50
Ah, okay.
Speaker 3
19:52
Here's another sort of, you know, hidden Pro to something I have so much work on, that I can't afford to muck about with stuff if I think it's already finished, I just have to move on.
20:03
He just got right. Yeah, oh, I
Speaker 3
20:05
wonder whether I could just No, you haven't got time. Got another three to finish in the next two weeks, don't dilly dally. And that's an advantage of of that situation is that? You know, again, if you're a hobbyist designer, I'm not saying that in a derogatory term whatsoever. But if you have no deadlines, and you have no component limits, and it's your baby, and you just want to make the best game possible, if it takes you five years, fine, it's not a problem, because you're going to enjoy the journey. And it's going to be brilliant. And it's all if you're paid by the hour, to do a job professionally, to a deadline, there is a completely different way of working. Yeah, completely. And that makes you very efficient. But the way that a lot of the solo design stuff that is done is it's a commission. So the faster ideally, the more money. But that doesn't mean I'm going to rush it. And that does mean that certain projects, you go back and you go when you look at the time that you've spent on them, and what you agree to do it for you go back and you go, whew, I wasn't very good per hour. Yeah, that's not an order. No. But you have to be completely happy with the products that you put out.
Speaker 2
21:19
If you give me an approximate number, how many per month in any one point? Are there games that are in your pipeline? Of those kind of things
21:26
at work in solos? Yes.
Speaker 2
21:28
There's i on the list at the moment is eight. And that's eight live projects. Whoa. And how many of you actually develop so far in total? In the last what I mean, because it's the last couple of years? It's been primarily you've been working
Speaker 3
21:40
on this? Yeah. So I think Chocolate Factory was the first one that I designed in February 2019. To think about. But that's, that's where all this started. I think I've hit double figures of games that are that are either funded on Kickstarter or a public.
Speaker 2
22:01
Oh, wow. Because I mean, if we were comparing that to let's say, someone who was designing games, I know there are obviously some people there are like certain big names that we all know, that are insanely prolific, and they make loads of full game designs. But generally speaking, I can't imagine that almost anyone would be to produce that number of normal designs in that time.
Speaker 3
22:19
No, I mean, David, Turkey is a machine. Oh, yes. He's produces loads with me. He's full time within the industry. He works incredibly hard. He's right. I mean, even if you just had a conversation with the blog, you can imagine how fast he works at things.
Speaker 2
22:36
Yeah. Oh, having had a conversation about solo modes. I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker 3
22:41
You can I can tell when I'm in a development channel, David can you know when he's in that is hit that sweet spot, he's found that perfect bit of design. And your phone cannot keep up with the notification, right?
Speaker 2
22:54
It's just there's a constant bars and rattle along the table. Yeah.
Speaker 3
22:57
I think think think think think think think think think think think think think? Because it's just this this phenomenal stream of really creative, really high quality stuff. So you know, he's kind of the exception to the rule. And don't we can design that, as he buys does not co design work? Well, he
Speaker 2
23:12
designs a lot of games as well, as well as solo notes. Right? My understanding?
Speaker 3
23:15
Yeah, I'm talking. I'm talking full game designs and their big, heavy game. It doesn't design much. They're enormous things like an Acolyte. Yeah. Locked in comparison to you know, you get to can you give tracking at tiny Sue's? You know, these games on beat?
23:34
Right? Yeah,
Speaker 3
23:35
you know, void for perseverance. They're all you know, the mind cash type is huge. I would guess that David does maybe six a year. Right? Yeah.
23:44
Makes sense. So long notes.
23:46
I would imagine triples that if does not quadruples it.
Speaker 2
23:49
Right. Okay. It's like writing a focus module that sort of sits on top of an existing game that, but isn't just like how they come across. That's actually how that's what the development process looks like for it, basically. Yeah, that's interesting, because one of the questions I was gonna ask you was, what it was like, working with Martin Wallace on this. And I can imagine it or you're gonna step on his toes creatively, but it sounds like to be honest, it's almost a completely downstream process, that you've got the very, very fixed constraints, and then you're working within that. How much are you able to negotiate back the other way with Martin Wallace on what things how things
Speaker 3
24:20
should work? Martin was very easy to work with. Oh, fantastic. A lot of my brief came from Alleycat as the publisher, so they said, Okay, we're reprinting tennis, dry. Cool. We want it to play. It was originally a three player or four. So they said, We want to expand the player count to five, and two, if you think you can do it, and it will be a good game. And then I went, we want to reduce the randomness. We want to increase the production quality and have new art new graphic design, and we want to smooth out any lumps and bumps you feel in there as the developer. That was that was my brief. I'm not paying for the partnership.
Speaker 2
24:58
It sounds almost like Almost for every note, it's taking the product into the modern age in terms of what people expect, you because that must radically increase the potential market potential if it can serve as two and one players and five players, compared to just being a three and four only play a game, which is incredibly specific. Yeah. And as your production quality, and I think randomness as well, which is instinct is a hallmark of people's interest in a lot of this kind
Speaker 3
25:21
of years. You know, I think Martin was happy to get going signed with a publisher that he wants to work with. We had some initial meetings, where Martin explained, if he was in the position to be able to redevelop this game, this is what he do, he would introduce conflict, because when he did it as part of the tree frog line, the rule was no cards. And he really liked to introduce card play into the game. Oh, interesting. And he'd like that to be partially hidden information, partly open information. So the information has a value and has it as born within the game and becomes a present element. The development, which are the pieces that you add to your minds to improve things don't change, these don't mess with these they work, leave them alone, it's very narrow design space, the time the way that the game is used as you use work points, and you have a sort of time track type thing where the person who spent the least is first, he goes first. So don't change any of that, that all works, how does the scoring work, and I do a lot with that. Wherever we go with it, as long as the intent is the same, you're always better off spending money in the current round, and you are in the next round. As long as that intent works. On that there is an advantage to potentially having a supplier and there is interaction and that is part of each phase within the game and not just tacked on the end of a round it had to be to his dad or whatever. So and then we Alleycat spoke about well, from a Kickstarter model, we'd really like to include some expansions. Have you got any idea for expansions? Martin's answer was no, just go and do some research, see what you come up with. But that was his steer was research the history, research the subject, the thing that the game is about, and design the expansions from there. And that's very much Martin's design ethos and how he worked. So there my brief was to go away and research and I did loads of research. And then that was that inspired me to come up with two expansions. And then I put all those concepts together. And I pitched that to Alleycat. And anyone that said, Yep, sounds fun. And then I had to pitch that to Martin. And I had to sort of explain that this is how I'm going to make to play game work is soundcards work. This is how I think expansions would be I want this expansion about arsenic, which is this highly valuable, very stable resource, but it needs we need to represent the fact that it would kill off your entire workforce, because it was pre health and safety. And this is how I would choose to represent that and how we do it tactfully. And I think the thing that's really missing is the fact that these the skill of miners and how into our integral the Cornish the people were to Cornish mining route the beats. So here's the function is all about miners. I'm Martin just sort of went Yes, that's good. Okay, so then, you know, and then it was, and then the process kind of just Elon gates in this, you know, we went from talking to Mark every couple of weeks to talking to Martin every three months. So here's the finished game. Yes.
Speaker 2
28:06
I find that so fascinating that, that which bits of the process that the things that obviously he was really keen to say, Look, these are the these are the lines in the sand all the bits, you should really focus on that they were not necessarily things I would expect them to me, because I think if you asked most people to guess, all right, this conversation takes place, what things are likely to remain the same, I would have thought things like scoring, for example, might have been something that he might have considered be quite important. But in fact, in this case, it's like well, okay, is the kind of decision has been taken by the player at this point, still the same kind of decision. It's just this kind of intent concept. And then yes, it is. Okay, great. And actually, are you following the history? Yes. Okay, great. But actually, the specifics of the history or how those bit works? Not so important. And have you had a chance to work with other designers who are sort of like very well known, or quite big names have got really long track records like that. If your chance to see how their process differs in terms of working as a developer on that? Or is Martin kind of the best example you would have for that so far?
Speaker 3
29:01
I mean, this is this is where I, I have to try and I suppose answer your question and also pander to my own modesty. I just sit here and I reel off names. I'm going to sound like a complete
Speaker 2
29:14
Name drop your way through. Yeah, I don't mind I don't think the I don't think the listeners will mind either. So
3
Speaker 3
29:21
projects that I'm currently either doing a little bit of work on or paying or paying attention to, or starting out on or I'm finishing up on include designers such as Devi, taxi, Simone Luciani, Fabio Laviano, nesto, mango, and Brian Aconicio, Martin Wallace. That's probably all the big names.
Speaker 2
29:40
Fantastic. That'll be them in the room working with Ryan again. It's here as well. It's awesome, though very toxin.
Speaker 3
29:47
Oh, fantastic. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2
29:51
Absolutely. And it's really cool, I think to see inside this because it's one thing when I get to talk to individual designers and hear about the kind of The process from their perspective. But the advantage that you have as a developer inside this process, I think is that you get to work with multiple different people and get a sense of how they work. Are there any commonalities do you think, to the design process that you would say you've seen that it's kind of common to the strongest designers that you've worked with?
Speaker 3
30:18
They're all quite different in their personalities, I think it comes back to that sort of project management thing. I think they're all very good at making decisions. You'll sit in a playtests, with maybe other big name designers, or just really clever people who are great play testers, or great developers, you know, we're not just talking about big names that go on the front boxes with all these sorts of things. There's a massive team behind all these projects. Oh, yeah. And you will sit there as a player and you sit there and play the game, you think that's really good. And then someone else will give feedback? And you got caught this really clever? Yes, really? Oh, yeah. It's really interesting feedback. Really smart. And the designer will just go Nope, doesn't fit because of this. Especially the Italians. They're really good at knowing what fits and what doesn't, within the design space. Now, whether that's because going back to that really clear, brief idea, they know exactly where they're trying to get to. So that they're really good at shaping that development process. And they're very quick to go, this works, this doesn't work, but also the range of experience that they've got behind. And you know, the fact that they actually they can answer that question really, really quickly, because they've had to ask it every couple of months for the last 10 years on 15 different designs? Yeah, I know, they know the answers, because they've got that level of experience. I think that's, that's an enormous resource to be able to tap into, and kind of sit at the end of the play test, and you're feeling brave enough, you can kind of go, why when everyone else has hung up. And it's just the two of you left on the on the call, as the designer and the developer or the guys doing leading the solo playtesting, whatever it is, and you can kind of just go, can I just take two more minutes of your time? Could you just explain to me why you've decided you've made this decision over this decision. And it's fascinating to get to unpick that sort of process from from these guys who have been, you know, hugely successful.
Speaker 2
32:15
It seems like there's a very strong kind of confidence of vision there. Right? There's that it's that sense of being quite sure of yourself in terms of knowing I've really thought about this, this is what the design is intended to be. So this this thing either works or doesn't. And that seems radically different, I guess because understandably, to the experience of most hobby designers, which I think is a good way to put it because it's anyone who probably who is just starting out, not so had something published is that I've noticed a lot of people are very unconfident about the designs, and they tend to be the moment any feedback comes in, they're like, Oh, my God, maybe I should change the game to that or something. And I guess these are these, maybe the biggest single differences I'm picking up is that these very experienced designers don't suffer from that kind of uncertainty, because they have a very deep, clear idea of what thing is supposed to be. So it's quite clear whether that feedback is either all there is actually quite a clever idea that we can incorporate, or it's not something away. Hmm, yeah, that sounds? Well, I guess that's part of this development of experience. But it also to me, seems to speak to that confidence being quite important to make the whole process work. Have you ever been interested in designing any solo specific games, because this has become a thing recently, I'm aware of in market in a way that even a few years ago, I don't think you saw that many solo only games.
33:27
it's not something I've I found myself doing. And I think they're different skill sets. I think designing a solo only game is a different skill set to turning a multiplayer game into a viable solo experience. So I take part, both sides of the both sides of the table by take part in the tabletop mentorship scheme, which is a really good scheme to run, you sort of do it for a couple of months, then it has a month off. And they do it for a couple of months. And this isn't different people. And my last mentee was doing a solo only designed for a big competition. That was about having a $20 Max solo only game, there was sort of design constraints, typical desert competition, brief talk. And it was fascinating to watch him go through that process, and how much of the information that I was able to give them and the sort of experience that I was able to impart to him in terms of a solo player experience, which is absolutely critical to designing a solo mode. And it's the question you always ask yourself is, am I creating the right experience for the solo player for this game is that I've only got that fit, right? That was all still relevant within the solo game. But the mechanisms that you use are different. The way that you kind of structure the game is different because it's not your turn someone else's turn, or jump through this series of hoops, because that's not the structure of the game. Here's how you eat, it's how you learn. Okay, but where's the owner? There isn't any because it's solo only game. You get it? Is it any different to designing a, get it out of the box, play it, put it away, again, game with a degree of replayability to a game that's got variable setup that's got a different degree of skills in terms of what you need to do to be able to design it, and then turning it into a campaign game is a different set of skills. And they're all right, we're looking at very small margins now in terms of the differences between them. But there are differences, I think I'm now relatively confident in my ability to do a solo mode. But in terms of my own design work, I haven't got the itch to design a solo only game, my back list of things on my drawing board. On solo, a lot of them will hopefully at some point have the solo modes. But even with my own designs, I design the whole game, and then solo.
35:50
So you're not even actually even in your own design. So you've made the set of nodes considering that much up front, is you actually for the same process as a developer. And you're saying, right, here's the completed game, he's incredibly tight component count constraint that I've got, I've got one token and X number of cards to work with, wherever it is. And these are the pieces I have. And even in our own product, you're doing the same thing. I find it interesting again, to me, this sort of speaks to the wider experience of this role. One of the reasons I want to talk to you today about being a developer that seems to be rather different to being a designer, because it's the way that you are responding so much to to much more precise constraints in a way that as a designer, you are by nature, working in a more amorphous world, at least the beginning, and you're having to define all of the constraints yourself. It's the
Speaker 3
36:31
difference between, you know, being an architect and being a builder. Yeah, oh, that's
36:35
a lovely comparison. I like that. You give the architect, you go, there's a piece of land, I'd like a house, please. I'd like four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, a garage, and a shed, shed, and the architect goes away, he draws it all. And he goes to, there's a house, brilliant. And then the builder gets, there's a pile of bricks, there's 60,000 pounds, there's a load of concrete, and there's a time constraint. That's what I want the house to look like, you need both bits. But they're
Speaker 2
37:03
very different. I mean, that I think that's very valuable. I love that comparison. That's not what I've heard before. But I think it seems to me to be one that describes certainly, from what I've seen so far. Describe that relationship really well. One thing we got from this one is absolutely tonne of listener questions, which I'm really excited to get to. First one is from Oliver, who asks, What's game sentiment that you worked on? are you most proud of
Speaker 3
37:23
the one point you've spoken a lot about tennis translate, and it was it was such a big project in terms of my career, that is understandable. We spoke about that a lot. But finally, cracking the solo mode for that was quite an achievement. Because I went through three complete
Speaker 2
37:36
iterations, as in like, basically free could be different concepts. Yeah,
Speaker 3
37:39
I threw it away two times, and started again, from scratch, to try and get that to work. So actually getting that to work and having that moment of having some really good and nice roots and really experienced playtesters. Come back. No, yes. Really good. It's fun. For the golfer that that was because there was a moment where there was pressure saying, Well, if you know, if it's still not good enough, then we won't put it in the box. And it'll be two to five players. And it's fine. And it's like no, people really enjoy the Super Game. Yeah, I'm convinced I can make a solo out of it. Yeah, yeah. And then the other. The other one that I will mention these distils, and I'll do a quick plug for the fact that that's, that's going to Kickstarter next week. That one allowed me to go back and chocolate factory was my first solo. And that came out came about very much by accident when the pump when I was asked to do a protesting for it. And the publisher said, What do you think of it, and I said, not a lot. I went, alright, I do better. And that's how it came about is I went away and designed something that I felt was better. And that's what ended up getting published. But distilled allowed me to go back and revisit a very similar gameplay style to Chocolate Factory. But with 18 months of design experience under my belt, and all of the information that I've tried to glean from other people in the industry and talking to people and listening to podcasts and reading blogs and things, I felt like I was in a much better place. And it allowed me to go back and correct all of the things that I would love to have gone back and corrected with chocolate factory, with it being my first and distilled the reception that's been getting. And I've just been kind of sat back and watching the kind of results have gone. Yeah, we've got that right.
Speaker 2
39:18
Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful, isn't it? That's such a great experience when people are talking about it. The seller mode very your case of selling it very positively. And that thinking yeah, we nailed this. Yeah, that's fantastic. So I've got a question from Mike, which is when is a solo mode right for a game?
Speaker 3
39:35
And when is it wrong for a game comes back to the whole brief thing. So there's kind of a list of questions I've even gotten written down to there might be one of my blogs somewhere, which will be the list of questions that I kind of ask the designer or the publisher. Okay, great. You want to solo brilliant, what you want, and if they go, you can't go wrong. Okay, well, how good to play again, how spatial is the game? What's the decision path for a player What are the points of interaction? What do I care about on someone else's turn? And what do I not care about on someone else's turn? So you're looking for the core loop? You're looking for the interaction points, and you're looking for the overall experience. And if they come back to you, and they say, oh, no, it's really good two player game. There's there's this great worker placement thing where you put down one of your own workers and pick up on someone else's. You know, I know that sounds like Raiders, but I'm on the spot. Yeah. This is where the colonies really interact really good at tombs, really tight boards really? Okay, brilliant. Well replicate all of that. Do you care about what resources someone else has got? Oh, no, it doesn't really matter. I mean, they know there's different types of resources. So you need to know how many they've got that which ones they've got, it doesn't really make much difference, because it doesn't affect why she's so cool. Okay, well, then we'll create an only solo mode, that places and collect workers just like a player would, that has all the interaction points have to play a game, but it just counts how many resources it's got, it doesn't actually collect resources, it just goes, I've got three resources, I need to spend two resources, I'll spend two resources, completely abstract out the difference between the different types. Because you've, you've identified the core note, the interaction points, the strong bits of the game, and you identify what you can abstract out, because the last thing you want to be doing is going right, okay, bots term. All right, it's got four corn, three sheep, and a cow, right? Four corn three sheet and a cat rock, I put them over there in that player odd.
41:29
Yes. No, four
Speaker 3
41:33
done next term. So you need to find the bits that are important than the bits that aren't important.
Speaker 2
41:39
And that's the kind of way I guess zeroing in on that right is the zooming on what the important interactivity spaces which bits are required for the human players to do but actually aren't relevant because that you can abstract them away quite nicely, because the last thing we're gonna be doing is tonnes of admin. And just one thing you know, you asked a question about the spatial side of it. Is that just because I understand the the server approach, or is it because spatial spatial awareness is the hardest thing? Yeah, I thought this was this. This is what I found.
Speaker 3
42:05
Take undaunted, for example, the solo mode from daunted will come out in soon, actually, June sometime this summer. What another one another one you've created. Yeah, this is CO design between as a co solo design between me and David C for the undaunted series. And we went back and we did undaunted, normally, undaunted, North Africa, which will forever cause me nightmares, and undaunted reinforcements, which is the new box. So we've done in the new box, there will be solo support for every undaunted scenario there has ever been from both sides. So there is a common the numbers now there's like 40, campaign settings scenarios. And there's two sides on every scenario. So I've written 18 separate solo games.
Speaker 2
42:47
Oh, because you had to come up with the solo rule set for each one of the scenarios and each of the boxes, but each one of the scenarios for each side in the scenario Oh, and is that because there wasn't really a practical way with the the scenario based games to just invent a generic rule that will just work in the written iOS?
Speaker 3
43:04
Yep. If your rifleman always moves forwards, and then ships, there are certain scenarios where he will walk into a river and get pinned down by machine guns and die, right? Yeah, exactly. That's just stupid. Yeah, you get to do it. But it's the perfect thing to do in the next scenario when he's got to go and capture that for like, three months, when i i Written and I gone through all the scenarios, and I'd written all the photos. Each scenario was about four or five pages of notes. I mean, without drawing them, it was flowcharts. If your rifle minis here, do this, if not do this if not do this, if not the complete list followed every troop that every site in every scenario for the IT team at Osprey games, managed to fit all of those flowcharts on Tarot site cards. Oh, wow. Astonishing. They've turned scenarios that I was playing with four or five pages of Google doc to take the six cards out of the solar set and place them on the table next to the solar box player area. Follow the instructions on the cards more.
Speaker 2
44:06
They're kind of modular, are they? Where do they work? Oh, very clever. So you don't have to wander stereo?
Speaker 3
44:12
Yeah, that's brilliant. So you, you your squadron leader in scenarios 2345678 use this code. But in scenario one, and Scenario nine use this code, because it's got slightly different rules on it. And you just go down that smart Oh, my God, that guy, that brilliant job of putting that together? Because I mean, the rulebook would have been ridiculous, the thickness, you know, the amount of writing there was in all those flowcharts and I do boiled it all down, sit down, lay the cards, get the cards out, follow the instructions.
Speaker 2
44:40
Fantastic. That is very clever. To me, that seems like like an like a huge step forward in terms of the ability to do that to better modularize things like that logic. Fascinating. God made me want to get hold of the reinforcements box. Now I must admit I didn't love North Africa.
Speaker 2
45:00
I can imagine, by the end of it, it really wouldn't have been. But sorry, I just just very fascinated to see to see that in see how that pans out. Because yeah,
Speaker 3
45:10
you asked me to play a two player game of undaunted, I'd say, Cool. Let's get out. Let's get out one of the lights scenarios in North Africa, because they're really fun, as you said, Go away and design a solo mode for an asymmetrical war game with a modular map on six different troop types and different vehicle seats and different situational setting. I tell you where to stick. Yeah,
45:31
I quite reasonably from the sound.
Speaker 3
45:35
But I was almost bullied on by the fact that Anthony Hugo, who's who's the developer Ospreay has done all this wonderful work with the card system. And David curtsy who designed the original solo system. They were saying to me in development meetings, don't worry about North Africa. If you can't do all the scenarios, don't worry about it. It's not a problem. And I'm one of those as someone who played competitive sport I played, you know, village cricket for sort of 20 odd years. And I play golf and things like that. That to me is a regrettable. Yeah, of course. It's
Speaker 2
46:03
like, no way I'm going to do more. You know,
Speaker 3
46:07
don't don't worry about trying to hit it over that palms. Don't worry about it. Just lay up. No Pity over the pub. Oh, I can get all those scenarios. Yeah, completely. Oh,
Speaker 2
46:19
fantastic. That's so cool. And this is Rob had a question as well for us, which was, are there certain types of game that you wouldn't attempt to solo mode for? And I guess that kind of begins cross setting with that, right, which is, although in the end, you did make that work? It sounds like in general things like the war games, and there's loads of rich spatial interaction on natural places for settlements to go. Is that fair? Yeah, it
Speaker 3
46:39
comes back to that concept of design budget again. Is it a light 20 minute gateway area control game with lots of spatial awareness? Yes. Okay. Dumbledore is just not worth the effort, because the rules will be so complex. Is it a really deep, involved? steamatic big box game where you know, it's 3.54 on BGG? Cool. Yeah, we can miss out on over that, because you've got the budget to be able to put all those rules in, because you've either got to do it accurately, or you've got to do it randomly. randoms just a bit naff, when it makes so much difference. In a recent discussion with David, I think we were in a podcast for Ospreay. Again, he real nugget that stuck in my head ever since. Was the you know, when do you do a solo mode? When do you not do a solo? And he said, does the game have lots of interaction? Yes. Great. I'd like to do the solo mode for this, I think it'd be really interesting is the game only interaction? Don't do a solo mode
47:40
hmm, very interesting.
Speaker 3
47:43
So pick almost any Euro game off of the shelf, and you go, that's got lots of interaction, that would be really interesting solo mode for pick a party game off your shelf, and go this only interaction? How many copies of just one are you going to sell? Because you've got a solo mode for it. None, not. The game is all about the interaction.
Speaker 2
48:09
Exactly. It's it's it might as well do the cards against humanity. So don't strike me as I think that's just doing really I don't know, strike me as being very useful. Okay, I've got a great one we want to get there from from bears as well. I really like this question about thinking about the future of teaching games, because this is a really cool one. What do you think of the utility of on ramping players, I guess in terms of teaching them by starting them off with a solo node as a teaching tool?
Speaker 3
48:38
It's in that list that list of questions. So the questions I asked a publisher or a designer, when we're doing the concept is, do you want the solo mode to teach you how to play the multiplayer game? It's kind of one of the concepts that you can bear in mind with part of the design. So an example of that it's not something I've worked on, it's just something I play cooperrider heavy Euro game, really, really tight design. And me and a friend of mine, we played it two or three times to play. And we were both rubbish at it. We were scoring like 12 points in two and a half hours of Euro game going, Oh, well, this can't be this difficult. Surely, I went, why am I playing the solo mode? And I kind of went from 12 points to 20 points to 25 points to 30 points to 35 points. I've got it. I've got it. I've worked out to play this game, because the solo mode taught me how to play the game. Interesting, not teaching me in terms of put this cube over there and then do this. But in terms of strategically how to play the game, because I watched the way that they had built that solo. And I went, do you know what? It's concentrated on two actions? I'm pretty much ignoring everything else. And I try and do a little bit of everything. That's clearly wrong. Okay, I need to concentrate on two things. And I need to concentrate on the two things that the bot isn't concentrating on. Got it. Oh, no loss. Okay. I'm gonna concentrate on one of the things the box concentrating on on one of the things it isn't smashed it fascinating. That's how to play the game, share a strategy with your opponent and have a different strategy than your opponent and do them both better.
Speaker 2
50:15
And that was an insight into the dynamics of that game around how competing for effectively a strategy works that if you don't compete with someone to let them have everything they're gonna win or get steamrolled, right,
Speaker 3
50:23
but you also need something of your own that you can fall back on with the Internet. And it was just that sort of, you know, that very slow, fade up with a light bulb. It wasn't a thing like little moment, it was a gradually getting brighter, light bulb moment. But just that level of realisations, you can't right now I've got this, and there are games, I'm by no means a savant, these type of things. You know, just because I've worked with in the industry doesn't mean I win every game. Yeah, but there are games that I'm good at. And there are games that are not so good. And games that I'm good at, a lot of them will have solo modes that kind of reveal the strategies to you in the way that they work. And therefore by playing it solo, I will get that pop up that step up, as you would do where you're playing a game with someone who's really experienced, but they're teaching you the game, and it's a dedicated learning game. And they're really going no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to invest in that company. Right now, what you want to look at is you want to look at the company, that's next going to be on top of the share market that's going to buy this, it's going to do this, it's gonna do the other. And you kind of go Ah, now I get it now great, because someone is helping you through that solo mode, can you can build a solar mode to do that.
Speaker 2
51:32
And do you think that that could be more explicitly positioned as a utility potentially, or maybe maybe not so useful as a way to teach people games,
Speaker 3
51:39
I think it's an interesting space to explore providing it's right for the product. If you put it in a game that's not going to have a strong solo uptake anyway, then, it might not work because you might be losing out. But if the next day, the turkey game says the best way to learn the game is to play it solo. when you ought you're already selling it to almost every solo game on the planet anyway. Right? Yeah. Because it's. And they'll and they'll go after David says he's brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 2
52:09
So that that's really interesting to think about there being an audience now for solo games like that, because I think even just a few years ago, didn't seem like that was the case. They seem to be more like, oh, you can pick up and maybe you can pick up a bit extra business if you do. If you'd have a solo mode, how important you think it is to products commercial success these days,
Speaker 3
52:25
comes back down to the product. Are you putting your game on crowdfunding? Are you relying on internet marketing? Is your game big, complicated difficult to teach? Then you need a solo mode, you absolutely have to have one because the reason so let one of the reasons behind solar most taking off is that is the blossoming Internet communities and your your Facebook's you read it's your Twitter's your PTG forums, all of that sort of stuff, is there is now a solo gaming community, who never see each other. And it's that community that has really fueled solo gaming, that's where a lot of the market has come from is because solo gamers now feel included. And for whatever reason that they're not going with other people. They now have a community that they can be part of you got the latest game that's got this solo, oh, yeah, I'll get that many points in it that Oh, really, I'm not tried that strategy. I should try that strategy. Next time I play. Suddenly. Now. It's a social experience. And it does all of those brilliant things that we love for games to do, and it connects people and brings people together. But it's doing that it's doing that with a solo mode. If that's your market, then you really have to look to do it. And we can all see within hours of the Kickstarter launching, if it hasn't got a solo mode. And it probably should have one comment after comment after comment will be either solo, I'm not backing it with that solo. Also dividing the expansion or No Not interested.
Speaker 2
53:51
I mean, I don't think that's one of the developments that anyone would have predicted five years or six years ago. It was like that's where but as you said, it seems to be such a big community. I mean, I've heard figures like people putting as much as used to be saying 10 or 20% to a Kickstarter is revenue, but it sounds like it could even be more than that now, but for some titles, if it's particularly for some products, as you say they're like, quite big complex games.
Speaker 3
54:11
Yeah, 10% is the figure offered 10% If your game has got solo play then about 10% issue is based on solo, which is not a lot and when you're fighting for I'm really need these extra components to make the solo word work. I really need another two weeks worth of playtesting and you're up against the publisher who's looking at the bottom line and they're saying it might it's it's 8% of my sales I'm just not interested it's just not worth it. But you know, then it is kind of you kind of go Yeah, but that's my percent.
Speaker 2
54:43
Yeah, exactly. It's the bit that you're a part of it
Speaker 3
54:48
is 100% to me, because that's all I've got multiplayer games, not my problem. So in this amount mode out is what you've hired me to do. So that 8% is everything. If that 8% drops by 2%, then, you know as 25%, I've got wrong. So yeah, that's where I can fight back a bit.
Speaker 2
55:09
If you're giving any advice to anyone who wanted to get into doing solo development, what would be the best starting place you'd tell them to go?
Speaker 3
55:18
It's a mix between playing as much as you can, and learning from them. And try and do that at the same time as designing something or developing something. And you'll end up with this horrible, messy hybrid thing that probably doesn't really work. But that's how you're going to work out what works and what doesn't work. So you could almost go, Okay, well, I'm gonna get Rondell flowchart mechanism out of an accurately and title method out of two, can you and you know, a card flip system out of perseverance, I'm just picking on 30 Games, because we're not talking about two and a small deck system out of this guy with a big deck system out of this game, right? Okay, there's five different David's 30 solo designs. And here's my here's my design, and I kind of want to design a solo for it. Okay, well, let's try a small deck first. No, I didn't work big deck. No, I didn't work rumble. Yeah, oh, Rumble works. Okay, let's try rumble for a bit. And just kind of discover it. And it can take me a reasonable amount of thinking time and thinking times great. Because I can do it when I'm driving or while I'm supposed to be asleep or out for a walk, or whatever it is thinking time is easy to find. It can take quite a long time to kind of get hold of that system and go, What I need is 18 cards with this information there and that information there and this and then you shuffle in the reading. Right? Okay. That's the stats, the right system for this guy. But 30 just goes I just do this that Nilla Well, oh, yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 2
56:45
I guess he's a special kind of talent, isn't he? That's the thing. That's when you find the people who've got those kinds of very unusual, just ability to just do it quite naturally, or at least it seems that way anyway. And then for publishers, what are your kind of top three tips for them in terms of creating? If they decide, right? Well, actually, we started, our game would fit a solar node, if they believe that first, I guess, what are the top three tips for them? I'm guessing one of them has to be this getting this really tight brick frame, which is good practice anyway. But it seems like defining that really tightly seemed critical for the selo mode as well.
Speaker 3
57:15
Yeah, it's kind of getting that I would, I would say what you really want to focus in on is this, the solo experience you want to create, don't necessarily get pigeonholed into AR, we must create an AI opponent, it must be an auto solo mode. Don't start from there. Get there. If it's the right answer. field from the What experience do you want that solo gamer to have? Do you want it to be an experience where they there's nothing much on telly, but they get it out and they play on the coffee table and they pack it away? And they put it away? And it's distracted them for 20 minutes? Or do you want them to turn their phone on Do Not Disturb for eight hours? And stay at the gaming table playing this until like, What experience do you want that solo player to have? Answering that question will then answer a lot of the other questions for you. But that yeah, it's working out production limitations, I having a limitation. And the constraint is better than not having one. Having complete carte blanche can lead to very bloated solutions that don't really need to be there. playtesting SoLoMo just difficult because there's a there is a limit on how much you can play test a solo mode. And knowing when you when you're approaching that limit. I'm still learning that but I know now when I hit my limit, but I'm still learning where I leave myself short of my limit.
58:32
Why do you think it has such a limit to it? Because you get too good at it?
Speaker 3
58:35
Can you unpick it too much? And the difficulty gets harder and harder and harder and harder and harder because you keep tailoring it to how you're playing? Right? Yeah, completely. And then suddenly you hand it out, you hand it over to someone else. And they play it from the robot. I mean, you know, blind play testing someone playing the solo game in front of you. Brilliant.
Speaker 2
58:52
Yeah, that that's the gold standard really, ultimately for that stays relevant, isn't it,
Speaker 3
58:55
and they just get absolutely annihilated and have a miserable time playing the game. And you go, Oh, yeah, if you've done that, and you've done that, then if you don't miss that, and they don't let the other that's not fun. Because you've made it too hard. Because you've played it too much. You need to find the point where you can where you can still go back and test it when you need to. Because if you reach that limit, and then you make some changes, we've had our play testers, we get that feedback or something in the multiplayer game changes and it comes back back at you, you still need capacity to be able to play test it yourself. And I have had projects where I've just gone can't play this anymore. I'm done. And now I have to go and find play testers every time I need to play to something. I can no longer play test this game. And it's it's being able to sit below that ceiling. So you've got a little bit of wiggle room.
Speaker 2
59:41
Essentially you say this, because that is a problem that I think we encountered a bit with the magnetic one was that DJI would play it so much. There were times when it would be like I think we're doing this too hard. That's going to be very, very challenging to play against sometimes for new players. I guess that's not normally a problem in normal playtesting because you're playing with new people and you're new you can see See how they're managing with it all the time. So you never get this thing of like, Ah, this is all terribly easy, because it's not that everyone is finding it easy. There's always somebody who's not finding it easy. Whereas on your own, you're just you don't know that you're, you can't see your own skill curve going up, and you're just making this thing tougher and tougher.
Speaker 3
1:00:14
Yeah, I mean, providing you've given yourself enough sort of moving parts or Levers as the kind of term that we use, Brian, you've got enough levers within your soul. And it can get really, really hard providing you've still got an option to present a base game version, going back to distil distil has got a developer on it chap called Richard Woods, who worked so hard, and he's so small, a huge amount of respect for the work that we've just done on this. Richard has played in the solo mode for distilled over 150 times play rate is phenomenal. I would make it real change, or I would update some cards at midnight, and I wake up at six o'clock in the morning. And Richard played it four times. And he's found all the problems in it already. And it's just like with this you brilliant every Richard, but I obviously had to end up building a Richard mode, because he was beating it on standard difficulty, but like 30 points, and it was like, Okay, well, I'll just keep turning the difficulty up turning up turning up turning out until which he's going to lose. And there's now other people playing that set of Richard difficulty rules, who are going, Oh, no, we might not come up with another variant to make it more difficult. And yet, you if you were to throw that as someone who's playing the game for the first time, they just go, oh, yeah, he's asking me to do what, in seven rounds, you're gonna allow off. So yeah, being able to tailor that difficulty in a kind of having nice, clear cut difficulty levels is quite similar. Suddenly, it's quite important to get.
Speaker 2
1:01:40
Well, I mean, David, this has been absolutely fascinating. I've really enjoyed this being able to spend that time time with you working through this, because there's so many interesting things I think to consider. But maybe from a product perspective, which I noticed that you're thinking caps coming comes around to just great. I just want to ask you what we should expect from you. What we should look out for from stuff that you're working on soon. I mean, you've obviously got a things in the pipeline, that's maybe too much, but bearing in mind that this episode will be out in the middle of July. What kind of things should people keep on that? Keep their eyes peeled out for?
Speaker 3
1:02:13
And don't it should be coming up fairly soon. That's the reinforcements box, which will contain backwards compatible solo modes for with the flowchart system for the autonomous stuff. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So that's coming up tennis trials, you'd get two backers. So that was development as well as solo design on that one. Ruthless, that will be quite a quick turnaround. Ruth has got a new expansion. I think I think the crowdfunding for that is just finished, they didn't use Kickstarter, they use their own website that includes a new new solo play version for that. scrumpy will probably arrive at some point that's got my solo mode in it. That was a six for Kickstarter a few months ago just deal with mentioned a couple of times that goes to Kickstarter next week. Fantastic quests as a product by think Luke Ames that includes, one of my sola modes in then you got the Alley Cat stuff that was kick started at the beginning of the year. So you have dice theme park, we have eternal Palace, both of which feature my solo mode. Bright Eye Games are a new publisher spawn that are some of the people that are involved with PSC, some other UK publisher, they're relaunching a new version of Michael dance by Mike Nance. And the follow up game that's all about termites. They're a straight to retail release later this year, they both got my solo modes in, you know, there's like another three or four that within the next couple of months, you'll kind of find out about an hour to talk about it more openly.
Speaker 2
1:03:38
I think that's great, because what it means is that people can see the kind of result of the thinking that you've put in if they're interested in playing some of your games as well, which I think is always really valuable to connect up the final product with the kind of mental process by which it was made is I think is always fascinating and interesting for them. So on that note, then thank you again, for having a conversation with me. This was really fascinating, and I'm sure everyone will find it very useful when it comes to solo games.
Speaker 1
1:04:06
Producing fun is produced by naylor games. if you enjoyed the show? Follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at NaylorJames or write me an email James@naylorgames.com. Until next time,
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Sophie and James run Needy Cat Games – a tabletop game studio based in Nottingham, UK. As a studio they have a nearly unique model – designing games on demand for clients with IPs, miniatures and other assets rather than pitching their work to publishers. In this conversation we talk about how the studio model works, the so-called Kickstarter treadmill, how creativity arises from well constructed project briefs and the future of the game market.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames/episodes/Sophie-Williams–James-Hewitt—Game-Studio-e13kq4l
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Needy Cat Games website: http://www.needycatgames.com
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I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective. Welcome to Producing fun. My guests this week are Sophie Williams and James Huet. Together they run needy cat games a game studio located in Nottingham here in the UK. Nearly cat games is not a publisher, James and Sophie create new games but they don't finance and market them. They also don't work like conventional game designers either. They don't go around pitching games to different companies in the hopes of being published. Rather, they create games to order based on client requests, leveraging their considerable experience working for Games Workshop, an hour range of other tabletop companies. In their day to day work, they go well beyond the traditional remit of a designer to considering usability, graphic design and component count limitations laid down by clients in their work. In some projects, they will even manage graphic designers and artists themselves completing critical tasks sits squarely with the publisher in most situations. The game studio model is still a real rarity in the world of tabletop games. But to me, it represents an interesting new development. While Kickstarter has made more generalists than ever, self published creators like myself shepherding ideas all the way from back of the envelope to shrink wrap games sitting on store shelves. This kind of specialisation is exactly the sort of thing I'm expecting to see more of in future. As Sophie and James are very honest about in this interview, there's almost no one who really has both the skills and the interest in doing every single part of this complex process. as the industry grows, and the competition for great commercially appealing games gets ever tougher, it seems natural to me that skills will increasingly divide organisations into different specialisms. Why wouldn't people who excel at design and development just want to do that, just as those who make financial bets on titles or specialise in marketing, are likely to find their own niche over time. Sophie and James's unique experience and approach give them a deep insight into making games from a more product oriented perspective than most designers. For anyone making games. This interview is densely packed with useful advice from driving creativity with a tight brief to the so called Kickstarter treadmill. And it's dangerous from when and how to integrate artists and graphic designers into the design process to a fascinating discussion on the future of the market. This is one conversation you don't want to miss. We join just as they explain what a game studio does.
Speaker 2
2:43
So I think we're in a really unique position, I can think of up to a dozen, maybe people that I know of that do similar things to what we do.
Speaker 3
2:51
We're not a publisher. And I think that's the thing is a lot of people think of a game studio as being someone who publishes their own games. And we don't do that.
Speaker 2
2:58
Basically, you've got the publishers, and then there are designers and designers, they will design a game and go and pitch it to publishers. And say we'd like this, we'd like you to publish this game. And there's a back and forth there. What we do generally is we work with clients who already have an idea for a game, or they have an access to an IP, or they have a range of miniatures or something they would like to turn into a game. But they don't have that skill set. So what we do is we work with them to a brief if you work out and we create games effectively on
Speaker 3
3:30
demand, we create games to fulfil a brief from a client, which is very different, because I think the sort of standard way is if you're like your stereotypical game designers, you will design a bunch of games. So you might design one or two games, or I've heard of people who've got 10 designs or like ready to go and they'll make excell sheets, and they'll pitch them to publishers, and they'll go to meet publisher events. And they'll try and pitch their game. And publishers are going to these events, maybe making their own games, but also going oh, well what we want is like I don't know, a game for eight to 12 year olds that uses no more than a deck of 60 cards. And a $20 dollar price point. Yeah, and only plays in 15 minutes. And they might have a very specific need. And what they're doing is they're looking out for people who fulfil their need, who also have a great product. And that is quite difficult to do because you're matching up, whatever someone's just thought of as a cool thing to make, which is completely random. Like amazing ideas came come out of that. And some amazing things are made. But if it's not exactly what you're looking for it then it's really difficult to get picked up.
Speaker 2
4:33
We've we've both had a fair bit to do with the tabletop mentorship programme. So you know talk from last last week. Imposter Syndrome syndrome and no one knows they're doing one of my former mentees, a woman called Danielle she was telling me about how she was doing this crazy whistlestop tour. She's using all of her annual leave at work to go to every convention in the US. This is quite a big convention circuit. And she's trying to get to every single one to pitch her game everyone we're a public She was in attendance to pitch her game. I mean, she has so many games to work on. All right, fantastic games, but she just kept being told it's not quite what we need right now. And the thing is, when you think how many designers they must see, and how crowded the board games market is, generally, you realise what kind of a lightning strike.
Speaker 3
5:19
And then I think you get people who self publish, either by just going and making the game themselves. Although a lot of people put it on Kickstarter, if you
5:26
can think of any examples James speak up
5:31
was struggling a little bit who would go something as mad as that
5:36
we sort of landed somewhere in the middle. And
Speaker 3
5:38
we sort of looked at it and we realised for all our faults, and plugging away at things we don't really enjoy, like admin, we did realise early off the bat that we would not suit just making games, and then trying to pitch them, that wasn't going to be a thing. And also, there's no guaranteed income there. And if we were going to start something where we were quitting our jobs to do it, because you've been doing it? Well, we've both been sort of dabbling for a long time. But you've been game designing since you were like,
Speaker 2
6:09
my first game was when I was five, I found it recently. It wasn't great. I'll give myself a little bit of leeway. He needed way more testing, the artwork was way off.
Speaker 1
6:18
Maybe you had your five year old self hadn't really properly considered product market fit.
Speaker 2
6:23
I think that was actually that was the key issue. Yeah. If I have the time, I'll go back and give myself a lecture. But yeah, so I think I've been learning games for a long time. And I've been doing it professionally with Games Workshop for a while, you had a really strong interest in games only, it helped me develop lots of
Speaker 3
6:37
Yeah, well, loads of play testing and development with you on all the stuff you were doing for your own, like hobby for quite a long time. And then we were like, well, if this is something we're actually going to do, we need to have like a guaranteed income. But So originally, we were like, Oh, this will be a thing we do for a while we'll just make games for other people. While we set up systems in place so that we can self publish through Kickstarter. And that was always our sort of original concept, wasn't it? So we were just like, oh, well, we happen to have connections within the industry. And because James have been against the zone of for Games Workshop, you were like people coming up to you going, would you write as a game? So we will I will, this is a perfect like gap in the market, because actually not many people. I mean, as we said, there are people out there doing it, there's not many, where just people can walk, go up and be like, I've got this idea, will you write it? For me, that's not generally, mostly how the industry works. So we were like, This is a nice little niche for us to get comfortable, get established. And then producer again,
Speaker 2
7:40
the first couple of years of working, we were always looking ahead, we're thinking right, we're doing this for now. But later on, we're going to get into the meat of what we're doing later. I think we've just realised actually slow down. This is what we're good at. We're good at making games for other people. And if that means that we can use that, to create space in our schedule to make a game for ourselves once in a while, then that's good. But really, the bread and butter of this job that we do, as far as Studio does, is always going to be bespoke game design for the company. Yeah. Because, as you say, it's a model that works. It supports us as a business. We're not having to gamble capital, we don't have on loads of Kickstarter and things and potentially get off that Kickstarter treadmill that you see some small companies struggling with where they they lowball a Kickstarter in order to make money, right, then they do a second Kickstarter to fund the first Kickstarter, and then you can't escape that.
Speaker 1
8:33
That seems to be a real problem in the industry, to some extent, right amongst maybe among smaller companies. I haven't seen Siemens detailed accounts. But I do wonder a little bit if they're in a somewhat similar situation, right. Although certainly their products you could you can't argue that Siemens products are underpriced.
Speaker 3
8:46
Absolutely. Well, I think the thing is, as well as that you get trapped in it. But also, there's this huge pressure from backers, it becomes this very stressful thing of like, how do you set your stretch goals? There's now this expectation that you're always must have stretch goals. Not everyone does it? But most people do. You always have must have stretch goals, you always must have some kind of good deal for the consumer. It's not just that they're getting the game, they're getting a cool bunch of stuff with it, and costing that and planning it out. And then the realities of costs changing or just you get a slight miscalculation. And that's it, you're borrowing money from your future self. And then you're you're stuck because you've already promised the game to however many people. It's like I saw recently, I think it was last week, shipment containers from China are going for like up to 10 times their price at the moment. Because there's so few of them coming out at the moment because of everything's going on. Sometimes it's double but it can be up to 10 times. So there are lots of small companies who just can't ship their game, they just can't afford to. Unfortunately, it's just a risk that you have to take and it costs a lot and you can do it but by spending more money and that means you need more money. So as you get stuck, I think
Speaker 2
9:55
another issue that kind of feeds into it is that a large chunk of it tabletop games industry is hobbyist led, by which I mean, no one gets into manufacturing nuts and bolts because it's the thing they want to do. I mean, designing games making games, and that tends to be a thing people get into, because they really want to do it. And so there tends to be a little bit of rose tinted glasses, optimism, around a lot of things. And so people will go, I really want to go to Kickstarter. And really what they want out of it, is they just want to have their game made and be out there being played by people. Yeah. And so they're kind of willing to go well, I don't need to make maximum profit losses out there. And so they set their margins incredibly low thinking we're gonna make profit, and then something happens, exchange rates fluctuate, border treaties, change whatever it might be. And suddenly, they're now paying 10% More than they thought they were
Speaker 3
10:44
going to, and then the margin just can't absorb that. And as a person
Speaker 2
10:48
by themselves, not a business, they don't have 20 grand of capital sitting around to just throw a project necessarily. And that's how these these things can happen, I think, and even when a business starts finding its feet, a lot of the time that people working, there will still be people who are first and foremost, board game hobbyists who are doing this. You're not necessarily people coming in, because let's let's face it, this is not an industry that you come into to make Mega bucks. Yes, it's
Speaker 3
11:13
a growing industry. But it's not something that you're gonna be an overnight millionaire. Yeah,
Speaker 2
11:18
exactly. And so I think people that are really I mean, in it for the love of it. And that means that it's easy to have, you're heartbroken, I think, and that can have financial repercussions, that could really hurt business.
Speaker 1
11:29
That's interesting, isn't it? Because it sounds to me, then we talk about the kind of few key issues there. So there's one, there's this kind of question that a lot of people who get into it, because it's hobbyist led don't necessarily make, let's be completely honest, here, the sound is business decisions, right? The problem is partly that they're saying, Well, I'm doing this as a hobby, so I don't need to make money. And they're thinking, therefore, it's fine as margins are low. Whereas actually, that's not really that great, because you're not considering all of the different things that can come along and screw you quite badly. I mean, shipping for one for me, I can attest that right now. I think in the end, we're going to spend something like 18,000 more dollars or something on shipping than we really needed to originally, ouch, it's very painful. But it's at the same time, it's like, well, there isn't really another option, because we have to deliver it so that we can move on and do other things. That's not a cost. A lot of people are in a position to the hilarity just absorb that impact. Yeah. The second issue is one that I also found very interesting in what you're saying, which is quite calibrating a Kickstarter campaign, and things about about planning around shipment around stretch goals. Even if you just give yourself a little bit extra slack, what we're talking about there, it's like a whole set of expertise, that's really completely different to the expertise of designing games.
Speaker 3
12:39
Yeah. And you miss judge one of those like, say you go, if my game gets another 10 grand, I'll put minis in the game, and people think that's a cool stretch. Everyone do Oh, woe betide them. And it's like putting minis in the game might cost you 15 grand, and so therefore, you've actually lost money. So you might have hit all your stretch goals and done a good chunk over as you're losing money now, because you didn't realise that just paying for a single tool was six minutes was going to cost you 8000 pounds, let alone getting them sculpted, let alone getting them concepted in the first place, let alone getting working. The tools actually works. Yeah, it just so much stuff. And you just think that you might get a quote from someone who says, Yeah, I can do that. I can do that for you. And they're trying to get your business. So they lowball the quote, and then you go back to them. And then they're like, oh, no, actually, it's sort of that that quote, didn't
13:34
include one extra minute
Speaker 3
13:37
you've put in there now, because of another stretch goal has pushed it onto to tools rather than one, or whatever it is. And that's, that's all it takes. So you have to highly calibrate it and really think about it. And it doesn't take much to accidentally step left or right and it be wrong, or you pitch your numbers wrong. So it starts losing rather than especially
Speaker 2
13:57
when so much of it can be guesswork, like there are very few solid figures initially, when you when you go to a manufacturer to get a quote, for example, you know, you don't know how many you need to be made don't know what the thickness they can't be, because you're planning on doing a stretch or uplift the quality of your cards, whatever it might be. So you have all these kind of it's like there's like a dark alchemy to working out, you know, a funding goal. Yeah. And then, and you know what your pledge levels are? And then and then you realise there are these weird little points. Like, for example, when we were looking at the past, we had a whole thing where the manufacturer would do quantities of 501,000, or two and a half 1000 It might be 1000 to two and a half thousand, 5000. Yeah. And if you go one copy above one of those levels, you have to pay for the next one up. And so you have these like these danger pinch points where suddenly if you do exactly 1001 copies, your margins disappear.
Speaker 3
14:45
Yeah, because you're having to pay for two and a half thousand copies. Yeah, that like and I think it's even more dangerous because like, you might be able to squeeze that one extra game out of them by begging but like, if you're getting to like 1100 You're far too comfortably in that next bracket. And now that's it, you've made no money because you've had to pay for more than double what you wanted.
Speaker 2
15:05
And none of this stuff is game design. You know, if you're saying I want to design games online, again, I'm gonna go to Kickstarter, you don't think about you think, Oh, I'll do a Kickstarter campaign wins, Yay, I get money, I make it right. And no, that's the start of the hard work. And then you have all this extra stuff to do.
Speaker 3
15:21
And what we realised after all of that, as a roundabout way is we didn't want to
15:27
do any of that. It's a minefield,
Speaker 3
15:29
it's an it's stressful, and it's we tried doing it once, and it was a nightmare. And it was it. The fact was, is that just the amount of work you'd put into the prep for that one game, we could have made another game in that
Speaker 2
15:43
time. You know, we want to put food on the table, we've got a five year old, we've got a mortgage to pay, we are very lucky to be in a position where we can make games and get paid for it. So and so for anything to displace that time when we're doing that. It has to give a similar kind of payback. Otherwise, we can't pay the bills.
Speaker 3
16:02
If what we're doing already works, why are we trying to eventually get to a point where we're doing what everyone else is doing? It's what we do works. And we have a nice niche. It's like a little niche.
Speaker 2
16:14
I think we're lucky. We get to work with people who want to work with you know, we're picking and choosing, we're being we're able to turn projects down if they're not, I think we're particularly bad at doing so we're basically having a cake and eating it and just having a great time. Yeah,
Speaker 1
16:28
it sounds like a really great model for you to be running, you get to do game design, you get a secure income from it, which is something which only generally speaking, a handful of game designers globally have something like a secure income from game design, where that their royalties are so substantial, that they're able to live off those. That's a very select club. How does it feel though, the fact that maybe you don't always get to do that many of your projects, because it's always someone else's ideas that you have to work on,
Speaker 2
16:56
I really just wish we could do a thing that is completely 100% ours and have the ability to not daft on us chin, because when you do a project like this, you are very much designing something to brief and let's face it, nine times out of 10. People want something they recognise, they don't want kind of wacky new ideas necessarily. They want something which does a job that they recognise they want a dungeon crawler or whatever else it might be that we always get hired to do. And they want a thing where you have a bunch of heroes, every player plays a hymn or you fight against the AI deck controlled bad guys. And we've done this a few I start running out of ideas. And also the thing is, we're never happy to just do the same thing
Speaker 3
17:37
we don't. There's definitely design DNA, what we call it like you can see if you've got all of our games, that's one another, you'd see some themes. But we make sure that they all have a different way of running a different way of playing in, you know, a different way of winning them. They've all got different strings that we're pulling on. It does get to a point where you're like, I don't want to do another dungeon crawler. Yeah, but at the same time, I'm not ragging on dungeon crawlers, because I actually I really do enjoy doing them.
Speaker 1
18:07
You just want the variety, right? Like, to some extent, yes. The opportunity to explore different things. I mean, that's the kind of soul of creativity, right? It's novelty.
Speaker 3
18:15
Absolutely. But What's lovely about what he told brief, is the moment you have a brief, your job becomes easier as a game designer, because when you tell yourself and this is actually something we talk about in our game design courses, when you tell yourself you can do anything that's actually extremely intimidating, like do anything in the whole wide world. Just yeah, it's it's so big. When you start where if you said someone, right, okay, it has to fit in this size box. Well, that's actually a restriction you're like, okay, so it can't be on a giant inflatable bouncy castle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But that cuts off like one of those wacky ideas. And then you're like, oh, what we want is this. So using these miniatures are set in this world, and you start to give yourself challenges. And the moment you start giving yourself challenges you can problem solve. And problem solving is what leads to game design, in my opinion. The problem is, is that if you've got anything that is such an overwhelming amount of stuff, so even when you're designing games for yourself, no, I don't think so. Because we tell people write yourself a brief because even if you end up changing that prefer not doing that, it'll give you a starting point, like your first step down the road. And that is something that's lovely about our job. So we do miss the freedom but also having the restriction is the thing that makes our job
Speaker 2
19:32
easier. Occasionally, we get a constraint on on a brief where it is hell and we bash our heads against the wall repeatedly trying to make it work. I can imagine Yeah, yeah. But at least at that point, you can go back to the client and say, Okay, this this feels like it's not working. How solid is it? Can we tweak it? Can we change it? But it is not. That gives you an interesting challenge, which yes, it lively? Well, I
Speaker 3
19:54
think a great example is when I worked on League of infamy, there was quite a strict restriction on The amount of cards we had for like equipment. And I found that so difficult and I wrestled with it for weeks. But what actually come out the other end is a system where you sell back most of your kit, and you only keep a couple of pieces, which actually avoids that thing you get in a lot of Dungeon Crawlers where you get like equipment bloat, where you just by the time you get to the fifth dungeon, you've got everything, and you've got so much stuff, you can't even remember what all your kit does. And it's stacked underneath one another. And it becomes this thing where people don't really care about kit, because as the values you've already got everything you could get
Speaker 2
20:32
at the end, isn't it? Yeah, level 10. You know, has anyone got a thing that will help with this? And everyone looks down this like, two page inventory? Yeah, somewhere in here. I've got some stuff.
Speaker 3
20:42
Yeah, exactly. So. And actually, what it did was it forced me to reassess all of those easy assumptions about dungeon crawlers, and actually made me come up with a system, which I'm really proud of, which is like a way where you sell back your kit, and that can give you some more renown. And it's a thing where infamy sorry, it's a thing that actually makes the game better. But the restriction was extremely difficult. It was a real challenge for a long time.
Speaker 1
21:10
This is the power of creative constraint, isn't it? It forces you to be creative. In fact, actually, if you have no constraints at all, all you have is a vacuum. It's so interesting that the way you say that, because I think when I think about all the kinds of projects we're working on right now, the games of which there are now probably four or five in the pipeline. With all of those, the most interesting part for me is once we've got past the very first initial concepting, it's the most enjoyable bit because I think, as you say, game design is about problem solving. That's the part where it gets exciting, right? You've got the problem to solve is where you're saying, Oh, how are we going to achieve this particular objective? Rather than just oh, what thing in general could I make? Which is just too, it's too general, it's too free? And yes, sometimes you have to renegotiate those, those elements, those constraints sometimes because they just don't work or they're just it's not workable. That is just that is life. But it's a great starting point. So on that point, then let's talk a bit more about this brace. What do you include in those design briefs and make them highly functional?
Speaker 3
22:06
As much as possible? Yeah, basically, we will, we will interrogate the client, and get as much information as possible to the point where it's like, how many phases this form? Are there any specific components. So like, quite often people will approach us with miniatures and go, we've got a miniatures range, and we want a game for it. So here's the miniatures we want to make. You need to accommodate that. Or they'll say, We want a game that, you know, is no bigger than this, that takes this amount of time because we've noticed there's a gap in our market, or they'll they'll give us limitations, but then we'll push into the corners of that and be like, okay, so if we've got a miniatures game, do you want dice? Because that's always an assumption that all miniatures games need dice? Or how do you feel about having does it need to be six sided dice? Or can we have like bespoke tooling on the dice?
Speaker 2
22:53
Yeah. Are you creating a starter set, which includes dice, you know, or are you just doing a book, so we look at the the physical product they want to make. So if it's a miniatures game, a lot of time, it's just a rule book. If it's a board game, we talked about things like how big it need, how big they envision the boxes being, the RRP is, the rough play account is. And I mean, we asked them to give examples of similar games. And if they haven't got the idea on that, we will come up with ourselves, and we will show it to them. And we will, a lot of the time we write our own briefs and get them to approve. Yeah.
Speaker 3
23:27
As somebody that uses these models, and we'll do, we'll ask you a bunch of questions where that and then we come up, and we'll go away and do a load of r&d and make some decisions based on a combination of our experience, what's popular in the industry, you know, if they say they want an RRP of 70 pounds, but they want to have like 100 minis, we'll be like, Well, what does that sort of game look like? Because that's gonna be very different to a RRP of 200 pounds, because they'll want a more in depth game, which is much bigger and much grander. And, you know, what can we do for
Speaker 2
23:58
what they've won? A game that is written for two players is very different from a game that is written for two to five players. There may be a two player experience in there in both cases, but you need to think about what what the game, what, what purpose it needs to serve. And I mean, then there are things like when we do things that are based on a licence, we talk about which aspects of the licence they want us to specifically key into. So for example, with Hellboy, it was very open, it was like they had access to the entire Hellboy range of comics. But they had already started making the miniatures they want these particular models to be in the game. And so it was like, well, we have do you want us to draw on themes and imagery from the entire run or just from that part there and that happens with a lot of things. So we did the Devil May Cry board game first input games, which faces the video game, and that was a very interesting one because the board game experience it's a multiplayer cooperative game, which the video game that never been. How do you want us to adapt that? Which parts do you want to keep? Which parts? Do you not mind changing?
Speaker 3
25:01
Yeah, because you can't keep the complete experience because the complete experience is not multiplayer and is not
Speaker 2
25:06
the skill in playing the different micro video game as I learned or doing research this and learn how to suck at it is carefully timed button presses and reading a situation around you and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1
25:16
That's a single player experience. Yes. Is there a reason why they asked for a multiplayer cult version of
Speaker 2
25:21
that? We never asked why, but I would assume it is because see, solo games don't sell as well.
Speaker 3
25:28
Okay. glendo. So you can include more minis, because you can be like, to how many players? So here's more player minis you know,
Speaker 2
25:36
as it happened, we included a set of solo play roles in the end, so you can play it solo. But it's still a very different experience. But yeah, absolutely. That that is one of the things that we often ask like now, especially when we briefed that one, about four years ago, we were just one of the first projects was done. Now we are much more detailed and exactly what we what we want and why. And
25:56
yeah, times it's just because the client wants to
Speaker 2
25:59
Yes, but we will offer the therapist will say, Why do you want to use dice? What Why are dice the right thing? And if it's just because they've only ever played games with dice, we will then show that we've actually I think that we've shown clients other games and played them through a couple of rounds. Back in the days we have meetings in our office, we often get a game out and play through a couple of rounds of things. So how about this? And you can sort of see the brain ticking over. So actually, we don't need to have a thing. We thought we could do this instead. Yeah. And
Speaker 3
26:27
I think some of it is just assumptions like we all do it, we all make assumptions. Like if I say to you describe a board game, we all come up with a picture in our head. And that's what people are seeing. So we will interrogate assumptions to make sure that they're there for the right reasons. If someone says, there has to be no more than 120 cards in the game, because they've done the costing, and they don't want it to be more than that. Because then it changes the amount that it takes to produce. Fair enough. If they've just picked that because it sounds like the sort of number that you should have in a game, then that's not a good enough. We're not if they say it is at the end of the day, they're the client. But like,
Speaker 2
27:02
yeah, classic one is that yeah, I say the way cards are made for games is, you know, a certain number of cards that and size will fit on the card sheet printers, one sheet and the cards are cut out. So actually, the exact number of cards don't really matter. It's it's bands, you know, if you over 64 Poker sized cards, it's a second sheet, if you have 70 Poker sized cards, or 90 poker size cards is generally gonna be the same cost of manufacture, because they're just cutting out one big sheet and throwing away the rest of recycle the rest. Yeah. And that's a client might not know that they assume well, I played my mistakes, and they had a deck of however many cards. So I'm going to suggest that is number of cards, you have miscarried
Speaker 3
27:38
Exactly, so we just interrogate every detail we can. And sometimes people are very loose, and then we will go and decide limitations for the starting brief. And we will decide what the product should look like before we start. Or sometimes clients are extremely specific about what they want. And then that's a joy, because it's really easy to like, be like, Okay, this is the starting point. That's cool. As we always say to the clients, as well as that, sometimes things will grow, you know, you'll get to a point where like, this game is different to the one we first started making. And then that's a point of checking in with the client and making sure they're happy with it. But sometimes it's actually just a case of of keeping them up to date, and then being happy with the process. And then I sort of mutually agreeing, oh, actually, this would be better as for players rather than up to five or actually, this is much better as a two player experience. So whatever it is, that becomes a dialogue. But the starting point is so key for the development.
Speaker 1
28:32
So given that starting point, and then I'm going to ask you a slightly broader question based on that before we move on to more parts of the process. Because there are things here, I'm really interested to find out more about what does product mean to you,
Speaker 2
28:43
when we talk about the products in our process is the finished items sold on the shelf. So usually a a game in a box with all the different pieces shrink wrapped and complete and sold as it is. And that is like that's the that's the end point. Yeah, process. I think if you got anything other than that,
Speaker 3
29:00
no, I would say it's really interesting because we always well, not always, but we quite confidently talk to clients about the fact that we do try and consider product limitations as in, we can't have the box bigger than fitting on a colored shelf, because then it won't sell as well. Or we you know, so don't make a board that's like, you know, three foot by three foot and doesn't fold up very well, because that just isn't going to be marketable. And we try and consider a lot of those like physical limitations as well as the conceptual ones of what is the game. But it's really interesting to be challenged because we also don't do graphic design or art or any of those elements we don't we don't talk to the manufacturers about the 3d plastic trays that go in the box at the end. None of that is to do with us. So even though we consider those elements it's actually not we don't take it from concept to final product. We very much take it from concept to final game. Yeah, with us. considerations there needs and then pass it on to the client and they go away and make the game,
Speaker 2
30:05
it will be nice it was that clean cut. What we always tried to push to get like some elements of graphic design layout, you know, miniatures, we're trying to get that done during the process, because invariably, otherwise, you will try to get something laid out. And we're quite good at avoiding this now. But there have certainly been times when a graphic designer has gone Oh, we just can't fit them as much text onto a card, or actually, that board is not going to fit in the box or something. And that can cause issues. And we have to go back and rework things accordingly. But I think we're getting better.
Speaker 1
30:36
You're not directly working with the artists and the graphic designers for the company, you're giving them and then they're managing that part of the process. Yes,
Speaker 2
30:45
but by default, that's the way it works. As we work with some smaller clients, they might not have access to those things. So we will then either help them find freelancers and manage those freelancers, or we will suggest people let them deal with it. But if we're working with people that have either got in house artists, don't worry about Mantic games and steam, fortunately, have complete in house design teams, we just give them the files and step back.
Speaker 3
31:09
And they will come back to us as well. Because whenever a graphic designer is let loose on like, I don't know, a character card, they might want to change the icons, because we just use default icons, like if it's defence, we might just put a shield on there, and we get it off of off the internet. And we're not, because we're not using that as a final product, it is a placeholder. So then they might come around and go, I've redesigned the icon, and I've put it in a different place on the card. And they will come back to us and just be like, What do you think of this? And most of the time, we're like, Yes, fine. But we might also say things like are Be aware that these cards are held in someone's hand to try and avoid putting things in the bottom in the bottom left hand corner or the bottom light or make sure that you don't put all of your your icons on the far left side of the card. Because then there'll be really hard to see if you're holding them in like a hand of cards, and stuff like that. We might be like, Oh, no, the text is really too small for people to be able to read that quickly in a game. So you're going to have to make that bigger. And so we'll give them some feedback. And that we're happy to have that back and forward. But we very much designed the game with the expectation, most of the time that people will take that away and make it into a product.
Speaker 2
32:19
We have had situations where if you do right now where we're working with artists, the client is paying for the artists you're managing, because he's got a whole background in management. Yeah, I
32:28
was gonna ask about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3
32:30
yeah, yeah. So I used to manage artists in a previous life. So that's why, so heres the thing. But again, that's a service that we offer, like that is a thing. You know, when we discuss fees, we can say, well, we have the capacity to manage artists for freelancers and graphic designers. If that's something you want to opt in, to pay us to do, but it's not a default part of what we do. It's just it's a it's an option.
Speaker 1
32:56
Is it easier or harder for you generally to have the more limited role in the process? Where you are secondary distance from the art and graphic design? Is that is that the easier version of the process? Or is it the way when you actually have a bit more control is easier?
33:10
Yes, is far easier.
Speaker 2
33:14
Both ways like not having to manage it is lovely not having to actually have the pressure of doing that is great. But also losing the control can mean things happen that I've certainly had experiences, even for larger clients, even when I was working in games, workshop, things where I've handed something over and stepped away from it. And then for whatever reason, I haven't seen it until it's like the proofs are ready. Oh, no, they misunderstood what that thing supposed to be. Can that can be quite well, they've changed something deliberately. And it's not a change that I would have made myself. But that can suck. What I like to try to do is when we do a handover, we try to get the graphic designers artists to play the game, so that they know what the context is for the things they do.
Speaker 3
34:00
Yeah, absolutely. And we always try and foster a positive relationship so that we are there if there's, if they get something done three months after we've handed it over, because they're working on the graphic design or whatever, we do encourage them to send it to us just so we can get an eye over it. Because there's also there'll be just like silly misunderstandings, like your use of purple icon. Because you just will i Oh, that's a cool icon for a blood drop or something. And then they'll read that and go, oh, there's a purple dice in the game. So that must be a representation of the dice. Yeah. Well, it needs to be purple as an example. Yeah. It wasn't anyone's fault that that happened because it was both of us approached it in a completely logical way. Just completely different sides. So it was just a misinterpretation of like, oh, that icon does not represent that thing. We didn't even notice that it was a weird colour. We were just like, oh, that's a cool icon to use as a placeholder, but obviously a graphic designer or an artist might be very sensitive. To the colours and shapes that you're using, where we don't necessarily think about that in the process. So having a collaborative experience is always easiest, whether that's us managing it, or someone else managing it, but we can have that collaboration, even if it's months down the line. And we always say, I know we've started working on this sufficiently that if you send us proofs through, we will check them through, we'll have a quick look. That doesn't mean we'll go through line by line, because that's a completely different job, though, you know, editing and all of that. But we will quickly cast our over it to make sure there's nothing that stands out on there'll be just weird decisions, where they're about like, putting wounds when tokens on a character, rather than taking wound tokens off. Well, stuff like that. And it can totally change the meaning of how you write a rule. And the graphic designers just got this looks cooler, maybe. But they won't necessarily understand the nuance of a rule or the way Something's written. So we always like to check those things.
Speaker 1
35:52
So my question, then, would be the if you could control more of the process, where actually you're the one who organises for the graphic design and art to happen, and everyone's happy to pay for the extra cost for that service? Would you in general prefer to work that way,
Speaker 2
36:06
we have a very busy schedule as it is. And I think as long as we could manage it, so that we had oversight with them. And we had enough time to do that without it becoming our full time job. Because it can be a very intensive thing to do, especially if you've got multiple artists and designers. It can be a thing where it just eats your entire week up. Oh,
Speaker 1
36:24
sure. Oh, yeah. It's a huge problem. Right? Like, this is another one of those things that you know, people don't think I've got a game on Kickstarter, don't think about. That's a much bigger part of the process in the game design develop.
Speaker 2
36:34
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. This is the thing designing the game. Don't get me wrong. It takes time. But it's the easy part. It's the part that is most
36:42
game made. So yeah.
Speaker 2
36:44
But yeah, I think if we have the ability to match, I mean, we've always said, but we would love kneecap to grow a little bit, we'd love that. Guess what, we've got a small office, we've currently got a small office, but slightly bigger than small office with half dozen people eventually, maybe, and have an in house designer in house artists, you know, those sorts of things, where we've got a good working relationship with them, we know how they work, we trust them. And then we can kind of manage them in that sort of way, that would be lovely.
Speaker 3
37:11
Yeah, to that point, I have one or two people creatives. And doing that would be amazing. And then you could get them involved in the early stages of the game design. And that's when you start getting really interesting things because we sort of build ourselves is sort of like a catchphrase, although we don't even know the exact meaning of it. As we go. We our theme first designers. Because we really want like the theme of a game to be baked into the design of it. So it's not just you make a game devoid of theme, and then pop something on top. And then that's you just change some words to other words, and you make the art of that theme. So like in Hellboy, it was really important to us that when you used Hellboy in the game, Hellboy the board game, he felt like he was punching things like Hellboy would punch them. That was really important. And like key to the whole development of the core game system was, how do you make it so that Hellboy can punch stuff super hard? How do you make it so that Liz can also use flame stuff, and it feel really threatening and dangerous for her to do that? And
Speaker 2
38:21
I think more than that, I think, you know, what is the structure of a Hellboy story? What sort of stories does it tell? You know, all that then making sure that is in there from the start? Yeah, I know, from playing magnets. The theme is absolutely baked into every element of that game. Yeah, yes.
38:35
Thank you.
Speaker 2
38:36
Yeah. In fact, I was sat here, when you played it, I'm in the same spot that when you were amazing. And I just thought, you know, it's, it's a game that it puts you in the shoes of, you know, a property developer. And that's what we always try to do we try to put the player in the shoes. It's not, we don't be wrong. We have a lot of love from abstract games. We play a lot of Euro games. Yeah, we got a lot of games where the theme sometimes feels like an afterthought. But that's not what we like making.
Speaker 3
39:03
Yeah. And I think that when you can get that collaboration where like the artist gets a chance to play very early versions of the graphic designer does. Not only do they get inspiration to do that kind of you need the early thoughts to just sit in the back of your head so that while you're standing in the shower, so that you can be like, Aha, there's an idea. And if you don't have that rumination time, I think you kind of rushed that process a bit. So getting that early exposure is really good. But also sometimes they just come up with really insightful stuff, because they're like, ah, because this is, I don't know, insert theme here, because it's a dungeon crawler, it'd be really cool if and they'll come up with something completely different that you can bake into the game at a really early stage. And that always always ends being a better product. It always does when everyone is bought into that from an early stage and you're all kind of having a bit of a hand in every stage you do tend to get a better product of the other end, but it's so difficult to do that because Because when we're making a game, and it gets handed over, we're making another game. And so we'll have a look at the game and give feedback on it. But it's not like we're there the whole process while they're creating the arm for graphic design, we might be playtesting a game while another game is being written. So that games
Speaker 2
40:17
is a constant pipeline. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1
40:22
I can imagine it's a it's a lot of projects. Because if you're a publisher, obviously, you're if you're doing the whole lot, as I'm doing it later games, where we're doing the design, the development, then the briefing into artists, and then all the way up to production line, the only bits we're not doing actually physically making the product, if you've got all that to do, you're always gonna have small number of projects, given the same size team. So obviously, you're gonna have a more of a kind of a throughput. I'm really into this question of kind of what the platonic ideal version of needy cat games looks like, in the sense of your description of this having a small office, because it sounds a little bit to me, like, the role you start doing is like the role of Product Management. One of the interesting things that I found in the board game industry is this is a term people don't really use very much in board games, really, but in software is massive. And it's like, it's such a critical role in any software company to be the product manager, because in that situation, you're the person who decides what the objectives are, what the product should do, what it's going to be. And you shepherd it all the way from initial inception to delivery and maybe including even even some extent of the marketing, at least, around the devising of the marketing strategy. Well, certainly about board games is how cut up the processes. So you've got like the public, the designers who are coming to ideas, and maybe there is no market for their idea, but there'll be pitching it all over the place, you know, all the time. Your approach seems to me to be unusually holistic, compared to maybe a lot of the industry, because you're doing some of the freelance art management at times, with some clients, the smaller ones, generally, you're helping the actual, the original people come up with ideas to actually tighten their ideas a lot, because you're saying you're writing the briefs to go back to them to say, do this. Yeah, exactly. Really important stuff early on, like play accounts, things like that. And box size, materials, limitations, maybe even eventually manufacturing costs or something you might consider. And so you're doing quite a lot of that, and just want to have some of that some of that is and the reason I asked the question about product is because I'm always very interested, see what people think about that. Because my definition is a little bit different. To me, the product is the totality of the box, the experience at the table, the price point and the marketing channel, I think about it as the entire experience that I would exchange money for, because I feel like so many of what makes them most game financially successful is that they deliver on a particular kind of experience for people, right, like how gloomhaven was probably monetarily successful, because it was the first game that actually made you feel like you were playing one of those long form RPG video games.
Speaker 2
42:50
Yeah, yeah, going back to the original thing, you're saying about WhatsApps platonic ideal was the thing we'd like to get to I think we've been doing some work with some other designers and developers, we've got a small team of just freelance game designers who we who we know and we network really well. It's a network team. But it's people that if somebody approaches us with a game idea, and we don't have capacity, we can farm out to them. And we kind of we do it through us, the people have come to us, because they trust us to do a good job. And so we will work with that freelance to make sure it's up to scratch and it hits all the points in the brief. And we will use our experience to make sure it's as polished as it can be. But what I would like, I'd like to develop that what Yeah, I think the ideal would be if we had a situation where we are, as you say, managing the product. But then we have a game designer, a game developer, an artist, an illustrator, you know, then we partner with a manufacturer or something. And we all have someone on the team who does all that stuff. Yeah, that that kind of is where I'd love to be because that is where we have the freedom to dig in and get involved all stages of the process to a degree but not have the obligation of doing all ourselves. Because I think we're both people that would get bored of doing just one part of it all the time.
Speaker 3
44:04
Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why we wanted to be self employed in the first place was just doing the same job day in day out for the rest of my life. You know, nine to five was just not on the cards for
44:15
certainly this. This
Speaker 3
44:16
is always changing. Yes. Always changing. We get so many different people approaching us for games. And we do occasionally do other little bits as well. We'll do like rules reviews. And
Speaker 2
44:28
we have a podcast we've done the the game design courses we've we've run the industry networking group that we do, which is nothing, which is it's kind of expanded since lockdown, which is interesting. We've got people further afield now. But yeah, yeah, that was that was originally just because we were sick of going to shows and seeing colleagues in the industry, people that we knew in the industry, chatting and chatting them for five minutes in a real rush then going away and carrying on working, not seeing them again to the next show and then realising that they lived five minutes away from us. So we just thought All those little get togethers and that's now 300 people. I
45:03
think it's more than that. I think it's
Speaker 2
45:05
more now. And we just offer, you know, support and things. And it's the thing that we did, because it seemed like a good idea. And it's one more thing we've done it, we've been very keen to just try out different things. Yes.
Speaker 3
45:17
Definitely. It's like during lockdown, I made some demo boards for long war games, terrain, because I have that skill set. And so when asked us Do you know anyone who makes all games, terrain demo boards? And we were like, No, I can make them.
Speaker 2
45:32
It was actually it was it was alarmingly long time during those few things. Oh, we'll go and have a look. I went and looked around. No, no one does. And then he said, Sophie, don't, don't you do that? I do. Yeah. You sort of realised
Speaker 3
45:50
Jane that down, it's just another string to a bone, another income stream. And so that was the thing that we do. And occasionally I do them now as an extra little bonus. So we're very open to just giving lots of different things to try, which I think is really key when you're in a small businesses, not to shut down opportunities too early not to go my company just does this one thing, because that's the one thing I'm interested in is worth exploring around that. Because actually, sometimes you find weird little foibles, that you're actually quite good at Little weird things. But you can be like, oh, oh, this
Speaker 2
46:22
is a thing that people want to pay me to do. Amazing. I think even in my 5-10 years time, wherever needy guy is, I would still like to have the freedom to do that. And that's what I crave. I think I need that variety. Yeah, function. You
Speaker 1
46:35
almost like that kind of the Google concept is never they have a sort of 10% time or 20% time to work on non job related projects. Yeah, probably because they know that actually, a lot of quite creative people who actually would get very bored if they weren't able to do things that are a bit different, right? Because this isn't just a nine to five in the sense of like, I'm, I have interest outside of work, and it's just about paying for me to live. There are almost infinite better options, and then games for that if we're completely honest. tabletop games. Yeah, comparatively small industry, high levels of uncertainty competing with other people who were happy to do it for love and not get paid. Not an ideal situation, if you want to make piles of money.
Speaker 2
47:12
We've certainly seen a few people come into the industry saying, I'm gonna, you know, leverage this this industry that is growing industry and make loads of money off it. And it's always you're not going to be here in two years. Oh, yeah. And sure enough, they always tend to disappear. It
Speaker 3
47:27
demands a lot of passion to push through. Because there's one it is still quite a young engine. It's been around for a long time. But in terms of the way it's growing, the speed, it's growing at it most of the industry is very new, like there's a lot like Kickstarter still only been around for a decade. Yeah. Not a long time,
Speaker 2
47:46
crowdfunding has remade this industry and the industry that is now it's not what it was 10 years ago. In this current format, it's still very much in line adolescent phase. I think they're nothing is certain? Well,
Speaker 1
47:58
if we talk about board games, because I think industry thing is that there's this interesting division, I think, is not always clear between tabletop war games, as pioneered really primarily by Games Workshop, and the broader board game universe is that the broader board game universe is really young, right? Because actually, before the 1990s even the idea of there being a kind of connoisseurship amongst hobby games didn't really exist. Absolutely. Yeah. Like there's miniatures collecting before that. But um, you know, for example, I think even Games Workshop's most famous product, which is probably 140,000. Right. And that is 92, 91?
Speaker 2
48:33
I think. Yeah, I think right about there somewhere. Yeah, absolutely. It's the sort of thing where, before that point, board games were a thing you had in a cupboard at home. And when you went around to your Nana's house, and on a rainy Sunday, you play a board game, or they'd come out on Christmas or New Year. In the UK, we've always had a strong culture of that sort of board game and like parlour games and that sort of thing. But as you say, it wasn't really until 10-20 years ago that people started being interested in hobbyist board games.
Speaker 3
49:00
So you know, I remember many years ago, we used to visit a collector games and reading a lot. What I was so shocked with was they had all these board games in which I was really excited about, but then they started doing like luxury board games like luxury, Scrabble, and luxury, Trivial Pursuit. And the thought of anyone being interested in having a deluxe fancy monopoly set with like proper, nice, chunky wooden pieces on a nice wooden board has been engraved. I just can't imagine anyone when I was in the 80s playing my broken monopoly said that the missing half is better than anyone would have cared about that. Now they're probably obviously worse people who cared about that, but the fact that that's come up so recently, is like,
Speaker 2
49:44
there have always been like high quality like knock on effects, but it's the the general quality shipped has moved towards that. Generally, people want nice games where it's not just a thin flimsy piece of cereal board. It's like it's nice, chunky cardboard and the components that are nice to move around. round you know, again, it's
Speaker 3
50:01
the experience the experience playing the game, not just about the game outcome or the game story, but the the physical experience you have while playing the game. But splendour, we've got a game spender, and it's fantastic, but it's got like poker chips in it, and just physically holding the poker chips. They're so chunky and heavy. They got such a nice sound to them. And it's like, that's part of the pleasure of playing the game.
Speaker 1
50:25
Yeah, completely. Well, where does all that mean that we're going then? Can this quality element just drift ever upwards? What what does that mean for the future?
Speaker 2
50:35
I think we're starting to see the rumblings of a split. Because there's a lot of talk happening, a lot of discourse happening around the subject of games starting to price people out, where the push for quality and luxury experience is making board games quite inaccessible to people without, you know, a large amount disposable income. So I think as the push for quality goes on, and I think and that is driven by, for example, I was saying earlier, Kickstarter, you know, you want to have things for your stretch goals and make your game as nice as it could possibly be. But then that affects the retail price. I think as that goes on, we're going to see more of a marketing, budget board games, there were there was a company still going I remember, there's a company called cheapass games. Now basically, they were sold. They're sort of like paper envelopes. And they were designed to be played with existing game clients you had so assumed you would have access to dice counters, playing pieces of some kind. Yeah. And you would buy it dirt cheap. And this is like the early days of the Internet, really. So they were they were mainly sort of conventions and things. And actually the equipment was now that that's where the bits, the printed Play Market. Now, basically, there was a whole it was a rebellion against board games becoming more sort of luxury, and people were paying for the same, you know, how many different types of people do you really need? The answer is lots. But you know, there was that kind of pushback against that. And I think we will see more of it. And I think what's interesting is you're seeing the rise of print and play games, where you get to gone into it and find dozens and roll and write games you can download. Yeah, free things like drive
Speaker 3
52:11
thru RPG and stuff like that as well, I think yeah, really is testament to the fact that people don't care about buying a fancy robot necessarily, you
Speaker 2
52:19
know, yeah, I think there's gonna be that split, you're gonna have the luxury market, then you're gonna have the budget market, you're gonna have the things that fall in between the two. I mean, certainly, we're seeing the budget. And when you look at things like the custom made board, game tables, board, game furniture and things, there are people who have enough disposable income, they want to have a really classy hobby, they want to be able to have a lovely gaming room that you go into it, it's an experience, then there are other people who will people at university or college or at school, who maybe just want to just play games, because games are cool. And there is everything in that spectrum in between the two.
Speaker 3
52:53
I think what we'll get is more games that fulfil more niches, because I think it's where lots of people are like, Oh, it's a crowded market. It's not. It's not always growing so quickly. I've heard people being like, Oh, well, there's already so many kick starters out this month. Like how and I do agree that Kickstarter, I think is getting crowded. And you have to stand out you are that's the thing, but I don't think we'll see a drop in games being made. I think we'll just see games fulfilling different niches, like you'll get more games that are similar to yours. 150 pound price point games, but being sold at 25. Where it's all bits of paper, and it's very low cost. Experience. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you'll see people who are like, well, I want and like the cool for miniatures and games. Well, that pushes the price up, but then you're going to get people who want those same experiences, but maybe are okay with chips.
Speaker 2
53:42
Because gloom Haven is basically, it is very rare to see a game like gloom Haven with mostly card studies. You know, that is a thing where I know loads of people who say, I love the idea of it. I won't play it. I like niches. Yeah, that's great. That would be I don't want to think how much would cost every miniature. Yeah,
Speaker 1
53:59
it would be hundreds and hundreds. Yeah, right. It would be like buying the complete pledge for Kingdom death monster. Right? It would be like that. But like all of it for one pledge for gloom Haven because there are something like 30 or so monsters, there are something like 10 of each of the chips of the monsters. So that's already 300 additional miniatures?
Speaker 2
54:18
Precisely. And what we'll say is a tangent clearly, but I think that putting miniatures in as a default isn't always a good thing. Because yeah, of course, if you want like miniatures, but you can do a lot more with standees. You know, if you've got like a legacy, I think the thing that was the charter stone. It's a legacy of Euro civilization building game that has a whole box of cards you draw from so certainly unlock new cards, bring them in, and some of those little card sized punchboard Things which bring new components into the game, and you can have standees on those. There's a lot of stuff you can do that miniatures can't get away with. It will be interesting to see people veer away from miniatures.
Speaker 1
54:57
I really wanted to come back to this question about your view. In the market and whether or not it's too saturated, because this is what I hear is the default thing people say, I think it's much more common to believe that the market is sort of saturated, that it's already fun to there are already too many games, for example, than to say the reverse. I think it's a really interesting, quite controversial statement in many ways that you said, and I'm really interested exploring that because I have a sense of the same thing. But I guess there are two ways in which markets can grow, right. So we actually know from the objective data that still growing so it can't be saturated in the sense that something like the average European growth rate is something like 5%. And in China, recently, I saw that the growth rate was 19%, or 20%, in market size every year, so as probably Asia becomes the more and more centre of all of this, that's going to become the really huge market. And there's still an absolute monster amount of growth left there. The question, I guess, that one might have, though, is the number of different games is a slightly different metric. So we've talked about Kickstarter might be saturated, what do we think about the number of different games being released?
Speaker 3
55:59
I really do think that the industry is massively growing, because there are so few people who still play board games as a like habitual thing, right? How many people do you know? Yeah, you probably as your friendship group, if you know, some people who are because you're into board games, you have surrounded yourself with people who are into board games. But actually, beyond that circle, how many of your friends and family every weekend go play a board game? And actually, that number of people, the people who play games sort of casually, but still regularly? I think that's the group that are growing massively, more and more people are like, Oh, well, we've got nothing better to do. I'll take my parents to the local boardgame cafe. And we'll spend an hour or two playing Ticket to Ride. And that is a huge market that is, I think, almost untapped. And actually a lot of the hobby, the hobby board game world as it is very niche, and pushes down on niches, there's put more miniatures in let's make it a more difficult dungeon. Let's go and make it more challenging without escape room games. Let's go in dig down into this really, really deep lore about Lord of the Rings, or whatever it is. We're actually I think, the untapped market is that the casual gamer who plays with their family, who gets more and more people involved that way? What games are they playing? Where are those games going to lead? And it's really interesting to see, like, if you ever go to a game or a board game cafe, on a Saturday afternoon, like we've got a couple local, obviously, current situation excuse but before everything sort of went bad as it were, you used to see whole families, people who clearly are not board gamers, playing like Ticket to Ride and Clank and, you know, like, I'm trying to think of some of the standard ones that they were always playing with, but also
Speaker 2
57:48
their beak tan then usually a monopoly out some Yeah. But you'd have a variety of different thing is, like you say, it's like, if you take a snapshot of the current audience for board games, if if that were not to grow, then yeah, maybe we're reaching a saturation point. But the fact is, is growing massively, you know, pushing into the market. Last year, running up to the Kickstarter around, we had a marketing intern from the University she was wonderful. She was, I think, a master student in marketing, and the university paid for her to come and do marketing for us. And she was from Pakistan, exactly where but she was saying, like, she had just started hearing about board games, becoming a scene out there. And she was taking back all this information. And like, she was saying, there is definitely an emerging scene. And so I think it's pushing into new markets. But I think also type two that is, you're seeing more voices creating. Yes. So I don't know how familiar you are with nib card games in Africa. Oh, yes, I've heard this. Yep. ACN, I want to say is it Nigeria somewhere, my mother or my geography terrible, but they set up a small board game convention. And honestly, about five years ago or so. And they started having a village, the board game convention, and then load of important board games that get people to come and play. And now they are producing their own board games. They have a board games Cafe, which is really popular. And they get what's really interesting is you look at the games, and the themes. And the gameplay are very different to what you see, in games that produced in this country or in Europe or America. There's one of the guys come on out design course, designs games, he over in India, and he has a whole bunch of games, he did a showcase on his YouTube channel. I'll put the link in the show notes. It was a showcase of Indian design board games. And again, the themes are so dramatically different. And whereas there's always been so India and Africa have always featured heavily in western board games. Now you're getting voiced by people that actually have an authentic voice to make those games.
Speaker 3
59:48
Absolutely. And then from there from a very specific perspective. Yeah, often have not read perspective.
59:55
There's the whole thing about colonialism in discussion itself, and also
Speaker 3
59:59
he Even, like, and you're looking at these these new emerging worlds. And it sounds really cool to be like emerging markets. But there are new, whole new worlds of what board game design even means and how it works. Like that convention you mentioned, there is like a whole culture now like there's a, there's a whole, like indie game designs, see this, there were people like make their own games of whatever they've got on their house. And there's like a whole culture of it now, where there's a new and more and more people just making games for as a hobby. And you just think this is the direction of games conveniency. You
Speaker 2
1:00:34
should try and get Casey on here. He runs nickel games, because I'm sure he would have some fascinating insights.
Speaker 1
1:00:41
That sounds like an absolutely fascinating conversation. Well, I have to say this entire conversation has also been incredibly fascinating. And I'm finding it very inspirational, actually, because I think it's really interesting to meditate on those larger questions of markets. I'm really aware, though, that we are rapidly running out of time. So what I would like to do is actually go to some listener questions next. Obviously, I think you've mentioned before as you run these tabletop design workshops, so he had a question about how you're switching to online workshops has changed your approach. He asked what things are easier online, and which ones are kind of easier face to face.
Speaker 2
1:01:14
We used to do workshops in person, we used to run a series of three, like full day seminars, which were in person they were, I think that 12 people's maximum eight in each one. Yeah, I've been 15 is not much I'm had a buffet, it was a nice kind of full day event. And we always ran in the morning was theory in the afternoon was practical work. So they would do stuff based on the stuff we've done in there in the theory session. Moving online, obviously change that quite a bit. For a start, we were able to have more people coming down, we still have to keep keep the the events to at 30. I think so. But because you don't have to physically come people into a room, that's, that's a bit easier.
Speaker 3
1:01:58
And we immediately we start breaking it up more, because the thing is, is we were very aware of when we did it in person that people would be travelling to attend them. So the last thing you want is to do, well, we decided we didn't want to do like, Let's do six hour long sessions, because then that means people have to travel or they're just not going to do it. So we made it these big long day events, they actually meant that we could make the sessions themselves a little bit more manageable by just breaking them up into smaller chunks, and also
Speaker 2
1:02:25
more coherent. So initially, the three things one was just about kind of the very first steps getting an idea out of your head and onto paper and onto the table and playing a game. Then we talked to them in the middle one about refining your idea. And the third was about kind of manufacturing and production, that sort of thing. And part two in the middle had kind of a lot more to it really the whole point of old versus developing and refining. Again, it's a massive subject. But we felt the need to make the days quite dramatic. So when we moved to online, we went with a six part a six hour long seminars, we ran it weekly. And Part one is still about getting the ideas out you hadn't today or part six still about what happens at the end. But parts two to five had room to breathe so we could spread out that middle part of the process. It's the same information delivered in a different format.
Speaker 3
1:03:14
but I think it's probably a bit more accessible, especially for people can't sit and concentrate for hours at a time. Because even us at the end of the day, we were just shattered. So it was quite an intensive experience. I think the thing that makes it difficult, though, is not being with people in the room when because we used to put people like we warned them that we were going to do it, we did tell people you're going to be put on the spot. But we used to put people on the spot after we done the first theory session and be like, right, okay, now make again, and people will be like, what made you get over like don't do your thing you've had your heart set on for the last 10 years, don't do the main idea. Make something completely new up. See, you know, it's a bunch of scrap paper, there's a big theme of like the initial getting out your head is just scrappy, don't commit to it. Don't put too much effort into it for the moment out of your head that it exists, then you can change it and make it better. If it's never comes out your head if you never write it down. And you you try to theorise the whole thing before you make it, which is what a lot of people do is their first stumbling block, and it doesn't exist. So it's not a game and you can't make it better. So we did this whole thing but being physically in the room with people you could be like, just right there is like
Speaker 2
1:04:29
the equivalent of the practical sessions in the online courses. We have almost a homework assignment like you can go away and do this thing before we look at an excellent but of course we're not in the room a will say make sure you do it because so many people came out of that first session saying oh my god, I hadn't realised that if I just give myself permission to make something that might be a bit naff, but it's complete communities playable. It's such a liberating feeling. So many people got so much out of that process
Speaker 3
1:04:57
games they made were fantastic. every single game had clever ideas. Every single game had great potential. You know? Yes. They weren't finished? Yes, they were clunky, because they were first ideas. But oh my goodness, the stuff that we saw, we were like, This is so inspirational.
Speaker 2
1:05:13
So that is a shame. We can't have that in the online. Cool. Yeah, yeah, that must be challenging.
Speaker 3
1:05:18
Because what you do get is you get people going, right? So here's my, this is the thing I've been working on for 10 years, and I'm thinking this or this and the other, you have the Foreign Service, I will just make it and then I will not until I've worked out how this stage was, you know, I just make it, you were in a room, I would tell you to put that aside, and I'd put a piece of paper in front of you and make you draw a box. Right, that's your brain. Right now, let's get something in there. But you can't do that online. So that is the one thing that I think you lose. But apart from that, I actually think it is a bit more digestible. And I think
Speaker 2
1:05:48
the training is that we were much bigger on the ongoing support. So we invite all the attendees to our Discord server, we've got a room locked just for them. And they if they need any ongoing support questions wherever we're there for them. And there's a whole, like, lovely community stream of game designers who are really supportive of each other as a result of it. So yeah, it's not quite the same, but I think it still works really well.
Speaker 1
1:06:09
What do you do to cut loose when you've had a stressful game design related issue?
Speaker 2
1:06:16
It was actually about a month ago, or whenever it was important, dated, quite specifically, we'd had a really, really tough day, a couple of tough meetings,
Speaker 3
1:06:24
very mentally challenging. When we say tough, we mean, like, you know, those days where you feel like your brains falling out your ears, and you're just like, I've just used all my brainpower.
Speaker 2
1:06:32
And so if you just said, I wish we'd go to the pub, and they just open I was like, we can go to the pub. And so we did, we went and we sat outside and very cautiously looking around at everyone suspiciously and given context. But we didn't, it was quite nice, we had a couple of drinks. One thing that's interesting is because we live together as well, it can be hard to switch off, especially if you've had a rough day. Like to not take that home is difficult.
Speaker 1
1:06:56
That must be very, very challenging. Also, because I can imagine if it's a particular issue, both of you really care about, you're going to instantly be like, Oh, I just had this idea about this. And you're thinking this might be time when you almost really want to segment it a bit and not talk about work. I mean, do you have some kind of no Shop Talk rule? How does that work? We try and have
Speaker 3
1:07:15
we're not strict on it these days. And we use a lot stricter, because we used to just work all the time, and do late nights as often as we could or go in early or one of us would go in early while the other one, two minutes for them to catch up. And it was, but we've actually very much got a quite strict like nine to five. And from Monday to Friday working schedule. We don't we try really hard not to pick in meetings around that. Obviously, there are issues with American people in America and stuff. But that's relatively we do have things where we're now a bit more conscious. So one might go, I've got a great idea I need to tell you so it's out my brain. And then I'll say the idea and then we'll have a quick chat about it. I'll be like, right, I'm going to write that down and then we're going to we're going to put on the shelf again.
Speaker 2
1:07:59
We often are things like if so robot fight club is going on kicked off last year that started when we decided we're both exhausted, let's go out and get some sushi. So we went out and got a bite to eat. And just because nothing of anything else. Oh, you're not we can make immediate back on to work conversation. And that happens so much.
1:08:18
Oh, god. Yeah, so
Speaker 3
1:08:20
we are a lot. And we are a lot better than we were. When we go to the pub. It's it's less about needing a drink and more about changing the setting. So it's about getting out of the office and getting out of the house. Because you have people occasionally seeing other people like is difficult though, because the last week I've had a really tricky, challenging day. I desperately want to see my friends. But the last thing I want to do is play a board game. Yeah.
Speaker 2
1:08:47
Definitely. A board game plan. Yes. Oh, I bet no. Soon as you start designing games, I'm sure you know, you've noticed you now can't switch off. You can't not see the production quality of the game or like oh, how do we make that component or whatever it might be?
Speaker 3
1:09:00
Like I remember there was one Christmas where we were like, Oh, we're just going to play like a family thing. And someone has a thing called trial blings of monopoly. And it was like a three tiered knockoff version it was clearly achieved caching and someone had it we will find we'll just play it because it's not to do with work. And I was getting really annoyed because it was just really boring. And I was just sitting there going well the the sides of the board are only eight long instead of 10 that you know we get a monopoly so when you're running two days the average is seven so you just landing in the same places in the board every time like
Speaker 2
1:09:34
I picked it apart. Yeah really mean? Oh, we couldn't I couldn't not really be
1:09:41
very popular.
Speaker 3
1:09:44
But it's just the fact that was like well, if they did a single dice roll or different decided days this would be a problem. But like you immediately start thinking about these things. So it is tricky, but it for us is changing of situation. We're very, very, very lucky as well. That we have Have a park literally five minutes walk from our office. So when we're getting really stressed, like with the thought, the way that we're thinking is getting a bit overwhelming, or we've got too much work and gave a stressed out, we go for a walk. And going just again, changing the scenario changing the place, we are able to just walk around a park is so good to reset and to de stress and having a dog now we have an office dog called Rosie. And she forces us to get out of the office on a regular basis. And we'll take Rosie for a big long walk. And when we come back for a reset, so that really helps.
Speaker 1
1:10:34
Fantastic. So you've got Rosie, so make sure that you take walks regularly. I mean, I think that's that's probably great advice for anyone to be honest, in terms of I think distressing and going for a walk in a green space is pretty much fantastic. I
1:10:47
think every time you get a dog, you know, that's the other way.
Speaker 1
1:10:50
The other one, we're forced to take the walk as well, isn't it? That's the advantage. So I guess we got to the wrap up then. So what should we be looking for from you is everything that we should want to look out for for maybe cat games coming soon.
Speaker 2
1:11:02
So I'm currently working on a game called myth and goal for blacklist games that is a it's like a fantasy sports game based kind of thing. It's, it's an interesting one because it's springing from a set of miniatures they're making which can be used in games of bloodbowl. But by being a popular games, workshop game, third party miniatures being a big thing for that. So our challenge was to make a game that use miniatures that are compatible with bloodbowl. But for my own personal benefit, having worked on people was nothing like it is very different. It's more about team management.
Speaker 3
1:11:34
It's really the I'm really excited about it, because it sort of forces you to think about the flow of the game and looking after your players and switching this players out when they get exhausted and things rather than it just being about individual players taking hits or whatever. It's a really interesting take on the genre that we've got. There's some stuff we can't talk about. Every game I work on is what I'm not allowed to talk about in this release
1:12:00
those NDAs
Speaker 2
1:12:02
Yeah, absolutely. But also, I mean, actually one thing that is quite cool. Sophie has been making set gaming tables for a while. As she started putting up on tick tock, I think she's young and relevant. Things are actually quite a nice little hobby community on there people with big into board games and things. And you're about to start making a new board. Should we live stream? Yes,
Speaker 3
1:12:24
I'm gonna be making a playable board and I'm going to be live streaming on Tik Tok. And Sophie makes terrain so you can come and check me out. It's like,
Speaker 2
1:12:31
yeah, so there we go. That's kind of that's as much as we can really talk about now. Obviously, our game design course is available at needycatgames.com/tickets. We've got quite a few things what the game is online, which is the six hour online version of the one that we did originally. That's mainly fantastic, because I have a massive lockdown bit. That's good. And then also I did one a few months ago, which goes more into sort of miniatures, war games and things, which is the thing that's quite close to my heart. So yeah, those are all up there. People can check us out.
1:13:06
More things coming hopefully in that regard as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1
1:13:09
I suppose indeed. Oh, well, thank you so much again, for joining me. It's been really fascinating. I hope we get another chance to conversation about the industry sometime soon.
Speaker 1
1:13:25
Producing fun is produced by naylor games.. If you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and its thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at Naylorjames, or write me an email at James@Naylorgames.com. Until next Time.
]]>Duncan Cowan is a convention director of Tabletop Scotland – a mid-size UK tabletop game convention that launched to a hugely successful debut in 2018, garnering more than 1000 unique attendees. In this episode we talk about creating a convention designed to reach out to new audiences, how to best use space to craft the ultimate convention experience, the impacts of Brexit and Covid and what practical things the game community can do to support conventions in a difficult time.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames
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Website: www.tabletopscotland.co.uk
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabletopScot
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tabletopscot
Speaker 1
0:22
Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is Duncan Cowan, one of the convention directors of tabletop, Scotland, a mid sized UK tabletop gaming convention taking place in Perth. If I had to pick a single favourite game convention, it would be this one. Table Top Scotland isn't yet a big show. In their first year back in 2018, they managed around 1000 unique attendees, but it was run like a big show. Rather than being focused on open gaming, as many of the UK smaller events are. It has something of everything, places to try games, places to buy them, design seminars, miniature painting events, and even an epic role playing adventure, where a throng of different dungeons and dragons groups all participate in a single, huge, interconnected story. What makes it best of all, though, is its atmosphere. Many of the UK conventions are great places for core hobby crowd, where serious gamers can hang out with their friends from the circuit. But tabletop Scotland is different. It's just as much about families, children, casual gamers, people from a rather wider background than usual as someone who tries to make games with quite broad appeal, that made it a fantastically useful testbed back in 2018. But more than that, I just felt really at home there. In a way I have never quite censored another show. Speaking to Duncan made it all click. Unsurprisingly, fostering this incredibly welcoming, open and accessible atmosphere was a deliberate choice by the whole team. From the start, they wanted to make a show that would grow the hobby and reach out to people who don't even think of themselves as board gamers, let alone the kind of people that would attend a board game convention. I learned so much in this conversation, from the clever use of space to tapping the untapped potential of local advertising. From the way different UK conventions collaborate for mutual advancement to how the community can best support these events going forward in a difficult time, from the impact of Brexit and COVID, to the viability of the online convention, this conversation was jam packed with interesting discussion. And behind the scenes peeks into creating just such a show. If you're interested in running a convention, exhibiting at a convention, or just how they work, I guarantee it will be of interest. We join just as Duncan is discussing his own game collection, and why it wasn't destined for the show.
Speaker 2
2:48
It's the third bedroom of the house. And it is entirely filled with games, every wall. In fact, I have aisles within the room of calyxes back to back, because I ran out of space just going around the walls.
Speaker 1
3:03
Oh my god. So it's like stacks basically like yeah, like an archive. It's
Speaker 2
3:10
according to board game geeks. My collection is currently about 1300 including expansions probably about 650 base games alone. And obviously with within that the remix of obviously you can have smaller card games and so on, but then also be Terraforming Mars big box as an example. Wow, Imperium and some of the, you know, the kind of more space consuming Kickstarter projects as well. So yeah, essentially, it's an entire room, it'd be fair to say it's probably starting to creep into other areas of the house as well. So as I look to my left, and notice an entire shelf of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Game sitting there, so yeah, so So yeah, there's there's a lot there.
Speaker 1
3:58
It's spread outside even of that. That's amazing. So actually, if you wanted to run games library for a convention, you've already got a complete collection.
Speaker 2
4:07
In theory. Yeah. But I'm one of those people. Yeah. And one of the all No, you can't be eating Doritos, and playing my game, dude. Yeah, because we had that discussion. Actually, before, before, we kind of decided what we're doing for games library at tabletop, Scotland. And, you know, one of the early suggestions was essentially, we just use our own collections. And sort of the internal alarm bells went off quite early. Okay, maybe some games but though that one, not that one, not that one. And that's not for you.
Speaker 1
4:37
And probably not this one. And that was valuable. And very quickly. It's like, actually, actually, Duncan, you don't want to lend any of
Speaker 2
4:43
your games. Do you? Use pandemic Herbert that? Yeah, exactly. I've played I've played this copy of Pandemic Legacy already. Maybe you can put those cards together. Don't worry about
Speaker 1
4:54
that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, completely. Well, it's very interesting when I spoke to Nick of the looter quest A couple of episodes ago, I think that's very much his approach was just to treat the stock of the cafe as just, it's disposable. You have to treat it as something that's ultimately just going to going to be destroyed. Yeah, and especially anything that's like more accessible and family friendly, a child will destroy it at some point. So like, I think you can't really use your games like that. I think to be honest, if you have any intention of keeping them,
Speaker 2
5:22
I think I probably take it too far the other way in all fairness. But I mean, yeah, I mean, I think, I think games that are intended, I mean, I listened to the episode with Nick and I thought those, I was actually taken by quite how many similarities there are, and his approach to, you know, how we lease things out within within Looter quest to how we sort of laid things out within the convention initially, in terms of that, Oh, interesting, you know, I guess what you want is the stuff near the door is, the less I get to stuff, it's not going to put people off and have them run into the hills if they're not dyed in the wool gamers. So if you want family, and if you want kind of your people new to game, and to stay longer, you are not going to put an 18 XX game on a table right at the front door of a convention, you know, whereas the people who are going to be interested in that will will go to the back corner of a convention hall, you know, for that experience. So actually, what Nick was saying, was actually bringing everything in true with a lot of the decisions that we made, in terms of which areas of a convention hall, you put the family friendly stuff, you know, the kids games, where you put the gateway sort of areas where you put play testing, where you put the retail area, and then where you put the stuff that you know, people are basically just going to want to go and get the way everyone else to play in there. The complex games in the forecourt.
Speaker 1
6:32
Yeah. Oh, that's really interesting. So I mean, because I think this is exactly the kind of thing that anyone who's curious about how kind of conventions are organised as probably often uses of conventions, but not people who don't have the experience of running them of exactly kind of thing. Must be questioning to work out, like how exactly do you plan out the shape of it, because you have, even tabletop, Scotland, which is not the biggest convention, but also by no means the smallest convention around, you've got a lot of space, right? I think in year two, you had two halls, at the Perth convention centre, as I understand it,
Speaker 2
7:03
so the venue that we use the juror centre and pair essentially, it has two large halls, it's got lots of other little spaces around the sides of that, and you know, an upstairs area and balconies and whatever, but two large halls, which when they're not being used for conventions, like ours, one is a curling rink, so it's generally a donut, and the other is an indoor bowling hall. So in year one, we took only half the space because really, we didn't know what the appetite was going to be what was the demand for a convention of a scale and size and duration in Scotland, so we only took one of the two halls. The second year, we managed to expand it into the second hole as well, which was, you know, kind of testament to how well your one had gone. Yeah, we actually, we actually found that the heat that was actually generated by the convention happening in the one hole that we took, was having a knock on effect in terms of the ace in the curling hall next door, because they were in the process of just laying the ACE and they do it in layers on a certain level of humidity that's required has to be kept within certain parameters. And so much heat was being created by all the gaming and all the people in all we had it skewed that completely cause condensation, which then dripped from the ceiling on to the esos it was forming completely warped it so they had to go back to the drawing board and actually start that all over again. So that's the power of gamers for you, we can help a
Speaker 3
8:26
lot of heat generated the amount of condensation in the room just oh no
8:33
oh my god QQ sweaty nerd jokes almost immediately
Speaker 2
8:38
so that first year that that first hall obviously you know, we hadn't done it before. So we had to kind of make some decisions in terms of you know, what we put where and so on. So we were going very strong and as a family friendly, kind of encouraging new people into the hobby as well as actually catering for those who are already in it. So have a sponsored area kind of families on so we wanted that to be quite close to the main entrance we wanted that to be you know, families coming in for the first time immediately seeing something bright and yellow and you know, something familiar and kind of friendly about and Riot, we actually even and this was pure chance, but the running of chairs were more would actually sit in the hall up and the venue also owns a swimming pool next door that went to the swimming pool next door got some extra chairs which happened to be bright yellow plastic chairs. So I've set up in the habit area and it just worked absolutely perfectly from that kind of visual perspective.
Speaker 1
9:35
Oh wow. A lot of people really thought that was completely deliberate. It's like very much on brand for the for the game.
Speaker 2
9:41
So if you're listening to this, you know the truth. That's very interesting. Give it to yourselves. And then what we also wanted to do for those that weren't necessarily come in as families, but really maybe didn't have kind of experience of exactly what it was to tip Scotland was going to provide was something someone that you know, people Walk in kind of completely bewildered in terms of what do I do? Where do I go? So we set up a gateway area, close to the cost of but not immediately at the the main entrance into that hole, where we set up it games that are so I guess your traditional sort of gateway style games. So we had things like splendour, we had pandemic, we had ticket to raid, we wanted things that had that were sort of easy to get into easy to explain, had table presence had a bit of pop, that, you know, people would walk past and go, Whoa, look at that. And so bring them in. And we had, we really overdid it in terms of the volunteers on that area, we had pretty much one volunteer per two games happening. So that essentially you could sit down with people, talk them through how the game works, play a couple of rounds with them, and then sort of back off and let them continue the game themselves, and then go on to the next table to teach another game to someone else. And that was it was it was kind of a risk to do that. But I think it definitely sort of paid off
Speaker 1
11:02
in a lot of staffing relative right to just being able to do that to having just one person per two games. Yeah, I mean, I know running demos on stands like that. It's a very intensive exercise. Yeah,
Speaker 2
11:13
no, absolutely. And, you know, it's about the right people as well. I mean, you know, conveyances just cannot function without volunteers. And one volunteer is not the same as another volunteer. So some people, they're 40 is shifting tables and chairs, and they're brilliant at it. And they, you know, they've got that kind of logistic element to it just off Pat. But there may be some people who are less comfortable either kind of handling cash, or being sort of Front of House and having that sort of, you know, direct interaction with attendees as they come in. So it's actually being able to not just say, great, we've got a list of 20 people have 30 people who want to volunteer, it's actually scratching the surface and finding out what are your strengths? What are you familiar with, are you the type of person who is going to be at ease with essentially opening up a cold conversation with someone as they walk in to convention for the first time in their life, and not put them off and attract them to, you know, try something that they maybe wouldn't have tried this gateway table or in the habit zone, or whatever it may be. So, you know, it's there's a particular skill set that we were looking for, for those people that were going to staff the gateway section, so that
Speaker 1
12:23
that's a completely different skill set. You know, being willing and prepared to shift huge numbers of tables and chairs around and just having the patience, just getting all that stuff done. And thinking about those logistics, and often in a tight space. As someone who used to run a volunteer organization, the thing I would ask is, that must have been difficult right? To find those people. It's hard enough to hire the right people when you've got money to pay people. But if they're volunteers, because there's not really enough money generated by the convention to actually have a fully paid team, How'd you even go about doing that about identifying those people than to do those jobs?
Speaker 2
12:54
I think probably you're one different from Year Two for that. So that the first time that we did it, I mean, to a large extent, we sort of identified people that we knew who were our friends, or who were members of gaming clubs that we were in, or family members, in a lot of cases that Dave, my fellow director, his two brothers were shoehorned into the library, in both year one and two. So essentially, we had a smaller number of volunteers in that first, that first year that we're essentially press ganged into it, by virtue of knowing us as organisers, year two, what was really interesting is that within, I would say, within days, if not weeks of the first event, haven't finished, we had people who had attended, as you know, as gamers, get in touch with us, you know, without us asking to basically see loved it had a great time, put me down, I want to come back and I want to kind of contribute next year, I want to volunteer, you know, the things that I'd be interested in, do it when it came to you to potentially we had more people than we needed. But you'll always have to look at these things. As you know, if 50 people tell you they're going to do something work on the assumption 25 actually are. Yeah, there's always that little bit of kind of attrition of intention, by the time that actually comes to the event. But But certainly, we had no shortage of people who were kind of volunteering themselves literally to come forward, before we had even put out any sort of clarion call to to ask for people. So I mean, you know, give us a warm, fuzzy feeling that would obviously done something right in year one that people wanted not just to return in year two, but actually so many wanted to be part of the event and actually kind of contribute to it as well.
Speaker 1
14:33
Yeah, I mean, as you say, I would say that is exactly testament to that. The fact that you before you even had to put a call out, I mean, even to put a call out and get a huge amount of response back would be a hugely positive sign. But if genuinely, people actually were just prepared to offer their services before even knowing that it was definitely gonna be right. And I'm number two, and how that would work. I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, we've had this discussion I know before, but it really was one of the best conventions I've ever been to. And and it was really, really fantastic. And so in some ways, it doesn't surprise me that that people did that. And I think it's really interesting thinking about about why that is, I've got some theories as to why I think tabletop Scotland is, was just such a good show back in 2018, which was obviously the first one as well as your first year that I went to. But I'd really like to know, with a little bit of kind of self analysis from you, your thoughts as to why it was so successful? And why did it go down so well, as a convention? Yeah, well, I
Speaker 2
15:29
mean, I think, you know, as you know, haven't been to a number, I think every conventions kind of got its own its own character, and its own sort of depends of what it does, you know, the, you've got the bigger trade shows, you've got the ones that are more. So it's all about the gaming, and there's not really a kind of a retail or a trade element. There are some that are really play test events to a large extent, some that focus on a particular type of game to another. And I think if I look at tabletop, Scotland, in terms of what we intended it to be in year one, and I think it sort of was the demography of the convention attendees was a little different than you would find in, you know, even any record, which was really one of the things we're aiming for, in that you had a great mix, I think of the gender balance, I think, that seemed interested in a lot. And I think there was also potentially that the family element of it. I mean, some of our probably best targeted advertising budget was a local magazine, which is distributed to all schools and libraries in and around the Perth area. And essentially, that allowed a lot of people who maybe wouldn't have thought about coming to something that was called tabletop, Scotland didn't even know what tabletop gaming was to actually, you know, take upon basically, and come along. And, you know, I remember on must have been the kind of the Sunday morning of the first tabletop, Scotland, I happened to be walking past reception there, my wife and was actually she was kind of front of the judge in front of house. So she shows me the family who had literally just walked in off the street, because they saw the banner outside the convention centre. And and basically came and said, What is this? You know, what am I doing? And I thought, well, rather than me just standing and given them the chapter and verse, well, here's what tabletop gaming is. And I said, Come with me. So this was like, mother, mother, father, and like two kids of about, maybe seven, eight years old, took them into the hall, there was an initial sort of like, whoa, you know, this is this is bigger than I thought it was gonna be. Yeah. And immediately, I took them over to the habit area, we just stood at the side, and just watched a couple of people playing kuruva watched a couple of people play in like a couple of other habit games, you know, renal, renal, Ido, and you know, games like that. And you could just see the kids immediately kind of go, what is this? I've never seen this before. This is brilliant, and immediately pestered, and mom and dad to go, Oh, we've got steam, I've got to do this. And it was, that's why we did it. I think, you know, it's to try and get those people who are so far outside the normal, I guess catchment of that type of event that actually bring in those in, you know, those kids that may be the only games ever played, but it may not, they may have bought rain or hail from the shop, they're gone home and played it talked about it with their mates in the playground, and there's a few more gamers to the future. So I think our ethos was about trying to grow, grow the hobby, be a focal point within Scotland for bringing together what are a very disparate and geographically distant set of gaming groups. Also, you know, the the kind of the shops that are around Scotland, that are pretty tight network, there's a small number of them. But you know, again, just people knowing that they actually have these on the doorstep, and they didn't before. So I think there's a good gender balance, I think there was a different balance of kind of family versus experienced kind of grognards. Yeah, yeah. But the old blended, and, you know, you actually saw people who did not know each other, that were sort of experienced gamers sitting down at tables next to families, and the families were asking them, What is that, you know, they're sitting down a Euro game, what is that? You know, what would you do that, what's all these wooden pieces, and they got talking to one another, and ended up actually getting a game over the library and certain play in that with one another. So, you know, see, when you see experiences like that, that is that, lets you know, that's what we were aiming for. And that's, that's kind of what the events sort of delivered, and often haven't spoken to you after the event as well. But, you know, when you when you're a play test and magnet there, and I think you had some kids, you know, kind of Yeah, some of those play test groups, which potentially give you a slightly different view on how people approach the decisions in the game sometimes compared to what you may have been used to before.
Speaker 1
19:41
Oh, totally. I mean, I think for me, there's this really interesting question about the family kind of atmosphere. And I think it was it's more than just even it's like attendance I would say it's atmosphere was something I just I really noticed. It's so fascinating to hear that you actually advertised in kind of local media, right? Because this element has is so cool. quickly gone from lots of what we think about board games, you think, well, this is this ultra niche thing. It's something that the nerds are into. And the nerds will find each other on the internet and they'll meet up. But there isn't like a space for, but no one else is going to be interested, right. And that can sometimes be the attitude and you've gone well Now hang on a minute. Let's advertise this to local people and see what happens when that happens. And I think it's interesting. They're talking about your idea about the accessibility as well, because it sounds like to me to make that work. Sounds like there's an advertising strategy. But there's also a kind of how you structured the room as well has to feed into that. Because presumably, if you put Twilight Imperium at the front, when people are coming in, they're not that that's not going to sell that to the kids, perhaps in quite the same way.
Speaker 2
20:45
Absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things that we did in year two that you you wouldn't have seen because you didn't need to make it to your to sadly, but we we had the media game walk the plank, which you may be aware of. So yeah, yeah, that's a small, you know, really small kind of card based game, really, we made a life sized version of that fantastic. So we had like a big ship, and we had bits of plank to take away and we had a big crack in on the floor and all the rest of it, and basically join one of our fellow directors as well, he, he basically said, if we did that, and nothing else, it was worth it. Because we had people gathered in teams before, they didn't know each other in some cases, before they got together in these teams, and basically had giant cards, one person filling the cards, the noise coming from that coordinate was brilliant, I'm sure some of the people sit and play in the 18X Games maybe weren't so keen on that, again, from from an atmosphere perspective, you know, everyone was looking at going, Whoa, what's up what's happening over there. And I think that's what a convention gives you that just a game doesn't, you know, you wanting to do something that you wouldn't be able to just do by, you know, putting a game down the table and playing it with your mates, you could, you know, you want that you can just book any church role in the country. And, and that's what you get, a convention has to give you something over and above that, and whether that's access to, you know, interesting, you wouldn't, you wouldn't have access to anywhere else, whether that's been able to try out a new game that's either not hit the market yet. It's in development, or, you know, something that is hard to get hold of, you know, or whether it's bringing buy, or whether it's, you know, any of the different types of zones that we've set up. These aren't necessarily things that, you know, you could get every day of the week. And that's what makes it you've got to give someone a reason to pay their, you know, their 10 quid or the 15 quid to come along to pension. But you know, for a lot of people that I've spoken to, it's about meeting up with people that they've not met up with all year, or only conventions, for example, and that's a big reason for a lot of people.
Speaker 1
22:45
Just to say that, that strikes me that that's probably one of the big motivations particular behind a show like aircon, I think it's so interesting. You mentioned that as an inspiration, because obviously, we did that as well, on the kind of campaign trail for magnate, we went to air con. And it was absolutely brilliant place to meet loads of people who are already kind of quite big in the hobby space, like I met loads and loads of really cool people, lots of reviewers and people like that, who were just hanging out having a good time playing games. But it had a very, very different atmosphere to something like tabletop Scott, as you said, like because it did seem very much more like it's about getting together just just a play lots of play things. It's very open gaming focused. I mean, very deliberately. It's not like that's an accident in terms of the design of the show. But yeah, that seems like that's very, very different to kind of what you were trying to try and
Speaker 2
23:29
try. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I've got to seal it. Yeah, of course, as I said, it was very much sort of the inspiration for kind of what we were aiming for in year one. And Mark and Ben have been absolutely brilliant in terms of kind of support and advice for us, when we were initially kind of setting things up and actually have supported in terms of some of the tech as well that we've we've kind of introduced in terms of the library and the bringing buy and so on
23:50
is really like you share technology, as well.
Speaker 2
23:53
So we've collaborated on that. And you know, obviously that's important as well that UK games export the amount of support the gift conventions like year corn and like tabletop, Scotland's fantastic, you know, there's a number of things that we really were able to do in year one and year two, that financially would have probably been beyond us had we not had support in terms of you know, the loan of cat. So even just things like Cafe barriers, printing, but for roll up banners, and so on your things like that, that you don't necessarily think about because they're just background dressing from an attendee perspective. But actually, they make a difference in terms of the visibility of, you know, split out different areas of a whole, for example, UK games export are very, very proactive in terms of support and like local shores around the rest of the UK, because it's it's a two way street. They promote us, you know, it helps us increase potential attendance, but actually, you know, speaking to, you know, speak to you know, Richard and Tony, basically there are people who live in Birmingham, who are gamers who don't know that UK games Expo happens in Birmingham every year. Yeah. And so you make assumptions all the time that Oh, well. It's the biggest show so everyone knows that. vote at all. So actually having UK games export, I guess, advertised across, you know, tabletop, Scotland and aircon kind of merchandise and the programme and so on, you know, it helps them massively as well as us. And having a strong network of good quality conventions across the UK helps everyone and it helps it helps this hobby to grow, and to reach new people. And and to kind of make sure that, you know, we're still going to have conventions in 5-10, 15 years.
Speaker 1
25:28
Yeah, that's really interesting. That's fascinating. I don't think I'd realised the extent to which there wasn't that level of support in the thing I've always noticed, of course, is the lanyards. Because you get the UK games Expo lanyards as a kid, as an attendee, you're like, Aha, there's some kind of cross promotion going on here. But actually, not to that extent. So when you so those are the printed things like the banners, so they actually they were paying for the printing of materials.
Speaker 2
25:52
So So I mean, essentially, you know, we've kind of worked with them and advanced it to essentially look at what our requirements would be, even things like technology. So obviously, you're running a games library, you run the bring and buy, if we're doing that in a kind of technological way, as opposed to literally just pen and paper. One and that was,
Speaker 1
26:11
that sounds like a nightmare, to be completely honest.
Speaker 2
26:15
But actually, you need that kit. So actually just having, you know, barcode printers, scanners, laptops to operate everything from, you know, that kit, if we're going to have to fork out ourselves for that, that's a huge cost for us to have to absorb, particularly in the early years of a convention. So being able to borrow that that sort of equipment from UK games, export, use it, you know, and allow us to kind of grow our convention, and ideally, to the point where we no longer potentially need to borrow that kept from them. We've grown to a point where we can be kind of self sustaining as a convention, but you know, you need you need help to get there in the first place. And, and having that level of support from you know, a convention of their size is absolutely fantastic. And be a bit beyond the kind of the actual physical stuff. And the financial savings. The advice is absolutely invaluable. A number of conversations we've had with Richard Tony, you know, with Mark and Ben from the year couldn't see the things as well about things that they did wrong in the early days or things that they would have done differently if they could go back really massively helped us to essentially skip the front steps. You know, I've been going to every aircon you know, since the since the one that was in Mark's house with 20 of his friends have been at everyone since that point, you know grow from a church hall in Bradford Yeah, with our retailer, all the way up all the way up to what it is now you know, taken up however many different floors of the convention centre.
Speaker 1
27:46
It is about if I'm if I'm right in saying it just just because I think it's maybe useful for the listeners understand some of the scale of these conventions, so aircon, that's about 5000 attendees, the four or 5000
Speaker 2
27:57
rooms. I think if you're looking at the turnstile as in like, everybody, I think you're probably about 5000, or certainly certainly over sort of 2002 and a half 1000 unique attendees for aircon right? To put that in context. Our first year at tabletop, Scotland, we had just over 1000 unique attendees, which was it blew our minds. Second year, we managed to grow that to over 1500 unique attendee Wow. Which is why we could manage to have the two halls. Yeah. But yeah, we, when we were first initially trying to look at things, we had a sort of a kind of gold, silver bronze sort of plan. You know, if we only sell 300 tickets, here's what tabletop Scotland looks like, if we only sell, you know, 500 tickets, here's what Scott looks like, if we sell 600, here's what it looks like and 600 reserve sort of, that's a great result point. And we ended up with over 1000. So you know, we just use, you have to be flexible in terms of the planning, you have to have a kind of fallback plan. And you have to work on the assumption that you're not going to grow based on what you did the previous time. So although we grew by 54%, in that second year, in terms of attendance, we had to plan on the basis that we were not going to sell a single ticket more than we did in year, year one, even though our costs significantly increased by us taken additional space within the venue. So and we also had a few kind of sunk costs in that second year as well, which, you know, are one off costs, which, you know, will will benefit us when we eventually get back to doing conventions again. Yeah, you know, there were some things that, you know, because we knew this was not just going to be a one off show, we could take that leap to say, you know, okay, we can buy like a five year licence for this. So we can, you know, we can invest in this kit, because we know we're going to be using this for 3456 years to come. But yeah, and then in terms of scale, obviously then you've got your UK games export around, you know, I think they were like 20 to 30,000 kind of unique people over over a number of days that 20 to 30,000
Speaker 1
29:53
unique people because this is one of those things always thinks we're interesting about how conventions are measured, right is that there's there's kind of two metrics You've got turnstile which understand that this is like entrance and exit on a day. Yeah. Which is that what Spiel use as well?
Speaker 2
30:07
Basically, if I've got a ticket for three days and I go in every three days, I count as three and the turnstile. Right. Okay, okay, there's one in uniques. Right? Okay. Make sense? Generally unique is unique is probably the more useful measure to let you know generally how many people have come to your convention. turnstile has its uses, though, because the turnstile figures will allow you to know who's come back, and will allow you to know how many people have maybe bought a ticket for one day and then upgraded to come back for the next day.
Speaker 1
30:39
Ah, interesting. So quite useful for you internally to kind of work out. Okay, is the convention hitting the mark is it making people want to come back for multiple days?
Speaker 2
30:47
Lindo, who's who's who's coming for Saturday only who's coming for Sunday only who's there for the entire weekend, who has bought a ticket for Saturday only, but then upgraded it to a full weekend ticket, because have enjoyed themselves on the Saturday. So these types of things will can assure us what we're doing right. And also what point of a weekend is the right team to target certain activities. So while it's something that is maybe going to attract more people in, don't necessarily do a time when you're already going to be busy. You need a team where actually you've got a bit of a lag. And actually, if you put something on that's going to kind of attract more people to come for that thing. You have a more I guess you have a flatter sort of curve.
31:24
Right? Yeah.
Speaker 2
31:27
And you know, you've known but the peaks and troughs of activity, Saturday is always going to be busier than Sunday, that Sunday doesn't have to be kind of, you know, hangover morning, and then you know, people are into the afternoon. If you have the right things on at the right time to attract the right people, then you'll you know, you'll you'll have a busy enough buzz over the entire event.
Speaker 1
31:45
So that that presents another interesting distinction for me about how you plan those events out. And because you obviously another aspect of your show is that you seem to have quite a few things where there's there are like set piece things going on. So for example, you mentioned the walk the plank, life size version of this game, something like that. So how would you go about planning those those then you said that it's obviously you can see the effect of them somewhat in the turnstile data. But how are you then planning that out?
Speaker 2
32:11
So that I guess there's a few factors too. So I guess probably the first thing to say is that kind of our convention is not purely a board gaming convention, try to kind of kick many different elements of the tabletop hobby as we can. So actually,
Speaker 1
32:24
this is why tabletop Scotland, not for example, board games, Scotland.
Speaker 2
32:27
Exactly, exactly. And role plays a significant part of that. So Dave, the other day to have not spoken about so far, he basically is really into his role playing. So of the four of us who are sort of the directors, they're really each of us are into everything, that we all have our own particular bit of focus. So for me, it's the element of it is really a role player at heart join as a Wargamer, which is probably the one area of the tabletop hobby that we've we've sort of struggled to sort of integrate fully so far. Interesting. Why do you think that is kind of interesting. Space is a large part of that, because I think if you're looking commercially at, you know, how do we make this a viable, you know, financial endeavour, you know, we're not looking to make a profit from it, we're not looking to become rich from it, we're looking to basically allow it to wash its own face. And if you have got the size of table that you need to have a game of Warhammer 40k, or, you know, ages Sigmar or something like that with two people around that that table. Oh, I see. Yeah. How much is that space generated? versus how much does that space cost us? As opposed to if you have, you know, eight people at two different tables playing Euro games there, there's a people for the same amount of space. So it can come down to a fairly brutal kind of commercial decision. Now, you know, for you know, whether we stay in the same venue and just know, forever or not, or whether we are able to sort of move elsewhere and sort of have additional space, I think that then opens up more opportunities in terms of the Wargaming part of the hobby. Yeah, you know, we've had, you know, talking about the events we've had, you know, Warhammer underworlds event a couple of times, right, yeah. Games work. It's
Speaker 1
34:06
a kind of adventure, kind of more board game from memory. I never played it.
Speaker 2
34:10
It's really kind of two player small scale skirmish. Okay, makes sense. teams of five miniatures against teams of five miniatures card basically played relatively quickly. And so So John, who I mentioned, who's, you know, particularly into the Wargaming, part of the hobby, and he had a number of contacts at Games Workshop who'd spoke to so we actually had a grand clash, the first first and only Evergrande flash that's happened in Scotland for this event. And we did that for both of the events that we've had there. So it was sort of a dipping the toe into the kind of the Wargaming because it's not the, you know, three feet by three feet table size, it's small scale, but it's still Games Workshop is still Warhammer. So there's elements of that in there as well. But yeah, so in terms of the event schedule, Dave, you know, really led that in terms of kind of At the end element to it, because obviously that's going to be your the bulk of your interest, but also making sure that other role playing systems had, you know, had events and we had hundreds, you know, across the two of us were hundreds of sessions, you know, three and a half hour sessions split across the day in five different slots each day that we had them there. We had an epic event for Dungeons of dragons, which I don't feel we're where
35:23
it is, but I'd like to know more. It's essentially
Speaker 2
35:25
a linked event. It's something that very rarely happens with.
Speaker 1
35:30
i Sorry, I think I remember this actually. Yeah, please go on. Explain. I think it's a convention concept.
Speaker 2
35:34
So Dave, Dave was aware of this from sort of his his d&d background, and he managed to kind of speak to some of the guys at Wizards of the Coast when he was in GenCon. A convention he goes to every so often and never mentioned. So essentially pestered away. So we got first of all, we got some scenarios for d&d written by Wizards of the Coast writers, specifically for tabletop, Scotland. Wow, no officially available in scenarios
36:00
written for tabletop, Scotland, extraordinary.
Speaker 2
36:03
We were essentially the premiere event for these these scenarios, and they're now available there in the wider world. So that was a bit of a feather in our cap to start with. But then the epic event is essentially, you have multiple different kind of tables, all playing the same game at the same time, but they're linked. So you have sort of one grant so every table will have its own its own dungeon master and the players as you would expect for any game of d&d. But there's sort of a room dem as well. And occasionally, something will happen on one of these tables, and the game will stop. And something something will be spoken about that's happened on one table that affects what's happened on every other table. Now, I don't know if I'm spoiling in this view. Oh, wow. I won't say spoiler alert before I see anything. Yes.
Speaker 1
36:50
Spoiler alert. If anyone wants to play with these, these scenarios that was that the ghost wrote for this? Yeah,
Speaker 2
36:54
there's one of these tables one of these groups found a magic tomb of some description. And for whatever reason, one of the characters decided to destroy this magic tomb. Raider book,
Speaker 1
37:07
typical d&d players smashing stuff up stealing things from friendly NPCs we know how this works. Yeah, pick up the reader
Speaker 2
37:14
or the reader or burner. Yeah. So basically, that went for went for destroying the book, The DM then flags to the mean room DM, every other game had to stop. And from that moment on, all magic had been drained from the world because this book was the source of all magic. So anything magic related, immediately stopped across. Someone in the middle of a chain lightning spell, just gone. Someone with a cloak of invisibility sneaking past someone suddenly visible. You know, some, you know, someone trying to cast a fireball spell, nothing happens for the rest of that game. So that's an example of the type of thing that these events can do. And that, you know, that was, well, we know that was 2018. So, you know, that's almost three years ago, and I remember vividly people coming out of that room talking about that, raving about that. Yeah, by the fan. So again, we had another epic that kind of the next year as well. And, you know, I think that's, it's so becomes a self fulfilling, you know, self fulfilling event. Having that type of thing. People talk about it to other people, people then booked it for the following year. And we had, we ensured that basically, with the exception of the epic, which we needed to have a certain number of people for, we had pre sales for every event that we did. So whether it was board game tournaments, that it was role playing events, or whether it was other events, or seminars or anything like that, a certain proportion of the tickets could not be booked in advance. So there was always a chance that you could rock up on a day and kind of decide I want to try d&d, or I want to play Warhammer Fantasy, or I want to sign up for that shade spire tournament or that ticket to a tournament, and you could just sign up there. And then and then that went down really well, because I think sometimes at some of the bigger conventions, everything, you know, everything goes on sale on the same day. And it's basically first come first serve. And if you miss out, tough, you've missed out. Whereas I think having that opportunity to, you know, see what was still available on the day, maybe try out a new system that you've not tried before. You know, we had a few people that you know, you know, dads who had played d&d, when they were in their teens or early 20s came along with their kids. And they were sitting at a table playing d&d with their kids and experience all these things. And like the dad was loving it, because it was bringing up all these good memories. The kid was loving it because the dad was, you know, involved in something that was fun and a bit wacky, and you know, and you know, on the back of that they were coming away having like bought books and day snow, the rest of it and these people came back the next year to take part in that haven't had a year of actually playing d&d themselves at home. So you know, wow, really cool. It was just like that it came over when we asked for feedback. And you know, just, you know, there were people as they were leaving on the end of the second day of the first convention, coming up to you know, those that were sitting of the front desk, you know, unprompted, just saying, we had a great time, you know, here's the thing that we did. Here's an experience that we had. And you know, you don't you don't do that unless you genuinely have had a good time. You know, no one's asking them on your way out. You're not allowed to leave the building unless you tell us what we like what your best experience. Yeah, so that was that was being as I said, we had some seminars in year one, but only maybe one or two. And then we looked in year two to try and sort of build on that. So we had we had of life painting seminars that Okay, right. It was like painting miniatures, that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. So, so we had, we had that we had a number of kind of panels in terms of game design, you know, a number of terms of advice on Kickstarter and other means of essentially getting your getting your game out there.
Speaker 1
40:48
So would it be fair to say then, that it's sort of like you're, it's like you're deliberately building the more you talk about this, like a sampler for people to some extent, right? The conventions almost like this. It's this playground where you've got all of these different opportunities all going on. So you've got this. Firstly, things that just impossible to do, because there's a big group like the links roleplay. And you've also got some interesting topics to learn about subjects. And you've got these kind of accessible set piece kind of games. So it's almost like it is like a truly a fairground.
Speaker 2
41:20
Yeah, that's a good description of actually, there really is a plenty of clones there as well. It's got to be said, Yeah. But yeah, no, definitely a little bit of everything. And, you know, there's a lot of things we would have loved to have been able to do. You know, either space or time, you know, constrained us, for example, we really wanted to have a mega game.
Speaker 1
41:41
Oh, right. Yeah. So just just anyone who's not certainly clear on what mega game is, this is just to describe that if you wouldn't mind what Yes,
Speaker 2
41:48
generally invited once this one was called watch the skies. And basically what it is, you're going in teams, and essentially, this particular particular mega game, each of you represents a country of the world, and one of your country's prime minister or president, someone's like the Minister of War, you've got a science, or, and you've, you've got a foreign secretary type person. And essentially, it's an alien invasion scenario, that thing cool. So you have a team, who are you're basically kind of running the game, they know all the secret stuff that's about to happen. One team is of aliens and everyone else's their countries, that you've got kind of real world stuff happening. So like espionage and warfare, and kind of the United Nations sort of thing. All this is happening. And at the same time, you've got this layer of weird things are happening, and not everyone knows about. You also have a team who are basically the local media, and they're going around getting quotes from people, usually when they're not particularly guarded, and what they're seeing. So this person could just say, like, Who do you think was responsible for you know, selling humanity badly to the aliens and UK, people will probably go over the French. Next thing, you know, they've printed out today's newspaper with UK blames French for such and such, and then they get distributed around the entire either the entire place. So it's, there's not really a winner and a loser. It's just a really good experience that's different from anything that I've really kind of participated in before.
Speaker 1
43:16
It sounds to me like, it's almost like a gigantic role playing experience.
Speaker 2
43:19
Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, the amount of kind of effort that can have goes into it in terms of kind of the preparation and the running over again, that that's something that, you know, we wouldn't have run ourselves. But we, you know, the event that took part, and, you know, the the group who ran that are, they're the experts in that they have their people who have rights, if we were able to put that on, you know, tabletop, Scotland, we would ask them to run it for us, as opposed to us have to find volunteers and train people up. And you know, they know what they're doing. They know how to make it an engaging and enjoyable experience for everyone.
Speaker 1
43:54
So part of making this successful, it seems like there's another common thread that I'm noticing throughout this conversation is you've got to find the right people to support you, right and where and you could have gone down your own right, we're gonna learn digital system for the game library management and actually very sensibly relying on UKG. Which, the more you describe it, it's almost like it's dead. It's almost like the mother church, as it were, of the of the UK conventions, has actually provided that Yeah, it makes a lot more sense to get these get people in who know what they're doing for
Speaker 2
44:19
these things. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Marshall, obviously the actual system and was on the back of a conversation with Mark via con. Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah. Get the technical kit is was what was provided by by export.
Speaker 1
44:32
Ah, okay. Right. Yeah, that's a subtlety. That makes sense. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 2
44:36
So yeah. So as you say, it's the people to do the particular different parts. So you know, essentially get the experts who know what they're doing to run that part of it. So space was really the main reason why we couldn't have that make. Again, we could have found a corner of one of the halls do it in that an echoey space in a hole is not the perfect environment for an experience like that. You would ideally want a separate room that you know, is off the beaten track, essentially, in order to do that,
Speaker 1
45:02
do you think we're going to potentially see that then in will hopefully, tabletop, Scotland? 2022. Would that be an Miam?
Speaker 2
45:09
Yes, well, it's one of several things in the mix several things in the mix, but there's a, there's a lot of things that we'd have to fall by the wayside in order for that to happen. But it's, it's not like we want to just continually always do the same things. We want to kind of rotate a little bit and have some things that I mean, one of the things we introduced in the second year was a starship simulator. Oh, interesting. Obviously, a UK games Expo have had a starship bridge simulator, where essentially you've got a captain's chair, you've got various different stations with the screen, you've got the big monitor, you know, big screen at the front. And essentially, everyone is part of that crew. And there's various scenarios and they're run and so on. And basically it was a Nigel and Sarah Kennington of one free elephant, right? Yep. Nigel also kind of worked with Edinburgh College. So it was a it was essentially Edinburgh College and one free elephant who were running that for us. And to be honest, we could have sold out spaces on that for a week, they were one of the most sessions that we've had. And it's again, for them, it's a lot of effort for them to run it because they're, you know, there's a lot of care. There's a lot of kind of technical expertise required. And also, it was the hottest weekend of Scottish history. I think, when we had tabletop, Scotland 2019. Yeah, hold 10 degrees.
46:31
It's good. It's good to say what was that? 10 degrees? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2
46:35
They were stuck in a room with all the windows shut. Everything kind of covered the kind of black cloth. It was a roasting hot room. We had fans everywhere. And it was still roasting. But there were at that every, you know, every sessions, five sessions over the weekend, with a full crew and every single time with deeply things and so, so yeah, they did a fantastic job. And again, that's something that we didn't do in year one, that we found a way to do in year two. But yeah, so yeah, back to your point in terms of a lot of kind of sampler of everything. I mean, seven seminar as you have, you know, role playing, we had tournaments for board games, you know, we had the pandemic survival, you know, an official qualifier.
47:16
Yes, yes, yes, yes, is that
Speaker 2
47:19
essentially, everyone appears playing a game of pandemic at the same time, but there is only one deck of cards, which was myself actually ran that particular job. Oh,
Speaker 1
47:31
I didn't realise that's how it worked. So everyone's working into the same deck.
Speaker 2
47:35
Yeah. So that the only things that are different in the game are the decisions you make in terms of where you go, which is very clever. But it's the same cities that have been infected everywhere. So essentially, it's last team standing, wins, and we had to settle as best we had won one final only in the first year, the second year with the two semi finals and a final. And the winner of that goes through to the final UK games Expo. And then the winner of that gets through to the World Final, which i Wow, yeah, mystery destination. So it's been in the Netherlands, it's been in the US. It's been in Spain. So essentially, if wherever there's been a special edition of pandemic, they've held a world champion giant.
Speaker 1
48:14
Yeah, it was mostly things like there's Hollywood movies, where there's the plucky underdogs are going to make it through to regionals and nationals, and that kind of thing is, is that it's really interesting. Oh, wow, I find this very compelling, you clearly have a kind of really clear vision for this. So this accessibility point, I find, I find really interesting, because it seems like everything you've decisions you've take her and making this sample everyone can kind of enjoy, it's very easy to get new people into you've deliberately advertised to kind of local people, not just your kind of core hobby nerds, how do we go further than that? My question to you is like, what, what do you see is like, I drive accessibility even further, are there other people that still not reaching? Like, how would you go about expanding the kind of board game franchise, so to speak almost to more people?
Speaker 2
48:59
It's, yeah, it's a fair point. So I mean, you know, the, as you say, the geeks will find the geeks, you know, the, the true hardcore of the hobby will will, you know, will find its way to us at some point, that the family element is something where we have to work a little bit harder to kind of bring in disability is something that we can have thought long and hard around. So I don't know if you remember from the year you were, there were quite big spaces between a lot of the tables. Yeah. And you know, so there was, you know, clearly like a metre and a half space between chair backs in rows of tables. And that was a very conscious decision. You know, we could have packed those tables in much tighter and potentially had more people in and a for it to feel like a more kind of spacious environment to play games, people will bump into each other and want to stand and talk. We don't want to block with, you know, block areas that you know, people potentially in wheelchairs might want to get through with any other kind of, you know, mobility issues. You know, we wanted to make sure that it you know, it was as inclusive, innovative From that perspective as possible, you know, obviously the venue had certain physical restrictions that would prevent, you know, wheelchairs going into certain areas. But we always tried to make sure we had a sort of a workaround for that for exam, right. Make sense? What I mean, actually, one of the things that were a bit disappointed with potentially in the first year was the the quality of the wheelchair ramps. So as I mentioned, the come the hall had reserved a bowling Hall. So the actual floor of the Convention Centre was actually slightly sunken from the level that you would walk into the room from, so only six inches or a foot. Yeah, so we needed to have, you know, a means for for wheelchairs to go down. And they technically did provide ramps, but we'd argue that they weren't necessarily fit for purpose, in terms of kind of how sturdy they were, and so on. So that was part of our feedback to the venue was around, look, if we're going to be continuing to come back and bring in this crowd in here. Yeah, we really need you to think about these things a little bit more, and we need you to kind of, you know, ensure that that, you know, what we asked for is sort of provided from that perspective. It's also a venue over two floors, as well. So there was a left to allow for sort of the food and drink areas upstairs that I mentioned, we had a bar. Yeah, you know, that was something that we, you know, early on in day one, we, you know, discovered that we're storing some, you know, food boxes and things like that outside the lift doors upstairs. And that's not good is it, you know, wasn't our accessibility left so that, you know, there's there if they have to punch their way through packets and quavers to get into that. So yeah, so when we look through it from that perspective, one of the other things that we try very hard to do in the second year was look at the makeup of our panels for seminars. So we're very aware of that. As for organisers, we are a pretty homogenous group of sort of, you know, mid 40s, balding, slightly Tubby beard, white men, and, you know, so we, you know, we really wanted to make sure that we could have, you know, sort of, in a representation of, you know, some women in the industry and, you know, some people of colour and industry to actually kind of talk to us from their perspective, as opposed to just us talking about the experience, that's going to be the lived experience of 95% of the people in that in that hall. And that actually, you know, it was very difficult to find, certainly within Scotland, that level of diversity that we would ideally want. So, you know, we did manage to have, you know, in some of the roleplay and panels, you know, we have a few guests to come over from Europe to kind of talk as part of that I mentioned Siena, Cannington, earlier on from one free elephant, you know, so she took part in some of the the kind of the crowdfunding stuff based on some of their their own experiences, you know, and you know, that, that that was great, that you're still conscious that even having made a deliberate effort to increase that diversity of what the seminar kind of panel looks like, we're still sure of, you know, a large part of the population that, you know, we would want to hear from you know, your work, or even if it's like, why are you not there? Love it? Yeah. I mean, what are the barriers, you know, admittedly, Scotland is, you know, 90, probably 98%, of White country, but, you know, there's still, you know, 2% of people who live up here, and there's a lot of people who don't live here, who will want to come to tabletop, Scotland, and we want to kind of make it as inclusive and environment as we possibly can. But, you know, without knowing what it is that blocking that from happening at the moment, it's quite difficult to, you know, kind of get to that point
Speaker 1
53:27
completely. Well, I think, as you you know, having listened to the episode with Nick, that's something he talked about was very much about like that, because obviously, Croydon particularly is very, very diverse. So it's an area where and there was probably quite a relatively big mismatch between the number of people who were kind of coming in, versus certainly the local area. And I think actually, I could understand some people being being cynical on this conversation. But I just think that they forget that that really important part of this is that is that you know, games very much are for everyone. And I think what's really cool is, is that actually, the evidence is when you it seems to be I mean, just just from what you're saying about families, you advertise the local area, you'd say, Hey, there's this tabletop thing going on, they've not even heard about before. And actually straight away, you're getting people who aren't the usual suspects, because as you said, the top a slightly bald head men in their 40s. I mean, that is you are describing lots of people in board games there. Right. Okay. And certainly, we're talking about, you know, people from certain social demographics or whatever, very much like there's that there are certain groups that are more commonly historically associated with it. But I think that is something that's changing all the time, partly just because as board games become better known, more broadly, I think, I think that's a no, that's a really important point in terms of doing everything you can to bring people on, I mean, that that's how I feel about board games. And there's an essay which I keep meaning to write, for ages about the use of language and board games, and one of the big ones is the use of the phrase, our hobby, and how much I actually intensely dislike this phrase, because to me, it seems like very strongly like you look at human history. I only discovered recently to my shame that backgammon dates back to Something like 3000 BC. And that, you know, that's such a key part of the human experience. And they've got really, really good in the last 20 years. And there's a huge opportunity to like massively extend that to lots of people, it feels to me like we shouldn't be biting off every chance we can to do that. So I think that's, that's one of the reasons why I really like I found myself really, really liking your show, because it did feel like that. And to your point you made to me earlier about magnet, I thought that was really interesting in terms of it did give me play test feedback with children very directly, that other shows would have been, you know, some really great people that were definitely bought my products who like got really interesting feedback about design, they paid like hundreds of games, but they're not going to give me the feedback that children are going to in terms of the bits that they're zeroing in on. So I think that seems like to me, that seems like a really, it's a really important point, what you're trying to do there, I think is a really valuable thing to do. Okay, well, we've got a couple more questions I want to ask you. And I want to make sure I got some listener questions, because actually loads of listeners sent in tonnes of questions this time. And I promise some of them are serious about about what we did. But before we move on to that, I'm kind of really interested to hear about kind of where you think first things are going in terms of in terms of the industry in general, because obviously, you're on the forefront of this trying to expand the franchise extend more people to get get more involved into games. So where are conventions going next? So the question I'd ask and maybe the much bigger, broader question of where do you think board games are going next?
Speaker 2
56:23
So yeah, so conventions? I think there's still going to be an appetite for I guess, COVID. happens when the other side of COVID have to talk about this one? Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, I mean, clearly, it's been a great couple of years to be a convention organiser. But you know, how will COVID affects people? You know, will we see, you know, we momentum is really important in terms of tabletop conventions, you know, so I mentioned that kind of the move from year one to year two, you know, we obviously started ticket sales for year three, when when COVID sort of kicked in, and things were looking really good. We'd actually, you know, we're at a point of ticket sales early on in that year, that, you know, we were fairly confident we're going to see, you know, another significant growth on what we've done in year two, but do we have to reset our expectations? No, in terms of attendance levels, you know, do we, you know, we were thinking, year three, for us was going to be a three day convention, then suddenly, we're like, even at the point where we thought we might still be able to do tabletop, Scotland, 2020, we then started to think is that a good idea to go three days and increase our financial risk with great uncertainty in terms of what the restrictions will be? How many people would even be interested in coming at that point? And, you know, you ask online, and we did, we did survey people, in terms of, you know, what we just thought to be in terms of coming to a socially distanced tabletop gaming convention, you know, what sort of things would put you off from coming? What things would you be happy enough to accept? You know, as always, with these things, it's the it's those are the most entrenched positions that will get back to you. Is the silent middle are the ones that you really want to hear from, but
Speaker 1
58:02
yeah, the hardest to get, as well, as doable,
Speaker 2
58:05
I, you know, I don't care if you know, my head's fallen off, and everyone around the boat is on fire, I will still go to a convention. And then the other side of things you have those that are, look, I'm too nervous about this. Just know, you know, maybe in a year maybe into yours, certainly not no. And, you know, do we have to plan on the basis of kind of flat attendance for a couple of years, do we have to plan on the basis of a reduced attendance potentially, you know, for a year or two, and then build back up from that point. You know, it's interesting to look at what UK games export going to have to do this year. So obviously, the event is later in the summer than it would normally be. And obviously, there's a restriction in terms of the capacity of the venue, they don't have the Hilton Hotel element of it this year, which they would normally have. And obviously, they've got the potential barrier to entry of, you know, testing and so on to, to get into the venue. So, you know, obviously, they're going to take a significant hit in terms of their attendance level this year. But they'll probably be looking over the next couple of years to build back up to the point that they were at the last physical convention they held, as opposed to expecting that they'll grow from that point, because you're still gonna have that nervousness. Understandably. You know, I think you may find more people would visit as a a day trip as opposed to necessarily encamped themselves for a two or three day convention. Are people willing to go as far for those things, you know, how many would still think nothing of you know, going to Essen for, you know, three, four days, you know, we'd people go from from Kent to tabletop, Scotland as as they do when people go from Scotland to Kent, as we have done, you know, it's a long trip for something that if you have concerns about, you know,
Speaker 1
59:49
yeah, it changes the kind of maths in people's head write about like overall as a proposition, even if it's something where it's not that someone is particularly frightened on it, but just that they're thinking out When you add up all the things, and I guess, this classic what's I guess, technically a collective action problem, which is that if other people suspect other people might not go, maybe that's good to go. Which compounds? Obviously,
Speaker 2
1:00:12
it's a fair point. Absolutely. Fair point. But yeah, I mean, again, I think, you know, some some tabletop conventions are probably slightly better placed than others for this type of kind of post COVID environment. So, you know, we've talked about different types of convention, probably the larger ones with the larger convention centres, and the ones with the biggest risks financially. There's, you know, kind of two or three year deals, there's probably penalties for things being reduced at the last minute and things like that. Oh, yeah, a different one more flexible, you know?
Speaker 1
1:00:45
Yeah, essentially, question. So one of the additional questions Oliver was asking this, he was sort of asking two things, I guess, if it's an international convention, which touches on the point of like, where the tabletops Scotland attendees from because obviously, I don't live in Scotland, but I very much was very keen to come to the first one, which I think is interesting touch on, firstly, what the impact of the reduction international businesses is, probably, I'm guessing less of a problem for you than say, for example, for UKG, and certainly less of a problem than for Essen. And then also, how do you insure yourself against it? Because I think he's thinking partly also financially like that, that is a bit of a problem, right?
Speaker 2
1:01:19
Yeah, I'll answer the second question first. So in terms of insurance, to be honest, it's just one of those annoying costs that you just have to take a bath, and that you can't run an event without that. And, you know, I think we got a call early on and in COVID, for what our insurance would be relative to what we had before and it was it was virtually double, in fact, actually was more than double. And that was with a kind of loyalty discount as well. So you know, the insurance industry doesn't really know what it's doing, whether at this moment in time, either. But, you know, as an organiser, these events, if you want to insure yourself, for every potential outcome, you have to just pay whatever the you know, shop around, obviously, but if that's what the industry is telling you, that's what you have to pay to insure against this type of cancellation, then, sadly, you know, very sadly, that's. But I mean, again, it comes back to every convention is different. And, you know, every, every venue is different as well. And, you know, we've been really lucky, I mean, it took a long time to find the juror centre, but we've been really lucky, that venue really works with us, you know, we've all grown, they've wanted us there. And I mean, at the end of the day, I think we're, we're the most profitable event they've ever held. Because what they're used to is sort of, you know, trade shows and model real issues where people come along for an hour and a half, maybe grab a cup of tea, have a sandwich, and then off they go. Whereas tabletop gaming codes will turn up at nine o'clock on day one, and they're there till midnight, and then they'll turn up at nine o'clock on day two, and therefore, and they drink and they spend money. And, you know, we are good for them, they are good for us. Very flexible. So and actually, when it comes to the contractual arrangements, they've actually been quite flexible in that as well. Where is that? Oh, that's
1:03:05
great. Yeah.
Speaker 2
1:03:07
So you know, I mean, we've had to kind of, you know, change things, both in year one and year two, between what we originally kind of asked for, and what we ultimately needed. And the level of flexibility they've shown with us, you know, allowed us to do all these sorts of things. Whereas, you know, potentially, if you're, you know, I don't know how it works with a venue like the NEC or you know, the Messer in Essen, or whatever it is, but I would imagine the T's and C's of that are pretty watertight in terms of any changes having a financial cost. Again, it's down to how I guess how good that relationship is, with your venue in the, in the first instance, for the first part of the question, again, that was around
Speaker 1
1:03:46
just about the international visitors international element. Yeah,
Speaker 2
1:03:50
it's a difficult one to answer because obviously, we've not put on an event since either a, you know, either COVID or Brexit for that matter.
Speaker 1
1:03:59
But oh, well, that eventually asked that, because because that's not the question that Ian had was this was this one about how Brexit affects exhibitors as well.
Speaker 2
1:04:07
So I think so we were starting to have some conversations with some of our exhibitors around Brexit, and how that might complicate things slightly before COVID happened. So we have a small number of kind of international exhibitors, and you know, from Ireland and some from mainland Europe, but you know, we're having conversations around how it was going to work in terms of, you know, stock being moved across the borders of things, and because we just didn't know at that point, essentially, more pencilling things in but you know, being really flexible in terms of look, if this turns out to be completely impractical because of cost or because of, you know, what things look like at the border because we just don't know that then. You know, we'll take a decision on that. I mean, I think, you know, given what I've just said about flexibility of a venue I think we'd be quite cheeky if we were inflexible in turn with without examine. Yeah, and I think one of the things that we've always prided ourselves on is being quite easy to work with and quite easy to deal with. In terms of kind of that exhibitor side of things. So we've always had, you know, a good common goal, we've been really clear about what our costs are, we've been, you know, really upfront in terms of options. So you'll find it for exhibit a stands, for example, for us, we've never charged extra for tables and chairs, and so on, we essentially include our cost, whatever is required in terms of tables and chairs for the space that you have that you know, you bought. Yeah, and which in a lot of conventions, sort of, you know, you buy the space, and then you buy the tables, and then you buy the chairs, and you buy the access to electricity, and you're buying the right for Wi Fi. The major approach we just visited, our cost per square metre, is including anything you require in terms of furniture, power, Wi Fi, that type of stuff. So again, it's that level of flexibility of tell us what you need. And we'll we'll do it if we can basically make sense. But yeah, so in terms of kind of, you know, kind of COVID impact in terms of Brexit impact, you know, we've not seen that because we've not actually held an event since kind of those those sort of come too late. But I would imagine from a retail point of view from an exhibitor point of view would be more of an issue than it would from an attendee in a visitor point of view, you know, certainly the last event that we did have, which again, bear in mind is pre COVID. We had North American attendees, we had people from Australia, New Zealand. Come in like Europe, we had some people from European retailers and publishers, who came as guests with a view to sort of scoping out, you know, is this is a good idea. Yeah, me too. Because, you know, you don't know, do you? I mean, if you're, if you're sitting in Germany, some random people, and here we're tabletop, Scotland. Yeah. You don't know what it is. But if you've gone on holiday Scotland anyway, why not? Kind of yeah, check it out. Right. convention. So yeah, so So you know, definitely got a lot of kind of positive, positive kind of noise from that type of thing. But, again, as with everything else, that's, you know, how does, how does Brexit actually shake down because I don't think even though we're anywhere close to knowing what the the kind of final shape of how that UK kind of interaction is going to look?
Speaker 1
1:07:19
So more painful seems to be the only the only certainty. But as you said exactly how it will look very difficult to know, this raises an interesting question that Alex had just missed note, what about talking on the topic of the future of conventions, where you think they're going? How does the online thing fit into this online conventions? Are they something which is worth it? Is it a failed experiment? Is it A, is it something that's not really worth doing? I really keen to know your opinion on that.
Speaker 2
1:07:45
I think, if I'm honest, I think it's a little bit from everything there. I mean, if I talk from my own experience, obviously, we when we cancel tabletop, Scotland, 2020, we did have the discussions about whether we do an online, an online version of it, knowing what other conventions had been had been doing at that point, we decided against it. And the main reason that we decided against it is everything that we've spoken about so far. Why did we create tabletop school? And what did we want it to be? We wanted to be that kind of inclusive, reaching out beyond the core of the hobby, yeah, to bring additional people in. And I think that is much easier to do in a physical event than it is in an online event by a guest by nature, it's going to be the people who already knew about it, and already in those Facebook groups and are already you're subscribed to those newsletters, who are going to be the ones who, you know, who gravitate towards that. So you become an echo chamber, you're not really doing anything to grow the participation in the hobby, you're not really to have that, whoa, moment of that, that eight year old kid suddenly seeing Reno heat or for the first time, you know, the bringing by kind of rifling through the shelves, as opposed to looking at online, you know, online thing, but a Facebook page, you know, all the things that kind of made us want to do it, and made us want to do it again and again. We felt we're sort of missing from that online experience. So for us an old ethos and what we wanted our convention to be. He decided not to do that. I should say that Dave did start an offshoot convention, specifically a roleplay. In books, because I think I think that's one of the things we lock down that actually RPGs on Yes, yeah, massively exploded. And it's been a really positive thing from a role playing perspective. So Dave started sort of as a splinter convention, if you like, with a few others called Alba con, which is that was last September was the first event and it's going to be happening again this September. And again, it's purely online at this moment in time, maybe when the world reopens it will become a physical event as well, but it's purely online. At the moment, and it's purely roleplay based, and it works for that, it definitely works for that. But that's very much a part of what we were doing in tabletop, Scotland, and the whole thing distilled into online, I don't think would work. I think it works better for the larger conventions. So I think, you know, whether it's UK games export, whether it's SN, for example, I think the has had, from the sounds of it pretty good, kind of online convention interfaces, but they're not really in the case of s, and particularly looking to kind of reach out beyond the people who would already know that. They're very animal in that regard. So I think for them, it worked pretty well Gen Con falls into that same, that same category, UK games export, you know, potentially fall somewhere between the two, in that, you know, yes, they've got that ready made audience but they also still do want to reach out beyond that, and kind of grow the participate. Well. And the other type of online convention is obviously your smaller scale stuff, which is essentially, you know, someone essentially moderating a discord channel and a Tabletop Simulator experience, that type of thing. And that can work. But again, you're you're focusing on a fixed crowd, as opposed to necessarily that network. And, and, obviously, of course, and they did a sort of aircon event which wasn't an online, they just have like, basically said, this is the weekend that air con would have been happening. So we're just going to do loads of stuff on our social media and discord. And, you know, like, if you want to do something, if you want to, you know, play a game at home, your mates just pushed your foot was on here. And let's see what everyone's doing on this weekend, where we should have all been meeting and how to get to have a great time. And you know that that's probably closer to if we're going to do anything, it's probably that's closer to what we would we would want to do.
Speaker 1
1:11:48
It makes sense. I think, to my mind, it's always the the fundamental problem that it is, is ultimately an analogue hobby, right? We partly, let's be honest, partly We do this because it's nice to do things away from screens in isolation. So it's very hard to I'm certainly at that place, translating, as you said, when it comes to recruiting new people, which has huge success with close to impossible. I mean, the way the internet works is that by its nature, it's been very good at supporting existing niches, and growing those niches within kind of already very closely related connections, not really so much for kind of kind of reaching out. So that I find that really fascinating on that question, then of just if you can encapsulate that, because I noticed we're running a little bit short of time here. This is this has been absolutely fascinating conversation, but but on the future of conventions, where do you see them going? Do you? Do you see that the kind of COVID concerns are going to make people go in general being be nervous for a long time? Or is it something that's going to pass? And they're actually going to go back into crazy growth mode? Like they were before this happened?
Speaker 2
1:12:43
Yeah, I think I think short term, you're gonna see that that stutter a little bit. And then and then I think in the medium term, I guess it really depends on whether this, you know, whether whatever, you know, comes after COVID. If there's another kind of equivalent thing, right. Yeah. That never happens. But, you know, yeah. Speak of the next time that there's a threat of that, you know, happening. Yeah, everything shuts down. Really? You know, do we do that? It's an interesting question. If I'm honest, I have no idea. And I think, uncertainty in the certainty of this moment in time, but yeah, we I mean, my, my day job, I work for a brewery. And, you know, obviously, over the last year and a half, that has been a very difficult kind of industry to be in as well. And the green shoots are there now in terms of the hospitality industry. But there's still this massive uncertainty of it will not take much for all that has to be shut down again. Yeah. And, and you have to live with that, that fear that it might happen. But you have to continue with the hope that it won't. And I think that's probably the same for conventions. Yeah. One on the basis that, yeah, the green fields are there in the future, we're going to be growing again, that momentum is going to reestablish itself, and we're going to be able to then kick on from there. Well, the back of your head knowing that, you know, we're not over the woods yet.
Speaker 1
1:14:05
Yeah. And I guess, would you say very, maybe much the same way. My question about games in general, is that it's actually very hard at the moment to say because my last podcast, I spoke to David Weiss, he was very convinced there'll be there's pent up demand for people to get together again, which I'm convinced that there is, I mean, everyone I talked to seems like the same, but very hard to make predictions right now about the future,
Speaker 2
1:14:23
right? Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know, and that's a really valid point in terms of that pent up desire to kind of meet up with others and and do things again. So obviously, in the last few weeks, I've finally been able to get round tables and play. You know, again, as I said earlier, I've got a collection of you know, now on 1000 Games upstairs. My wife is not a gamer, and we love the old episode of The Twilight Zone, was going to talk about this called time at last Burgess Meredith. Forget it. I think I know which one this is. Yeah. So basically, it's a librarian who never has enough time to read books. And there's an apocalypse And he's the last last man alive. And he has all these books around them. And he's delighted because actually no has all the time in the world to read all of these books. And he drops his glasses and he smashes them and he can see a thing. That's how I feel.
1:15:15
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Speaker 2
1:15:17
They're all up there. Yeah, yeah. Got played. Wow. Oh, wow. Yeah. That, that, that that desire to meet up and play again, is absolutely there. And I talked about the survey that we'd kind of sent out to kind of former attendees and our kind of newsletter subscribers. And that was, you know, loud and clear, people want it. The only question mark was, when do they want to how soon do they want to be able to kind of do that, in that in that kind of school again, you know, going around their friend's house, you know, five or six of them around a table is one thing, walking into a convention hall with, you know, 1000 2000 3000 other people in there? That's a different level for some people, you know, the ball, how quickly people will, you know, feel? Yeah. And that level of exposure, if you like,
Speaker 1
1:16:05
Yeah, completely makes total sense. Okay, then we'll just to kind of finish up to two final questions then. So one, which is, I think, a very naughty question from Janice, which is, how do you really decide who goes where in the convention in the convention, or come on now, spill the beans, who gets the prime slots, we've added this all the chat about kind of vision for accessibility. But come on now, who decides this one,
Speaker 2
1:16:26
being pleased and easy to deal with? A long way? That's all I'll say that, uh, ya know, that I did, to be honest. I mean, there are elements of, you know, sponsors will get the praise of sorts, because actually, they're, you know, they're putting their hand in their pocket. And so we've also like, for tabletop, Scotland, we've also got a bit of a soft spot for those who, you know, basically took a risk on us in year one. So, you know, we gave a sort of a discount in terms of the the cost of exhibiting and year two to those who took that punt on us in the first year before we were a known entity. And so you know, if they want something, they tend to get it a bit more. Yeah. But yeah, so So kind of sponsorship year one exhibitors, I guess, eyecatching stands as well. So if you've got like a demo table, like, you know, common during games, and Sterling always bring along like a demo table for miniature games, that's the sort of thing that you want visible so that people react to it and spend a bit of time there as well. So, you know, it's trying to get that mix as well. You don't want all kind of makers in one area. And then all of your kind of publishers another, you want a good mix so that you're walking from someone demoing a game. And then next is someone making, and an artist at the next table, you want that kind of mix of stuff, as opposed to having a an artist draw. And you know, all the all the stuff of miniatures is up the back corner, actually, you want to encourage people to walk around. And in the second year, when we had the two holes, there's a wall between the two halls and three doors. And we made sure we put the retail area in the middle of the two hallss. Oh, nice to get from one hall to the other, you had to walk through the retail area, and you're passing stuff that you maybe would have not seen otherwise. And that seemed to go down quite well.
Speaker 1
1:18:08
From what I can imagine. Yeah, I can imagine that we work really well. Yeah. Oh, great. Oh, fantastic. And then the kind of the last question I have this week is from Oliver, who asks, What can we as the community do to support UK conventions?
Speaker 2
1:18:20
Attend would be would be the the obvious answer to that question. But I also think And seriously, one of the challenges that we always have, is knowing exactly how many people are going to turn up. And the earlier that we can have tickets purchased the Brett the better idea, we have an interesting shape of what we can do. You know, if everyone's leaving it to the last minute to buy their ticket and then show up on the door, a there's a chance that you may not get in. And if it's a particularly popular year, and secondly, we might have been able to put a bet or Shawn or allow more space for something or or set up a room differently if we knew in advance that our ticket sales were x level compared to y level the year before. So yeah, pre pre pre sales is a massive thing. And I think any can a convention we'd like to have as much entail in terms of who's coming as far in advance as possible.
Speaker 1
1:19:16
Right. Makes sense. So So buy those tickets early to support your local convention. And I guess, share as much as you can. So for me to get other people to buy their tickets early as well. And it gives you great data about who's going to come to do that. That's absolutely fantastic. Well, before we finish up, I just like to know a little bit more about anything we should be looking on the lookout for from you in the tabletop Scotland team, or what it's looking like for 2022 Anything which are on the lookout for websites to go to that kind of thing.
Speaker 2
1:19:42
Absolutely. Well, the first thing I'd like to say I'd love to be able to give you the dates for tabletop, Scotland, 2022. But at the moment or venue can't guarantee dates because they're still there for COVID At the moment, so Oh, okay, make sense. What point that's going to end so as soon as as soon as we know, we expect it's going to be in one of the last two weekends and August 2022. Right? That's as much as we can kind of see. But nothing's actually booked in yet. But WWW.tabletopScotland.uk will give you as many updates as soon as you know, as soon as we know more, that's where you'll find it. And you can have a look on there in terms of some photos and some information about previous events as well give you a sense of exactly what's happening. Our Facebook group is actually pretty active considering there's not been a convention since August 2019. So it's the small but vocal. And so there's there's a lot of good chat and a lot of them have actually kind of met up in real life, you know, since since meeting at conventions initially. So that's been good sort of Facebook group against just tabletopScotland, or Twitter pages @tabletopScottland, and we're tabletopScottland on Instagram as well, which have nothing to do with cars. Photography in me is not yet not good bedfellows. So yeah, so So the full scale planning for 2022 will start kicking off later this year, we have been toying with do we do a sort of a satellite event, a smaller scale event, at some point early next year, just to sort of bridge that gap between 2019 and 2022 years, three years is a big a big void to have nothing. So again, it really depends on what venue availability is and exactly what we would want that to look like. So it's very much just a sort of a spitball idea at the moment. We're not committing to that at this moment in time, but ya know, certainly, certainly our kind of Facebook group is the hub of the activity at the moment. And our website is where we will put up any information as soon as we have it.
Speaker 1
1:21:31
Right. Fantastic. Well, I'm glad that people know where to go to find those things. Well, Duncan, thank you again, so much for joining me today. This was absolutely brilliant. It was great to learn a lot more about it. And it really makes sense to me now. Why I think that came off so well and why I like that that way. I enjoyed your convention so much that kind of that clear, accessible vision. Really fantastic. Well, I hope we get a chance to chat again, maybe as we get closer to 2022 That would be great to have you back or even to reflect on the event maybe when and when it when it finally comes around. But thank you so much again.
1:21:58
thanks very much.
Speaker 1
1:22:05
Producing fun is produced by Naylor games. You enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting platform. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter, NaylorJames or write me an email at James@naylorgames.com. Until next time,
]]>David Weiss is the managing editor of Canadian boardgame review site the Daily Worker Placement as well as the creator of scripted tabletop game podcast the Game Changers; a 26 part history of tabletop games. In this episode we get under the skin of key issues in games and how they’re marketed: the evolution of game genres, why people use certain language to describe games, the emergence of “AAA” boardgame titles and tips for getting media coverage for your game.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames
Listen on Youtube:
The Daily Worker Placement: www.dailyworkerplacement.com
The Game Changers: https://dwp.buzzsprout.com
I'm James. And this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective.
Speaker 1
0:22
Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is David Weiss, podcaster and managing editor of Canadian board game sites, the daily worker placement. I've thought for a while now that people don't take game reviewers seriously enough as a knowledge resource in the industry. Given the vast explosion in the number of people reviewing games in recent years, it's easy to be a bit cynical. From the publishing side of things. Almost everyone seems to be getting into game reviews. Now, everyone has a YouTube channel, everyone's an influencer. And the promise of free games, even if you don't have a massive reach, looks like a great deal for a hobbyist who would have purchased many of these products anyway. But I think that's the wrong way to look at it. publishers need to be smart about who they send their precious preproduction copies of their game to, of course they do, they really can't afford to do otherwise. But if you fall for the cynical line, you miss two important things. First, that this explosion of enthusiasm is actually great. The fact that people want to get their hands on these things is because they love them, regardless of scale, or reviewers have the potential to become some of your fiercest advocates. And they exist because whole world is waking up to how great games have become, and the extent of their power to build in an easygoing way, real human connection in a world dominated by glowing screens, and digital isolation. Second, amongst this large group of individuals who not only love games, but really really know their stuff, people who've seen and experienced so many titles, that they really have a sense of the artistic and commercial landscape of games, and even where they might be going, like no one else. It's for exactly this reason that I wanted David on the show. Davids site, the daily worker placement is actually one of the better known review sites publishing primarily text content. But more importantly than this, he's a walking talking Encyclopaedia of game knowledge. His podcast series, the game changes a 26 part history of modern tabletop games, is for my money, the best podcast in board games, bar none. A self confessed labour of love. It demonstrates the kind of deep and wide knowledge base very few possess, that knowledge is something game makers should be very interested in. As you might expect, this conversation went in all sorts of directions, from the evolution of game genres, to games of storytelling machines, from changing tastes and complexity over time, to the emergence of what David calls the triple A board game title, as well as practical tips for publishers looking to get media coverage. By nature, this is a more wide ranging and at times theoretical conversation and many others that I have. But if topics like how games actually work to create fun, or the two way relationship between game design and marketing interests you, I think you'll really, really enjoy this episode. We joined just as I've asked David to tell me a little bit more about the daily worker placements audience.
Speaker 2
3:16
Well, from the beginning, Sean Jackman, who is the sort of editor emeritus and founder of the site always wants it to be more than just about board games. It's supposed to be about board game culture. So that's quite different than focus. I mean, many, many content creators are really about reviewing the latest games that have come out. And there are some that aren't. I'm in a couple of Facebook content creator groups, and whenever anyone posts Oh, I've got a game a Kickstarter coming up. Would anyone like to write about it? There's always three dozen sites lined up. Oh, yes, we'd be interested, we'd be interested. And honestly, that's not as certainly for me, or for Shawn, or Nicole, Nicole Hoyt, who was sort of the third of the triumvirate, originally who's also stepped back. But for different reasons. We were interested in writing about new games, but more about the meta of it all about board game culture, about issues around representation, diversity, or doing deep dives into particular designers or particular currents in board, game history, all kinds of things. So what I would say is our audience is not just board gamers, it is board gamers who want to know more about the background of the hobby, and maybe some of the issues that are facing the hobby.
Speaker 1
4:37
Interesting. How does that change kind of what you're looking to create for it? How do you pick the those kind of articles then?
Speaker 2
4:45
Well, I mean, there's no question that we still cover new releases. I mean, we've worked hard to build relationships with different publishers with Panda Saurus with Robins burger with yourself and other people. Plug magnet, hashtag magnet.
Speaker 1
5:03
Any opportunity? Thank you, I was gonna have to well working in that subtly, somehow later, so it's perfect. So and
Speaker 2
5:09
I would also deny, like many content creators, one of the reasons I wanted to do this was, Hey, maybe I can get some free games? There's Yeah, question. Yeah, I think that there is a, there's a track there. And I think it's been I think it's being discussed both among content creators and others. So we write about what interests us. I mean, certainly for me, when I started to contribute on a more regular basis, I didn't necessarily want to write about the latest games coming out, I would want to write you know, there's sort of a feature that I do called you really should play. And because the conveyor belt of new games has been going faster and faster, so that, you know, gamers are like, in that old episode of I Love Lucy, where they're sitting there with the chocolates trying to stuff the chocolate packets, and they ended up just eating them and eating them so fast, the cult of the new games get left behind. And also there are classic games out there that I love to highlight. So that's one thing that I've talked about, or particular genres, like, I've always loved civilization building games. So I think my whole two part series on if there's a game with a sift theme, I have generally my ears perk up, you know, the time travel games, which I haven't written about, but that's another one that I will probably do. Or another one that I'd like to do is maybe film noir. Anyway, there are genres. I mean, as an art form, board games, there have these genres, there's the train game, it's not even about mechanic, it's not party games, necessarily. Like I say, train games span everything from Ticket to Ride to, you know, the 18 XX genre. There's a whole subculture around, though, so I'm interested in that. And then you come get around issues around representation, colonialism, you know, issues around, how shall I say that behaviour at conventions are appropriate and inappropriate? So those are things that, you know, people have written about tricky themes, you know, what's the fine line between using a theme to give a gaming flavour, and just doing five minutes worth of research on Google and appropriating, which has been done? You know, but people have a lot less patience for that today? And I think that's a bit myself. Yeah. So that's how we look for articles is what interests you? What do you want to write about?
Speaker 1
7:24
So so on that, then because one of the questions I want to ask you is sort of what motivated the creation of the sites then? Would it? Would it be fair to say that actually the sort of interest in those broader kind of board game culture questions that, did you feel they were maybe not being answered in the broader media? Is that kind of part of the motivation? You know, along with the classic one of like, Oh, I'd like some free games to play, which I mean, clearly would be? Yeah,
Speaker 2
7:45
I definitely think so. I think there was the, you know, shaun, you know, for for the first couple of years, because then we were complacent around since late 2014. I started contributing regularly in around 2016, I think I had done a few little articles before sprinkled in, but before that, it was Shawn and and various people that he had on board. And I know for a fact that that was their intention was to Yes, write about new games coming out, write about the conventions, covering the conventions, and so on, but also talking about the broader trends in the hobby.
Speaker 1
8:20
Yeah, that makes tremendous sense. It's, you get to cover those kind of broader questions, social political issues. Yes. And things like genre as well. And that that after says, that's an interesting question to me, because one of the ways that in the kind of board game design side of things, things get very clinically divided up sometimes I think it's between theme and mechanic. So as if these firstly, these things will be distinct, and that you either choose to describe a game in one way or in another. And yet the interesting about, for example, to train games is that within the context of train games, as you say, there's a huge variety from Ticket to Ride 18. XX, but actually, there is some still some kind of group similarity to them. There's something about like, the whole notion of route planning, like is often nearly always is like, is almost always in a train game. Right? In some sense. You can make a train thing game like Russian Railroads that doesn't have anything like that. It really
Speaker 2
9:10
just makes me kind of deconstructs the whole train thing in that respect. Yes.
Speaker 1
9:14
Watching railroads does. Yeah, exactly. But broadly speaking, there's like a kind of, there's like a kind of commonality to it in the same way, I guess. A Time Travel game allows you to visit multiple periods, which is it sort of all the time travel games gonna be like that, right? Because that's, that's in the soul of what time travel is.
Speaker 2
9:31
Right? Right. So I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and I've noticed more and more in marketing on Kickstarter on Facebook, a game will be described purely in terms of its mechanics. Oh, this is an area majority worker placement game. Yeah, yeah. And more and more, it gets on my nerves, because ultimately, I think mechanics and designing around mechanics is is very hard, but it's a craft. It's one of Easy Press. But in terms of a creative expression, a game, a game is a storytelling machine. That is my current in terms of thinking about what is the game because that's another discussion that's been going on. On board game, Twitter is defining what is a game. And there have been some very good ones. But a game is a machine that helps to tell stories that ends with someone winning or losing, right. So for now, in six minutes, there is a loser there and no winners, that's fine. So it's how you tell the story. And I think more and more designers are thinking more in terms of what experience do they want the players to have? And then they try and figure out how which mechanics would best serve that experience? Not theme, but experience. And yeah, starting maybe with Token. I don't know. Somewhere along the way, we've, there's been this whole thing towards these Dreadnought games of mechanic piled upon mechanic, maybe Great Western Trail. Some of them are great games, but honestly, are they you know, at what point? Are they like dreadknots? Where they, you know, begin to sink into the ocean?
Speaker 1
11:13
Right? under their own weight, so to speak. Yeah,
Speaker 2
11:17
well, it ties to that article that I wrote about what is fun, like, people have fun with games for many different reasons. Yeah. And for some people, the fun they have is in engaging with the mechanic. And those people tend not to care about the like, they're the ones who comment, oh, it's just the game, who cares, blah, blah, blah, that's fine for them. But for other people, you can't separate. And personally, I've kind of, you know, the mechanics should be good. And they should work. But they should be at the service of some. I mean, there's already plenty of games that are about mechanics, like what about doing something new with with the form because it is an art form?
Speaker 1
11:58
Yeah, completely? Well, so that's really interesting. I mean, then we spoke a few episodes ago to Chris eget, who's the tabletop gaming magazine editor, very much, this was very much the kind of angle he was coming from. And I think it's very much the kind of angle that I come from things in Naylor games as well. And it's like a relative, it's because of bugbear of mine, to see things described in this kind of list of mechanics, weight, which, to me seems like the least imaginative way to go around it. And also, in my experience, so far, I find very few designers have the kind of truly abstract imagination that allows them to come up with interesting combinations of mechanics in isolation, like, almost no one I've met yet can do that. Like there's always an idea that goes beyond that somehow. So it seems frustrating. And yet, and this is a really curious question Polycom things that, you know, I'm really keen to discuss with you. And yet that does seem such a default way of describing it. And it makes me wonder what the commercial implications of that are.
Speaker 2
12:54
Well, there's a musical equivalent, right? When you have a band, it's like, well, what kind of band are you? Are you know, are you indie? Are you punk rock? Are you this email? Are you EMD trap music. So I think some of it comes from a marketing perspective that people who sell games want an easy way to describe them that is going to hook people. Yeah, and many marketers in many genres are about labelling and compartmentalising, because you can quantify that. So I think that's part of where it comes from. And I also think part of it comes from people who come into the hobby, they're new, they're looking for a way to classify things because when an art form is new, it is possible to familiarise yourself pretty well with the entire form. Like if you were a jazz fan, in 1925, you can pretty well listen to every jazz record in existence if you want.
13:48
Because it's an amazing thing.
Speaker 2
13:50
And, you know, by the 40s, and 50s. So jazz had fragmented in so many different forms, and they were very political differences between those forms. I mean, if you were a bebop fan, you were you know, not going to be listening to New Orleans jazz or in England, you know, if you were a mod, you are not a rocker, you know, or you are a Trad jazz fan, and so on. So part of it is also from the consumer standpoint, a way of finding their way into their passion and also belonging to a group. Oh, I love Euro games. I love Amera trash. I love whatever. I love replacement games. And I'm astonished at people who post and say, you know, I would never play a worker placement game or I would only play I only want to play worker placement. But that's the same musically for me like I would almost never say okay, I only want to listen to Elvis Costello or whatever. I love Elvis Costello but so by nature I am an eclectic practices. Yeah, yeah. I'm an agnostic. And I believe more as I get older when I was a child, I loved abstracts. I chess was really the first game I remember learning and then I got into jeopardy. could use chess and Chinese chess and then go, and then those someone. But the older I get, the more I want there to be some kind. And those have narratives those games do have narratives in chess, you know, the opening, and the middle game and the endgame. So there is a narrative that emerges out of the gameplay. But the older I get, the more I feel like, I think when you play a game a lot, the same game over and over, you learn its story arc, like Monopoly, for example. Gosh, but you know, monopoly, there's an early game and mid game ending. Today, I think we want a lot more hand holding in terms of what is the theme? I do anyway? I want some kind of story.
Speaker 1
15:42
Yeah, completely? Well, I think this goes back to your kind of point about the storytelling engine, again, that games are, is that actually, you want to do that and you want you want to be a clear art to do that, I think that's one of the things I feel about so many games that I've often bounced off a little bit is that they actually lacked that art. And somehow, there's something isn't that fundamental at the journey of going from an early game where there's, you know, you're often if it's, let's just take the example of something that's a bit Euro ish, let's say you're building things up, you're struggling around a little bit of resources, you know, the mid game moves to something where you suddenly you've got money, you can buy the good stuff, you're building some kind of engine, and then a kind of end game where it suddenly all accelerates forward, and it rapidly comes together. And it's a sort of race to see who built the best engine, who made the cleverest use and the mid game of how things were doing. And it builds towards a crescendo. And if it like, doesn't have that, it seems like it's very weak. And so as you said, that the abstract thing is an interesting one, because as you said, those games have close to zero theme as we think about it normally, and yet, they will still have almost a story arc.
Speaker 2
16:40
That kind of story arc emerges from the design mechanic, like when we talk about the pacing of a game, you know, for instance, with monopoly, one house rule that many people have, in fact, it's almost an official house rule, you have that accelerated start, where you deal out some initial properties to everyone. Oh, yeah. Right, because it's acknowledged that the early game in Monopoly, as played is unnecessary, as it were, if it were designed today, they would have gotten rid of it. So that kind of pacing, and that part of the storytelling is done at the at the level of mechanic, but then you have the story above that. And it doesn't have to be a fantasy story. I tried to think of games that that do do that. And it's hard. It's a hard needle to thread, cloud age. Kind of does that. I mean, Alexander Pfister is, I think of him is the DW Griffith of board games, because, uh, wow, okay, he is the first guy to take the euro and try and tell a campaign style game using Euro mechanics. Interesting. Also Friedman Frieza, who I think also is like a mad genius. He talked about designers who have abstract things of design. I mean, what is copycat but a conscious effort to create a Frankenstein monster of mechanics and make it work?
18:01
Interesting. I've actually I don't know that game at all.
Speaker 2
18:03
Oh, also, if you 504, which is in some ways, his magnum opus in that sense, where it's literally a sandbox, where you choose a main mechanic, a sub mechanic, and a victory condition thing. And it's like those books with the monsters head, body and tail. Yeah. But they're all seamless. They're all seamless. But you can create 504 Different euros using, you know, this sandbox of a thing. So particularly you as a designer, I think it's an invaluable tool as a designer, frankly, because you have your choice of nine mechanics, their stock buying rebuilding area majority, oh, wow, I'm back all these different things. And you can choose any of them as your main mechanic. Any of them is your subsidiary McCain, any other of them, so it's nine times eight times seven, which is 504. But he's now with the fable system. Also begun to think about games like you know, that have an ongoing story arc, like not well find them a little bit. I'm thinking of sand. The one was sand people sand. Okay.
Speaker 1
19:08
I don't know. Anyway, yeah. You're making me realise how comparatively unfamiliar and with his work, but that's fascinating that the thought of he said, The unusual idea? Well, the idea of kind of choose your own mechanic, I think that's something that kind of lots of people How does an idea right, but to actually implement that it's quite challenging to make that work? Well, most
Speaker 2
19:25
of them there are groups who have played literally through all 504 and one. Yes, yes. His idea was to give this to the world and let people find the best combos. You know, he didn't claim that he knew which combos were best because each one is uniquely numbered with a three digit number. So as a as a game or game system, it's it's not great, but as a philosophic kind of sand
Speaker 1
19:51
box. It's brilliant. One more to play from that point of view probably
Speaker 2
19:55
Yeah, I mean, Pfister though with Tony to noi Dale even before that, the OH MY goods game with its two Oh My Goods, which is a beautiful little Euro. I call it a TARDIS thing because it's, it's a tiny game, but it's bigger on the inside. So it's it's, you know, the play space is huge. And then he's got the escape to Kenyan book and longsdale and you know trying to tell a narrative. It's not very sophisticated. It's like the early video games, which say they have branching narratives, but really right yeah, converging, you know, it's not.
Speaker 1
20:28
Yeah, it's really converging back with a main trunk arc.
Speaker 2
20:31
But yes, exactly. That's what Cloud gauge is. But it's still trying to ghost to tell a different kind of story. Because quite different singers. That a design mechanic design.
Speaker 1
20:46
Yeah, makes sense. It's, it's fun. It's really interesting. The question for me, though, that thinking about how this, this idea of the dominance of mechanics plays out commercially, that seems very interesting, because 504 is a good example of a game that is a really interesting game to play as a designer, as an afficionado. In the same way that you might try something like molecular gastronomy, right, which is, like, it's this isn't what great food that you take your family out for nice to have. Because you want the experience of oh, it's the bacon flavoured ice cream. Right. Right. Interesting. It wouldn't necessarily be actually great, won't be hearty. It won't really give you the same kind of feeling of like, oh my god, that was just amazing. You like to go, That was clever. Yes. And so that's really interesting to me that and the reason why there's these mechanic terms, I find them so fascinating in the hobby game community get used a lot to describe products even commercially, or go on a Kickstarter campaign. I see people selling them that way. Isn't to me, it seems almost like the mechanics are a bit more like if you're a musical analogy to me a bit like saying this is the time signature This is in Yeah, oh, this is the key that it's in which I don't really know enough about music, but I still feel like if you're a music aficionados or a real fan, you still probably won't use those terms as your primary descriptions, right? Because genre like trains, like for example, as as an example of a genre or for example, games that are like Civ games, for example, that's a really good example of genre are like a kind of higher level collection of those ideas, right? In the same way that you know, jazz or for example, or rock who have certain keys, certain chords, or certain time signatures that are more likely to be common than others in that category. So if that's a reasonable analogy, why is it that our hobbyists like to use those more technical terms?
Speaker 2
22:35
When you look at gaming reviews from the 1990s, before Potanin even came along? They never talked about mechanic, really, I mean, I Games magazine, and not things magazine, UK, which is a different beast entirely. But the American Games magazine, which has been around since the late 70s, and used to be my go to for game reviews, the game reviewers would generally talk I mean, it would be more about the experience of playing the game, what's happening in the game, what does it feel like where the challenges and so on, and then magic came out magic was really the first shot over the bow of something new and then Catan. And then the gradual influx of heroes at some point, and it would be interesting, try and trace this back now that I think about it, which is a great idea, and then write it back down, is when did reviews start? To focus more on the mechanics, then the story that the game was trying to tell or the experience because mechanics are not experience? You know, they're often confused with each other. But it's not.
23:43
Yeah, yeah. Okay, hopefully, I
Speaker 2
23:45
will remember what that means. It's like waking up from a dream and ah, brilliant idea. So, I mean, I didn't emerge out of BGG. Because BGG had these you know, tagging by mechanic was a purely a function of BGGS structure that's just off the top of my head, if it's something because German gamers as they used to be called, and then your gamers tended to deconstruct the games, and they're the ones who figured out like, I don't think when, like the term work replacement, like when they're quick, I like came out. I don't think the words word replacement were anywhere in the rules. I don't think the term role selection was in Puerto Rico, or even citadels which is where it came from. So at some point, someone coined the phrase, it's right and then people said, Oh, this is a good shortcut to talk about the games. The same with the term gateway game, which is something that Eric Lang tweeted about a couple of weeks ago is the term gateway game started as an ironic really and I want to comment on games as habit forming. Yeah, yeah. Completely, then became It was positive versus a normative term. Yeah. This game got me hooked on games. Yeah. And then it became somewhere along the way, it became a normative term, as opposed to describing something, it became something that you were aiming for. Yeah, so I'm wanting to design a gateway game. And even at the time, I actually found the original Board Game Geek thread. That is the earliest mention of the term gateway game that I could find from 2007.
Speaker 1
25:30
Oh, wow. That's quite late. Isn't it? Really? Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2
25:34
First of all, it's quite late. It's really after the first golden age. Second of all, it's 15 years ago, practically. And people were having the same arguments then about good benefit game as a gateway game. Some people were using it in a snobby way. Some people Wow. All the things that we you know, even the term gatekeeping, which is a newer term was happening in the context of that discussion. Although they didn't call it gatekeeping. It was just snobbery. I don't want to be a snob, and so on. So the use of the mechanic to sell the game happens, or kind of organically. I mean, it's like you say it's almost it's just saying, Oh, I really like that band. They only use Gibson guitars and you know, PVS Yeah, like that. Yeah, for for gearheads. They do care about that stuff. But you have to be quite an anorak is a more appropriate term. Yes, completely. Yeah, yeah, that's really inside baseball teams in a more American term. So partly, it's a signalling device. If I'm using these terms, I'm signalling that I know a lot about games. I, you know, you could call it virtue signalling in a board game context. Like I'm signalling that I I'm pretty smart about this thing. But it started to short, useful shorthand, but then like many things, it becomes a shortcut to thinking.
Speaker 1
26:55
Yes, yes. Now this, to me seems like the most dangerous bit of it all. Because the thing that I find, typically, and not to be unfair on my fellow publishers on this one, is that if the publisher is choosing to use a list of mechanics to design their game, that's nearly always a shorthand for me that I'm not going to be interested in their game. Like, every time I say that, I'm like, Oh, I won't like that. Because the design approach behind it will be that, as I said, the shortcutting the thinking of like, we've got to put the blocks together, we've got to make one version of 504. That's all we're doing.
Speaker 2
27:25
Well, it's also the same as you know, if a game is described itself as wacky, you know, then I also we almost always it goes, you know, put it back on the shelf, either, you know, Analogue or Digital, it's like no, again, there has to sell itself like that on on the box is probably not a game, I'm going to like, it could be wrong. Interesting. But you know, the sad thing to me is that many fledgling designers and publishers think it's a good thing. They think that it's helping them find their audience.
Speaker 1
27:55
Don't, don't, I think they do. And the thing that maybe also, I think, in this issue is that they might be right, to some extent, in the sense that the lack of shorthands that we can get are kind of like creativity, our heads around or conceptually around what kind of certain games are, proves to be really challenging. So for example, Naylor games, one of the things that I talk about, that I realise is an internal idea that I generally draws me to games is ambition of vision. So that's something like almost every game that does that has an ambition of vision, I know that when I play, I will enjoy it some extent, even if it's a beautiful failure. I will love it for the fact that it tried to do something that was quite ambitious. And so for NATO games, that's kind of, I guess, one of the pillars of what therefore, I always want to do with everything is that kind of role is every game we produce has to be in some way ambitious, and I think
Speaker 2
28:46
but I think that's true of most game companies. And and I think about video game companies as well, because I think the video game industry, I'm beginning to see the equivalent of triple A games now coming out, as in board games, for instance, lost ruins of our knack to me is triple A portaloo. Interesting, in a sense, it's gorgeous. It's like chess. And it's very well designed and so on. But there's something fundamentally actually you know, it's got some neat things but okay, well, I want to go back to the thing you said before, I think maybe video gaming board game companies start with that philosophy because when you're little when you're small, you're agile, you know, you can absorb a loss and but later on, when you get bigger, and you're responsible, maybe to shareholders or to a board, then you inherently become more cautious and we've seen what's happened in the video gaming industry now as in the movie industry where you know, think of how many triple A video games are basically, you know, now we've got Resident Evil village, there's Mass Effect two is just come out all these things. There's actually a British YouTuber. Well, he's really Australian, but I think he lives in England now. His name is yatse ProShot, Zero Punctuation, and his philosophy of video games is really begun to infect My view of board games that sense of games that kind of makes you numb as opposed to games to make you feel. So there's a comfort zone in games like Gears of War and Halo, and you know, waist high cover shooty, shooty shooty games, and they sell incredibly well call of duty, but he has a soft spot for the games that are brilliant, you know, he judges quality by the ambition of the games. And so it's hard to talk about quality in games in general. But I agree with you that again, well, how do we judge quality in games? Let me ask you this. I mean, forget about BGG ratings, which we know are kind of a joke for lots of different reasons. How do we rate what makes a good game?
Speaker 1
30:43
Wow, well, that's a big question. I but I'm gonna have a go at it. Because I think there's a really interesting one. I think, for me, it's something about a kind of totality of experience tied to a particular context, which is, it sounds like a very French philosophical way of putting it. So I'm gonna try a little bit more detail in that it's not exactly common I'm gonna be philosophical and persistent. Hand. And I think what I mean by that is, is that if I think of some really exciting games I've had recently, a one that I really enjoyed, I've got really into recently as aeons end, and that's one that I find, particularly the deeper you go into it, the the much, much, much more enjoyable, it gets, I've played now about 30 games, or something like that. Fought something like 30 Different monsters in the game. And there's something very complete about, we sit down for this experience, where we're gonna have a battle against something. And it rewards us in the kind of ways that I think kind of almost every Co Op game does the sense of common camaraderie and team that we have. But what it also does, which I think is so sophisticated, for me is that it seems to consistently deliver on a degree of uncertainty about what we should do, as well as building a kind of a narrative tension towards the end as well, so that sometimes the game does come down to a flip of a card in a really tense game will be, well, if one card if the Nemesis goes next, we're dead. But we want and the moment of now, when you turn that card is just absolutely magnetic. So there's something about a kind of narrative tension that it has, which is usually enjoyable, and a genuine, strong feeling of powerful sense of choice, and branching paths in multiple possible directions where I have found with the person I played with on a regular basis, my developer, Jaya that we don't, we're not able to Alpha gamer and come up with the optimal solution. It's a Margot's, obviously the classic challenge a lot of more simpler Co Op games have. And so I think it's a sense of like, I feel like I'm somehow even if it's not actually, I would say, it's the most amount of enriched game in the sense that often I don't think we talk in world story terms as much as we could, in other games. But however, we are emotionally transported to the experience of are we going to do are we not gonna beat this thing? For me it's like, is the emotional transport there for the kind of situation that you're in. So I think this is the totality of experience point for me, it's about really about emotional trauma, engagement and transporting in place, dare I say, so my mind goes to different place. So a light card game can also do that. But in my experience, this is where my personal understanding of what quality means to me, I am so big on being transported, I want to escape somewhere else that actually there are very few like card games that ever really satisfy me. Because they don't do that. They're so abstracted, they can't take me anywhere. And I think the ability to do that, and then the quality aspect for me is like, can you transport me emotionally? And can you do it consistently? Which is really hard? Because it's, we've all known those experiences. But I think can you consistently transport someone across is where the real quality is. And then everything about like components, everything about tightness of pace, are all things that are feeding that I think that's the closest I can get to an idea of what quality is,
Speaker 2
34:02
are you playing legacy? Or are you playing regular AM's? Okay, because I haven't played the legacy I have played. In fact, I kick started the original when it came out originally. And I have the app, and I've played that as well. So is there a stronger narrative in the legacy?
Speaker 1
34:18
Oh, that's an interesting question. So I think the legacy was the pinnacle of the experience for me, because I think it does that really nicely. It has this really lovely system where your character obviously is every mission, gaining a permanent upgrade. And And what's really nice about that, and where I think for me, it's been the best legacy experience I've played so far is that those upgrades are incredibly material to how your character works. So I'm like, in some situations, like pandemic, for example, where, yeah, it changes the game, and there's things you could do, it's kind of interesting, it doesn't feel like it's part of your characters personal development truly, because it completely changes your playstyle you get to a certain point like oh, well, now I can use this with this, because you're also selecting which cars go into your shop and things right, so that I found really good and what they've done recently Is that the next set of expansions that afterwards they released that was one where they came up with a kind of halfway house campaign system with a similar idea of where you get upgrades incrementally over the course of four games in a story sequence. And it doesn't quite work for me, because actually, they tried to make the story generically fit so that you can plug in any monster, it doesn't work. And that's an example of where the vision, although the vision is great. They've kind of fallen short for me, the execution is not there. It's like one right, I'd go close. but no cigar, guys, you could actually have done this a bit differently. If you'd actually given me more legacy content, I think I would have preferred that. But yeah, that that's what that bit does. For example, the key thing is, is that the evolution of character means that you really begin to get under the skin of exactly how your character operates.
Speaker 2
35:43
Oh, absolutely. I mean, again, thank you if the video game equivalents, Fallout New Vegas, for me is one of the best video games of all time, in that even 10 years later. And as janky as it is, there are still so many ways to play it, even if you've played it, even if you've played the story through. And they're all the different endings, with, with even without taking in mods and stuff. There are just so many ways you can play again, there's a different YouTuber, many a true nerd who always find like a new twist on, you know, this time in the playthrough, I'm going to try not to kill anyone. So you impose your own constraints, and so on and so forth. But it changes the narrative as well. I mean, Fallout New Vegas has so much writing in it. And it's just a huge game, there's just so much there. But then there are also simple games that have a lot there, I actually think that no thinks is a like card game, that you can still be talking about what happened the next day, it's not the only way to describe a quality game. But I think a good game is a game where even the next time you get together with your group, or it becomes part of the lore of your group, the meta of your group was like, oh, yeah, you're going to do this to me, like you didn't to me with no thanks, or whatever. So it, you know, you've integrated into your own life story as it were. But it's also I think, would say, with Deion Sanders, you've played it now. 30 times. So you have given the effort. You know, there's so many games that come out. Now, when I look back to the old reviews from or things from that 50 60 70s 80s people played their games a heck of a lot more times. So they were able to dig deep in and find quality, where today, we wouldn't have the patience. And so the standard, the bar is a lot higher, I once did a review for a guy for sort of an abstract game. And I told him about it's not a bad I said to him, I don't like writing bad reviews, I personally feel that if someone gives me a game, and it's not good, I would rather give them personal feedback, then kind of shamed them in public. It's just not for me, I don't live to bash other people's passion as a creator myself, I just, you know, if you want to shit all over it, tell me personally, I can learn something. But to do it in public, I just I don't have that killer instinct. And I know he reviews the dunk. In this case, I said, Look, I can't write a review of this, because this game is too flawed, blah, blah, blah. And then when he goes, Well, you don't understand there's like this early game and mid game and end game. And I'm like, Yeah, but you know, you'd have to play the game a lot to actually find it that in there. These people don't have the patience to find those nuggets. I think these days, the expectation a lot more from gamers and reviewers is they're gonna, the pressure on content creators is to write a review after even playing something once.
Speaker 1
38:34
So I think this is this is this is something I wanted to sort of bring us to this, I think it's really interesting is about what this means for the practical challenges for publishers, because I know lots of listeners will be very interesting thinking, okay, how can I apply some of this because I think also fascinate about this subject is is that it's easy for us to actually discuss in quality detail, trying to describe, you know, what it is, what good is and what the experiences were not able to just go was this book, right, we're able to say it's okay, well, we've got several different concepts there. And I think what it does is number one, I think it illustrates very nicely the bind that publishers are in to some extent, it seems in terms of how they describe their games. So maybe they should be a bit less afraid. Sometimes it's just using more genre titles, because I actually think that genres connect with people. To be honest, if someone tells me to train game, they've already got my interest to some extent, more than if they said it's a route building game, I'd go. No,
Speaker 2
39:24
right. Right. Just like in qualitative terms, as opposed to quantitative terms. mechanics to me are quantitative, why? As a because, because you can break them down as opposed to qualitative, where you are talking about this kind of ineffable experience. I mean, obviously, if you think if Dungeons and Dragons were marketed, you know, well, first thing you do is you're going to roll some dice and create your character with three six sided dice and you're going to do this if it were marketed like that. It would never have taken off it was taking it was created. Well. The creation story of Dungeons Dragons is huge, but it's spread like wildfire, because of word of mouth. And I guess if you look at magic, if you look at Cards Against Humanity, very different examples or mafia werewolf they spread because well, they were easy to teach and essentially Dungeons and Dragons is, depending on how you look at it as a low entry mark, depending on how much work you as the DM want to do, you know, content for the time was considered incredibly complex compared to the standard of American Games, it was considered a complex game. That's how much the Overton window of complexity,
Speaker 1
40:34
the Overton window of complexity. I love that phrase. Again, that's a really key idea to keep in mind. I think publishers think about
Speaker 2
40:42
is that oh, I don't take credit for that. That's Eric Lang. No. And the designer Eric Lang,
Speaker 1
40:47
I does kind of good phrase, he does quite a good phrase. Yes, he is. Yes. But
Speaker 2
40:51
going back to your thing about publishers, I think it's increasingly hard to stand out from the crowd. There's so much pressure now to have slick Kickstarter videos. You know, there's all this pressure, just like guitar magazines, you know, like, I never bought guitar magazines. I played I was in a band, I do all these things. Occasionally, if there was an interview with Jimmy Page, or someone who I thought, I'll find out something interesting, I went by it. And it was full of all these ads for like, even now, there are ads on YouTube learning guitar at home, and all these different things. And it's like you learn by doing Yeah, and for publishers, there's all this thing about, well, you've got to have this kind of mic. And this kind of camera setup and this kind
Speaker 1
41:29
of ring. Ring, like the ring light. Yeah,
Speaker 2
41:33
that can be a real block, not just financially, but also psychologically. And I feel like, again, some of these begin to look more like trailers than telling me anything about the game. So yeah, for sure. I mean, again, just launched now, Keystone national parks, which is getting a lot of buzz from creators, because I think the people involved are good people, and so their friends want to behind it. But the video tells me nothing about the game. It's beautiful. It's I mean, it tells me about the game, I should take it back, it tells me what the game looks like, I feel like I don't come away. And the same is true for many video game trailers like you see these awesome, I mean, it's infamous in the video game industry that the teaser trailer is often nothing like the game itself when you actually see the gameplay footage. So for publishers, the problem is, is a lot of the audience is sucked in by the blade. So I think that, to a certain extent, high production quality is a good thing. But I think there's diminishing returns, that the increase of interest past a certain point, maybe is it worth it? Maybe you should have spent those dollars developing the game more and playtesting it more.
Speaker 1
42:41
Yeah, that's a really interesting one. On the marketing side of that, I think it's really interesting, because I think it's again, this, it's very easy to look at it from the outside and make a mistake about what is the thing that is driving the value and say, well, oh, they're really big campaigns have really nice videos, that means we have to have a really nice video. Right? And that it's very easy to do that. And I think any kind of almost any business. So if you might, and marketing, particularly because it's very people don't really understand the logic behind why something is the way that it is. And through mistakes. They are just copying it.
Speaker 2
43:12
Well fear really, because they feel like they have to Yeah, true, you know, and the pressure now for physical components. Oh, just in the last five years, is, from my standpoint, insane. Like it adds nothing to gameplay. I don't care if a box has spot UV on it. What do I care? You can believe that? What do I care that a box, the box has taught, you know, a neoprene mat. I mean, there's quality, which adds to the game experience fine. But you know, like, I'm the kind of person that would never spend in game currency in a video game for like extra sprays or like armour that has no gameplay. Yeah, like, I don't care about decorating my character. I want stuff that you know, but that's a whole different thing about pay to win someone. But there's a kind of pay to win thing in video game marketing, where you feel like you have to have, oh my god, there was a guy recently who had a game and he posted about on Facebook, and he had this huge mini like seriously about 16 centimetres tall, and it had zero game effect. And he saw that as an incredible plus, and people were chiming in going, bro, you're adding like $20 to the cost of your game just for that one mini? And he said yeah, but there are people who will buy it because they can paint it and all these different things. And there will be there's no question that like, you know, Sandy Peterson games and some other things, you know, companies are cashing in on this, you know, with the with the inserts and the coins, the metal coins and maybe Saif was maybe the first game to really integrate it into the original Kickstarter was the sense of Oh, wow, with the original components. This game is awesome. I don't know. Yeah, I just feel like it's a bit of a dead end. And companies that I think really succeed are companies that where the game has been tested and developed very well before they even launch it on. Yes, I would agree. Yeah. I mean, Puerto Rico and red Seyfarth spent five years testing Puerto Rico before they released it, which is unheard of today, like, it's ridiculous. It's been five years in the game again, from a cost perspective, oh, again, if you're on a company whose revenue stream demands these constant releases, there's this pressure, you know, and that's what happened in the record industry, the movie industry, we need our big Christmas release, Christmas single, whatever, like this. And that's the problem is the business
Speaker 1
45:35
with the movie industry, they what's really interesting is that then there was this realisation that actually the best thing to do was to start making fewer films. And so they started moving towards making a small number of very big titles, they knew they could succeed. That's the negative effect of crashing out a lot of things, right, because the curse of the Marvel films in some senses that I'm in as a fan of them, I enjoyed them. They're great fun, and the way they interconnect is really cool. But it does mean it's like, well, actually, this is so bankable, that actually, we've got very little interest in funding lots of other crazy around the edges stuff.
Speaker 2
46:08
There's no long tail. In other words, and I think, you know, think of what proportion of the major board game industry is IP driven. Yeah. tween Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter. That's why it is because publishers, like movie studios want something that people recognise yes can be an add ons end to its credit, manages to do very well, despite the fact that its world as its own lore, and is not dependent on you know, even tearing off, which is the fantasy flake kind of universe that they build all kinds of games onto. So you know, as publishers get bigger, they get more conservative, they look more and more to IP, dirt and things. And recently, the IP driven games have been amazing, like Funko. And Prospero halls games horrified, diehard pan-am like a game about pan-am, it's actually an excellent, but not always, they don't always succeed. But they're more predictable. Because companies need Predictable Revenue Streams, it's hard to know where it's all going to end. Even with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you figure at some point, it's going to reach a saturation,
Speaker 1
47:20
I think that may already be in partly the effect, the pandemic has meant the cinema or cinema has been shut down. So that that is entirely fair to judge marvel at the moment on that, but it does seem a little bit like it always seemed to me the moment end game was over, I had this strong feeling of thinking, it kind of ended the story here, if we're honest, right? Like, wait, it's going to be an uphill battle to come up with a completely new Justice compelling 20 film mega narrative is that, well, what
Speaker 2
47:45
they've done, what they're doing now with one division, and the Winter Soldier is they're filling in the corners, right? Like, they figure as long as those corners are well written enough, and bring in enough fans and they can sell them to Netflix and Netflix will buy them, then they can keep going right, and now Black Widow is gonna come out like I mean, it is like a vein of or you dig out the main door, and then you're forced to frack out the the bits that are harder to get to. And at some point, the load
Speaker 1
48:14
is going to be on questions. And then board games, where are we in the lifecycle of that? So are we at the point where, where we're fracking for small bits? Or is it in reality that we are much earlier than that in that lifecycle? Because right now, if I'm honest, my view on this stuff, which again, is often unpopular when I say it's because the question is, is, well, whose games don't get named? But is my view is that I still feel like I see, personally, and I'd love to know what you think about this. Too many games that are perfectly fine, but not actually that great, because they don't have the years of development. I've gone into them.
Speaker 2
48:53
Yes, I agree with you. I agree with you. There are lots of games out there that are perfectly fine. They're fine, but they're not great. Because of the pressure. And again, if I were a big designer, like you know, like bonfire to the stuff on felt, relatively most recent game, it's perfectly fine. But honestly, does it really break anything? Any new ground? No, it doesn't. And I feel bad. You know, he feels obviously a lot of pressure to keep producing and move a with his, you know, he goes through these periods. But where's the board game industry as a whole? I think there are two. So here are the factors that I think in short, to medium to long term, what is the end of the pandemic, there's a huge kind of a huge pent up thing of people just getting together and play all the games that they've accumulated over the last hour and a half. My pile is huge. And there'll be some triage out of that. There's huge amounts of money being spent on Kickstarter, you know, some of these games the newest Marvel United was I think now the most successful board game Kickstarter ever now more than king of Death Mountain. Wow. Yeah, I think so. I think I think they broke that record. And it's a it's a very Very good game I just recently. So there's there's that there's pent up demand. Then there's the digital side of things where, you know, at some point digital technology, which obviously flower during the pandemic, you've got all these online platforms, few people have been forced to use them. There are some advantages to them. It's not as good as playing face to face, but there are some advantages. And they will continue to get more sophisticated, and I'm waiting for an AI table. In fact, I recently got after five years waiting, essentially an AI table. I was an early adopter for this thing, it took them five years to finally deliver it. It's basically a huge iPad that I'm going to write a column about, it doesn't really deliver on it, but imagine not having to deal with the huge cubic footage of boxes and things and rules and pieces of the game. You press a button the game is set up like live in like a live and and then you would still have it's like digital music. Some people still love vinyl, they have their vinyl, even their CDs. But most of us my whole record collection is right here on my desktop with digitised basically, and that used to take a whole bookshelves. So the digitisation of board games is going to be another trend. And then also the bubble will burst whether it's some other economic factor, because there's a lot of board gaming arbitrage going on, I mean, copies of Stardew Valley, the board game going for $300 right now, because it's only available in the United States. Interesting. Yeah, there's people who, you know, are using board games as real estate essentially. So that's another trend. The commodification of board games, which I talked about in the game changes. It's not huge, but it's there. At some point, people are gonna sit back and say, I have enough games about mediaeval merchants to
Speaker 1
51:46
CubeSat maps. There are a lot of those.
51:50
How many more do I need?
Speaker 1
51:52
Yeah, exactly. No, I completely agree. I do think that that that's kind of that's the way that's going? Definitely. Okay. So if you were to give advice to publishers in terms of what they've tried to look into, and to get attention for their games, I guess there's two sides of it. We've talked about but the consumer side, and I think there's still some interesting questions, I'd love to come back to another time, about about how some of that stick around around how we how we pitch and explain things. But from a kind of media perspective, what should publish from your perspective be doing to try to get the attention for the titles that hopefully they're pouring all of this love and work and attention into?
Speaker 2
52:23
Well, honestly, I feel like publishers, if they want more people to buy their games, they should be looking to get as many different types of voices as possible, who create games. The fact is that a lot of people don't see themselves in these traditional board game themes. mediaeval merchants, fiction, fantasy, zombie things, look at wingspan, you know, which didn't kick the door down. But it certainly showed that a game about birds. Oh, you know, yeah, huge numbers, because there's a lot of people out there. I mean, the whole point was Elizabeth Hargrave has said time after time, she and her group didn't care about those themes, they wanted something about what they were interested in. So I think publishers can't just sit back and wait for people to pitch, they need to build out into these under represented communities, different voices, to look for different kinds of stories, because those stories are bound to pull in people who will see themselves as gamers and it will grow, they will sell more games in the long run. I'm convinced. So that is one thing in terms of telling the story of the games, you know, in the in the details lower down, they should definitely talk about what the mechanics are. But I feel like players want to know, well, I mean, players want to know how to play the game. But I think ultimately, they want to know what kind of experience they're going to be having here. So I mean, when we look at how books are marketed, they are marketed by genres, but they you know, they talk about it a thriller, you know, yeah, yeah. Those are emotions write thriller, suspense, romance, those are emotions. So it's interesting, the language of genre in literature is emotions based. And so I think a realisation, perhaps, that I mean, we there are horror based games as as board games, but I think reading a little more into the emotional experience of playing the game will again attract a wider audience who aren't as necessarily interested in what the mechanics are.
Speaker 1
54:25
Yeah, yeah. And the chapter that I guess is going to be that the language is often so poor, I think around games. So the article I know you reference that you wrote a little while back about what fun is, oh, the game is fun. And it's like, Well, okay, yeah, but what does that mean? Like, there's so many different when we're talking the experience, I'm playing here and then I'm just gonna try and describe it to people. I try and avoid the use of the word fun at all costs, because it's so it's become almost somehow exhausted of meaning. Because it it comes to mean any positive emotion that you have when you're playing Ah,
Speaker 2
54:57
wait. I mean, yeah, it requires you More than a thesaurus or for Saurus. And still not sure how you pronounce that. But you need more than just adverbs and things, I think describing the interaction in broader sense. Again, it's interesting to go back and read, you know, game reviews of an earlier era before these mechanics were discussed. And that would be another thing I would advise publishers to do is go back to those gaming magazines, whether we're talking about strategy and tactics, moves magazine, the general, those, those are coming out of the workings thing, but even Games magazine, taking a look at those more in depth reviews from an era when you had you didn't have that language to sell games, you had to sell it a different way.
Speaker 1
55:39
Yeah, I find that that element of it kind of really fascinating. It strikes me that one thing I think I expect to happen is for the kind of the role of kind of high concept to come in even more. So I think about the way that films are often pitched is that you have here's the genre expectation. Here's the subversion. So it's like it's a film about a nanny, but it's doing their job. Like, but she's a zombie. Yes, exactly. So and so so so but it's about zombies, or even even serious films. So for example, Saving Private Ryan is it's a second world war movie, but it's a kind of hyper realistic Second World War.
Speaker 2
56:14
Kirk, it's which one was it? Was it which one was done with one shot one long edited shot? Was that done character was that?
56:21
No, no, don't get don't don't Coke is definitely not not the
56:25
team for 90.
Speaker 1
56:27
It was yes, not. Not only is it 1917, I think my shame, I haven't seen it. I have seen it. And it's brilliant. And it's not actually one shot, but it's made to look like it's edited into one long shot. And it is again, so it's so it's the first world war in one long shots. And I think what's so interesting about that, is that when we do games to get our attention, it's like it's a it's a trend game, but right, and then it's like, oh, and that seems like quite a clear understanding. That's probably why that became saying became quite clever.
Speaker 2
56:55
But you know, here's the thing, as long as consumers are willing to throw money at stuff as the status quo, publishers have very little incentive to change. So as in video games, again, or movies or whatever else they are driven by, except the smaller ones, are willing to let be led by ambition, but the larger ones are going to be led by the market, but what is already selling? But there are exceptions. I mean, in Fantasy Flight, they sometimes they'll have pet projects and so on that will do that. I mean, look at the median, the median came out of nowhere. Yeah, people thought that Donald X Baca Reno was a pseudonym. Like they didn't even believe he exists. Yeah, and it was real bread. And Rio Grande was a major publisher. But they they clearly thought they were willing to take a flyer on it. I think originally, they bought the base game and the first two expansions if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1
57:51
I think they were all designed together. When they all of those, I believe the first eight, the
Speaker 2
57:54
first arc of a back corriendo never thought it would ever have bigger legs than that. But he was ambitious in terms of thinking
Speaker 1
57:59
about it. I mean, eight, it's so many cards, right?
Speaker 2
58:03
Right. So if publishers are willing to set aside part of their budget for something that's more adventurous and let creators as in any, again, anything let creators get on with it without interference, then you know, you can end up with a Graceland you can end up with Craig Ferguson Late Show, which lately, I've been obsessed with these things where like, you know, they're not under scrutiny. So they have they feel that creative liberty to just go and push the boundaries of what the art form can do.
Speaker 1
58:33
Yeah, completely, completely. And as you said, difficult, I guess if you're trying to make a living from it, and you're worried about, Oh, am I going to be able to pay the bills, not just for me, but for my staff as well, which I think is another thing, I think, because I think that's something I encounter quite a bit is that actually it strikes me quite a lot of people in public in game publishing are pretty nice folk who are quite responsible, and they want their people to be looked after. So it's like taking big bets on like, whether this suddenly bananas thing will work out on without the kind of like financing that something certain things could have is a challenge, I can understand why the incentive I think that's a very good point you pointed out makes actually a very natural fit. A lot of small publishers are quite ambitious to do things that are impressive, or trying to try to push the genre because to some extent, you're in a position where you feel very safe to do it in some ways. Because it because if it blows up, it blows up. It doesn't matter so much.
Speaker 2
59:21
Because for many of the small publishers it's not it's not even a full time gig. They still have their day jobs. Oh, completely. Yeah. So they can you know, like you're looking at it isn't a very expensive hobby at that point. So and you've made your peace with the fact that it could all go Yeah, so yes.
Speaker 1
59:38
Yeah. Yeah, completely. That's, that's completely well, you know, I would love another time to get into even more detail on these sort of things would be absolutely fascinating, because there's so much there that we've gone through in particularly, I think around really interesting to get into some of that going to industry commentary stuff as well, which I think is really interesting. Before we wrap up though, I'd be really keen to hear about what to expect from you because I know you do a podcasts, the game changers, which I want to say right now just the audience. anyone listens to the show should listen to it is absolutely the best thing I've ever heard on the history of games. It's, it's exceptional.
Speaker 2
1:00:12
Thank you so much. I mean, it was a labour of love. But it really is. It's a It's my labour of love. And I beginning now to coalesce around this, what a season two would look like. And it is going to be around this thing of what is a game and sort of a an aesthetic philosophy of games. So in other words, what does quality mean, some of the columns I've written in the spring, this thing about what is fun, and the other one about foam, whatever. And then this various other things that I've tweeted about and it's going to come around, again, is a storytelling machine with victory conditions. And looking at a game, which is inspired by the French architect of coop was yay, who basically wrote the textbook of modern architecture and saying that a house is a machine for living. And it's interesting, oh, which was very controversial, and you know, some of the architecture that came out of it, not everyone loves, but I think thinking of a game in that way might provide a framework and also the language that you use in terms of how much ambition does the game have, and judging a game by how well it fulfils that ambition? Yeah, I think I'm going to steal that idea. Oh, so, basically. So basically, what I'm hoping to start soon, once I've organised my thoughts better, because for the history, what it was easy to figure out what the 12 episodes would be this time around. I don't know exactly what the framework will be. But I'm hoping certainly before the end of 2021, that there will begin to be a season two, I'm hoping we'd like to start doing some videos as well. I'm hoping that as the pandemic begins to lift, here in Ontario, and the gaming groups locally, and also, I mean, we have writers from across Canada and in the States. So as this all lifted, people have more stuff to write about. I'm hoping to see more, you know, writing from the daily worker placement, www dot daily worker placement.com. And the game changers byte podcast is I think, dwp.buzzsprout.com I think I sent you the link to it. Yes,
1:02:17
yes. I'll make sure that's in the description. There'll be
Speaker 2
1:02:19
in the comments below. Yes. And by all means, if people watching this, have enjoyed it and have comments on anything that we've talked about, I will definitely love to take them into account and we can talk again soon. I would love to thank you so much.
Speaker 1
1:02:40
Producing fun is produced by Naylor Games. If You enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at @NaylorJames or write me an email James@Naylorgames.com
Until next time.
]]>Nick Smith and his wife Carrie are the co-owners of the Ludoquist boardgame cafe in Croydon, London: a hugely successful venue which won the global award for best retail store at GAMA in 2020 and has been featured multiple times on UK television. In this episode we get stuck into the economics of game cafes, his ambitious and inclusive vision for a café where everyone is a gamer and managing a hospitality business in the age of Covid.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames
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Ludoquist’s website: https://www.theludoquist.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheLudoquist
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theludoquist
I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective. Welcome to Producing fun. My guest this week is Nick Smith, owner of the ludicrous boardgame cafe here in my hometown of Croydon. The looter quest is an amazing venue. It has a fantastic selection of games, good food friendly staff and a brilliant atmosphere. But don't take my word for it. Looter quest also has a legitimate claim to being the best game cafe in the world. At the start of 2020, it won the award for outstanding store for the world's most important tabletop game industry body gamma, the US based game Manufacturers Association. This is an impressive enough achievement of itself. But it's rendered even more incredible when you consider that to Nick's knowledge that looter quest is not only the first UK establishment to win this award, but the only game cafe in the world to have claimed the title so far. When this news was announced, I was hugely proud for both him and my hometown. But I was not actually that surprised. The attention to detail, smart strategy and determination to make something great was obvious from its opening back in 2017. So far, I'm yet to visit anywhere in North America or the UK. That's better. A savvy and experienced mind at work was printed all over this venue from the very beginning. But interviewing him underlined exactly why it has been so successful. First, Nick and his wife, Carrie, are an excellent team. And it's very clear how much with their different areas of focus, their partnership allows the venue to fire on all cylinders. Second, and maybe even more importantly, it's also clear that they have a truly compelling and sincere vision for a game cafe where everyone is included from aficionados of rare heavy Euro games, to Saturday night cocktail parties. If you play games, you're a gamer in Nick's book, his drive to make sure those people and everyone in between all have a lot of fun is quite something I think it's safe to say that Nick knows a thing or two about running a game cafe. If you've ever been curious to know about the economics of these businesses, this is in keeping with Nick's incredibly honest to a fault character, the most transparent description you're ever likely to hear. But even if you aren't, it doesn't really matter. Nick is such a switched on strategically minded business person, there's bound to be insights to mine here that are useful to anyone trying to make a living out of games. We joined just as Nick is describing his previous venture, the IT company, which provided the solid financial foundation for his foray into the world of hospitality.
Speaker 2
2:51
Thank you in 2017. I ran it so 22 years. Wow. And then handed over to a managing director. He will then hand over the managing director when I started Looter Quest.
Speaker 1
3:08
Right. Okay, wow. And so and so why on earth did you start the IT company, then what was it that led you into that?
Speaker 2
3:14
Oh, God, well, that's interesting. Let's go with I was at university. Well, let's let's let's go probably so I got into recovery from alcoholism at age 24. Right, having spent six years in Northern Ireland at university, running the student bar and drinking it dry, right. And I came back to London, which was place of birth and got into recovery, and subsequently went back to university and actually got a degree this time instead of spending all the time messing around, right. And in my degree, I was doing business and it and I was doing a project about ethical investment, which is the concept that you should buy shares ethically with a view to avoiding mine manufacturers, for example. Yeah. Or proactively purchasing environmentally friendly companies. And I was interviewing somebody about that guy called Charles meadow, who was an activist in that world. And he started talking to me about what I was doing as a student and I started doing it and he said, Do you consult? Yes. And then I had an IT company.
Speaker 1
4:40
So, so when prompted this this spur of the moment moment, you're just like, well, I'll just say yes, that I'm an IT consultant. And then you became an IT consultant.
Speaker 2
4:49
And I saw it. Yeah. I mean, what we are what we say we are, to some degree always profoundness but yes, that's that is pretty much how it happened. And I originally it was primarily around web design, right? And I went off and helped him build his website.
Speaker 1
5:06
That must have been very early for like web design. He was a full range of the big boom and kind of web design agencies that happened like a few years later, right? Yes. Well,
Speaker 2
5:15
it was at a stage where I could call myself a web designer, because I was a technician who understood HTML, not because I understood marketing colour schemes and fonts, right? I see. Yes, yeah. And I very quickly discovered over the next couple of years, but web design was a marketing thing, not a technical thing, and morphed for company into a technical element. So it was all about infrastructure, doing internet instals printers, making networks work together. sort of interesting. So
Speaker 1
5:47
So actually, isn't that you started as an employee in someone else's it firm? You went just straight into running your own business? Pretty much I have
Speaker 2
5:55
essentially never worked for anybody else. Oh, wow. Extraordinary. Other than like, a two week holiday, once, right? Which, which is very odd and unusual. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
Speaker 1
6:12
Which is difficult. Tell me because I sort of want to ask the question. What's it like being like that, but I guess you don't have the comparison point to having been an employee? Right?
Speaker 2
6:21
I think he has negatives and positives. So so the negative is, I never really got taught how to be any sort of businessman by by, you know, I was never mentored into being a business. But right,
6:36
that make sense.
Speaker 2
6:38
And I think that probably means I can come at things with slightly open eyes and slightly odd angles. Because I'm not to rely on an industry standard manual, an internal manual, if you like. Yeah. But equally probably means. I'm sure that over years, it's meant that processes have been done inefficiently, because I'm not picking up on all the experience of other people having taught me, I mean, yeah, I can Google stuff. And I can read, be expert who says this is how you do this sort of department, but I'm sure there's a certain amount of, you know, not having had that background that impact on what I
Speaker 1
7:20
Speaker 2
7:41
That's probably true. And I think, you know, opening the looter quest, I'd never, I'd never worked in hospitality. I've never worked in retail.
Speaker 1
7:49
Interesting. But But although you hadn't done that, as I think I said in the sort of trail for this episode, you actually won the Best outstanding game, retailer or cafe last year,
Speaker 2
8:02
power retailer of the Year Award from gamma. So that's a global award right of the hobby game industry. I think we were first board game Cafe when it was certainly first Cafe. We also won the bet best designed store. Safe. So it's so we won two awards, which is unusual. And we are. I wonder if Dave will ever hear this. But I believe we are the only UK store to have ever won two awards at gamma. Wow. It's not a no not typical thing. So yeah, technically, we are the best game store in the world. And this year, they awarded it to every member of gamma because it was such a weird year. So we are the best game store in the year, two years in the world two years in a row. Oh, wow. It's always going to claim. Yeah,
Speaker 1
8:55
exactly. Isn't that a little bit like when they sort of cancelled the Olympics during the Second World War, though, there's sort of your record gets to last a little bit longer, I guess.
Speaker 2
9:05
raunch of a reigning Olympics cricket champions, because they won 18 1900. Last time, so yes, it is on those lines. Yes.
Speaker 1
9:19
Oh, one amazing fact. I'm going to going to keep that in mind that it might relate to I love that. That's fantastic. But yeah, that's really cool. I mean, I would say that's, that's testament to the power of thinking differently than really like to achieve that level of success. I mean, certainly, it's an it's incredibly impressive here. And I know I'm very grateful to have such a fantastic story as you've created right on the doorstep, really. So that's probably a great point then to start talking a little bit about, about why you started to looter quest because if I could ask the question, why on earth would you start an ID company? That least sounds like quite a sensible kind of business to get into. Why would you start a board game bricks and mortar retail business in the late teenis is Maybe a less obvious commercial choice,
Speaker 2
10:02
because I was very, very bored with an IT company for 25 years, I think is the answer. I so there were certain few a few things fit into it. First of all I was I was bored with the IT company. But the IT company gave me a certain career financial security, which is important. We'll, we'll come to that I had, a lot of my relaxation is always involved games. And for a long time, I was a video gamer and I was an online video game. And I found that actually, online video gaming, even when I was theoretically playing with other people, was an inherently lonely thing. I think it may have changed a little bit now. Because video games, you know, you, you've got your discord, and you've got a built in chat facilities in every single online game. And that wasn't so much the case, say 10 years ago. So going back probably eight or nine years, I started casting around for other hobbies. I keep fish so water and fresh. But But again, that's a fairly lonely occupation, or solitary, I think it's
Speaker 1
11:17
not as great. It's usually social, even if I'm sure there are conventions and events and people go to our and
Speaker 2
11:23
there are forums, but it's essentially, I have built this beautiful fish tank. And yeah, and I'm the one who clears out fish poop. Yeah. Yes, yeah. And so I found a meetup group that had recently started in Croydon called Croydon, board gamers are run by a lady called Emma, and went along to it, having not played very much board games, I had a friend who I play fairly regularly with, he and his girlfriend have played Catan a lot. And we've got my four year old daughter, we're starting to play turn to great games play with your kids, because you can give them very generous trade so you're not actually cheating in their favour, right, I could help them stay competitive and not get very annoyed, but
12:16
I never thought about it from that perspective was quite interesting.
Speaker 2
12:18
Trading games are good for kids all levels, but anyway, so I played but the rest of the modern board gaming scene was more or less passing me by and I went coin board gamers and found pranky upstairs in a pub. I think it will just cross road in fact from where it's at now upstairs in green dragon and that was about five or six it grew to about 10 people that day and we played board games and I think I dragged my daughter along actually and she just went and hugged everybody which was going on Yeah, and that developed into I you know for next few years I got modern board gaming and and I developed a social life with friends who were you know, in the same bar as me or striking distance. So we reached I reached a point where I was bored with what I was doing my it work and I turned to Carrie one evening said You know, I'm sort of thinking I might do something to do with this board gaming stuff and have fun doing it. I spend most of my weekends with it. I don't know if I want to design a game or open a shop or run a cafe and she said let's run a cafe. And that was utterly a surprise to me at that time. Our daughter by them was we're talking four or five years ago she was 14 1314 Cute she was did not require as much parents union she previously had. So Carrie was having ready to do something outside of the house again outside the family home and she and I come from very different angles. So I want to do something to a board game she wants to do something to do with hospitality. Right? And honestly, I think that that combination is why the looter quest works as well as it does. Because whenever I want to fill shelves with Warhammer minis and put up posters advertising the latest cool game, she is going know what you want is first place look beautiful, because when when non gamers walk in, they won't be terrified. think it looks cool. Yeah, it'll be
Speaker 1
14:43
this inviting space for them, rather than as is so easy for really specialist hobby retailers to become actually the complete opposite of that, which is which is kind of quite threatening and off putting and I certainly feel that way about if I'm going to be brutally honest. Maybe the majority Have those kinds of shops in the one the ones that I tend to see, I mean, you know, they sell to a niche and they do really well in that niche, I'm sure, but are not hugely attractive to much more casual games.
Speaker 2
15:11
Right? Correct. And and I think it was very much the vision for looter quest was always felt it was not going to be just for hardcore gamers. We wanted an element of that. And you know, There absolutely are different different levels of gamers as we regard a gamer as anyone who plays Ludo. upwind. Right? Yeah, yeah. And I think that's really the critical part of our ethos is that and if your idea of fun on it, what we care about is that we provide a space where people can interact in person Yes, completely. Wherever phones are away for computer screens or away we are one of the very few places in in Croydon where there are no television screens, we, we are interesting during the World Cup, we are asked Can you show the hook but no, we cannot. We literally cannot we have no facility to do that.
Speaker 1
16:14
Yeah. And no, nor would you want to write nor would we want to. Yeah.
Speaker 2
16:19
And we suffered during the World Cup because it was a bizarrely hot summer and England did well in a World Cup. And we're gonna happen that often. Thankfully, not. Exactly. So yeah, we we are the screen free place. But that absolutely means that if what you want to do on a Saturday evening is come and drink cocktails and play hungry hippos, there is a place for you at Looter quest. And the people next to you will be playing some weird, obscure European game with infinite amounts of wooden and cardboard pieces. And neither of you will feel judged by or stare at the other.
Speaker 1
17:00
Oh, that's that's a wonderful vision. That's, I must admit that I love that. Because I think that, you know, games are very much for everyone. And so the fact that you can, the idea baked into the venue, is that it should facilitate that I think is really marvellous. And it makes tremendous sense because it means that you can equally benefit from both of those kinds of customer, right? Well,
Speaker 2
17:23
it absolutely makes commercial sense. Yeah, we talk about Saturday night, people and Monday night people and Saturday night, a Saturday night person would typically come with a group of their buddies, they wouldn't begin to think of themselves as gamers that was just, you know, the people who occasionally play a game and they will drink a whole bunch of cocktails and spend a lot of money and spend, you know, we're going into resistance, we spend 3040 50 quid ahead, and then we won't see them again for three months. Hmm. Whereas the Monday night, we'll come in, get a panini and a coke. Six quid say. And we'll do it every Monday of the year. Yeah. And that those are different crowds, but fill different calendar spots, but also different commercial spots. Yeah. And what I've learned about Cafe Cafe trade is if you can get repeat customers, that's gold. Yeah, the person who comes in and spends three quid a day on a cup of coffee and sits before hours when you don't have anyone much else in, right? Yeah. is just as valuable because that's, that's 1000 pounds in a year. Yeah, three, three pounders. And, you know, compared to the guy that you know, the group of four who come in and flash their cash on Friday night, and it's great. We've got people flashing on the cash. Yeah, I'll do it. But they're going to spend 200 quid on a night. That's lovely. We love that 200 quid, it's still not as much as is for your laptop, who comes in spends three quid every day? Over a year.
Speaker 1
19:10
Interesting. And so that so that I find that really fascinating as well, like thinking from that perspective, is that partly we think about your strategy, because you're also you're able to articulate a very clear vision, if I'm going some classic product terminology there. That's kind of the next stage down I think of is is the strategy level. When you're thinking about this, then Is that Is that how you're thinking about complementary customer bases, that you've got those you're actively seeking to make sure you have those different kinds of people coming in for times. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2
19:39
no, we're not we in vSv or nudge, as we are nudge Saturdays tend to be slightly louder. family oriented during the day, right? Sunday's tend to be slightly thinkI a Euro gamer right? Particularly anything that we've done, but if someone says to us, I want to come and play long, long thinking game whens a good day, then we will in inter suggest a Sunday is someone saying it's my kid's birthday weekend, I'm not sure whether to come on Saturday or Sunday, we will see you Saturday. And you know, people are completely free to and do come on whichever day they want those couple of notches and there's couple pricing elements in there that were two years we come out of lockdown where we're reviewing that. And essentially, we're probably likely to be slightly more limited in times on Saturdays, because most people who come on Saturday don't want actually to be with us for like six hours. So one of the interesting aspects of games Cafe as as a cafe element is, is that it's the antithesis of what you want to do as a cafe, generally, broadly speaking, normal cafe, want someone to come in? order a coffee, with frappe, lattes, and all the added 35 p elements. Right? Well, yes, take Yeah. And a slice of cake. Sit down for 20 minutes and go. Right. Yeah. So you want to sell that space to the next person that you want to worship you because commercially,
Speaker 1
21:21
you're turning tables over as quickly as possible. You're hoping they come in? And by pursuing the highest margin overall products? Yes. And then leave?
Speaker 2
21:30
The next person could do that. Because as soon as they stopped drinking that product, eating that product? They are I'm going I'm making inverted commas. Because they are useless to you as a customer. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1
21:45
yes. If we're talking about pure rate of return economics here. They aren't, they're no longer unless they unless they're compulsively buying more and more from you every five minutes. They aren't that they're no longer contributing to additional revenue. Yeah, I
Speaker 2
21:59
mean, actually, that's not entirely true. If they're sitting in the window and looking good to be outside. There's an element of that as well. But in pure cash terms, but not they so what you're doing as a board game cafe, is encouraging people to come in order their coffee, and cake and then sit there
Speaker 1
22:22
for three and a half hours. Yeah, the exact opposite of turning tables over correctly.
Speaker 2
22:26
And it's the exact opposite. So what we've had to do with what we've had to work out is because our commercial rent is based on normal commercial rents, and our landlord is just a normal landlord. And you know, we pay the same rates as a ordinary cafe. There's no economic exceptions with that, but we have a slightly different business model. So we've had to max up try to maximise the amount of times that we make money on. Yeah, make sense. So we're open on a Monday, where a lot of small cafes are closed on a Monday, because we need that extra 1/7 revenue. Yes. For it to make sense, is not one seven fits a different amount of money. There's a quite a bit of that today. But
Speaker 1
23:16
and I guess is that partly, does that partly work? Because you actually do have your Monday evening person that you were discussing, who is actually presumably is actually coming to browse the games to play the games have their Panini in a coke? Yeah. And actually, they're, they're kind of contributing in a way that maybe also other kinds of Cafe just wouldn't have that kind of customer. And quite the same way.
Speaker 2
23:43
variables. So on meetup so organised social events, and we've talked about pre COVID, I suppose. Yeah. are broadly Monday through
Speaker 1
23:52
to Wednesday, right, which would be the slow times in hospitality normally so
Speaker 2
23:56
slow time in hospitality. So but times that are attractive to the slightly more hardcore gay, slightly more thinkI. Gamer? Yes. Yeah. Don't want necessarily to be with us on a Saturday night when it's loud and noisy and brash. Yeah, they want a quiet space. Yeah, perhaps. All sorts of reasons. Yeah. Picture not not
24:17
a bug at that point.
Speaker 2
24:18
Abs. Absolutely. Absolutely. And on Saturday, in fact, it's a busy busy place is also a feature not a bug, but for a slightly different group of people or people in a slightly different mood. Yeah, that's, that's the other element of that, of course, is there's nothing to stop Bob once every three months coming out with the guys and having a few drinks on a Saturday night and playing some lighter stuff. And that happened. That it's it's a different mood mood, I think is the essential of it.
Speaker 1
24:48
Yeah. And that makes tremendous amount of sense. So partly then this is partly about thinking about the market and who you need to kind of fill what spots but you say you can't Not too much. I mean, obviously, when it comes to people making bookings, you can't say, oh, no, you're not allowed to come on Saturday.
25:07
There is no return on a Saturday night is not.
Speaker 1
25:11
Exactly. Or just to tell them I don't know, like, I've already got the correct buyer personas for that day. I need you stopped in a different segment. Yeah. So I needed to come another day. But that doesn't mean presumably, there aren't things like pricing around how, for example, you've got a pricing structure around game charges, food offerings, that kind of thing, that and events, right, all those things can help shape that.
Speaker 2
25:36
Absolutely. So I mean, are so broadly speaking, and this will vary a little bit with where we're at the time of year and time of month and all that, broadly speaking, we are full most Saturdays, most Sundays, more or less from lunchtime for more or less to be Friday nights. So we don't run weekend events at all, which is very unusual in in the game space, because typically, it's Friday Night Magic. It's Saturday morning pokemon. That is where traditional. And I think you know, we're talking about 15 years ago, traditional, right? Yeah, is when Opie started with those sorts of shops would open a reliance on card games and Warhammer and that sort of thing they expect to feel with their tournament's on Saturdays and Sundays. Yeah, and we actively work against that. We don't want to do that interesting. So we don't. So we get, now we do, we do have pricing structures. So this is varying around COVID. But the pre COVID We were, broadly speaking five pounds can play games as much as you like, or two pounds to play. Bring your own game. So how we described it. So what we essentially meant by that was card games
Speaker 1
26:59
and role playing games. Right? Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2
27:03
But bring your own game didn't play all weekend.
27:08
Ah, right makes you want to role play
Speaker 2
27:10
for two pounds, you come Monday through Thursday. If you want to role play for five pounds, you're absolutely welcome on a Saturday, but it means you're paying five pound for me two pounds. And then what this lets
Speaker 1
27:21
you do is helps you manage again, those crowds a little bit because you know that with your much broader offering because this is about your vision for games for for everyone. Everyone is a gamer. Anyone wants to play a game as a gamer. And it means that on the Saturday and Sundays, you probably going to end up with a crowd who is not going to be as high a percentage of the very hardcore hobbyist people. And it's going to be a quite an actually very broad selection and setting whenever I go to looter questt, I'm really aware of actually what an incredibly awesomely broad selection of society you get coming in for games, and then you you've then made that made it cheaper for for those kind of more, those kind of more hobbyist activities to happen earlier in the week. And then that helps you manage that between the two things. Yeah,
Speaker 2
28:03
yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, there's some demographic effects and economic effects that spring from that. And we also have memberships which could apply in different offences. So So you know, there are ways we nudge people but it is very much I think it's very important, but it's a notch we're not playing Magic with us on a Saturday night you're absolutely welcome to come and play Magic. Just be aware it'd be noise even be somewhat loud music and people will be drinking cocktails around you and it's going to cost you a fiver Yeah,
28:40
yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2
28:41
We're not the typical magic environment. So people generally don't do that. And we don't get very much magic flavoursplayers at all. In fact, it's quite rare that magic is played not that we have anything against it but but equally we don't push towards it.
Speaker 1
28:57
Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I mean, that's something I know that particularly Croydon there are some places as well that kind of more specialised in that anyway, right. That have a slightly Absolutely
Speaker 2
29:05
I mean, we more than they're there. So I visit this is worth discussing, I think because, again, your traditional organised play retail store for the last while is pretty much dependent on getting a groups of magic Pokemon YuGiOh and similar Trading Card gamers who come in regularly possibly pay a small fee to play but certainly play pass a larger fee for tournament and selling them cards that has been the strategy for lots of shops and still and still it's absolutely still it has been very clear through lockdown. I mean various groups and it's you know, everybody sales of card games have hurt because why would you pay retail price to The store you can't go and play in when you get it cheaper at the online store 200 miles away. Yeah. So, but So why did we not encourage that sort of play? Because it is quite exclusive. If you walk into a magic tournament, you will see row after row of as it happens, mainly male. Yep. Not not not not quite what it was. But is still mainly male. People facing each other one on one focused on them. Yeah. Who? Not in any deliberate way. Or excluding you because that back is to you. Yeah, they're not interested in you
Speaker 1
30:50
at all. They've got a degree of focus on the game, right?
Speaker 2
30:54
Because they are completely focused on. And if you walk into that room, you are not going to feel like it's a welcoming room. Unless you really understand that game already. Yeah, exactly. And you can mitigate it, you can have a host on the door, who is going to welcome you in and help with it, but but still, in all the atmosphere you walk into is not a welcoming one. Whereas walking twice, there'll be some people desperately trying to think of a new scrabble word, others are going to be laughing about a card game manager job, others will be playing their focus euro, but but even that, that's four or five people and one person is really thinking about their turn, and three or four of them will be chatting and joking around that. It's a much more open environment.
Speaker 1
31:42
That's a really fascinating, important point. I think it's interesting, you raised that because I did that mean, it made me think about how even as you say the body language associated with people playing yours is a bit different, because of the way that it's a whole group experience. Generally, if one person's taking their turn, most the way these games are structured, that means several people aren't. So there's a little bit of conversation tabletop going on. And one thing that I've noticed, increasingly, is that because the the general visual quality of these games has gone up so much, maybe in the last 10 or 15 years, they're appealing to people to everyone, they see a lovely big Euro game being played. And actually people who otherwise have a lot of interest, I've often noticed that, Oh, what's this? And they'll take an interest in it.
Speaker 2
32:21
Absolutely. I mean, honestly, one of one of the criteria for selection for our games library is what sins table presents. So over lockdown, we bought a copy of holy, it's HTML. Okay, and it's based around the I'm going to be I may get this wrong over Hindu or Indian, the festival of colour throwing, where people throw colours in the form of either dies or powders at each other illistrate. And so that's actually not very relevant, other than the actual board for Holi is a free D board. It's looks like a 3d chess board call, and you put it on a table, and it's you putting lots of different colours on it. In its essence, it's just an abstract. It can be three levels. But it looks amazing on a table.
Speaker 1
33:19
Yeah, I'm just taking a look at it right now googling it, and it does look, I could say incredible, these three layers that you've just described, and that the amount of colouring I can imagine that just looks so impressive. Set that out there. Yeah.
Speaker 2
33:31
And and we will often, you know, buy again, based on is it going to look cool if someone walked past it? And that's not probably very, in any other world. That's not a great purchasing criteria for again, obviously, it has to be a decent game as well. Sometimes we get it wrong, and sometimes it looks really good. And it's black soul, Dark Souls.
Speaker 1
33:54
Yeah, that makes sense. Makes tremendous sense, though, that you would take that kind of approach there. Because I think, as you said, overall, what we're saying is, is that this kind of deliberate choice of an overall strategy that is more likely to favour those kind of games is partly because it makes a huge sense in terms of making people feel included, because they are by then by their nature, the way they are played tends to be like that, right? Because it would actually be much the same. I think if you were to walk into many into a chess tournament, right, which is, again, one on one hyper levels of focus, everyone's caught being very quiet. Yeah. Even though that's a game that is has an enormous number of people who know how to play chess or have have been exposed to at some point their lives more than Magic the Gathering, it still would be a really not great environment for entertainment venue.
Speaker 2
34:41
Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. If you walk into a chest or unless you there for chess, you're in the wrong place. Yeah. It will be very obvious to you immediately that you're in the wrong place. Yeah. And you're likely to turn around and walk away.
Speaker 1
34:57
Make sense? Let's revisit that question about stock because I That's really interesting. So it sounds like one of the criteria looking for is that in terms of what to carry is that it obviously has table presence because of that is a clear advantage that we've kind of gone through already. As you said, gameplay presumably is also important. Are there any other factors because you've got a lot of stock, right, I think is 1500 or something games.
Speaker 2
35:18
It's currently about 1000 because of COVID. Right? On display, so we've had to reduce, yes, the amount of games for various reasons, but let's say it's in full fitness. So there we want a range. And I think, again, this is this is one of the things that I think probably is reasonably unique about us. We have a big range of Cluedo monopoly Scrabble, premium pursuits, chess drafts Lugo, we have multiple copies of various sorts of each of those. And we have a right at the front of a cafe. So that the non gamer person doesn't consider themselves gamer walks in and sees familiar stuff. The first shelves very deliberately, the first shelves you see as you walk in will be games that no one is scared. And then as you go further into a cafe, they will get somewhat more complex. So the next set of shelves is gateway shelves, it's Catan. It's Ticket to Ride, it's quacks of Quedlinburg. And then going further in, we hit the euros in the big boxes full of lots of plastic miniatures and stuff at the back. And then the role playing is a step further on from that. So partly what we wanted to do with that was make it non scary to people and help lure them in but it was partly it was meant to be a voyage of discovery. My favourite shop in the world is a place called Shakespeare and CO which is on South Bank in Paris, ah, and it's bookshop. And it was run by the same guy walk with me for about 60 years. And he used to have people were just students would just rock up and say, I'm in Paris to be a writer. He said, right, there's a sofa, you can sleep on that tonight, you have to sweep the floor on a Friday. We've got spare typewriters in the back room. And he made his money though, by selling books. That's what it is. But but he was, you know, he was absolutely a throwback to a prison 1920s or something. Yeah. And that place was just this old Higgledy Piggledy exploration, you would go up winding staircases that might or might not end in a room. And books were just in random ish piles. So you were you were exploring it and I wanted to give people that sense of exploration that of coming in to be Aladdin's cave. But you don't want to see all the treasure in front of the Aladdin's cave for families face Eva stuff that excites him early on quickly. Yeah. For people with respect like us, James. Yeah. Probably want to venture further and further into the cave before. What you would consider the good stuff.
38:11
Definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 2
38:12
So we then within sorry, that that isn't an answer to your question. It's background to the answer within those broad groups of family, kids family gateway, we try and fill category. So we want cooperative games. We want racing games, we want conflict games. Then there's a certain amount of hotness is it hotness? There are games that get rejected because they're too flimsy. Right? Yeah. Games in cafes, even the Euros don't get treated as well as they do at home. Yes. Tea boxes get dropped on floors, things get knocked around. Family games we considered disposable. Yeah, that makes sense. Pluto, it gets replaced once every six weeks or so. Just ask us because once a card goes in a baby's hands, games dead. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1
39:09
it that that I hadn't really even considered that. But they're not even really assets, I guess. Are they a lot of the games? Because they get destroyed quite easily.
Speaker 2
39:19
Yes. But we are accountants. We review them each year with the accountants and he just looks at us in a puzzled way. Try and describe the value of the other games. Yeah. Because he wanted to appreciate when I go no this copy of small world it's worth 100 pounds more than it was two years ago. Yeah. Interesting. And, and this game, it's out of print that it's suddenly worth 150 quid. So it's very difficult. So we just put a fairly notional amount on
Speaker 1
39:52
Speaker 2
40:19
We honestly we come up with a fairly notional amount. Yeah, it's just ways to to import your Board Game Geek collection in to get a number, right. Yeah. And we did that when we first did it. Honestly, our Board gave me a collection. So yeah, it's a couple of years out of date now. So So yeah, there's a lot missing from it. But I think, I think actually, I'm just saying that's another important element you mentioned, you know, the things that are collector's items. We have them on display, ready to play? Yeah. And it's terrifically important to us, but games should be accessible. And we have games out there that people go, hey, yeah, they see it on the list and go, Well, I assume you have that under lock and key. Yeah. And we have to specially asked for it to come from a safe place. And we don't know. That's, that's the wooden chest of 10th anniversary. Catan. Yeah. And it's worth a lot of money. Yeah. And it's lighter. And you want to play it you play? And actually, yeah, there was obviously a concern when we open you know, how much of this stuff is going to get nicked? Right? And the answer is almost no. Oh, interesting. So far. Touchwood. It's, it's not for people who understand the value in it.
Speaker 1
41:38
Arent going to nick it. Yeah, make sense.
Speaker 2
41:41
And, and the people who don't, I mean, the only fit, we had some sentinels of the multiverse cards. Some guy, some random guy shoved in his pocket. And we kind of assumed he fought battle Pokemon, and heard that going up in value, or something, right? Yeah. Good luck with that when you get home to eat.
Speaker 1
42:02
Yeah, that's just sorry, but you pick the wrong game there, mate. That's not gonna that's not going to generate any of those kind of sums. Well, I mean, that's really great. I'm so glad to hear that. Because I think this is the great tragedy of boardgame collections is that they get glass cased, often purely by accident, which is that people are buying so much more than an awful game and play, that actually things don't get played. And it seems really sad to not have games being played. So that it's really, really great that you've got the attitude to have them out there, even when they're sometimes surprisingly valuable.
Speaker 2
42:32
We we are not a museum. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have got a couple of cases where we have a couple of very interesting things that we've we've got a game that got published in Croydon, a mile and a half from here in 1934. That's Oh, wow. Um, as far as I know, it's it's a Yeah, it's a sort of 6.8 on BoardGameGeek, which for 18 year old game is pretty good. Pretty impressive. Yeah. We have an unpunched version of Buster first work, work placement game first edition, right? Yep. And stuff like that, which is under lock and key. But it has to be very, very special to reach that level.
Speaker 1
43:16
If we're being honest, probably I'm guessing. In both of those cases, we're talking about games where the object is of is obviously itself a kind of very high value. And it's a lot of interesting historical objects. But the game they're they're much more like other people want to be wanting to play other games.
Speaker 2
43:30
Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. We're launching verge for game. I mean, yeah, I'd have it has any intrinsic value. It might Yeah, when she 30. quid to and aquarium, but, but it's not. It's not a board game level of value, modern board game level of value.
Speaker 1
43:46
So what about we think about the revenue streams of the cafes? If we come back to come to that question of you've got these different sources going on, because you've also got a retail store, as I understand it. Yeah, I'd be really keen to know is how the revenue streams contribute. So like, what, what actually makes the money in a board game cafe? Where is it coming from? And and how does that work?
Speaker 2
44:05
Okay, so, again, I think we have to go back pre COVID? Because the answer to the last year is it doesn't,
Speaker 1
44:14
it feels like on almost all of those things. You know, you're you're a closed down hospitality establishment, for certainly for a period anyway, to
Speaker 2
44:23
a to a large extent. I mean, yeah, we as a cafe we've been closed for what? Eight of the last 13 months, right? Yeah, like that.
44:32
So the majority of the time,
Speaker 2
44:34
we have a certain amount of outdoor and we so we've opened as a shop recently for our six weeks. And we were doing, you know, in that weird period in December when we went through tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four, it's closed in a three week period.
44:50
Yeah. Oh, God, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah.
44:53
Yeah, trying to cope with that a bit.
Speaker 1
44:56
So actually, just a pause you there just a second. So let's come back to that question. Have COVID Because I think there's a whole lot of questions there. But all related that I'd really like to talk about, because he does seem to me like the kind of pre COVID cafe and hopefully the after COVID
Speaker 2
45:08
Cafe, yes, we hope it will be upset. So
Speaker 1
45:11
was almost one entity, right? And then the kind of, and then the sort of COVID era thing is almost a different business in some ways. So it is, so So let's let's definitely come back to as a whole, because I think I know that actually, several listeners have asked questions about that already. But I'd love to understand more about like the fundamental core economics of this
Speaker 2
45:28
server pre pre COVID Shit. So as we discussed, we have the wrong model for a cat. Which is high turnover. Yeah, it's not what we do. So we first of all, we've talked about we stretch out for Week, we stretch out the day, many cafes essentially give up at two o'clock in the afternoon. We are running from 11 o'clock in the morning for to 11 o'clock at night. Yeah. So revenue streams are, there's three bits of revenue, there's game sessions, which are five pounds. Again, I'm going to I'll just stop saying pre Covid, let's just go Yeah, everything I'm saying is pre COVID until we come to the COVID. Okay, so so it was five pounds for all day. But as long as you like, lots of people would only come in for a couple of hours. And we'll pay that and for as many games as you like. And that is a not insignificant chunk of revenue. It's about 15% turnover. So it's not insignificant, and it does have the advantage of no directly attributable costs to it. Hmm. Games sales are about 10% of turnover. We're about 10% turnover, but a very poor margin. Now, you my margin is better than some online discount sellers would do. But it compared to game sessions where I have 100% Actually, yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So having a 20% margin, or 30% margin is relatively small.
Speaker 1
47:10
And you're talking about the kind of gross margin here, right. So that's like on the cost of the cost of goods cost of the cost,
Speaker 2
47:15
roughly speaking, I would buy a game for five pounds, I would sell it for 10 pounds. But don't that 10 pounds to belongs to the government. And I would make three pounds. Right? Makes it very, very broad. It will vary from game to game. And
47:33
on average, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2
47:35
Is that's not even on. Median rather than mean something like that. Right? Yeah. On average.
47:42
Yes. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2
47:44
So yeah, very roughly speaking, then food and drink is 65 70% of surprise. And food and drink is what we are we are games cafe, come to us for games, the money they spend is on food and drink. margin on that is variable. I will make better margin on a pizza then on a pint of beer. But I have more labour involved in the pizza than in the pint of beer.
48:13
Right? Yeah, makes sense.
Speaker 2
48:15
And again, I think coming into I was fortunate that Croydon Council sponsored me and about 15 other people on a starting a food hospitality business course, five years ago, interesting run by an organisation called gcda, one of whom was based in Croydon, and they're largely based in Greenwich. And that's where they do all their work. But they came into Croydon, and actually really useful, really, really useful. It's very good. And they you know, you learn about food margin. But other than that, knowing nothing about restaurant chain when we started
Speaker 1
48:58
well, that was more like a deliberate exercise in sort of self education. Right. This is because you knew nothing about this industry had never worked in it previously. You thought Why would make sense to do some learning about it if I just suddenly open a cafe?
49:10
I'm quite good at knowing I know nothing.
49:12
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2
49:14
I think maybe that is an advantage of having never worked for anybody else going way back to where we started, right? Yes. Is that I know, I have to learn everything. Yeah, I won't barge into something thinking. This is easy, right? Yeah. No work is easy. Yeah, no, no business. There is no business out there. Where it's easy. Yeah. Because if there were, we would all be doing it. And there is.
Speaker 1
49:42
Yeah, exactly. It probably wouldn't be a business because no one could make any money out of it because it would be too easy. That's the
Speaker 2
49:49
thing. That will be a hobby. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the revenue side of it. We're nearly all revenue I don't think I've ever did go back and look at my original business plan. Because it'd be so embarrassingly wrong. Our revenue is very significantly higher than I anticipated it being interesting. Our labour costs are massively off the scale higher than I understood. They were interesting. I don't looking back on it now with like, somewhat experienced eyes. I cannot imagine what naive look at four years ago, I was thinking with the salary numbers I put in, right, yeah, they're just so the maps does not work. I cannot be open for too many hours. If you're open for 12 hours, you need 12 hours of labour to be paid for. Exactly. And I somehow managed to miss elements of that. Anyway. So hospitality is a very labour intensive business back is going to be no surprise to anyone who was in hospitality, but it was to me, right? Yeah. Yeah. Having been a pure retailer for the last month or so the post COVID world we're not going to be talking about. Yeah, but retail is a much lower margin. Much, much lower labour. Right. Yeah. Interesting. Anyway, the combination of the three things works, if we lost any element of it, it would not work. Right. Interesting. The retail element, our retail bit is a small part of the store. But you may have seen it in post covid, we have found ways to add more shelves in but smaller items. And honestly, it was there because I thought in my vision of the games cafe. But that's what it should have. Right? Yes, I wanted there to be a game shop. Had we put a six person table there in that area, which turned over three times on a Saturday, it would have made more money than the game shortly?
Speaker 1
52:08
Oh, interesting. I find that quite quite surprising. Actually.
Speaker 2
52:11
I did it sorry, it would have made more profit, more margin. Right. More
52:15
margin are right. Okay. Makes sense.
Speaker 2
52:17
So so, you know, we had discussions, we have had discussions, there's other geographical reasons, it's the entrance to the bar, or we don't want tables there. But but if you were looking at purely as a commercial thing, then your per foot, you make more money by having tables than you do by having shelves.
Speaker 1
52:37
That's very interesting, because in some ways, I'm somewhat surprised that I would have thought that just the effect of having a few shelves, there would kind of act as a sort of signalling that we also sell games, which would mean we'd make that whole revenue stream like viable and some
Speaker 2
52:51
signalling is terribly important. Everything we do, we think about what signals it sends out. And there's lots of elements of that. So you know, we put the family games at the front where families may wander in by mistake and see. We put, we sell pride dice, there in our role playing section, they've got LEDs glowing on them, we are letting LGBTQ plus community know that we are a welcoming community for our social media posts. We are very careful when we have people in the store to make sure that those posts reflect our community around us. So people are seeing people who look like them. Yeah. Yeah, we're very aware that visuals are important. And I think that's something essentially, I've learned from Carrie from my wife, because yeah, I'm a nerd you’ve seen, I slung around in T shirt. cardies. And occasionally, I'll brush my hair. But you know, I'm not a very visually aware person. I've had to learn but visuals are important to key members of community is a thing, what you look like that. So one of the symbols have been against place, but it's not just for families is to have some hardcore games for sales for sale. Yeah, it you were sending signals in, in different directions to different people. Yeah. But without the signal scaring off the other group. Right. That's
Speaker 1
54:26
exactly it. Well, that's but and that shows you the complexity involved in creating an inclusive atmosphere. You have to be, as you said, sending out the right positive signals about some things and making sure that they're not dominant so much that they begin to exclude other people, which is, it sounds to me like a kind of real art making that work.
Speaker 2
54:47
It's Yes, it's work. I think so. So I think I slightly dodged how I said this earlier. So let me be more explicit about it. After we were open for about six months We came to a realisation and there was a thing that was nagging at us and we said, looked at it and looked at behaviours walked in. And what we found was for Croydon is a very multi ethnic community. And we found that black people would walk in, look around and walk out. Interesting. And we went and talked to some local community activists and local community businessmen. And we came to the conclusion that there was an odd and irrational thing that the black community felt they didn't have permission to go into what they perceived as a white place. Oh, interesting. I'm permission. I'm using that in a very broad set. Yeah, exactly. But it was a feeling and instinct.
Speaker 1
55:49
And it's an unconscious thing that you walk in think this this is this place isn't for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2
55:53
In the same way, as if you've walked into a place full of magic players, you might or chess player. Yeah. And because, you know, we I think we're 40 percent black in Croydon, something like that. And as a cafe, we were five 10%. Yeah. So we so we sat down with people, and they basically said, look, what you need to do is, every time there's a black guy in here, or a black lady in here, take a photo of them on your social media. And we haven't done it quite as blatantly as that but but we would use to do with Saturday night group shots of four or five tables, and we would be very careful. We picked up on you know what it was saying? It wasn't? Yeah, yes, we made sure that we would have black people in a shop, we would actually have women in the shop, and make sure we would have people in wheelchairs in the shop so that, you know, people go where they see other people who they feel are like that. Yeah. Yeah. to a very large extent.
Speaker 1
56:55
Well, it's a dare I say, it's like a default mode thing, isn't it? So it because it is the I think, from what you've described, anyway, your investigations, this is a it's an unconscious thing. And so you know, when there's one thing when we're making our minds constantly about something, when it's an unconscious response, that's quite people make decisions quite automatically. And as you said, a common one is, if you regularly don't see people, like you're in a situation, that would be very understandable to have a certain response. That's not for me.
Speaker 2
57:22
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And the flip of that is, if I show you that there are people who look or feel like you, then you're more likely to walk in. And, and frankly, this is just not everybody in our area in hospitality goes the same way as we do on this. Why would I not reach out to the money? First presented by everybody? Yeah, completely. Why? Why would I? It's not that hard work to be inclusive? Yeah, it really isn't. You know, we we I don't think it's quite right to say that we are the gay bar in Croydon, but, you know, we were asked on Saturday evening, couple of days ago, say where do essentially, where can I go now? 11 o'clock. Right.
58:16
Yeah. Well, it's kind of us. Interesting.
Speaker 2
58:23
And it's not that we're gay bar. It's not? Certainly not we're the gay bar. And it's certainly not that others arent inclusive. But, you know, because we are inclusive to everybody, because we make the effort. We are, because we're inclusive to everybody. We're inclusive to everybody. Yeah, it's, by default puts you in that position.
Speaker 1
58:45
Again, it seems to me more like it's more of a reflection of your very conscious approach to signalling those things, more than any more than anything else. And it seems like, again, that seems that the dare I say, the power couple of you and carry in board games local is what really makes that work. Because it seems like it's like you have the knowledge of the game side of it, you're and The Nerdery which you do need in this market, you can't operate in this industry or that degree of nerdery. But ultimately, obviously, we carry strong interest and hospitality side of just having quite intrinsic understanding of those things. That seems to be sounds really important. Yeah,
Speaker 2
59:21
absolutely. I think power couple, I mean, you know, humility for fans, but But yes, I think a couple bit is important. And I would add to that, actually, as part of that is is our stock because we have a great staff and you know, we when you have an ethos of inclusivity it has to start with your colleagues. And it absolutely has with with our guys, they I want to say very sans prejudiced bone in their body and you know, that's a that's a glib thing to say, but it genuinely it's really very close to being true. You know, we all have prejudice So of course, but, you know, we have a bunch of colleagues who I think we have a really great mix of people who come from hospitality background and people who come from a gaming background. And both of those have been very important. You know, having the games, people who can sell your game to teach you games is good. But if a coffee isn't good if a cocktail is good, and features aren't good, and particularly if the atmosphere isn't good, then it doesn't matter how good the game.
Speaker 1
1:00:27
Yeah, completely 100%? Well, when you said it right there when you said 70% of the money is food and drink. And ultimately, that seems very critical to get that to get this right. Well, as with so many businesses, unfortunately, it seems like it is about firing on all cylinders, not necessarily being able to neglect any one of these areas really, is not something you can really afford to do. Okay, well, I think this is a great point, talk a little bit about the COVID effect, I guess, on the store, and really understand that in a little bit more detail. So obviously, for the benefit of listeners outside the UK measures in the UK, were specific that for quite a lot of the year, you said as the last 13 months, I'm estimating something in that kind of ballpark. It's just not being possible to have anyone indoors in the cafe. And something you don't have is a particularly sizable outdoor space that you can use either.
Speaker 2
1:01:25
Yeah, we've made an effort. We put some space outside it, and it's working on a sunny day. It's nice enough out there, we you know, we put up tents and it's nice and people will eat pizza and drink pints. And that's fine. At moment. It's building site, which hasn't helped much recovery. And even I think so. So yeah, we've we've been literally closed for seven, or eight of the 13 months for the rest of time in order to maintain social distance. And we've had half the seat numbers on
Speaker 1
1:01:55
the right. Which is I mean, must have a dramatic effect on viability and in terms of like, as in for the long term. Right. Having those commitments.
Speaker 2
1:02:05
It's not via Yeah, is the answer. And I think if we go back to February, March, last year, i i We in Tripoli, lucky that I have a friend from university, who I described in a post as an epidemiologist because he was warning in January. He said, what's going on in China? This is real. This is bad in the to prepare for a storm. This is a man who knows what he's talking about. Yeah. Last year. I said, I wrote an article based on his advice. One point I said, are epidemiologists. No, no, I'm afraid. I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm just a biosecurity consultant.
1:02:51
Lover moving. So he has
Speaker 2
1:02:54
been very he I mean, he's given free of his time to advise us through a lot of the last year in terms of our security. Right. We closed down before the government told us we had to, because I in some ways, I think I may look back at it now. And I think but I was awful. I've seen in March last year more than has actually been the case. Right? Yeah. I thought it was gonna be worse. But it has been. We put boards up on the window when we closed down. Because we really did. I did have a visitor vision of Walking Dead apocalypse. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Fortunately, it wasn't that bad. Well, I certainly had a vision breakdown in civil order.
Speaker 1
1:03:40
Right. Yeah. Well, that, which is why you would put the boards up. That makes sense, right, that if it had been a much bigger catastrophe, or the fatality rates have been much higher and have affected the border section of population. I mean, that's not all that has happened historically.
Speaker 2
1:03:57
Yes, absolutely. I, my assumption was it was going to take at least 18 months to get through this. And so I started doing maths about how we were financially going to get through. Right. I did not expect the level of government intervention that has happened.
1:04:13
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Speaker 2
1:04:14
I think it is unique in certainly in my lifetime, and I think generations before,
Speaker 1
1:04:21
I think it's pretty, it is pretty much historic. Yeah, it's just historically, I don't think a government minister is I think that ratio has reached the same level that it was in 1945. So yes, UK government debt. So it's for disease is completely unique. Yeah.
Speaker 2
1:04:36
I mean, it's all invented debt. I don't actually think the debt is as big of a problem as Yeah, I don't want to get too political or economics. But
Speaker 1
1:04:44
yeah, I think we could just stop it. But let's keep it on the cafe for now. Yeah.
Speaker 2
1:04:50
So um, yes. The answer is it was catastrophic. We were going from turning over, broadly speaking, we were turning over 40 to 50,000 a month. for pre COVID, I think the best month we've had since has been 20. And most of that has been games. Right? So our game, so we have learned a lot about games, retail, games, retail, and about how to sell games in store, because we've had space to sell it. So our game sales are now broadly four times what they were pre COVID circuitry. So that is a good thing. And I think that will probably sustain just got better at buying the right stuff better at selling the right stuff. Better presenting it. Our online presence has gone up dramatically, particularly in some niche areas.
Speaker 1
1:05:40
It has that been the majority of the sales that you've been making in online sales. Ie Yes. Yeah, we've been shut. Oh because Yes. I mean, yes, of course, during the very last last
1:05:51
four months, we've
Speaker 1
1:05:52
been open for three weeks. But is that true, even though because I know you've just recently and in that when the weird December period, converted it into a retail store from a cafe? So is it now the case that it's still the highest revenue coming from online? We opened
Speaker 2
1:06:06
on 12th of April? So it's nearly been a month? Oh, wow.
Speaker 1
1:06:11
shows my time perception. So you've not really even had time to really no, no, no, I don't have
Speaker 2
1:06:17
a month's worth of figures to tell you. Yeah, I think our walking trails have been not bad. And they wouldn't sustain this sort of premise, long term. If that's all we were ever going to do, they wouldn't come close to it are online. Basically, we've created a couple of niches in a couple of product lines online, which have sold really, really well and we hope will go on selling really, really well. There's some games that I'm particularly enthusiastic about. And I'm involved in those communities online, because it's all been online. So we've been selling stuff there. But we're still selling more online than we are in store right now. But we hope in a month or two or three or four but we'll be back to getting. It feels odd say it now. But in pre covid days in February last year, we would have 200 people on a Saturday. Go through our store. We now would get 30. Right. Yeah, maybe and and so just volumes of people near purchase for simple stuff. I expect us to go.
Speaker 1
1:07:28
Yeah, yeah, completely. That makes that makes sense. And so but you've you've kind of built in things like a delivery service as part of this as well.
Speaker 2
1:07:36
So when lockdown going back when lockdown happened in March last year, we didn't do online sales through post because we were used royal mail. And our understanding was Royal Mail. We're struggling and frankly, more important things for Royal Mail to be sending out. Right. Okay. They did have boxes of cardboard. So we did local delivery, and I just got in my car and drove around Croydon. I remember
1:08:09
you pass me the street one time bigger like yes, yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2
1:08:14
And, and sort of tube team and stratum and places on my way home. And about. I think as we locked down for the first time as people began to realise how much time they were going to spend in the house. Yeah, we sold a lot of games from hand delivery. And then after a while Royal maill recovered a bit. And we still have each Sunday on property online. And we've developed from that. But I mean, you know, again, game sales are a fraction of the profit, that food and drink sales,
Speaker 1
1:08:47
as we discussed earlier, make sense? How did you manage in terms of the COVID rules? Because this is something that the listeners have been asking about specific demo the state Stephen, for example, my list of questions here, has asked about how you sort of stayed ahead of those rules, because something in the UK at least, certainly before the weird December period, and during the particularly bizarre, weird December period, it seemed like the rules kept changing all the time.
Speaker 2
1:09:10
They did and it was very difficult. And I think I think it's fair to preface any discussion of this to say that, you know, the government were dealing with an unprecedented situation, and the science was changing over time. Yep. The standing of the problem. Certainly, I can be very critical about someone government messaging. And I started again, I go back to my biosecurity consultant who was telling us a year ago, what is important is ventilation. Yeah, and only really two months ago has for messaging started to change from wash your hands to keep the windows open.
Speaker 1
1:09:50
Do you know what I did not to spend too much on the politics of this but that has been infuriating for me seeing that exactly that that because the funny thing about the science changes that it seemed like Actually, most of the signs didn't change very much after the first few months, it came to, you know, principal transmission routes like not actually on surfaces very much at all. And mostly ventilation being critical and things like that seem to be quite well understood, quite early
Speaker 2
1:10:13
issued, and it didn't come through. And we, you know, there were definitely times where we are frustrated where, you know, because I had this guy who I trusted. And I would say, right, we have to have all our doors open. I know it's minus two outside and I know, customers are complaining because we're as a cold breeze blowing in on them. But we have to do it. Right. Yeah. And most other places weren't doing that. But I wasn't great. I wasn't comfortable potentially killing people in order to make me feel a bit warmer.
1:10:45
Right. Yeah. But that
Speaker 2
1:10:48
wasn't what the government message and then yeah, so hospitality got a different set of guidelines to those for retail or general public. Yeah. And there were times when those were directly contradictory to each other. And that caused me how God huge angst. So there was a time where it was illegal for you to be within two metres inside of someone from another household. Yeah. It was, I think, a criminal offence for you, James nailer. To do that, right. We in hospitality, were told that we could sit you at a table with someone and that was fine.
1:11:31
Right, yeah. Even though
Speaker 2
1:11:33
the table was going to send to me too. So yeah, we're breaking the law by doing that. But we we've been told we should encourage it. Yeah. And again, I don't want to get too political on that, because we were writing stuff in a hurry. They were you know, there's a news of why laws and regulations, get lots of reviews and take lots of time, get lots of feedback. Under normal circumstances. We didn't have time because
Speaker 1
1:11:58
legislation is actually really hard. Making good law. In many ways, if business is hard, making good law is really hard like that.
Speaker 2
1:12:06
Yeah, tough cases, make bad law and rushed cases make bad law to step away from the political on it. Yes. It was bloody difficult to be a hospitality business trying to adjust to all these things, somewhat, which made no bloody sense. And obviously, not just hospitality, lots of business. It's the same. He was all change. It's very difficult.
Speaker 1
1:12:31
Yeah, it makes sense. But yeah, different challenging. But it sounds like as soon as you've navigated it well, though, and the fact that the business is still going right. And I know that it's been quite challenging, and quite a lot of companies out there.
Speaker 2
1:12:42
Yeah, I think let's see where we are, where everybody is, in a year's time, there's going to be a huge debt. Right now for hospitality is focused on we hope for 17th of May, yeah. Reopening in doors, but still with social distancing. So from our point of view, still with 50 to 60 seats instead of 100. Plus, yeah. Yeah. And that has financial implications. Still, we table service, no bar service that has financial implications, that essentially we have to have higher labour costs for less income. No, not not, which is financially good. No. So yeah, it's going to be a very difficult six months to a year, and there will be casualties. Yeah, we think we're all right. Yeah, we have had support from government, we have had support from our customers. And we launched one of one of the things locked down gave us was time to think so we launched a future funder, which essentially was a begging appeal. You know, we dressed it up to
Speaker 1
1:13:49
but it's yet a programme of specific events for example, that you're going to be offering right in the future where you could pay an advanced ticket price I think I've already paid for obviously one of your memoir 44 events which the first time I played it, yes, a couple years ago, loved your DD memoir 44 event, thinking I think a blood on the clock tower that I've paid for as well because I'm excited when that comes up. I guess that's a way also for your your hardcore fan base, like me to also put some money in upfront platform.
Speaker 2
1:14:16
I mean, I think there were various concepts behind it, you know, that there was a commercial, let's see if we can get some cash in the bank. And my God, it helped. But there was also you know, it is going to be a dark winter. Let's give people something to look forward to.
1:14:31
It's a very nice idea. Yeah. So
Speaker 2
1:14:32
it was very much at you know, let's, let's let's create some enthusiasm when it's a difficult time versus also you know, we're able to give some games to disadvantaged kids in schools and and community stepped up and drink by a drink for a nurse essentially. And so so when we opened up some NHS workers going to get free gaming sessions and stuff, but also Yeah, again, I suppose on pure commercial things. If you have bought into coming to us, at some point in the future for your blood, I will talk to our session and you'll probably buy a drink and pizza. Almost certainly. Yeah. So cause we do damn fine pizzas
Speaker 1
1:15:12
Yeah. Very, very good. And you didn't pay me to say that? No. Exactly. Wonderful. Well, okay. Well, before we wrap up, then because I noticed we've been going for quite a while
Speaker 2
1:15:22
we have sorry, I do tend to go on. No, it's bouncing.
Speaker 1
1:15:26
And it's been fascinating. And there's quite a few things on the list that I'd love to talk about. And maybe at a future date, it would be great to have you back. And I think, particularly, if you're up for it, looking back on, you know, sort of six months after reopening, hopefully cross fingers, how things have gone and how to change would be a great update on that kind of thing would be really useful. So before we go, just I guess a couple more just listener questions, then we'd be good for. So definitely quick fire round stuff here. So Alex asked, What's the most surprising hits been at the request of a game,
Speaker 2
1:16:00
escape the Dark Castle, we get people coming in now, we're not gamers who have heard of Dungeons and Dragons. And they will come in on a Saturday afternoon, and they say we would like to play Dungeons and Dragons, please. That's what we booked in for. And the first couple of times that happened, my eyes bugged out, and I sort of explained that you need a dungeon master. And it's impossible, and you can't possibly do it. And here's a DMS guide for 40 quid and do go away for three weeks and come back. And now what we do is we get out a couple of nice simple games, which capture the essence of a role playing game, which is that you are a fantasy character in an adventure. And there's a story happening. And that's all that anyone actually wants to like, that's not true. That's all the people coming into our said, I want to play drums and dragons would have known Yeah, they want to be in a fantasy story for about an escape the Dark Castle. It's a very simple dice. from a mechanical point of view. It's very simple dice chucker with a little bit of background random story in it. And people love it. And fantastic feel like their middle of Lord
Speaker 1
1:17:15
of the Rings. Very interesting, quite surprising to me, certainly, because it has this kind of very kind of retro black and white art style, which I know it's not to everyone's taste. So I think it's very interesting that much recently, but it makes total sense. You're saying kind of create a lot of like roleplay experience. So then the next question is from Terry, and he wants to know how you recommend the perfect game for a table?
Speaker 2
1:17:35
Yeah, we probably never recommend the perfect game. We we do our best. Ask them what sort of games they have played before. That's very important because you want to get an idea. Are we in a world of bluedot? Or are we in a world of Terra Mystica. So that's that's the starting point. And then also about theme, we will recommend games typically much more in theme, you establish a complexity level. And then it's, you know, superheroes, we've got lots of Marvel games. We've got fantasy games. We've got games where you lie to each other. We get games where you're bluffing. We go games that are addition, we've got card games. So you're asking around that and mechanics. Mechanics don't matter to most of our people who are asking us about games that people who play Terra Mystica they're going to get up they're going to wander around, they're gonna find the get the shelves of UV Rosenbergs and stone mayors and they're gonna make their own decision. It doesn't really do what we say to them. To some extent. Our recommendations are people who want quick game, they want to be taught it typically in under three minutes. And they want to laugh.
Speaker 1
1:18:55
Yeah, makes total sense. Then I guess the last one to end on also from Terry, because kinds of like this question is, what's your favourite recent interaction with a customer and particularly a non hobbyist customer and why?
Speaker 2
1:19:11
I'm not going to give you my favourite recent one. I'm going to give my favourite first one. Oh, no, more or less. But day we opened. A couple of ladies walked in quite clearly what they wanted was a cuppa. And they ordered a cup of tea and we brought it to them. And they looked around a bit and said, Can we play these games? And we said yes. Second and me as I think about that first month we were free of charge. So it wasn't even a charge. Yeah. And she went and got these were ladies of certain age and she went and got out Scrabble and sat down with a friend and played it and turned to me and said, you know I've not played with for two years, and I've had so much fun. And they came back every thursday for several months. And that was fucking what we did. That was what we set out. to do was hobbyist gamers, and basically, we can find each other and we can you know, we or I come from London perspective as lots. So that's an easy thing to say it's not always easy. Yeah, we can find each other. But an old lady have not played a game for 30 or 40 years. That's what Christmas about.
Speaker 1
1:20:23
Yeah. Wonderful. Um, that's such a wonderful story. Well, one lovely story to end on, I think is absolutely lovely. I think Well, that's exactly what your cafe is all about, isn't it is making moments like that happen? And as you said, so wonderful that you could be you could bring that kind of little bit of joy into their lives there through that. That's so cool. Well, you know, I think that that his story also exemplifies why I love the loot quest and why I'm a huge supporter of it. And hopefully, as everything continues, and hopefully as things were open, hopefully permanently, then yeah, we can get again, getting back to doing that for as many people as possible. I
1:20:57
certainly hope so. Yeah.
Speaker 1
1:20:59
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming in has been absolutely fascinating. And yeah, looking forward to another one the future. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1
1:21:15
Producing fun is produced by naylor games. If you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at NaylorJames, or write me an email at James@Naylorgames.com. Until next time
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Annie Norman is the founder and owner of Badsquiddo Games – a company specialising in making believable female miniatures.
In this episode we discuss how she built the business from absolutely nothing, bringing women in history to life, key practical questions about pricing, product quality, when and when not to outsource and how selfies play a surprisingly critical role in the miniature design process.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames
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Annie’s link tree: https://linktr.ee/badsquiddogames
I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective. Welcome to the latest episode of producing fun. My guest this week is Annie Norman, the founder and owner of bad squiddo games, a miniatures company specializing in the creation of believable female miniatures. I wanted to talk to annie because her story is two important things at once. First, it's an inspirational tale, how someone built a business in the hobby sector from absolutely nothing in debt and unemployed, and turned it into a thriving business with an avid fan base doing something genuinely different. It's also about what that actually involved, which is not all luck, but the result of hard work, sound business decisions, and a commitment to making quality products in addition to any kind of fortunate market timing. That's an important story for people to hear. Here in the UK, at least, the opposite narrative is normally dominant in the world of games. No one can make any money and all success is a crapshoot. Well, that might be convenient for some people to believe it obscures the very real differences between the decisions made in successful and unsuccessful ventures. I suspect the real truth is the bitterest pill of all life isn't fair, you might still fail even if you do everything right. But if you're smart, and you work hard, your chances really do improve a great deal. I say the world of games, but as a producer of miniatures, her business exists in what I always find to be a curiously parallel universe, the world of war game miniatures, where the aesthetics of the sculpture not the design of the game is far more important, commercially, and critically, indeed, and he doesn't make games or rules her products, realistic looking female figures from history and fantasy they used in other people's games and has painted showpieces in their own right. From how the selfie plays a critical part of the miniture design process to avoiding the false economies of insourcing. This chat was a wonderful mixture of curios fun and practical advice applicable to almost any startup business. It is great fun in general. So I'm sure you'll find this as enjoyable as I did. We join as she describes what it's like to live and work in Nottingham, which is, as she puts it, the unlikely Hollywood of the miniatures world.
Speaker 2
2:30
So I chose to move here of all places, because the lead belts thing phenomenon. So there's a lot of companies based in Nottingham from obviously the GW. And then over time, I think people as people sort of left that company. They then formed their own sort of larger companies. And it's just kind of splintered off and kind of made Nottingham this sort of miniatures hub of the UK. And I was I was moving anyway, I was I thought, why should I move to move to Nottingham Give it a go, though, plenty of people around there. I'm really, really glad I did my fair. It's got a bit of a unfair reputation. I
Speaker 1
3:06
think that's interesting. What is its reputation? Do you think it's a place? Well,
Speaker 2
3:10
it did have quite a lot of gun crime. So it's okay. Yeah, this sort of bit of a karate, karate. Bizarre ish, but no, softly I was pleasantly surprised. I moved here for for bad squiddo and then ended up really, really liking it for Annie as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1
3:27
Oh, great. That's pretty fantastic. I mean, certainly when I you know that one trip, Mike came to the networking thing with the tabletop thing run by needy cat games. Yeah. And I remember thinking, Oh, this is actually rather nicer than I expected, again, similarly, sold, perhaps a rather faulty idea of what Nottingham was like. And actually, yeah, it seemed quite nice, actually. And I was amazed at how reasonable it was at least coming from London anyway. Yeah. And I think I was told that like, even the office space for example, is very cheap. I'm just think even just getting a desk in London is like an expensive Yes, definitely. And you have a your own workshop, right? That you Yeah, kind of do things at night.
Speaker 2
4:08
So I'm in the same building as needy cat games which is super. Okay. Yeah. And that's another reason the why Nottingham is Ace because they're just you pretty much can't go anywhere without bumping into other war games companies. Or someone from a war games company. They are everywhere. They know even so Tesco shopping is safe. Yeah, yeah, I do. You call it the Hollywood of war games, but Hollywood of war games. Great.
Speaker 1:
4:37
That's so great.
Speaker 2
4:38
But the amount of people I've met since I've been up here, it's just it's it has sort of coincided with bad squiddo getting big sort of thing as well. But yeah, the amount of people I've met in that sort of business connection or friends or both sort of manases have been here. It's just sort of skyrocketed, and it's good to be able to still, I've been realising a lot lately that that bad squiddo is both smaller than people realise and larger than people realise.
Speaker 1
5:07
TARDIS like a company. Yeah.
Speaker 2
5:09
And so it's still day to day in the office most of the time, especially with COVID, as well, it's been just been me. And so that's where it's, that's where the business is smaller than you think. Because if you see the office, it's not enormous, I'm still very much doing everything as sort of tightly as possible, which is something I'd like to talk about in a bit as well. So that scale of it is small, but then the business is big, bigger than people realise. It's this sort of cross crossover II type thing.
Speaker 1
5:38
Why do you think that that is, is it because there's like a misunderstanding of what it takes to run a business like that, and but somehow, at the same time, being surprised by not having by not being absolutely massive, I'd really like to know, what your, what your thoughts are on that.
Speaker 2
5:58
So before I set up bad squiddo I found that I was, I thought a lot of companies were bigger than they are. So a lot of the smaller miniatures manufacturers in my head, were making loads more money, consisting of way more people than than they actually are. So I've kind of just realised that that's, you know, it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to think that's how a lot of people see my business, because you don't realise till sort of thing you just don't really think about, you know, it's not until you're sort of in that land where you know, what it was like the process and the manufacturing and how things work. So I've always been really open about it being a one on one, any business, though, we do employ a lot of people, it's all contracts sort of work, or, you know, freelancers and things like that, there's no day to day sort of, you know, payroll person. So that makes it really small in that sort of sense. But then just as the size of the business is in, you know, the amount that we sell, or just the range that we've got all of that, I think is a lot bigger than a lot of people realise, because they just see the Annie. So, yeah, that's sort of it creates that, you know, sort of wrap around. So yeah, you kind of just see me bumbling along going, Ah, oh, tiny company, it's just so you know, to Stanny going, Ah, but Annie is working on way too many things at once. So it's also that part of growth of a company as well, where I'm in that typical part where you start needing, you know, needing to get delegate more needing more people in, but not having that spare funds yet. So it's
Speaker 1
7:35
makes sense. So it's that, that classic issue where, as you said, because just as you'd done from the outside, it looked like, oh, there must be loads of people involved in making these miniatures. And actually, it turns out, no, actually, that can just be one person who is subcontracting out loads of different kinds of the kind of work. That's what would make people think that a be somewhat surprised that it's actually it is only you, actually as driving everything forwards. But also at the same time. I guess the thing about the being larger is because I guess even as one person today, it's possible isn't in a way that might maybe not previously, perhaps even 30 or 40 years ago, be the case that you can project an image of being much bigger because actually, you can be through subcontracting out and buying different services in you can be creative is actually pretty big footprint, right? Yeah,
8:23
yeah, definitely. On that
Speaker 1
8:24
note, how many miniatures are there in your range, then?
Speaker 2
8:28
I should know this. I looked it up a while ago. It's a lot. It is a lot. I'll have to have to get back to you on it. But yeah,
Speaker 1
8:36
have you got like a ballpark number? I can just approximately just to kind of help the listeners work out like roughly how many miniatures they can start getting a sense of how overworked you are,
Speaker 2
8:47
in terms of the female minis that you know that the scenics range that we've got.
8:53
Oh, so there's that. Okay, so you've got a scenics range as well.
Speaker 2
8:56
It's almost two businesses at one point as well. It's gone. pretty huge. Yeah, we have this huge range of scenics, and then we have the believable female miniatures project as well. So between them, they're just growing all the time. But yeah, in terms of the feeling of unease, I don't know it's got to be got to be at least five hundreds, if not more,
Speaker 1
9:20
and that would be kind of a set of like, there'd be like sets with
Speaker 2
9:25
terms in terms of mini so yeah, some of them are on their own. Some are in sets of four stuff like that. But there's a lot there's a lot of miniatures. So
Speaker 1
9:32
actually, that means the individual sculpt. So this would be like an individual design effectively. So if I understand what a sculpt is, in this context, correct me could be more than 500
Speaker 2
9:40
Oh, no, that was I was saying that right. Many minis I'm probably way off as well. So Right. off my head, I should totally know these. These
Speaker 1
9:52
two anyway. I mean, regardless, even if it's even if you're 100 out, that would still be an absolutely enormous number that gives people I think, a bit of a scale of kind of kind of what you do. Especially being able to do so many things on your own really, really interesting because another person who does that is Jamie stag Meyer of stone Meyer games. Yeah. And his annual revenue is about $18 million last year. So I think that's really interesting is that you could have a business of that scale as as, as a one person run business that doesn't actually have any other employees. Yeah, yeah, that seems kind of amazing that it could scale to that point, what what's required, I guess, to do that, what do you think? What's needed to kind of do that with any one person? Or is that even possible? Can Do you think, I'd like to say, your company
Speaker 2
10:39
having tremendous organisation It's, um, it's obviously a point in the business where you can kind of go one way or the other. And I feel like a very strongly gone towards this particular way, I'm sure we will end up with, you know, more than just me at some point. And that would be lovely. But I can't see us necessarily becoming that sort of, you know, huge warehouse style company, because I'm very much a fan of outsourcing and not doing everything in house. And with miniatures, manufacturing, I think, maybe sometimes the older way, is the very much all in house, you know, having everything done in your one place, I think that's when costs can just bubble a lot as well, very suddenly. So you know, people start growing. Again, with any business, it's the same sort of thing, you start growing, and then you go right now I need more infrastructure. Now I need to go to a bigger place getting staff, but you're not growing at the same amount as those expenditures are going up sort of thing. And that's when they can sort of cave back in on themselves, which has been something I've been really really conscious about.
Speaker 1
11:41
So So for now, then your your plan is very much to keep it as probably just you for now, unless there was some exceptional reason something came along, it seemed like an employee would be the right.
Speaker 2
11:51
Yeah, I would love this is where I end up getting loads of job applications, not yet. It's almost like a shop manager type person that can that can just do a lot of that this freeing me up to do more of the bits that I'm more interested in, I guess the words or you know, where my skills are better suited? Because the amount of things I have to do occasionally, that's a really good point of confidence for me where I think, damn, I can do a lot of things. Yeah, necessarily, you know, all of them are amazing, but they're all very much, you know, possible. You know, no one would notice I've not got, you know, I've not got a company or sort of, you know, taped together or bits of cardboard and sellotape and whatever. Yeah, it's all handmade. I can wing it pretty well, it's the basic Yeah, but having to have like, not, again, not an expert, but a solid knowledge of so many different aspects. So obviously, like the, with the miniature design, so largely focus on historical figures, there's so much research that has to be done to get all of the details. Correct. And that's the bit that I would like to have more Annie freed up to do. I don't know, when I started talking about myself in third person over.
13:03
This has happened in the last few years.
Speaker 2
13:07
Yeah, what I was saying before about how you could have everything in house, and people do that. And it does tend to be those sort of larger companies now that when they get to that size, you know, then that's that's a different sort of fish. What's this? Yeah. But that larger scale? Yeah, that makes sense for all sorts of different reasons to have things in house, but my sort of size of business, I'm very much a fan of that, yeah, just get professionals to do things big, and then everything is great. So the thing that I can do, and like I said, after weighing a lot of stuff, and that sort of go, right, we need to do this. Now. I've never done this before in my life ever. Now I need to read up and figure out how the hell I do this. You know, whether it's things like different software's or different ways of accounting and stuff like that. It's, that's, that's okay. But the things that I should never ever do. And I see I see it happen with a lot of a lot of companies where they do that, and they kind of get like, you know, well, we could save some money by doing these things ourselves. Like, no, no, don't do it. Don't do it. But I, you know, that's a real trap, isn't it? Extremely overworked people, but then I think I'm extremely overworked. But wow, if I did some of the things that other people do on top of that, it just It'd be impossible. So one of them that I see a lot a lot of companies start doing is go, we spend a lot of money on casting, we could get our own caster, and then we could just pay them money. And and then we wouldn't have to pay, you know, the profit to the
Speaker 1
14:41
casting here just for the benefit of the listeners, I can understand what part of the process is it because you explain that I think after that, what we'll do is we'll go right at the top in terms of maybe what kind of typical day looks like just so I can understand a little bit more about how the business works. But yeah, what do you mean by casting in this context?
Speaker 2
14:57
So the miniatures we have are made in metal and resin. Right? And yeah, that's basically once you've got your original sculpt that's then made a mould of and then the casting is the main manufacturing process. It's quite casting
Speaker 1
15:11
the the actual final figures from a mould that's been previously made by mould maker.
Speaker 2
15:17
Yes. So those those fingers that will then go into the packets and be sold. So those sort of final pieces that, you know, yes, people can learn to do it themselves. And you can get your own, you know, by the machines do it in house. But you're always going to be at that sort of mercy of having a caster. And then if something happens so that they die. Why leave they go? Oh, yeah, they die made it dark. Yeah, I'm relying on them. Yeah, so if there's problem with that one person, or maybe you've wild and you've got two of them, but it's still still a bit shaky. And this was talking about a scale because at that point, it is one or two, if you're a much larger company, you've got a whole team and it's different, you know, different matter. But I think other than doing that, then why wouldn't I use a company that's got professionals that have done this for a very long time? They've developed the skills to just you know, obscenely good levels, and have everything in place to make the best miniatures possible. It's just for me, I, a lot of people go on, it's about time you start doing in house casting? No way. Why would I do that?
Speaker 1
16:28
It's really interesting. So when I spoke to manufacture who I believe you work with Louis Downes in a previous episode, as he spoke more and more about the process and what was involved, it was very clear to me that this is this is a hugely highly skilled specialist area. Yes. And certainly, the thought of, oh, I'm going to have to cast some models now or get someone else who just does casting, without any of the ability to, for example, the resilience because obviously, Louis employs multiple people who can do that kind of work. And so that if someone is sick or unavailable, there's always ability to continue producing product. That sounds like a nightmare. It sounds like a lot of risk. Not really a lot of cost saving really,
Speaker 2
17:12
exactly and even through you know, the last year and the pandemic. I've got, I've had barely any sort of interruption or anything to the manufacturing because they've got all their systems in place. So that's actually more stable than having that that sort of system in house. And it's something that people it's not, it's not too hard. This is well, yeah, Louie tells me off afterwards, it's not too hard to cast a miniture you can pick it up, you know, you can do a day of you know, someone showing you and you can cast a miniature, but there's a very big difference between casting a miniature and casting a very good miniature. Yeah, that makes total sense that difference of quality. A lot of people just go I've made a miniature it's worked. Yes. Why would I pay someone like like Clarice company? To do this when I can just do it like, yeah, it's the same as with anything like, yes, you have made a miniature, but it's not very good is it
Speaker 1
18:07
Seems critical. Because I mean, this this comes to me in something to talk about immediately about the whole attraction of miniatures is an interesting question. Because, for me, I would have assumed that production quality is really important because they are aesthetic objects, first and foremost, in a way that board games can be enjoyed, they can look terrible. Sometimes people still have an amazing time with them. If they're very well designed from a gameplay perspective, that isn't really true miniatures it is it because their aesthetic objects,
Speaker 2
18:36
especially if like myself, I only produce miniatures. So that seems like I've got a game system that I can kind of go, you know, well, I can say the mini sucks, but the game was really good. It's just got miniatures. And and yeah, that's another thing that I see people sort of doing where they'll, they'll try and save costs on something like the miniatures say, by you, using a less a less good, less good caster, and go over, we can get these for much cheaper look, but that's your product. That's the whole thing. Everything is about the figure. So why would you not have the figure as good as it can possibly be? So that's something I'm absolutely happy to, you know, because we're, you know, people get together and chat about all different costs and stuff. I'm aware that the costs of mine are a lot, but it's just like, why wouldn't you do that there are other ways you can sort of skimp and save like, well, let me having a way smaller office than I should have. That's fine. But the important thing is that products and I think yeah, people sort of setting up can easily be lured into that whole like, Oh, but I can save money by you know, not using you know, super good casters perhaps all Yeah, just like I can pick it up and do it in my shed. And there's plenty of people that do that and I didn't want to like look like I was being super critical. But it's it's very easy to To do it wrong, basically. And yeah, there's plenty of lovely people that do very lovely castings in their shed or their spare room and that sort of thing. It depends what you want out of the business, though, you know, wherever you want to stay is that sort of size. And it's a bit of a hobby project, you know, a bit of a side thing to your day job, or whether you want it to be that sort of larger company. So there's all that sort of tied up in it as well,
Speaker 1
20:23
I would have thought that there would be a problem, but your scale, right in terms of people who would have the adequate capacity to make the miniatures so you produce them in such a volume that someone who's doing it in their shed, even if they've spent a lot of time getting really good at it is going to struggle from a volume perspective, right.
Speaker 2
20:41
Yeah, exactly. I have I have in the in the past, I've had this sort of shed caster, so fit absolutely lovely. And now at this point, when I switched over to to use and CMA Louis, that was the point that was really starting to take off. was really pleased that I noticed that beforehand. I didn't wait till it got out. Yeah, yeah, right. Now our output is, you know, it's not scary, but the way it's growing, it's gonna get scary fairly soon. And again, if I'm using it, even if it's a casting company, where it's one or two people that can disrupt as well, because you know, they're real, or they go on holiday and that can sort of Spanner, everything.
Speaker 1
21:19
This is interesting that there's quite a lot, as I understand it, in this industry, within the sort of casting side of things where there are a lot of businesses that are similarly micro businesses of people using small quantities, right?
Speaker 2
21:31
Yeah. Yeah, most most of the WarGames minis companies are, are a lot smaller in terms of people than than a lot of people realise. Because there's even ones larger than me that seem somehow even smaller, if that makes sense. And that terms of like, yeah, their outputs larger, but they're still just Yeah, mostly, like one guy that organises specifically
Speaker 1
21:51
even for something which I think is probably a bit of a surprise for me when I learned this manufacturing, right? Not just because I think we used to think about manufacturing has been quite a big scale process, if you look at what the factories in China do, in terms of manufacturing games, and the quantities, that isn't the operation, which so many people involved, yeah, but actually, there are lots of these sort of micro manufacturing companies in your game space, in and around Nottingham. And I guess some of those are the people that you're bumping into at the super market.
Speaker 2
22:19
So besides that we're at now and the amount that we order, I can only think of apart from obviously, the cast as we use is probably one of a company out there in the UK, that would be able to handle that amount, which is something that I find really interesting, interesting, more and more companies are popping up. Because it's the you know, the barrier to entry is always a lot smaller, and probably even more so. So that'd be a whole other episode talking about digital sculpting. And that sort of, yeah, it's just, it's a lot easier to be able to set up a company, which is great. And I'm one of them. So I can't go there. It's all these companies. But the infrastructures not there, even the shed people, there's, there's just folk, they're all gonna be shed dwellers. There's just not. But even with all those people, because there's a lot, there's a whole load of those sort of micro casters out there as well. So between like everything that there is that sides not really growing as much. So it gets harder and harder to sort of find that good, reliable caster as well. So that's, that's been a whole adventure in our growth and just sort of learning things along the way. But we've been with CMA for the longest now and hopefully forever. They're awesome. But yeah, there's just there's not that much in that sort of, yeah, that's the core of it, that actually making the minis and then I get a bit concerned that it's a bit of a dying art sometimes that, you know, like a lot, a lot of the people I know that cast are fairly old as well. And it's not, because it's not something you just kind of pick up at any point is it any of us sort of hobby or something, the machines generally quite old. And that's where it gives me some hope, say companies like CMA that are constantly employing and training new people. Because that's a lot where it hasn't been sort of passed down because it will be somebody Kasei casting in their in their garage till they kind of retire. And that's it.
Speaker 1
24:11
Well, that's interesting, isn't it? So it's almost like you can see the kind of hobby origins of it. Yeah, something where people it's being done at this kind of hobby scale, but as probably those kinds of hobbies in general, like it feels like craft hobbies, and particularly, maybe this is something that's not maybe this is just purely opposition with them. I had no evidence, but that kind of craft hobbies amongst men seem like they're becoming less popular. So I think about things like in the 60s, there was like a huge boom in hobbies around things like making model aeroplanes. And it kind of reached a real peak at that point. And then since then, this is funny thing that a few of your men have been interested in crafting things. Yeah. And I guess if that's the result, then potentially you're losing out on that talent pool that was once there for casting as it does, it feels like it's in a similar ballpark. Yeah.
Speaker 2
25:00
You could say that was part of, in general that maybe you know, things, a lot of hobbies sort of dying out or Yeah, due to, again, it's it's the whole thing for another, but that's against being totally speculative. Something, you know, like video games, you know, there's a lot. Yeah, a lot of things are a lot more digital than they used to be, you know, so, so yeah, I'm not sure that's an interesting one though, for sure.
Speaker 1
25:22
Yeah, I find that interesting. Okay. All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about what a day in your life looks like, because I think that would help make the company a little bit clearer as well. And actually, before we do that, let's first introduce if you could introduce a little bit more about what bad squiddo games is and why you set it up. They basically
Speaker 2
25:40
games we manufacture 28 millimetre scale female miniatures,
Speaker 1
25:45
and sorry just to stop you there immediately just to make sure that I'm clear on this 28 millimetre scale this is a person is approximately 28 millimetres in height just so I get this a lot
Speaker 2
25:54
this it's an ongoing it will be debated until the end of time arguing over what it means but what we do which is clearly the best because you know from from foot to eye because some people do to top of head I'm like but what you can get crazy hairstyles and stuff that would mess up. So we do it to the eye. As if they were standing anyway, obviously poses they won't be 28 mil but yeah, this when I'm describing to people outside of the sort of hobby just like the head or about three centimetres three centimetre apologies. I
Speaker 1
26:32
wanted to ask that question because it's something that I found a lot when I'd sort of it's one of these kind of piece of terminology from from the scale miniature world that when I first heard it, I was like, I'm not quite sure I understand this. It's 28 millimetres of what you know, like a map scale is like one to something. So I was always mystified now understanding it's from approximately the foot to the to the eyeline Yeah, of a person. It makes sense. And as you said, it's even makes even more sense if you say the models are about 3 centimeters tall which is even easier. Anyway, sorry. Sorry.
Speaker 2
27:06
Like mind blown. So yeah, we manufacture figures at about three centimetres tall. Yeah, they used for Wargaming. Some people just use them for not just some people also use them for painting dioramas and things like that. And we don't produce any rules. But what we specialise in is female miniatures. Because at the time, when I set up, I noticed that that was what was really lacking in that sort of diversity in the hobby. But that's what we focus on. But we've kind of been branching out quite a bit as well. So what they tend to be because people go, but you don't do rules, what do we use your miniatures for? Well, a lot of people swap them out, because so many companies don't do female models, they want to play a game, there isn't what they would like to use in it. So they tend to be used for all sorts of different games, which in historical worlds is a lot cooler than the fantasy worlds, you know, so it's not me sort of, you know, bombing off someone's IP or anything like that, you know, it's not like I make models that people play Warhammer with, it's not that sort of thing. Okay, say in the historical world, it's quite, you know, someone will make a rule set, and then it tends to be, you know, use whatever figures you like, and there's a whole load of that out there as well.
Speaker 1
28:19
Did you say that the majority of what you produce is historical miniatures?
Speaker 2
28:22
I'd like to think so. But then. Okay, well, we really, you know, we really went all out on the guinea pig warriors or something.
Speaker 1
28:35
Right, because you've got the guinea pig warriors. These are sort of armed guinea pigs that have armour and swords and things like this.
Speaker 2
28:41
That was me giving away one of my plans. But yeah, that was Oh,
28:46
really trailed the range that's coming. I
Speaker 2
28:49
had it here first. But yeah, it probably is. I'd like it to be and I get to get distracted. Sometimes the sculptors get distracted as well. And depending on who it is, I sometimes just let them go off on, on whatever little adventure sculpting adventure, and that's how some of the other rangers have sort of come about where I didn't have plans to do something. But the sculptor made me you know, one, and when I just I was just having fun, and you know, do you like this? And now let's make loads of them. Yeah. But as well as ladies, so it's mostly lady figures. We also bought most of Bristol's extraordinary market again about three years ago, which does feel longer that one does. So what's that he was a scenic company in Poland. But he was fed this is that ties in quite nicely, actually. Because he's, he was a sculptor. He still is a sculptor. But he also was casting and running the business. Right. And one of the reasons he decided to stop that was because he was getting frustrated that he wasn't sculpting as much as he wanted to be sculpting, because he was doing the day to day business running instead. So he sort of switched up what he's doing, sold off the range, and then just became a full Time sculptor. So you can just sculpt and hone that craft, which is I was really proud when? Yeah, because I see. So again, so many people still just work themselves into the ground trying to when I think of everything that I do, and if I sculpted and cast on top of that, it just blows my mind that, you know, people do that. But yeah, so I bought that range, but then we've expanded it, we've probably tripled it or something since then. So Bristol is now one of our sculptors, I'm really pleased with how that's all turned out. Because it was a range that we used to stock. And now it's, well, that's ours. And it's just a combo of me and Bristol are both our weird brains have just been created, like the best stuff ever. Do a lot of chatting about you know what we're gonna make. They're like, we like this is a deadly duo. So the
Speaker 1
30:47
creative processes is that generally speaking, you will be coming up with kind of concept, right for some miniatures. Yes, then the sculptor might also have some ideas. And I guess this partnership with with risktal is one way he obviously because he previously running his own company publishing as well. Yeah, he's got lots of great ideas that he is inputting into the process. Oh, yeah, he
Speaker 2
31:07
Speaker 1
32:12
that's how you brief poses in sometimes if you just get a photograph of yourself making a kind of expression.
Speaker 2
32:16
Yeah, cuz then you can figure out like, stuff like, he goes that way. You know? Oh, that's fascinating. It's like your your own armature. Again, it's like, is that a natural pose?
Speaker 1
32:29
Right. Because, yeah, because there are certain things you could do with them, or the loads of things you could do with a model? That would be impossible. Yeah. In terms of human physiology. Yeah.
32:36
You see a lot of that.
32:40
That's fascinating.
Speaker 2
32:41
Yeah. I love to remember when I'm being a bit mean, and see something that I think what have they done? They're not not on a bad
Speaker 1
32:50
quality control and design process, right. It's actually you're doing that part of it. Brief, tight, so that you don't have that problem.
Speaker 2
32:57
That's it. Yeah, I sort of see something occasionally I'll be scrolling and see see? What and then yeah, I find myself in pulling all sorts of weird poses trying to be is that even possible? Even do that? Yeah. So yeah, like that. That's one of my, one of my testing processes. Can my body go? Like?
1
Speaker 1
33:15
Where do you get your ideas from? How do you start with because there's, I mean, you could make a miniature of anything. I mean, if you're in the category of women, well, that's 50% of all the possible biological forms that have gender. So that's obviously pretty broad. That's pretty broad brush. So how do you narrow that down and work out what miniatures you're going to make rather than others?
Speaker 2
33:37
It seems to be what excites me the most really? Hmm. And it's, there's always the sort of the business aspect as well, because it's a lot of money to make even just one miniatures, the whole process, so it's got to sell. You can't just, you know, just go well, that'd be cool. It's got it's got to sell so then you've got to look at ways you know, what games might be out there that could fit into all those sort of parts. And oh, yeah, largely, though. It's what I'm particularly interested if I see something and think Yeah, that's cool. That's like, was it I like to the sub base of the company is making minis one of my cheesy taglines is minis that younger Annie would have really enjoyed painting and playing with right fingers that my little self would would sort of appreciated. So yeah, it'll be just just things that I think are really cool sometimes. So especially with the historicals. I have, I'm looking at now. An enormous specialist bookshelf does all women in history books, right? I'm trying to like get them all at some point. But I have massive like, anything that's been written about women in military history or to standard history. I've got all of that and then I'll just sort of be flicking through various ones. Now maybe it will be an old photograph or a bit of information. That will be the thing that makes me go Oh, and then suddenly it's escalated and as a whole range. So the the Soviets range for samples, I think our largest one, especially with the latest stuff,
Speaker 1
34:59
and this is women of the Soviet Union Yeah. Well, around World War Two, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2
35:04
Yeah, like that range came about because we just we just released well on Kickstarter, which just had a whole, like, massive bunch of it, but that very start the start of it was me looking through one of those because I've got in the books I've got there are sort of specialist books where they really delve deep into one particular topic. And then the broader ones, which are the sort of like, you know, coffee table books, the 50 women that you should learn about before you die and those sort of books right and it was one of those so I was just sort of flicking through so the Night Witches so the Night Witches that were bombers, Soviet bombers, okay, and they were called back because they were just sort of silent and gliding. Low flying gliding bombers. Okay, uh, yeah, just read about them. I went I know, which is a cool and then before I knew it, suddenly, like humongous World War Two binge, of just sort of learning everything about women in World War Two in the Soviet Union. Escalate. Yeah,
Speaker 1
35:59
me passing down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. Yeah.
2
Speaker 2
36:03
And then yeah, way that one ended up Yeah. In me on various translated Russian language websites, books. Just go read it. Yeah, that was so that was just the first sort of bit of interest.
Speaker 1
36:14
Well, I guess that makes sense to go quite deep, right? Because the historical research is such a big part of what you're making?
Speaker 2
36:21
Oh, yeah. It's like, it's got to be more than, you know, the BuzzFeed article or whatever. Yeah. Which is funny, cuz somebody basically said that to me. At one point, I think it was on Twitter or something. They said to me, like, don't believe everything you read on these clickbait articles? Like, no, I don't I don't see a Buzzfeed article ago. Well, that's fact let's make a model of that. I don't need to look any further into this at all. The research does go does go deep, especially with the World War Two, because it's also I find it really fascinating and so many photos, which also helps. So you can get really down to the precise detail with where some of your things like Dark Ages, you've got a bit more room for speculation or rule of cool, you know, things like that,
Speaker 1
37:05
right? Yes. As in you can you can have something and like it will be wicked. If it was like this, even if I don't have any historical evidence that someone like this would have done this. I'll just use anyway, because things like we don't really know. And it's cool.
Speaker 2
37:17
Yeah, there's always a bit of rule of cool in there. Right? Yeah. So yes, it's not anything that's too crazy, because then I just put them into my fantasy figures. But yeah, it'd be something like this particular, this sleeve design might look a bit cooler than the other sleeve design. And we have no idea right? Sleeve design. So I'm gonna go for the cool one. So they have artists thickness in those. But yeah, when it comes to World War Two, you can get everything precise. And I really enjoy the challenge of that. I'm much more a fan of books than the internet for just the obvious reason that they tend to be a bit more not filtered. They have to go through processes to get published. Yes. Especially with things like cool women from history. Websites, just click off other websites, and an article is everywhere. And yeah, if there's an inaccuracy, it almost becomes a new internet truth. So that's part of the reset. Because there's this one that drives me wild every time I see it. And it's, it's one of those Yeah, like, this woman is really cool. And they use a photo of an entirely different woman. And every time I see it, like someone in the comment, sort of thing you would know, it's
Speaker 1
38:28
just because, yeah, it's been interesting. Because it's like, okay, so inspirational woman has a great story that gets copied without really checking the facts to make sure that in fact, this is this that person, even that photograph of them. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 2
38:43
just shows how stuff gets picked up and thrown around. Which you know what that Twitter guy said was absolutely correct. But I thought it was funny that he just assumed that that was yeah, there's this whole yeah, I've read like a bit of an article and thing when they do make cooler headlines as well. So it'd be like, lag for from Vikings was real and then it's this whole enemy, like, No, you know, like, giving you ideas of you know, we found a female skeleton, therefore, there must have been entire colonies of fighting women and stuff like this. Right, exactly. So it can get they can almost get too excited on the other side of it. Yeah. So I like I really enjoyed waiting for all the different research and trying to come up with one what I think is correct, but sometimes being 100% correct with the models I said about the rule of cool Yeah, isn't necessarily the best model. So it's got to also look like a really cool there's a compromise there. Yeah. So there's there's all that and there's sort of like, it's almost like they become symbols, I guess. So how there was some characters where it'd be like say a woman from history. She never shot anyone, but maybe she had a gun or she there was some reason she's linked to a particular item or whatever, but she won't probably won't walk around with every day. But if you put it on there, right? Yeah. Cool, really cool. So like all nods to that sort of thing. Yeah, that makes sense. They're the bits that I really like putting in, obviously, like, if it fits, you know, they're not like, I don't know, armed with a gun, and then they've got like a basket of puppies or? So actually, that's a bad example. Because I do that I totally do.
Speaker 1
40:20
How much do you think? How much do you think that contributes to the commercial success? Like, do you feel like you go above and beyond the call of duty? Or do you think that actually is a big part of why they sell?
Speaker 2
40:31
Yeah, obviously, the cooler a figure is, the more people gonna buy it. When I started off, I set the company up for quite a useful time, Lucky time, if that makes sense. Because people were starting to question that why there wasn't as much women's representation in Wargaming. Right? Your the figures that were there, were all very scantily clad.
40:50
There was exactly the kind of classic bikini armour. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2
40:54
So when we started on, you see, before that, we had kind of had the luxury of people buying because of what they were sorry. Like, it's a female model. It's got clothes on, we'll buy it. Like, when you when you set out to change the world, when you're doing that sort of thing, though, you can't have that forever. Because what you want is for there to be lots, you know, not just one squiddo, obviously, you want that to be the norm. So then people, you can't have people buying your, your fingers because it's a woman with clothes on. Yeah, because that's wild when you consider it the other way around. If people were like, this company, they've got men with clothes on. Yeah, it's a point where it's like, Okay, what's, what's the angle here? Because it was a little, you know, maybe even just a few months into it. I started thinking about that, right? Well, I want people to buy the figures because they're really cool figures. Not because they're women. Right? That's obviously a bonus. But I just wanted to get that. So cool figure. And I just want make
Speaker 1
41:52
sense. So there's a funny way in which that is like an early stage advantage, because you're doing something genuinely different. It's kind of amazingly amazing. And it is genuinely different. Women with clothes on miniatures, and initially, obviously, that's just that's enough. And it might be that they go well beyond what they need to in that sense already in terms of quality. But as you said, anyway, in the long term to make this work, they've got to just be great miniatures in general,
Speaker 2
42:19
because it's improving as well. Other people are already doing this, surely. Yeah. Yeah. And that's awesome. Because yeah, I guess you feel like such and such a stunning woman closer like, Yes, this is good. I must be the only company that good kinda, well, I'm doing
42:37
a monopoly on women with this seems a little self defeating.
Speaker 2
42:46
Really, but it has got better, partly just again, it was the right time for me to start that because it has been becoming more of a discussion and a lot of small companies are doing it. And I know that I have directly influence some companies as well probably indirectly influenced them. I'm not claiming that there are more models of women with clothes on. Oh, no, I'm claiming that I'm claiming that there are more out there because I was like you are.
Speaker 1
43:07
exerted that pressure to some extent. Yeah. Just by showing people what's possible.
Speaker 2
43:13
Yeah. I'm not responsible for every every woman's clothes on Mini. But yeah, you know, what, I have contributed quite a bit. But yeah, it's a mixture of, I think the effects. And, and also, yeah, more people just having the same thought going. Hang on what, you know, when we're doing a, a woman, barbarian or whatever. Why is Yeah, so just Yeah, people have been more conscious about it. And then it is a sort of ripple effect. So the more companies that do it, there was a fear. When I started, a lot of people were like, don't do it, you won't sell them. And I've heard that so much people going, or people make sexy female figures, because no one would buy them otherwise. And that became a sort of, like, gospel. Yeah. And it kind of angered me that people wouldn't even try to just say, Well, you know, they're not going to sell so, so I thought, Well, okay, I'm out of nowhere. I'm gonna like pull everything I've got into this. And at the start, it was, I didn't have much at all. It's quite healthy to tell people I started bad squiddo when I was in debt, right. Yeah, I was at the very last sort of bit of hope, because I'd previously been running a dice bag business, where I was I was doing that for years, but I'm just to bust up both my wrists with repetitive strain from from doing that. Oh, from actually making them. Yeah, that wasn't long term sustainable, but I did build a pretty damn good empire. So I was pleased that right but yeah, I'd been out of work for a bit because of obviously my hands weren't working. Yeah. And it was that last point of I need to change this up. I need to do something else. Yes, starting in the back, which is something I would never suggest. Hey, um, you set up a business when you're in debt, so it can be done. It can be done, I would not recommend it at all, that don't have repetitive strain injury. Yes, exactly. I did go into it with that sort of self defeat from the start just this like, well, if nobody buys them, I've made some miniatures that I will like. Because the first figures that we made were female shieldmaiden, Dark Age, the Dark Age warriors that were winning, because there weren't any. And that's what had been enraging me when I started playing, because this issue did seem to be largely in historicals, where obviously, you've got all the, you know, the fantasy tropes, but with historical figures, they were, and they still are, to be fair, barely any female representation. And there are women in military history, right, of course. So it was that sort of like, adding into that. And so it started playing Dark Age Wargaming. And just went okay, oh, get some ladies. Go on to Google. And yeah, they're just they weren't there. And so what how, why? Right. And then it just, they'd be the fantasy version. So traditional Dark Age warriors always got like a tunics and trousers, maybe a bit of chainmail on top and a helmet. And that's, you know, that's your standard warriors, like, just want that, but a lady, but all you could get was like metal bra things. Like this, you know, this is all historical. No
Speaker 1
46:27
one goes to war like that. Which is interesting. So actually, that's an interesting point about that historical shieldmaiden. So who were they historically? What was their role? And what kind of places particularly did they crop up?
46:39
Funnily enough, this is the one that's very contested,
46:41
right? I can imagine just the, the amount of historical record, from those times in general is pretty limited,
Speaker 2
46:47
isn't it? Yeah, I really like looking through archaeology with your own biases, which has been getting a bit better as people are more aware of it. But yeah, it was sort of like thick, you know, this skeletons buried with beads, therefore, it's a woman skeleton, you know, like, Oh, this one's buried with pots. And you can it can be very, very quick to make presumptions about lots of stuff. Yeah. Because it's one of those where there's been a lot of men in that industry as well. Nobody's really questioned it. Obviously, they have over time and a lot more lately. So the there's still a huge debate over well, actually, whether they were she'll maidens are not the conclusion I came to when I was going for it or It's like this emotional roller coaster where you read one bit, and they're like, Yeah, I was really common for women to fight. Yes. Another one, okay. Yeah, they would never be fighting, just like you learned as much as you can look at as many different sources as you can. But the conclusion I came to with them was that there would have been, it wouldn't have been normal, there wouldn't have been tonnes and times makes, it seems weird, or for they're not gonna even look at different, you know, more documented periods of history. And there's so many cases of, of women over, like sneaking into the army and stuff like that. Someone who might be exceptionally strong or something that, you know, even if there are rules in a particular silo, women can't fight, but there's a woman that is really strong, then they might go, Yeah, okay. We'll make an exception here.
Speaker 1
48:21
I would also imagine in times of like, incredible strife as well in more battles conflicts, because it's very easy. If you're thinking back to like the Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages, where there's like, a huge amount of convention about how everything is done. Yeah. Then it's a bit different. But as you said, to me, that seems to make sense to me what you're saying. The chance that at no point were there women fighting in that context seems much less likely. Yeah. Seems like that would be very, never happened. Yeah. Reasons you've said is that actually there would be they weren't? They might not be the typical case at all.
Speaker 2
48:55
Yeah, they might not have a you know, 20 of them running down the hill at you. But yeah, but did they just
Speaker 1
49:02
come on? Some point? I must have done like, I think that right, that makes sense. Yeah, I can't see. Any other way to be honest.
Speaker 2
49:10
The time is not linear. So when you're looking through looking history, depending on where you are in the world, what the year is, some, you know, some places will have loads of women, and it's absolutely fine to be in combat, others they won't. And it's never something that will kind of like you know, gets more progressive over time. It sort of just jumps up and down, depending on what what does that make sense? Yeah, but she's really interesting. And that's one of the reasons I ended up finding the World War Two women in world war two really interesting as well. And we don't just do combat at the start. I was very much on this whole like badass sword wielding women even more into different representations. So with the dark age, I've got villagers that are defending with like pitchforks and things like that, which absolutely definitely happened. They can't Yeah, and then once, when we started the Soviets, they're all frontline, frontline combat. And then it got to Britain, but what to Britain and we didn't really have that we had like the odds, you know, sort of, like the odds were quite a lot of, you know, spies and agents and things like that. But we didn't have, you know, rows of wi, on the frontline. So, but then it got me got me more interested in in different roles that aren't all the, you know, the glory of combat as well. sorts of different things that people do that that, you know, on the surface might not be as cool or because you don't get a sword or something. But a really important one from you
Speaker 1
50:39
an anti aircraft gun team. Yeah. And World War Two. Right. So isn't that an example of one because this is something that happened where women would operate those as part of their what's the what's the regiment called when they're part of the operate? Those kind of guns
Speaker 2
50:52
are the ATS. Yes, yeah. Yeah. So with those, that's a really interesting one, because it's the Bofors you'll we'll have, yeah. And that one, so there's so much women's absecense so much, there's so much more like it just in everything. What I've been researching, is people like don't try and shoehorn stuff. And I kind of for a little bit like a might be a sort of wish list shoehorning. And then once I started reading, so I don't need to, there are so many women doing stuff, even if they're not the front line, they're there. They're being active in the military. So with the Bofors sociality aircraft gun, women were allowed to do everything apart from fire the gun. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So that was absolutely an it was a huge source of debate throughout the war, because, you know, like the doing over and Russia just let him shoot. Like, for now, you could load it, you could do everything, but you couldn't like pull the trigger, basically. So in that kit, and I like that bit of detail. So in that kit, there's there's an option so you can get this male gunners and female gunners. So you know, because you people I know a lot of what if histories and things like that? Where where you would have that? Yeah. Or you could just think you're doing a scenario where yeah, there's no deeds about so she's firing. Okay. Yeah, so I like that I've put in this the Yeah, but historically correct, ma'am gunner but also ladies as well. So you can inflate it. So you can magnetise them to so you can switch them out for your flame.
Speaker 1
52:23
That's that's really cool. Is that would you say a kind of feature of the realistic war game world that actually people do really appreciate that kind of realism and reflecting the kind of how it would have been through that?
Speaker 2
52:37
Yeah, yeah. Well, I like like making them accurate. And if they're more sort of pulpy genre stuff, I'll put that as a separate thing, but it's again, it's also rule of cool. So when I yeah, like I like educating people and the whole like, yeah, the dudes dudes were the only ones that were allowed to fire. But you play in a game. So sometimes, like people don't care there's because Alex cool. That's gonna be a cool version. A way to make that model Nice. Yeah,
53:02
yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2
53:04
So it's not like everyone who's put the women on the gunning position Have you could pull actually to find out what, what ratio?
53:13
People have done. I've not mine so I go.
Speaker 2
53:17
First, yeah, it's not like everyone who's put the woman on theirs is not playing World War Two. I'm sure. Most of them probably are. And they've just gone yeah, looks cool. They're not they're not real soldiers. So they're three centimetres tall representation. So it depends.
53:34
Probably yet, right. That's,
Speaker 2
53:36
that's a lot of what I think what's been getting getting really good over the last maybe 510 years is historical Wargaming getting more accessible. Because just for it was almost a sort of regarded, like, traditionally, like, stereotypically old man type thing where, you know, you can't just pick it up, you know, you've got your masses and masses of napoleonics people shout at you, if you paint the button wrong, you know, that sort of vision of what people see historical Wargaming. So I'm sure in some areas, it was definitely like that. But now there's more and more games and things coming out where it's just way more like the entry, the bass entry is so much sort of smaller. And there's also this sort of, like, more games where it doesn't have to be 100% accurate, because it's a game based in that era, rather than being you're playing that era.
Speaker 1
54:29
Well, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, to some extent, all war games are alternate histories, right? In the sense that if you can change the outcome of the conflict, yeah, my favourite war game is his memoir. 44. You never change the outcome of the war, but you do change the outcome of an individual battle. So my dad whenever he plays, he's always the Germans. So if I lose, I always like to remind him that he did lose the war in the end anyway. Thank you. So your individual battle can go a completely different way. So there is that element, isn't it? By its nature It's something which should be able to be adjusted around the edges.
Speaker 2
55:04
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's there's a lot more of that now where it's just a bit more relaxed. Yeah, I just want in the hobby is just as much choice for people as possible. So there's nothing wrong with any of it. You know, if someone wants to recreate, you know, mass battle, keep it as accurate as they can get it, and they enjoy it, then that's great. If someone wants to do Vikings versus Space Marines or whatever, like, you can do that. But yeah, so that's, I think the hobbies now getting so diverse in those sort of sense anyway, that there is something for everyone out there. And I think that's really cool.
Speaker 1
55:40
That that's really fantastic. Yeah, and I completely agree. I think that's, I would say, more just broadly in the world of board games as well. Yeah, I would say seems to be very much the case, which is great, right? This is a huge expansion of themes. Those are different things happening. I said, we're talking about like, kind of what a day in your life looks like. I think it'd be really cool to understand a little bit more about that about like how life works at bad squiddo. So what was typical day? And can you walk me through just a kind of overview of that whole process of how a miniature goes from being an idea, because there's kind of a really cool, run down a rabbit hole wikipedia, to being something that's being sold in little blister packs.
Speaker 2
56:18
Yeah. Okay, so standard, the office day, I watched loads of those motivational things on YouTube about to start with that I get up at this time, then I go to the gym
Speaker 1
56:30
and go to the gym, then you meditate. Like, that's all. That's all you got to do at that point. And then you've got to eat, you got to drink, I think something that's like a glass of water with lemon juice in it.
Speaker 2
56:39
Yes. Yeah. Normally. For a long time, I was getting up at five o'clock. Forward, but that's because I'm a morning person. So I do I do like, early. And I feel like a fail from about four o'clock onwards. So if I can use my, my personal optimal time, then. Yeah. So again, up, go to the office. So go to the office. And then just various sort of things that have happened throughout the day. So the first thing you'll tend to be checking orders, check the web orders pack, any of those that have sort of come through, depend on the day. So if it's a Monday, it's usually quite a bigger task, you know, sort of midweek, maybe not so much. So be sorting, sorting for the orders, and emails and queries, if there's been any issues, do all that I'm supposed to not be on social media too much. I keep meeting to see the schedule a schedule loads and loads of stuff. And then right yeah, so that I'm not then going right now I need to update the social media. So because I failed with that at the moment, that's the thing, I'll do it right. But also check all of those because they'll be messages through there as well. And then I'll just sit around till about five and go. around doing I think that's pretty much for this week, to be fair. So it's a mix, I like what I'm doing a mix of sort of computery bits and moving about bits because I tend to just my like, well for live saps, the longer I'm sort of sat at a computer but there is a lot of that sort of stuff. Then depending on what's happening, it could be working on some graphic design for some new packaging, because we have painted pictures of our miniatures on everything so right as soon as the paint is finished, then the mini might arrive so I'll take a photo of the mini whack it into Photoshop came out put it onto the put on the packaging,
Speaker 1
58:24
like having as part of the process people painting them for this and then you get to keep a collection of painted miniatures that must be pretty cool, right? Yeah, I bet they do have those on display in the workshop.
Speaker 2
58:35
No and should I still have any space for him to be frank Yeah, no, they're like I've got all these really well lovely painted models and they just live in on phone cases most of the time. Yeah, I occasionally get them out for photoshoots and things like that as well make sense. So like get put some nice terrain just got some new terrain coming. So that was part of last week. I was trying to find some like pre made terrains ends up being on on Etsy looking for some nice backdrop sort of terrain that was already you know, like scratch made sort of stuff it can really easily like get off on a tangent on because it's because I'm doing so much I've got to be careful to then not get too into one particular thing so yeah, there are let's say going on let's look at the next page. The next page like any this was supposed to be quick see, I'll be doing the graphic work there got any sort of accounting things to do and we'll do that and that sort of boring boring paperwork there's a lot of boring paperwork, but again people don't because the visual of what you see is just Annie on on video or whatever go ahead we've got more shell made every company has that doesn't it there's the busy work that people forget about running a business like it's just me with my fingers going now fight which I do do quite a bit
59:52
with the most of the job Wow
Speaker 2
59:54
Have you the best conversations with each other and stuff but you know, that's that's normal probably So yeah, other things that may occur during the day could get interviewed, but something I have to write, maybe if I've got a new miniature coming out, I have to write the, you know, the info for it for the website, as well as to like, take the photo, then make the thumbnail images, maybe you've got a newsletter so valuable, the newsletter aspects that there really is that whole wearing many, many hats, again, trying to sort of automate as much as I can now or outsource to sort of get rid of some of that busy work that yes, is this the best use of my time sort of? Makes sense? So I like getting more systems in place. We've got livestock, which is just beautiful. So livestock on the website, so if it's on the website, we have it. I'm fantastic. Yeah, we've had that for years.
1:00:48
fulfilment companies, I mean, work for them to do that. Oh, no.
Speaker 2
1:00:51
Just just being cool with the website. Right. And just keeping Do
1:00:54
you do you? Oh, you have the miniatures, you dispatch them and do that side of it yourself as well? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2
1:00:58
Yeah. So yeah, we do all the shippin, right. Okay. So I mean, like, I don't have to do, I spent way too much my life, stock counting all the racks and counting things. So that's all auto now. So when we get them in from the casters, we just add those totals to it. And it's beautiful. It gives me little alerts when things are low on stock. But there's still things that would have been quite a bit of time beforehand. So you know, in previous days, but then maybe spend an hour stock checking this bit doing this. Whereas it's really quick and easy to do in order now. Because I just print off the spreadsheet or print it off. I do like printing things off and having it in front of me rather than on the screen. But I'll sort of go through that. I think, right? We need some of those. So we restocking the miniatures, which happens quite a lot. So on this, let me just catch up. Because there's so the range is big. We're still relatively small, so don't have like tonnes of, you know, budget laying around, especially as this whole, like starting from debt. It's been a real grind, imagine. Yeah. And I'm really pleased with how it's got how that's gone. Because I think that was a real battle against the odds. So I'm very proud of that. Yeah. But it doesn't make sense to carry loads and loads of things in stocks, it's finding that balance, we've got a nice chunk, and it's better for the casters, you know that you don't go can you cast me five models, you know, they've got a cast chunk off at once. But that can very quickly add up, you know, sat around,
Speaker 1
1:02:24
your stock is all kept in your your sort of workshopping office, right. So I can imagine that's a terrible trouble. Like, even with very small miniatures, being able to just manage all of that stuff is like a huge range that you've talked, yeah, it's quite challenging.
Speaker 2
1:02:39
Also, a lot of people sort of keep them in drawers and package them up when they need it. But I just like getting them packed, as soon as they're here, not immediately, but one of my rules I try to have is to not have bags of metal around, they've got to go into the blister packs. And that helps me keep, like, keep an eye on how many of those we've got as well. So we're gonna have a show coming up, suddenly go, I've got blister pack loads of things. Ah, now for an hour, these blister packs.
Speaker 1
1:03:03
So you have some, we have some time for design in one of these days, just to do a little bit.
Speaker 2
1:03:08
I like to do more of that from home, because that's where I've got all my books. And I can really like spread the books out all over the floor. Just become one with a
Speaker 1
1:03:18
and then doing that. And then you create a brief from that design process. So
Speaker 2
1:03:22
to make the minute share that yeah, that starts I do. I just make a million notes. My main sculptor, Alan, he's done some of our world war two with him. I've got a Facebook group set up with just me and him. And we find that really useful just for managing everything. So you're not lose, you know, when you go back for emails, and you're like, When did I say that? Where was that bit. So we'll have subtopics in there. So we just use that. So you know, like, on one particular figure, we'll have our own thread. And then there'll be like sub threads on that. So be like, the clothes, here's the clothes, and then we can just post and I've got seven galleries. But these are the specifics. But this is the album to sort of be aware of, sort of thing. So we put all that together. Sometimes I do a my one of my bad sketches. It depends what the figure is. And when it's things like say the World War Two, I tend not to, because we've got all the things together. So I just need to go. And in that pose, it's almost like I've got assembling all of the pieces together. So it's not a from scratch sort of design. So we go from that. So sometimes I'll do a lot one of my awful sketches that which they're very good at, and they do the job basically, it's one of one of my sore points when people go can I see a concept interesting, but it doesn't need to be so a lot of what people show as concepts are isn't concept as refined art because the more you draw it then if you need to make a change, that's a whole other, you know, things change it up. Whereas the point of it is just to show what goes where, you know, there's no need to spend time shading In the face in whatever question Yeah, like, Can the gun go over this part here? And then it can be no, then you could just easily rub it out draw it, you know? And the gun. Yeah might just be a tube with just a very basic, because that's all that's showing, and then I'll have it safe. It's World War Two onwards or something. I'll then have attached to that a photo of the gun, because there's no point to me drawing that gun. Yeah, of course. It just needs to showroughly where it’ll be. Yeah, sense. And yeah, if it's sort of older things, it might be sort of artefacts or then a mixture of that with somebody sort of painting of one restored or you know, things like that. So there's a lot of sort of collage this in there. So send that have a chat with the sculptor, again, depending on who it is. So my main dude knows me so well, that we can almost mind read each other now. They're like, Yeah, I know exactly what's going on here. Cool. Sometimes I'll phone them up as well, which I like doing too. So it's not just all that sort of emailing back and forth. They get that they do the sculpts, they'll sometimes send me a work in progress. But most the time, it'll just be finished. Unless it's something that's interesting, and a bit vague. So yeah, they send me the photo through say us or anything that he's changing most of the time, there isn't because they're ace I love that. I love that they arrive and they're just like, Yeah, this is perfect, awesome. Or like, yeah, that's a really small thing. Because yeah, I'm having that confidence. Now, like the people that I work with, I love that, I just know that they'll do it ace
Speaker 1
1:06:37
that seems incredibly valuable. Because the my experience in that side of things has been, there are some people who are working with them on that basis. But there's often been a bit tougher than that. A lot of art produced,
2
Speaker 2
1:06:49
it's been an interesting ride to get to this point. So I'm like, right, or 100% Happy now with the casters as that like the trio of the casters, the painters and the sculptors, because they make the figure
Speaker 1
1:07:04
the benefit of finding a working relationship like that, I guess. Yeah, it's about doing really well, that is
Speaker 2
1:07:10
really solid there. Because, yeah, I've gone through various different of all of those three, sort of in that, especially in that sort of shaky start period where you're trying to find your feet and stuff like that. I don't know, a whole bunch of bad experiences as well. And now like being at that stage, well, I'm just so happy with the people I work with, and also really like them as well. And I know it's not always necessary. But yeah, it's just like when you get on with people. And even in that, you know, professional capacity, it just makes everything easier. And yeah, I just, I just think that people that the workforce is just so happy. Like, because like, it's fantastic. They're the ones that make the figure so yes, it's important. They're important, which is another thing when I was thinking about, you know, mistakes people make as well. They go, well, that sculpts that much I can get a sculpt for cheaper. Again, yeah, it is a sculpt. It's definitely a sculpt. But is it a good sculpt? Because the sliding scale costs for sculpt is all over the place? As you can imagine, it's art. So yes, like anything can be a fiver or a million pounds. It's kind of Yeah, it varies. But I'm so happy with that team I've got now that just like the combo just makes everything it's really satisfying. So if you've, if you've got an idea, which I guess from what you've just said, there, you've done with magnate, you've got this idea in your head, and then someone just isn't getting it. Or they do something different or because you didn't leave out a specific detail or you didn't, you know, there's something that you didn't clarify on they've gone off for totally wrong way, but you didn't mention it and you're like, is that my fault? You know, and it's just disheartening. And yeah, the casting a bit as well. Like, I've had boxes, not from my cast, but other boxes of casts arrived and cried. Really, like points where it's been, you know, just before massive show like Sully
Speaker 1
1:09:07
Yeah. And it's like, not to scratch. Yeah, like,
Speaker 2
1:09:11
that's not a stress you need on top of that. The Chill of knowing that the fingers are going to be perfect, that it's just really, again, without flexing, everything's gonna be perfect. And if it isn't perfect, they'll fix it and it'll be fine. Yeah, like, there won't be an issue. You know, there we go. Well, that's what it's like, you know, the very rare time I might have had, like something that we've missed on a figure like maybe, like, I think there's one where a finger it got lost in the mould or something. I know that once if there's something like that does happen, that it's going to be fixed so quickly. And you know, I don't need to worry about it. It's not gonna be like, well, you you don't really need that finger. Do you? Yeah. Yeah, I just like them to have all of the fingers.
Speaker 1
1:10:05
It makes sense it makes us make sense of and this is exactly how I felt with the kind of final production of this magnet has been, is just like, well, this, this is like my baby, I want it to be really right. It's got to be right. And when something's not quite there, you're like, No, we do this. It's got to be Yeah, you know, as close to perfect as humanly possible. Really.
Speaker 2
1:10:22
It's, it's hard. And it was for me at the start, because I kind of have no business background. I have all this like go alone, which again, when I'm like giving myself a pat on the back, you learn business along the way. Well, yeah, that I'm learning all of these different things. But it's at the start. It's just things like people management, I've done a bit of it. But yeah, having to tell someone to change a piece of art and stuff. Oh, that's a big thing. And yeah, you just like, part of you says like, Yeah, it's fine. And there's been bits where I'd say, you know, in the early days gone, yeah, that's fine. And then it's bothered me forever. Like, why didn't I just tell them to do the thing? You know, like, when I thought that bit could do just that little change? But I go, No, it's fine. Its great. It's like, never upset artists. But it takes a long time. But for me to get to that point of people to sort of yeah, go nope, that's incorrect that that again, luckily, I don't even need to do that anymore.
Speaker 1
1:11:21
It's interesting. You say that? I mean, that sounds like a wonderful place to be in, because then in my experience, is that there's a lot of skill in briefing anything to any kind of artist. So that makes a lot of sense. Well, I think we're kind of running out of time a bit now. So unfortunately, because I think we could to be honest, we could just keep going for ages, there's so many more things that I would love to ask you not to talk about about this. But But before we were, before you go, I really wanted to know what your top advice would be for people that want to run a miniatures company. And maybe they've heard what you've said, sounds like Oh, my God, that sounds actually really cool. Like, and there's really there's, there's a huge, wide open, feel the different things you can make, right? Because you can make a miniature of pretty much anything. Yes. So what would your kind of top advice be, let's say top three pieces of advice for someone who wants to run a miniatures company, like yourself,
Speaker 2
1:12:07
okay, make something you're interested in, and that you have a passion for? Don't go, okay. This particular type of figure is selling a lot now. So that's what I'm going to start with. Right? Yeah, if you happen to like it, that's fine. And like I said, Before, it makes sense to, to do something that is financially viable, but it's very hard to make money. I feel like in my little, you know, my size company, and that sort of around that I do feel like I am doing very well. But I'm still not, you know, in my Lambo, or I'm working really, really hard and having beans on toast, you know, because it's just this constant reinvestment. So even when stuffs going really well, what people like, How come you always skin like because it's going back in all the time. And that's with me being successful. There's so many companies that start up and they don't really get anywhere because it all you know, goes wrong. But if you're doing something that you're passionate about, it makes it so much better. Because this is not the business side to get miniature manufacturing, it isn't the business I'd get into if it was just to make money. Yeah, of course, because this is a lot easier to do. Yeah. And it's like doing this, you know, work yourself to the ground having to put things out there, you know, putting your baby out onto social media. Yeah, some guy just trashing it immediately. Like, there'll be days when I just go, why am I doing this? You know, like, this is awful, wherever. And then someone will message me or picture their door with the first shieldmaiden it's like the first model I've ever painted or something. I'm like, That is why yes. So for me, it's not just about the minis, it's about this, like, I just sounds cheesy. I just want to make people's lives better. And of course, and yeah. If I feel like I'm having that positive impact, and I feel like what might I do with bad squiddo is, then that's me winning. So that's the that's that goal. But if it was just for the money, just by now I think I'd have just quit
Speaker 1
1:14:12
would be so punishing, wouldn't it? And it's, it says people keep saying this to me. Is that love of it that gets you through the tough times? Yeah, yeah. And so don't get that. You're not going to be as motivated as well. Yeah. That you've got
Speaker 2
1:14:23
your heart into and that's your particular thing. Yeah, it's just gonna be rather than just these being these little, little figures that you resent forever, because you used your mortgage money. Oh, God. It's like, like when I started the shieldmaiden. Well, if no one buys them, I've got some cool things that I've made for myself that I would like, right. Make sense? Yeah. And also like, there it is. It is doable as a business. So even though I've just said, yeah, there's too many people that go, Well, you know, was this some phrase that goes around? It's like, if you want to make a million pounds in this industry,
Speaker 1
1:15:01
And I'm gonna say for the record now, like, loathe it every because every time you can say that I can say, alright, I look at something like stone Meyer, like, as we were talking about earlier $18 million of annual revenue. Yeah. And I'm just like, one person making board games because he wanted to make board games that he really enjoyed making, right like that. That is like, no, completely like, yeah, that is just do you not think that that degree of that is a kind of form of self protection? Right? Because it means that if you if you fail at it, you can say, Oh, well, it's impossible to make money. Yeah.
Speaker 2
1:15:48
Right. Yeah. So is it is very hard, a lot fail, but it's not impossible. Which is important. And if Yeah, if you've got the drive, I know, it's always like, you know, it's easy to say, if you've got the dream, you can dream, and you can do it like, No, you have to work your ass off.
1:16:06
Yeah, it's gonna be tough thing to take away. But but even more achievable,
Speaker 2
1:16:11
is achievable. Other bits to avoid, I would say, not pricing high enough, because people get new, and you're like, oh, and then you kind of look about and there's some companies that are sold them so cheap. And it's because they they don't need the money. You know, it's the same for any business where people don't, some are doing it for a hobby, somebody's business. And your thing are that they're selling it for cheap. So I'm gonna have to sell it at that cheap, and you don't. But it's really in those early days, because you're already like the holdout of no one's gonna buy my miniatures. So you know, do them cheap. Or if I do like, endless deals and make them really cheap, or if you're a retailer, you can almost discount things. But you don't, you don't have to do it. And yeah, I see too many people just sort of screw themselves up from the start, because they don't price them high enough. So they're never going to get the money back or the time it takes to get the money back. It's too long. Yeah. And that they can't sustain until that point. Makes sense. And so make a good product and then price it for what it's worth. If it's good. People are gonna want it. You want them to have it. You want them to want it because it's good. And it's something they want. They want in their lives totally. No, because it's cheap. It's a bit crap, but it is cheap. I know you want you want them to want it. So don't be afraid to price it at the level that you need to. Or that you, you know, obviously you do your workings out what it should be. But yeah, don't don't be too worried about seeing other stuff cheaper. I think that's that's definitely important. And another thing, I think what I mentioned before, I guess, is don't, don't go cheap on your manufacturer. Right? Yeah. You know, you're not going to have much of a budget at the start. Unless you're one of those lucky people. I'd love to have had money to set up a company. Like, this gonna be areas, like I said, as areas where it's easy to cheap out, and you can get away with it again, like my office should be way bigger. Right? Yeah, that's, that's a smaller monthly cost. That makes a big difference at this point. So there are bits where you can cheap out like that, but you can't on your sculptors and sculptors and casters, particularly, you got to make good models and don't get to get lured to like this guy. I'll do it for this price. Nope. Yeah, that is your product. So you want your product to be good. So don't yeah, don't be lured by that potential extra profit, because you're not going to sell as many if their crap so yeah, extra profits not
Speaker 1
1:18:39
Amen to that. That seems like a really, really good advice that people seem to get wrong all the time when it comes to making products, which is thinking, well look, wherever the cheapest option is the one to go with. And generally whenever you do the cheapest way of doing it, there's nearly always some other pain involved in the process. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. counterbalances if you just pay more money for it. It's something I think everyone has experienced. Yeah. And it is wise to keep in mind that you've got to assess your options carefully.
Speaker 2
1:19:04
Yeah. When I when I do my autobiography, I'll put all of my Horus in.
Speaker 1
1:19:12
This was absolutely fantastic. It's been so great. That's really great advice. I think anyone who wants to do this will be interested. And I think all three of your tips there. I actually think a highly applicable to lots of different businesses actually, about quality suppliers about sensible pricing and doing it, you know, because you love it. It seems like it's really crucial. Yeah, yeah. Good on those like specific versions of it. I would apply to other board game businesses as well. Yeah, would probably apply. So just before you go then so what are you coming out with soon that we should be on the lookout for even though we're under the Soviet Union, we get more of them.
Speaker 2
1:19:42
Yeah. So we've just finished a Kickstarter. It's only a week. I very much like short sellers. Yeah. So it was a week that went wild. So we're currently working on getting the stretch goals sculpted for that, but that pledge manager will be open probably a few weeks. But it means that even if you've missed it and you're thinking, Oh, this sounds great. Listening, you'll be able to join us a late backer for that. So keep an eye out for loads more World War Two ladies. After that we're actually doing a short fantasy Kickstarter. Again, this was an exact example of the sculptor just kind of making one fantasy mini. And then we go, okay, maybe a couple days are really good. Let's do this, we've got a really nice little set. So I'd like I'd like to put them as a small kick. So it'd be nice after you know, doing the huge one like the World War Two will be a little, little one like that. We do a mixture of Kickstarters and normal releases, though. So there's always something coming out. The scenics range is just going while the things getting moulded at the moment. That's just immense. And yeah, so there's just everything. There's always something happening around bad squiddo. You check out any of the links that assume you'll put them somewhere? Oh, absolutely
Speaker 1
1:20:49
linked. The description as always links to get to buy those lovely miniatures. I mean, like I said, having, owning that Bofors gun set, I was just so cool. Like, there's a pictures just dont put it together yet, like, I don't know when I'm gonna get round to that, because I'm not really, I'm not much of a modeller. Like I don't really make models, mostly. So I love finished miniatures. But I don't love the process of getting to finish miniatures. So I
1:21:13
think it's a hobby in itself.
Speaker 1
1:21:17
is the same for everyone to see the light of day to be honest, I don't get someone else to assemble it will be why should do but yeah, but that's really cool. Thank you so much again, there's so much to learn from there. And I think it's so cool to hear about your your business and how the whole thing works, and then how all the different things you do every day. And let's hope that maybe it won't be beans on toast forever. And that at some point. See, some people can take some stuff off your plate.
Speaker 2
1:21:42
Yeah, thank you very much. Have lots of fun. It's been really good chatting about different things as well. So this is very interesting.
Speaker 1
1:21:57
producing fun is produced by Naylor games, you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher or other major podcasting. Remember, producing fun is also a product and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at Naylor games or write me an email James@Naylor games.com. Until next time,
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Paul Grogan runs “Gaming Rules!”, a rulebook editing business and YouTube channel focused on videos that teach people how to play games. As one of the industry’s top editors, Paul has worked on around 100 different rulebooks; closely collaborating with several of world’s most famous game designers in the process: including Vlaada Chvatil (Codenames, Mage Knight) and Vital Lacerda (Lisboa, On Mars).
In this episode we discuss the biggest mistakes to avoid when writing a rulebook, the future of in-game tutorials and the role of a rulebook in a game’s commercial success.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames
Listen on Youtube:
Paul’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/gamingrulesvideos
179319864-44100-2-69da8fc8db224
Sat, 3/12 2:25AM • 1:40:11
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
rulebook, game, rule, people, books, read, play, magnate, question, editor, editing, text, bit, index, publishers, graphic designer, flavour, paul, vital, point
SPEAKERS
James, Paul Grogan
James 00:10
I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective. Welcome to the latest episode of producing fun. My guest today is well known rulebook editor, content creator, and good friend, Paul Grogan of gaming rules. Paul is a true pillar of the UK board game community. And one of the hardest working people I know, from developing games to running conventions from making videos to training demo teams, he's pretty much done it all. So I had to focus extra hard this week on keeping the conversation as focused as possible on just the topic that I wanted to pick his brains on rulebooks and what makes them great, and sometimes not so great. As I suspected there was so much he had to say on this subject alone, it was very difficult to decide what to keep and what to cut this time. Paul's experience is beyond substantial. He has edited the rule books of games designed by some of the industry's biggest names. People like Vlaada Chvátil the designer of multiple runaway success titles as diverse as Codenames, or Mage Knight or Vital Lacerda, whose heavy Euro games are often regarded as some of the very best in the genre. As to use Paul's own description, a rulebook editor in all caps, his working relationship with these creators is really close. He's so trusted that he's become the exclusive editor of several top creators' work. As many as 100 rule books in, he really knows his stuff. If you are in any way interested in writing or editing a rule book, I would strongly recommend you listen to this episode, Paul is a pleasure to listen to. But I can also say from personal experience of working with him on Magnate that his understanding of teaching games in multiple media in general is invaluable. He has a lot to say here, not only on the immediate practical challenges of structure and wording and rule books, but also on the broader perspective of how commercially important they are. And the increasing growth and new trends in games like built in tutorials. We join the interview, just as I've asked Paul, how he got started as a rule book editor.
Paul Grogan 02:17
Thanks for inviting me on I remember when you spoke to me about you're going to do this podcast before you did episode one. And it sounded like an interesting idea. So yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me on. So how I got into real book editing is by pure accident. Now, when I answer this question, because I'm generally well known, patting myself on the back for being a fairly good rule book editor. So a lot of people assume, Oh, you must have like a degree in English. He's got professional qualifications. None of that. None of that whatsoever. And when I... I mean, I'm a gamer. I've been a gamer since the 80s. Right? I am a passionate gamer. It is my hobby. It's become a job. You know, not through, not through? Well, no, to say he's not through deliberate choice. It was my choice to turn it into a career. But it kind of happened accidentally, because I'm so passionate about the games. What happened is about, well, gosh, when would it have been now what year are we in?
James 03:15
I think it's 2021. I think it's been very confusing the last week.
Paul Grogan 03:19
Especially this week, because it was a public holiday last weekend. So I'm still confused as to what day that week it is.
James 03:24
Oh, 100%
Paul Grogan 03:25
This was about 10 to 12 years ago, when my passion for games got to the point where I wanted to start doing things on a voluntary basis for some of the publishers that I love to publishers sprung to mind Czech games edition and watch your game. Massive fan, bought every one of their games, loved their games. And I started making, you know, going to see them every year and saying hello when everything else. And then I was like, Look, I'm really interested. I love your games, and I'm passionate about your game. If there's anything I can do, like, let me know. And it was like, Well, I guess we could, you know, send you our rule books that we're working on. And you can help us out maybe with them and reading through it. And that's where it all started. It was purely me wanting to give something back to the companies that I enjoyed working for.
James 04:14
Oh, interesting. So actually, that's very interesting. So it wasn't necessarily that you had a kind of specific thing in mind that you really wanted to do for that company. Like, oh, my dream has always been to edit rule books. No, it was more like, How can I help? I think what you're doing is great.
Paul Grogan 04:29
Yep. So talking to them about their games, maybe even play testing their games, you know, they'd send me the files I'd print I'd spend like you know, three evenings printing out all of the titles and all of the time. Wow. Then I'd get any friends round at a weekend. Now, this was all done on a voluntary basis because you know, I had a well paid full time job. I was fine financially. And I was doing this because for me I was like how this is amazing. I've just got Vlaada's new game he sent he sent me a prototype of this game all those little literally spend about 12 hours printing it all out and inviting my friends around and then feeding back to them. That's work right. I was effectively doing work for them and feeding back all. I even went to conventions. I remember being at BayCon, which is a convention down in Exeter that happens every year. That's actually happening virtually this weekend starts today. But I was at virtual, I was at the real BayCon with a physical prototype of Dungeon Pets the year before it came out. And I spent the whole weekend Well, maybe not the whole weekend, but at least 50% of the weekend, playing this game with people demoing it to people. And so this is a new CGE game that's coming later this year. Oh, this is from Vlaada. Who did Dungeon Lord? Yeah, yeah. And I didn't get paid for any of that at all. And they were very happy. I was very happy because I was working on Vlaada's latest game. And then eventually, CGE sat down with me. And I think this is all down to Vlaada. Oh, Vlaada and the boss of CGE sat down with me. This is going back eight or nine years now, I think. And they said, Paul, you've been doing loads of work for us. You've been doing all of this. You've been doing demos at conventions. You've been helping us with our rulebooks, you've been helping play test games, you've been doing all of this. We can't let you carry on doing this. If we're not going to pay you to do it. Because it's not fair. It's not fair on you. And I was like, okay, sure, yeah, if you want if you want to. And we basically made an agreement that I would track the hours that I spent working for them. And we agreed on an hourly rate for that. And then I carried on doing what I was doing. But I was also getting paid for it, which I had to declare as extra income. And I did it all aboveboard and efficient. And that's how we all started. Now, what happened following that is over the next couple of years, my professional career was not working out for various reasons. And as I was starting to do more and more work, and I was thinking, I'm passionate about games, I love games. And now I'm actually sort of doing work in the games. And I was enjoying during the work, because I was doing, you know, I was working on Vlaada's new game, and I was I was doing all of this stuff. And I thought, Oh, I wonder if that I could actually maybe cut down on my work and maybe do more of this. Hmm. And whilst at the same time I've I've always loved teaching people how to play games, I, you know, I was the one who in the 80s Paul would get a new game with all rigour and pulls out. And Paul would teach us how to play a game. And in every gaming group that I've always been a member of I was the one that taught people how to play games. And I actually love just in the process of teaching people. You know, if I went to a convention for four days, and spent all four days demoing games to people and didn't play anything, I'm really happy because I love that I love teaching people how to play games. So I came up with the idea of, because I've no, I've no background in creating videos, or anything. Right? No background in that whatsoever. I came up with the idea that I would create a YouTube channel where I create videos on how to play games. Make sense? Yeah. And a couple of people pointed out to me that this has already been done. A couple of people have already done that. And I was like, All right. Okay, I wasn't aware of that. But that's when I formed gaming rules. I did it with the intention of creating videos. That was the whole sole reason why gaming rules was formed is to create instructional videos.
James 08:20
So it's much more focused purely on that element to begin with, rather than what it does today, which is your
Paul Grogan 08:27
50/50. Well, it's kind of a bit more well,
James 08:30
You've got videos. Yeah. What's the edit rule books, you also teach people how to other people have to demo games, right? That's another part of what you do.
Paul Grogan 08:38
It is but that's a that's a small part of what I do. Okay. Yeah. So so the whole rulebook editing, getting back to your original question was, because I was doing the videos, I was also doing bits of rulebook work. And then the rulebook work, just more came in. And then more came in, and more came in. So we are now where we are, in that a lot of people know Paul Grogan gaming rules. He's that rulebook guy. And they don't realise I do videos as well. Every week, I come across somebody who goes, Oh, you also do videos. I thought you just did rule books and like, whereas other people are like, oh, yeah, he's the video guy. I didn't know he did. Yeah, yeah, these multiple hats. So I fell into it accidentally. And I've just, I've just built up and built up and built up. And thankfully, I've ended up working on some fairly high profile games, which have then had a great reputation for having amazing rulebooks. And that's that's obviously been been really good. But I have to say, again, that has an amazing rulebook. If I was the editor, of it, it's not just down to me, and we'll probably touch on this later on. It is a big team effort of everybody involved. And it isn't just you can't just look at rulebook and go. This is an amazing rulebook. Who's the designer? Right? Because the designer usually has usually, I'm gonna say Usually an exception. The designer usually has nothing to do with the rulebook. And the rule book is a big team effort of writer, editor, graphic designer, publisher, you know, a whole bunch of other people.
James 10:11
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. makes a lot of sense. Well, the definitely, let's come back to that point, because I'm really, really interested in that point about what makes a good rule book and kind of the team behind it. Because yes, your point, I'm sure, well, spoilers, there's good. It's a lot more complicated than just, it's the editor or, it's the designer. So that sort of thing. So how many books in total? Have you edited? Do you think? Oh, gosh. Right, rough finger in the air. 60 To 100, 60 to 100?! Maybe something like it really depends on where you look at editing. If you look at, for example, on Mars by Vital Lacerda. Okay. Most of that rulebook is me, I wrote pretty much all of that rulebook. And I was involved in that process from the start to the finish. Right. Whereas there's another rulebook, which you could say I edited, where actually I only probably did maybe two days of work on it. Yeah, both of those rule books. I'm down as the editor, but one of them took me about 10 to 15 hours, but another one took me about 100 to 150 hours. Right? So yeah, it's yeah, I've done I've done quite a lot. I am planning on cutting down. But yeah, I think my, my skill set is in the, the structure in the writing of complex games. I mean, I can do other games as well, but bringing me into a rulebook at the latter stages, and then I read through it, and I go, this structure is all completely wrong. And they go, Well, I'm sorry, but the structure is all set. We've done the layout, and we just want you to proofread it. I'm like, Well, you've got the wrong person, because that's, whilst I can do that. That's not really my area. So yeah. So immediately, that raises a question for me, which is, have they actually not just got the wrong person? Have they made? Have they made the wrong process decision about when to bring an editor in at all? If they're bringing them in that like, in your in your opinion?
Paul Grogan 12:09
Possibly. Yeah, I mean, that that rulebook that I mentioned with, with the bad structure could have already had an editor, because there are different types of editors out there. I always say that the three types of editors, Oh, okay. Raw editors, with a lowercase e. There are editors with a Capital E. There are editors, all in caps. Okay, and I'm the latter because I know some editors that are and this is not meant as any disrespect to them. One up from proofreaders. Yeah. It's more like spelling and grammar and spelling and grammar. And they will check the occasional sentence and they may make some suggestions, right, then you've got the next level of editing, where they'll they'll look at it in a bit more detail. And then you've got me and other people like me who look at your rulebook and go, no, no, I, you know, and the reason I'm saying this, is because a company about four years ago, was a new company. And they had a rulebook. And they posted on the various Facebook groups and social medias and said, tell us who the best rule book editors are. Or, you know, give us your recommendations of rule book editors, because we need a rule book editor for a new game, right? And then what they did is they contacted each of those people, and I was one of those people they contacted, and they contacted me for details of how I work. timescales, obviously, cost, and all sorts of things like that. And he and I got the gig, I got the job boards, they came back to me afterwards. And they actually said to me, so they said Paul, we spoke to 50 different editors. 50. I mean, that's a huge amount of people. Yeah, they this is this is this is what I got told they they said they approached 50 editors, and asked them the same questions. They asked me. Every single other editor gave them a price based on word count. Oh, interesting. I didn't I gave them a price based on my hourly rate. And I said, I will work within your budget and within your limit. Obviously, if you gave me 100 Page rulebook and said, Paul, you've got five hours to do it. I'll say no, but quite reasonably. So. Yeah. But if you say, Paul, you're limited to 20 hours of work. I'm not going to then invoice them for 50 hours of work. Yeah. So I was the only editor in the 50 that they approached, that gave them a price based on time spent rather than word and that is because I can't give you a price based on word because I don't know your rulebook might be good, and just need some minor tweaks. Or it literally might need completely restructuring tearing apart whole sections being moved around and a massive rewrite and I can't I don't know that until I've actually started reading and working on it.
James 14:54
So I this is this is really fascinating to me, because one of the sort of trends I've seen a little bit with In the board game world is treating board games like books, right? So I noticed, for example, Ospray games when they were recently washed and made two years ago now, they were advertising someone to join the business. They call they had a role, which they called game editor. Yes. And I thought that was weird to me, because I don't think a game can be edited. And obviously, you know what this podcast is about product. I come from a kind of a software product management background. And so when I'm looking at a game, I'm thinking, well, we're trying to overall craft this marketable experience for people. And the thought that it that it looks like a book editing, where you're trying to preserve the authorial voice of like an individual, let's say like a novelist. It doesn't it doesn't resemble that role. But it seems like as with the rulebook editing, there's this sort of interesting trend amongst some organisations to see it in the terms of this is text that's been produced that we're editing, which is almost it doesn't seem to me like that's your approach at all? No, you're looking at it from the point of view of would it be fair to say, this object is what helps people learn the game? Yeah. So you're looking for how can I maximise the effect of, of how good this is that teaching the game, potentially, that it doesn't even necessarily the fact that it is a book rather, is secondary? Yes.
Paul Grogan 16:19
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's interesting, because gaming, I mean, Osprey games, I know people who work at osprey, I'm friends with some of them. And they are one of my clients. I do do some work. Right. Okay. So I'm curious about this. Because game editor. I'm thinking what, what is that role? I'm right after this right after we finish this, I am going to speak to my contact at Ospray and say, Are you that person? Or are you a game editor? Yeah. Because if it is who I think it is, yeah, they do game development. But they also helped with the rule books into so it's two hats because game, a game developer, and somebody who helped write and edit rule books are different skill sets. But that could be the same person. Yeah, because I do game development as well.
James 17:02
So yeah, that see that I find that really funny, because it seems like we're all working on fundamentally the same roles. Yeah, it's fundamentally what we're doing. But yeah, that's a really interesting one. That's that's one definitely wanted to explore, explore more, I think, because understanding what the roles are, is, to me really fascinating, the point of view of what you're trying to achieve. Yeah, so that makes a lot of sense. And in the same way that you know, it seems like your, your rule book editing interest has emerged much more from your very long lived passion for teaching games, rather than because, you know, you really enjoy the kind of the process of like, editing documents. Alright, I've got, right. Because, right, I can I can understand it, right? Because it's really interesting is that, you know, I have a friend of mine, she's an editor for a national newspaper, a sub editor. And so actually, she loves just crafting text, right? Like that's, that's very much like, what the bit that she and she's exceptional at it. But it strikes me that it's, it's, it's coming from, even though there might be an overlap of skills, it's coming from a slightly different place. Yeah,
Paul Grogan 18:04
I have no interest in that whatsoever. My passion is, and I have this every time I'm working on, you know, I'm helping right now chip theory games with the rulebook for burn cycle, chip theory games, one of my favourite companies love what they do. And as I'm sat there reading the rulebook, I'm thinking, it's midnight, I really should go to bed, I feel awful. But I'm thinking, this rulebook is going to get printed, and it's going to get into people's hands. And they're going to read these rules for awareness. And they're going to look at the examples that I've written with the images that I've written, and they're going to go, I get that, and they are going to be able to play that game. And I know that and that, that is pumping through my veins, which is why I can't sleep at night, because I'm like... but it's exciting. And this is why I'm, you know, working on some of the, you know, Vital Lacerda, for example, right? Me, I me and Vital have become friends over the years. And I'm now known as the people who the person who writes his rulebook, right. One prior to this, I, I was a fan of his games. I was a fan of Vital Lacerda his games before I even started working for him. So now we're in the situation where I'm lucky enough, in a way, though, it's not luck, I've made my Oh, luck, but you know, I feel very happy about the fact that I'm now working directly with him. And we will be having arguments at two o'clock in the morning about whether something should be worth two points or one point. This is my life now. Yeah. wouldn't change it for the world. If you just said to me 10 years ago, you're going to be Paul, you're going to be writing Vital Lacerda's rulebooks. I'd be like, yeah, get away. You know,where do you get that from?
James 18:04
Yeah, yeah. How would that how would that happen?
Paul Grogan 18:04
Yeah. So yeah, I have no interest in the actual technicalities of, of writing text or anything like that. It's because I'm coming from people are going to get this rulebook, and people are going to be able to learn how to play from the rulebook. So yeah,
James 19:55
Very interesting. Very interesting. So I get prompted a question from Twitter. view on this in terms of the role of the different people in the process, which I guess this is a good opportunity to get into that. Yeah. Should then the graphic design of the rulebook be managed more under ideally your watch? Because I think that raises because because the objective of the graphic design is to make the rulebook usable, but you don't obviously do the graphic design yourself in in kind of Paul's ideal world of what is the best structure for tackling rulebook editing? Yep, would you have yourself as the boss of the rulebook graphic designer?
Paul Grogan 20:34
In an ideal world? Hmm. I guess yes. But the way that it normally works is that I will work on the rulebook in Google Docs. I will I will work exclusively in Google Docs at the start add images and add notes and add comments. And then it goes off to the graphic designer, however, I always want to be involved in that process. There is only I think, maybe two rule books that I've worked on, where I did the text, and then it disappeared. And I didn't see it again. Now that made me uncomfortable, because it's my name is the editor, I wrote the text. And when that rulebook left me and went to graphic designer, who knows what they did, because you're absolutely right, that the actual layout, and the graphic design is so important, you know, if that call out boxes on the wrong page, or in the wrong section, or they didn't bold, the headings enough, or they use the wrong, you know, title for a particular section. So it looked like a subsection, and it was actually a big new, you know, all that sorts of stuff, or worst case, the graphic designer goes on, I couldn't fit these rules onto that page. So I've moved on to page 23. No!, you know, yeah, so as soon as soon as a rulebook leaves my, my area and goes to a graphic designer, if I never see it again, that is not something that I choose to do. And in fact, all of the rule books that I'm working on right now, whilst I'm not in charge of the graphic designer, the graphic designer is, you know, working for the publisher, and they work into their things, I'm involved in that process. So I will be able to say, you know, I won't be able to change the font, I don't like it. But I will be able to say that the arrow on that image is not clear. It needs to be pointing a bit more this way and things like that, because images and examples. And I want to see the entire rulebook holistically as as as a product and not just moves in it, but also the examples where things are and everything else. So yeah, I do like to be involved in that final bit.
James 22:40
Well, it makes a tremendous amount of sense because the layout to me seems like it is equally important to the text that if you have the layout, if you just had the text and the layout is very poor or the layout can actually surely detract from the text by implying things that are that are wrong.
Paul Grogan 23:02
I've seen some there was a rule book which somebody blinked because I because I'm known now for being the rulebook guy. People tagged me in on Facebook posts when they've they've read a bad rulebook. They just go off just read a rule book for such and such a game. It really awful shame they didn't hire Paul Grogan. Now that is very, very flattering. Yeah, what he means is that my Facebook feed, he's like, oh, somebody is mentioned. And suddenly, my brain is like, Oh, I'm just going have a look at this rulebook now, and suddenly, I'm now looking at a rulebook forgetting that I have no interest in. And I'm looking at it, and I'm going oh, yeah, and one of the ones that I saw last month, and it was very, very simple, it doesn't matter how good the text is, they'd gone with a two column approach. Because it's a it's an A4, or Letter size rulebook, which is fine, that's normal. But what they done is, they broke the sections up vertically, but didn't have dividers in between the sections. So you were reading down the left column as you do. And then when you finish the left column, you switch to the right column. But actually, what they done is you go down the left column, and then that actually continues about a third of the way down the page. That's the end of that section. And then it continues on the right column of that, and it was like, it was unreadable. You just could not follow it. And that was simply and I'm going to be rude here. It was an unskilled graphic designer, who just copied and pasted the text into InDesign, changed it to two columns, split it up into the various sections, but didn't actually think through putting graphical dividers between the sections. So you were reading it, and it just yeah, it just didn't flow properly. And that has nothing to do with the structure of the rulebook the guy who did the the text, fine, that was fine, but when it goes to layout, it was just Yeah, it was a nightmare.
James 24:55
Yeah, this is to me not that different to the way that graphical user interface design works in software, which is that you have to make it navigable as the first priority. And obviously, there are certain conventions about how we read books, the way that we read them is that we read one column and then the next column. And if you work against that convention, then it's gonna, it's not gonna work, it's gonna be very hard to navigate yet. So there's got to be a really exceptional reason when you break those conventions. And it strikes me that this is this is a real problem. Alright, so that's interesting. Part of this, though, and I remember we've had a couple of conversations about this previously, that there is a also a boundary, which seems to be somewhat soft to me between the rulebook usability and then the usability of aspects of the game as well. Yes. Like, for example, iconography. Yeah. Which I know is something we've discussed in some games. Yeah, you've worked on? Yeah. So what role do you think the rulebook editor can proactively play in putting into iconography and user interface design of game board elements? For example,
Paul Grogan 25:56
Generally speaking, none.
James 25:58
Ah, okay,
Paul Grogan 25:59
Generally speaking, right? If you were wanting to design a game, and you needed a rulebook, and you went on to the social media forums and said, you know, recommend me some rule book editors, and you find one and you hire them as a rule, book editor, you're going to get rule, book editing, that's what you're going to get. And a lot of rule book editors would not feel comfortable if they were looking at a rule book and looking at a game and they went, Oh, these icons are very clear. They're not gonna say anything. Because they've been hired to be a rule book editor. If you hired a third party to be a rulebook editor, and you didn't know them, and they would, you know, it's like, it's like hiring a guy to come around and paint your wall. And he went to, yeah, you know, you know, that, that that set of hanging baskets you've got there? Yeah, well, they don't really look great. and you're like, but let me just just paint the wall right. Now, I'm in the fortunate position, that I can't keep my mouth shot. The people I work with know that I can't keep my mouth shut. So I'm a little different. If I see icons that aren't clear, I say something because I can't not. But I don't expect or the rulebook at citizen to do that. And I'm very sorry, if you're a rule book editor, and you're listening to this. And you do comment on iconography, where you think it's not clear? Yeah, great. And please do that. Because to be honest, if I was in the position of the designer of the game, or anything else, I want that feedback. What I don't want is I don't want people to think, or I think there's a problem here, but it's not my position to say something. So I'm not going to say something, right. I'm always, this is one reason why I no longer have a full time job, and I'm employed by somebody else, is I will always speak my mind. And I will always, I will always say when I think something is wrong, or could be improved. And thankfully, going back to Vital, you know, me Vitel, Lacerda, and, Ian O'tool. Ian O'toole gets all of the credit for all of the iconography and all of the graphic design on the game. And to be honest, he deserves 95% of it. But then there's me and a couple of other people going, Oh, that one would look better if you just move that little bit to the right and added a bit more fading on it. And oh, yeah, I'll do that. So yeah, it's it's all a big, shared team effort. But as far as your question about iconography being usable, you could have the best rulebook in the world. But if your iconography is not clear, or, you know, things are just not in the right place on the board, people are going to not they'll read the rulebook in the blank, right, and now know how to play and then they'll come to play it. And they'll be like, wait a minute, this isn't intuitive. You know, I'm doing something over here. And it's, it's actually affecting something over the other side of the board. Well, you know, and people like me, and you will be looking at that and going, Well, why didn't they just put that track next to this one? Yeah. And things like that. Or why isn't there a... Why isn't there an up arrow icon here, here, reminding you that whenever you do something in this area, the share price goes up by one or something like that. And it's little things like that. And as I say, for me, because I can't keep my mouth shut, but also, I am a game developer. I do game development for some games. Yeah. So I, I find it very difficult when I've got that sort of thing to suggest. So I always make sure if somebody hires me as a rule book editor, I say, are you okay with me making any suggestions about the gameplay of the game? Or would you like me to just not say anything and just edit the rulebook? And always they say, No, if you've got any thoughts on it, let us know. Okay, interesting. I always do, but I usually check beforehand.
James 29:41
Yeah, that will that makes a tremendous amount of sense that you would do a check beforehand, because I can see that some people would feel Yeah, they're very precious. Right? I mean, that that can't be something which, which you're a stranger to people getting very precious about things being done in a very particular way. That's been my experience in general working With lots of different people that who are designers, especially, that they tend to be they can get very precious about some things. And they they're not prepared always to have to give up on their not so great ideas. Yeah. But I mean, obviously, you've had the experience of working with some of the top designers in, in board games in general. Do they tend to be sometimes a bit precious? Or they tend to be pretty good at giving up on their some of the worst ideas?
Paul Grogan 30:25
It depends on the person?
James 30:26
Okay, interesting.
Paul Grogan 30:27
It depends on the person. And the other thing as well. Is, confrontation always makes me uncomfortable. I am not good with confrontation, right? Having confrontational discussions about rules of a game. I mean, confrontational is probably the wrong word. But it's disagreements.
James 30:47
It's like forthright disagreement, right? Yes. All right.
Paul Grogan 30:50
With people who I'm a fan of, and let's go, let's say you've Vlaada Chvátil, let's say Vital Lacerda, let's say Richard Breese. These are heroes in the game industry. These are well known popular designers. And I'm having arguments with them. And it makes me feel really uncomfortable. But again, I speak my mind when I say something. And the great thing is, is that and the reason why I carry on doing it, is because I feel that I have helped, even if I say I played the game a couple of times, I don't like the way these work, it feels a bit un-thematic, etc. You know, I'll have that. And they'll go, What are you talking about? Paul, you don't know what you're on about this, that and the other? And I'll be like, right, that's, that's, that's fine. I've said my bit. And they've made they've they've said no, for whatever reason. But sometimes they go, Oh, yeah. And the change gets made. And that's why I keep on doing it. I don't win all of the arguments. But going back to the 2am conversation with Vitel Lacerda this, this is a classic This is from about two years ago, but there was a there was a particular part of On Mars. And it was about two or three in the morning. And there I was in bed on the iPad. And we were having this back and forth about this particular thing. And I felt he was getting a little bit angry. It he probably wasn't he was probably just tired in the language barrier and things like that. And I was reacting to that. And you just agreed to, you know, call it a night because it's three o'clock in the morning, and we'll go to bed will sleep on it. I got up the next morning there was there was a message from him to say, Paul, I've had to think about it. And you're right, we're going to go with your change. And he's like, right now, I don't want all of my arguments with Vital. But yeah, that's why I persist, because sometimes I'm onto something. Yeah. And sometimes I can make the designer look at it again. And think about it from a different angle. And then and then review. So again, we're talking about different roles here. It is not normally the role of a rulebook editor to be having those kinds of discussions with the designer. But I'm fortunate in the position that I mean, especially with Vital who I've been working with now for like five years, this is just how we work together. He did that. That's that's just how it is. And we're doing exactly the same now on Weather Machine. And one of my rules, suggestions that I put in about three weeks ago. He liked the idea of it, he's made that change. But then he said, unfortunately, I've now had to add five more components to the game. And we now need a way of tracking whether the component his face up or face down. But that change got made into the game. And I and this is the thing with most of the games I've worked on, I can look at the game and I can look at a little bit of it and go oh, that was me that bit, you know, I? On Tzolkin on, which wheel is it one of the wheels of solchen the last space on one of the wheels, there's a not equals to sign. That's my not equals to sign. Because I said, and this is this is going back a long time. Now. I said, I think that is too powerful. If you allow a player to move up on the same God track twice with that action, and they all thought about it. And they went, Yeah, you're right. And they put a not equal to sign on it. And and then that makes it clear in the game that you can't do that. It's two different contracts. Right? It's little things like that. And that if we go back to my passion for games, yeah, this is why I carry on doing what I'm doing. Because it's just so... it's so rewarding. And it's the unsung heroes. I mean, you've had you've got it with Magnate, you are the designer of Magnate. But how many people have you been working with over the last couple of years on that project that have influenced some of the rules to make them better in one way or the other?
James 34:45
Countless. Exactly. It's already the case because it's quite a complex project. It's already the case that when I look at the credits for it, it's not the end of a Marvel movie. Yeah, like a little bit already. But actually, if I if I included all of the people that have contributed in some way, but just having a bright idea or the play test or something? It really would be like the end of a Marvel movie with like, the all the technical credits of the massive SFX team and things like that it would it would be it would be. And yeah, you're completely the team effort thing is fascinating. Would you say then that it would probably would it pay rulebook editors in general to have a bit of developer experience?
Paul Grogan 35:24
Well, it's helped me, because he's helped me see things from a different angle. And it's like, going back to graphic designers, right? There's a graphic designers, and there's graphic designers, who are gamers. And if you're going to get a graphic designer to do the layout of your rulebook, try to get somebody who is a gamer, because the end product will be far better, right? Because they, they're a gamer. They've read rule books, they know how example images work, they know Oh, yeah, we need an image of a card. And we need, we need an arrow pointing to the bottom bit of text. And we need to draw a circle around where they know that, whereas I've worked with some graphic designers, who are not gamers, and it was painful. Because their graphic design skills are good. But they don't actually know. So I in one case, I literally had to create my own images for them in Photoshop. Right, very rough images and say, Look, this is the image we need go and make it look nice. Yeah. And all it was was here's a picture of a card with an arrow pointing to where the armour is. Right? Yeah. And saying, for example, this unit has four armour. They weren't able. I mean, they were a bit stubborn. But I've seen other rule books done by people who are graphic designers who aren't rulebook people. And yeah, it's just so yeah, I think, I think having multiple hats, having multiple angles all, all helps the situation. And again, you mentioned that I demo games at conventions, you know, and I do a lot of that I do a lot of teaching games in person to people that helps the rulebook writing videos, helps the rulebook, right, all of the different aspects of my job all feed into each other. And they're all I mean, all of them are all around teaching games. So there is definitely a complementary element to each part of the job.
James 37:19
Yeah. And that makes complete sense. Again, kind of bringing it back to what you said about being an editor in all caps, because actually, that is about that that kind of total view of how games are taught. So in general, then, do you think rule books are getting better? Or not? I mean, obviously, outside of your books, you put a tremendous effort into making them really excellent. But I'm thinking about from this very holistic perspective. But is that true? In general? Yes, and No? Interesting.
Paul Grogan 37:48
It's, it is it is a really interesting one. And I have multiple things to say about this. Because some people think that a bad rule book will kill a game. And there's been evidence of that, right? There has been evidence of games that could have been huge, popular, amazing games. But the rulebook was so bad, it was such a barrier to entry. People just weren't able to actually play it. Right. And there's a couple which I I don't know whether I should mention them or not, but people probably know which ones I'm talking about. And then there are other games that come out with bad rulebooks but are hugely popular and sell millions. And it's like, well, hang on a minute. And you know, people people have said that the Terraforming Mars rulebook isn't that good. Okay, now the Terraforming Mars rulebook is okay, it's not good. Well, maybe it's good, but he's not great. It's certainly not good rule book I've read book, Terraforming Mars has sold millions. The state of the rulebook for that game has not held back the sales of the game at all. Interesting, whereas there are other games where the reputation of the rulebook absolutely condemned the game to the bargain been within six months. And it's fascinating how you get these things because you're like, Oh, well there's the evidence there's the evidence that rulebooks right they've got it got to be good otherwise this happens and then you get other games that come out with not good rule books that's still seem to do well. There's also what's very interesting is what the Spiel des Jahres committee said not last year but the year before which when I read it, I tell you what I had a naked dance around the garden I was because the Spiel des Jahres committee. For those people who don't know the Spiel des Jahres is just the German Game of the Year award in our hobby or industry awards. This is the most prestigious one. Now the Spiel des Jahres is about generally goes to what the committee feel is the best overall game and it is very much weighted towards family games. It didn't used to be but it but it is now and that's fine, but they made a statement. and they said that if your rulebook for your game is not of a good enough quality, we are not going to consider it for the Spiel des Jahres award. And I was jumping and jumping for joy, because I can bang on about how rulebooks need to be better. And it makes nobody listens. Nobody cares, right? Yeah, there's a publisher out there who go in and well, we don't care about programming, we're not going to listen to what he says. Right? But the spirit genres committee saying it, suddenly, publishers have to pay attention. Now. This is this is pressure, it's pressure,
James 40:32
it's applying pressure. That means that if potentially you don't you make a crappy rulebook, then you 100% know, your game isn't getting nominated.
Paul Grogan 40:40
Yes. Now, yeah. You know, if you've if you've designed, you know, Magnate, for example, is never going to get nominated for this build as yours. That's just, you know, that's just how it is. It doesn't fit into that character doesn't know it does. So, So for example, your you don't need to worry about that. In terms of oh, I've got to make sure my rulebooks good. You know, if you've designed a five hour heavy complex Euro game, you go Oh, ugh, got to make sure my rulebook's good. Otherwise, the Spiel des Jahres committee is not going to look at it know that they're not going to look at it anyway. But yeah, so in some respects, rulebooks are getting better. There are a number of publishers who have over the years, improved their rule books. Now, in my opinion, they should have done it sooner. In my opinion, if you are a publisher, and you've spent a year in the industry, and you've made three games, and all of your rule books haven't been good, you need to do something. Yeah, some of those publishers took four or five years before they eventually caved in and decided to start improving their rule books. Because you can it's just time is the right people. It's money. That does what it takes to do a good rulebook. And some publishers have and some people, some publishers have been doing better and better results, or the publishers haven't. Or the publishers are still producing rule books, which are mediocre at best. And that's disappointing to see. But there are some other publishers who are still out there producing awful rulebooks and are showing no signs of even wanting to improve. And Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a whole separate thing. There are so many games that come out on Kickstarter with what look at these artwork. Look at these mini. Yeah, oh, look, it's just made 1.5 million funded in 9.3 seconds. And then the game comes out and the rulebook's terrible. And the game sold, you know, made half a million or more. And that's, I can see why. Because if you put a Kickstarter up for a game, and when this game contains a really good rulebook, right, it's not gonna fund. But if you say, look at these fancy minis look at these look at this nice artwork and all of this, like, that's what sells. So a good rulebook isn't going to sell your game. But it is going to make because because if you've got the, you know, if you've spent three years designing a game, and you've got these miniatures, and you've got this art work, and you've got a brilliant game, you've got 100 scenarios, and you make 2 million on Kickstarter, right? Fantastic. from a business point of view. You can buy your helicopter and you're happy. The game then gets out there on people's shelves and all of the backers get it and nobody's playing it. Now, for me, I'm not against designer. I'm not a publisher, of course, I'd want to make a million and buy a helicopter. But I'd also want my game to be sat on people's gaming tables and being played. Oh, yeah. Well, 100%. Yeah. So as a as a designer, I would hate the fact that I've spent two or three years designing a game, and it's out there, and nobody's playing it. Not because the game is bad, but because they can't learn how to play the game.
James 43:48
Well, ultimately, you've not made a game you just made a collector's object. Right, right. At that point,
Paul Grogan 43:52
Yes. Until a fan comes out and rewrites the rulebook for you. Which will happen.
James 43:57
Well so that's, so that's really interesting, isn't it? So first thing is that yeah, that makes total sense. To me. What we're saying is, is that rule books are more like a hygiene factor in the sense that they aren't necessarily the thing that will move the needle from a commercial perspective. And in fact, you've got these really interesting examples of you've got games, which have been terrible rulebooks, but still been very successful. Yes. But if that might be that they're very successful in spite of their bad rulebooks. Yeah. And it could easily be that actually, if the rulebooks had also been good, it's quite possible those games might have been even more successful, because we're actually what drove their success with something else. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, and this to me, I mean, this this question has to be good, because you want to reduce the friction for people to play it. And it doesn't. I mean, this isn't the problem. I guess. It's very hard to prove commercially. But I would have expected that the more people that learn your game more quickly and pay it more quickly, the more quickly that they tell other people To play yeah. And the kind of slow motion viral pattern that all board games follow would would just be accelerated. Right.
Paul Grogan 45:06
I hope I hope so. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, one of the one of the rule books that I've been working on for the last six months is Batman, Gotham City Chronicles, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I hope they don't mind me talking about this. But the rulebook for that game was not very well received. And that is a classic example of a game which made a huge amount of money on Kickstarter. And I know, dozens and dozens of people, if not hundreds of people who have this game, they backed it on Kickstarter. Yeah. And they tried playing it. And they failed to learn how to play from the rulebook, and they put it back in the box. And I know this, because I am now a member of the Batman, Gotham City Chronicles, Facebook groups, and I have been for the last six months, and people know, I've been working on the rulebook. And that's how many people have told me, We have this game Paul. We've got this game, we bought it. We tried playing it. We couldn't decipher the rulebook, we've put it back in the box. But now we know there's going to be a new rulebook, we'll wait. And when the new rule book comes out, and it's really interesting, from a company point of view, because what Monolith have done is they've they've hired me to basically completely and utterly rewrite their rulebook. Sure, they're going to be going on Kickstarter and launching, they're going to launch it again. And they've realised they need a better rulebook in order to do that. But they also want the people who've already bought the game to be able to play it. Because they made the money from it. They're now reinvesting that money back now they didn't need to, they could have said, Write Batman, let's just write that game off. Right that we made it, it made us loads of money, people can't play it, apart from the fans that have really invested the time and effort, but let's just leave it there. But they didn't. They've gone back in and said no, no, no, we need to actually support this game and do that. So that, you know, that's, that's, that's one aspect of it. Because sometimes a publisher will just step away from a game and, and write it off and it's finished. And then, you know, then then they're done with it. So yeah, it's, it's, it's that barrier to entry. And I've had this now, you know, 15 years ago, or maybe even 10, maybe 10 to 15 years ago. If I got a game that I was like, Oh, this looks like a kind of game that I'd like. And we start reading it. And I Oh, no, this rule books really bad. And I can't work out this. And this doesn't make sense. And this is contradictory. And whatever. I would spend days of my life, browsing the forums, talking to other people, asking questions, and everything else I've put in all of that effort, I then create create my own FAQ, I then create player aids with it, and I do that. All so I could play the game, because that's the kind of person I am. Was. Now, my impatience, my tolerance for bad rulebooks has gone that if I now get a game like that, and I start reading the rulebook now. And if within an hour, I'm like, I'm not saying, Oh, I'm very sorry, but the structure of this rulebook isn't good enough. I'm not gonna even bother. I'm talking about you start reading it. Something's not explained something contradicts something else. This isn't there. That's not there. I'm like, No, I'll tell you what, I'll go and play one of the other 300 games that I've got in my collection. Yeah, I actually just don't, don't bother now. So for me, a bad rulebook is a barrier to entry and would stop me playing the game.
James 48:21
Do you think this has been then your job, to some extent has been an influence over your changing kind of tastes and games over time?
Paul Grogan 48:27
Absolutely. Because I have more respect as a gamer for the publishers who take the time and effort to do things as I think they should have done. Yeah, rather than just the people who put in minimal effort, and just hope that that will be okay. It's like, No, I've, I've no time for them and have no time for their games now. And, you know, even if people say, oh, yeah, the game is great. You just really, really need to spend, you know, a week learning it and browsing, you know, when the FAQ is bigger than the actual original rulebook. Oh, god, yeah. And so I've rewritten the entire route. I'm like, no, no, the publisher should have done that. You know, and then you've got other publishers, who are really going to every effort possible to make sure the rule books good, and you know, all of that like, well, they're the ones that I want to be, you know, be interested in.
James 49:18
Yeah, completely. Well, I mean, that there's just so much that exists now. Yeah, that doesn't seem like a tremendous reason to be it to put that amount of effort in, because as you said, like, there's so many other games that have done that job that kind of respected the customer in that sense. And then the game is also equally good. Yes. So why wouldn't you pick that game rather than the one that's going to be a huge pain to learn? Yeah. This is very interesting. There's a there's a piece of research on BGG that tried to work out whether or not rule books in general, we're getting better by the size of the FAQ threads, which is kind of like, I think, but doesn't sound like that would work.
Paul Grogan 49:55
No, because the the number of users of BGG has gone up the number of people you Using BGG has gone up. And if you look at some of the rule books, which are, in my opinion, extremely good rule books, there are pages and pages and pages of FAQ, because people are lazy. And a lot of that if you look at the rules, forums for games, which have really good rulebooks generally the replies to those forums are eight, some page 17. Or you will say, or it is because and this is another interesting topic that I don't if we want to go down this route, but there is a difference between a bad rulebook and a complex game. And I know so many people,
James 50:42
I absolutely do want to go down this route. Like because that seems very critical to me that the meeting point of actual rules. Yeah, and the rulebook is just critical.
Paul Grogan 50:51
Yeah, there are so many people who will go Oh, yeah, the rulebook for game X is really bad. Yeah. And I'm like, no, no, no. The rulebook for game x is an extremely good rulebook. Everything is in there. There's no contradictions. It's in a good structure. There's no missing rules. It's all there. It's all fine. The game is just really complex. And therefore you are going to have a hard time learning how to play that game. Even though the rule books are good rulebook, right? Yeah, because it's a complex game, and you're going to make mistakes, and you're going to forget things but great western trail, in my opinion, whilst the rulebook might not be perfect. It's one of the best rulebooks for a complex game I've read. I was a I read, I read the rulebook for great western trail, I was then able to play great western trail and teach other people how to play and had no questions whatsoever in the game that weren't covered in the rulebook. Everything that cropped up in the game was in the rulebook. Therefore, that rulebook served its purpose, it taught me how to play the game. And I didn't have any questions afterwards. And there are pages and pages and pages of questions on there about what what what happens if you do this? Well, that, you know, it's it's in the rulebook it is there is not a hidden, it's there in a big red box. So yeah,
James 52:09
So quantitative analysis wouldn't even help you solve that problem and then of analysing it, because of the problem. It's the nature of replies to this all confounded by all of these issues of the more popular games, or just have more responses. Exactly. People often don't even bother to look necessarily in the detail the rulebook to be like, Oh, actually, this is even covered in a specific in rulebook FAQ or something like that. Yeah. So it's basically not amenable to that kind of analysis. Basically,
Paul Grogan 52:31
Even though the rule books that I've written recently for a game, which is which has just come out, backers have just got hold of a game, which I worked on the rulebook for, I mean, I worked on rulebook like, months ago, but you know, backers are now getting their copies of it. And one of them, well, some of them are Patreon supporters of mine, and he sent me a message through Slack. He said, I hope you don't mind, Paul. But I found a few missing things in the rulebook. And I said, What, please let me know, because I want to improve all the time. Yeah. And he was like, yeah, yeah. So so the concept of there's a few things that refer to the level of a card. Hmm, okay. And at no point do you actually mention anywhere in the rulebook what the level of a card is or where it is? And I'm like, I'm panicking. And then later, he came back to me and went, Oh, no, no, no, no, it's all right. I found a big blue box right on the page that says, here's what the card is. And I'm like, Who? Right but it's interesting, because I'm trying to work out psychologically, he didn't when he was reading through it, he didn't see that blue box, he didn't see that big box saying, this is the level of a card. And that's exactly the kind of question you'll get on BGG is somebody will go, Oh, I've done this ability. And it says that I score two points per level of my yellow cards. What is the level of a card? And some of the replies will be? It's in the blue box on page 11? And they'll go Oh, yeah. And that's it. The rulebook was fine. It was there. It was just some people, some people miss it.
James 53:56
So most probably, if there was anything that could have been improved about it, it would be something around the graphic design, probably, of how it was positioned, maybe
Paul Grogan 54:03
Maybe. Call out boxes are a difficult thing to get right. Because some people mentally ignore them. Yeah. But you can't interrupt your flow of text. With side information. It's a tricky thing to get right.
James 54:18
But yeah, that I think that that's something I've noticed quite a bit in terms of reading things is that I tend to, if anything feels like it's sort of like additional notes, or you might like to know, my brain just goes, nope. Right? Just ignores it. And it has to be something that's like a read with like a strong icon or something that's like, Do not skip this tends to be the only thing that I will pick up. So that's yeah, that's Yeah, that's very interesting. Considering that what I mean is the question of complex games versus rule books, raises a meaty question for me, and it's one that I've thought about a lot during the magnet is that are there just some rules that are just simply less amenable to explanation?
Paul Grogan 54:57
Yes, and I'm working on this morning driving me crazy. And I'm trying to convince the publisher to change the rule. And I had a discussion with them at about 10 o'clock last night. And they said, they're not going to change the rule because it causes balance issues. So unfortunately, it's a very difficult concept. And I said, Well, this might end up with an entire page of examples to explain this particular concept in this game. And they said, well, that's your job Paul. Here's the rule. You now need to explain this as clear as possible. How you do that is up to you. And I've gone are right, okay. And it's a Rick. It's one of those ones where if I was sat with you right now, and I had the board in front of you, I could say, Look, this piece here, you see it moves to here. And then there's this right, I can't do that in a rulebook. No. Right? I have to I have to do it with still images and text. And it's, yeah, it's a concept, which I'm, I'm wrangling with this afternoon.
James 55:50
So that's an interesting subtlety, isn't it? So there's the question of is the rule just difficult to explain? Yeah, there's the question of is the rule difficult to explain in the given medium? So for example, in a text document, and then there's the rule of is the rule just poorly expressed, and the expression of it can be improved?
Paul Grogan 56:08
It's, yeah, I don't know how I'm going to solve this one. Because when you're demoing again, to somebody in person, I can use analogies. Right? So I can be saying to you, look, James, if I move this piece over here, yeah. And I move through this here, then it's just like the doors in Star Trek, you know? Yeah, right. Right. Great. I can't do that in a real world, right?
James 56:28
Yeah. Oh, sorry. Like this. Think about this. Imagine that, you know, in this TV show.
Paul Grogan 56:37
So yeah, you can use the freedom of expression when doing a physical playthrough, where you can act things out, you can use hand movements, you can move things around, you can do all of that you can use analogies, is great, and explaining a concept within a game. So it's a tricky thing, because I don't personally believe that flavour text within the main body text of a rulebook is a good thing to do. Flavour text, when it's in a little side bit in a different font in italics, or whatever it grain. But flavour texts mixed in with actual rules is not something that I want to see, I want to keep my flavour texts to the side. But that does mean, I can't start using flowery flavour text to describe this particular situation. And if I did, it would actually make it easier. So I'm at the moment I'm wrangling with I'm explaining the rule. And then in brackets, I'm putting a thematic explanation rule. So it's not quite flavour text. But it is a thematic explanation for the rules, but it's in brackets at the end of the sentence.
James 57:49
Interesting. That's kind of an unusual midway point, because then when we were editing Magnate, we ended up just differentiating, here's the flavour text, it's in a different format. It's very clearly different versus the kind of technical nature of the rules text. Yeah, I guess the problem is, is that the rules text is has to be technical, because there has to be a definitive way to read it. Yeah. There can't be a kind of multiple approximate set of interpretations, like it's a poem or something like that. That's not what you can do. It has to be very clear what exactly is meant. Yeah. But the problem is, is that actually, in terms of explanation, I think I was fine in terms of teaching games in general is that without thematic and analogy, everything is much more complicated, which is why robic editing is difficult, right? Because it requires you to be technical about something that if you're verbally explaining, you can work by analogy. I mean, if I think about the way that you teach games, you have a very clear method for this. It's very different. It isn't like reading a rulebook out. It was absolutely sure it's nothing like that now. So. And just yesterday, I was talking to Jaya about this about the the fact that I find it difficult when people try to explain games to me who are not used to explaining games, because what they do is they tend to say, well, in the game, you move the piece from here to here, and then you can draw one of these cards. That's where they start.
Paul Grogan 59:04
Yeah. And you're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, is this a cooperative game? What are we trying to do? How does it last for 10 rounds? Or does it last when a market reach?
James 59:14
Yeah, held it up first? And they say like, and they're like, oh, yeah, it's a game about defeating a horde of invading robots. And I'm like, right. Now. First, before, before we can go into
Paul Grogan 59:26
That is similar in rulebooks. In terms of structure, you have to start with what the game is about. Yeah, then you have to start with. I mean, I always like to start with a little bit of flavour introduction. So a couple of paragraphs in italics, of setting the theme of the game, it's the year 3000, whatever. Then I like to have a couple of paragraphs about what the game is. This is a cooperative game for two to five players where you are trying to do this, etc, etc. The game will last for, you know, four rounds and then at the end of the four rounds, if your walls are still standing you when they get right. Okay, so we've had the thematic flavour, then we have the precise detail and straight away, right? I know, I know what the game is, I know how you win, I know roughly how long it's going to last. And then we start diving into. Here's the list of components. Here's the setup. And then and so in that respect, the teaching person will follow a similar structure. Because you start off with the with the high level, and then you start going down into the detail. But one of the things that I've been doing recently, and some people won't like this, but this is a style choice. If, for example, a game has a number of rounds, and each round, there are three phases. And in phase one, everybody draws two cards from a deck, right? So that's dead simple. In phase two, all players take an action. And then in phase three, you do cleanup. Okay, right. So the structure of the game is very simple three phases. I want to explain the, the overall structure of the game with those three phases. First, when I start describing phase two, if there are 10 different actions that you can do, I'm not going to explain them at that point in the rulebook. Yeah, all I'm going to say in the rulebook is in phase two, you will perform one of 10 actions, the actions are all explained. Maybe even in the appendix, literally, I'm not going to put them in the middle of the rulebook, because at that point in the rules, I want players to read. Okay, phase one drawcards. Phase two, perform an action phase three do cleanup, right, that's in my head. You don't want to interrupt and say phase two, you perform one of 10 actions, right? I'm now gonna spend six pages talking about those 10 actions. And then seven pages later go. Phase three, cleanup is like, what? No, no, no, because by the time you've got to that page of the rulebook, you've forgotten that you're in a three phase structure.
James 1:01:49
I wonder that's really interesting in the perspective of how rulebooks meet how people mentally file things, because it's almost like that's a bit like, what you end up with is something which is more usable when it's like a fractal pattern, where there's this thing of like, first step step is you have the structure of the game. And that gives you a way to understand okay, the overall, it's displayed in a series of repeating rounds. And each round is phase one, phase two, phase three, and I suddenly got a superstructure in before I know anything else about the game I'm sitting in about to play the game. And I've got a sense of how my turn arc will be. Yes. And then your next thing, right, well, we're not going to tackle what the 10 actions you can do in phase two all yet. We will have a set when we get to that we will explain that in in. We will explain that in due course. Yeah. And that reflects a little bit I think how people file information, right, is what it seems to be. And I guess that's that's partly what the art of writing the rulebook is, right? It's reflecting the way that information is filed. Yes. But but at the same time remaining completely unambiguous. Yeah. Which a metaphorical approach can't do.
Paul Grogan 1:02:48
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, the amount of sentences of rules I've written, which have then gone to other people, and they've read it a different way. I mean, I read a rule yesterday. And it was quite funny, actually, because I was on the discord channel, where all of the play testers are. And I read this rule, and it said, Put a token on either side of the wall.
James 1:03:09
Okay, right. Yeah.
Paul Grogan 1:03:11
And they said, Paul, you need to mention that, because there's only three tokens in the game. You can only do that a maximum of three times.
James 1:03:22
Yeah.
Paul Grogan 1:03:23
I'm like, Well, I'm putting a token on either side of the wall. So that's two tokens. So how can I if there's any, surely I need six tokens? And they went? No, no, no, you put a token on either side of the wall. I went oh, as in both. Yeah, I was reading it as both were as they were. Now, I was the only person who interpreted that line as put a token on both sides of the wall. Oh, interesting. Everybody else. And it could have been because I had I didn't have much sleep on Wednesday night. But everybody else interpreted as put a token on either side of the wall. And I did it or the other. Yeah. Yeah. And I interpreted it as put it on both sides. And now as I say, I was the only one that made that misinterpretation. But that meant I had to say, and I just changed the word either to one side of the wall brackets. It doesn't matter which,
James 1:04:23
yeah, yeah. Right. I say yeah. Because that that because I'm ambiguous,
Paul Grogan 1:04:26
Because if you put one side of the wall, players will go well, which side of the wall? Yeah. So you have to say, one side of the wall. And then I felt I needed to add a note to say, it doesn't actually matter which side of the wall you put the token on. And yeah, it's interesting how many people will read as you say, a rule needs to be precise and clear, and unambiguous. And I've had this with rules I've written: I've written it and I've got yep that's clear. You know, a couple of years ago, I learned a lot about the word any. So if I say to you James right there's a barrel in the corner. There's a barrel in the corner there. It's filled with apples. Go over there. And get me any apple. Yeah. Yeah, you're gonna get me one. Or you're gonna get me... The word any, is ambiguous.
James 1:05:15
Oh, there are lots of situations in which I found this Yes. Where it's it's it what effectively because it doesn't exactly mean all but it can kind of mean all exaggerations, right.
Paul Grogan 1:05:25
So it could mean all in some circumstances get me exactly rather than one. Now say, go over there and get me any one apple. Because it's unambiguous. And it's funny, because another rule book that I wrote, went to the backers a couple of weeks ago for feedback, and one of the backers came back and suggested removing the word one from that line, because taking any one token is clear. And I went, No, it's not. And that's exactly why but it's interesting that I gone the extra mile, and I'd put take any one token and some backer one but backer in particular, read it and said, You don't need to use the word one, because by saying take any token that infers and I'm like no. Language is is easily misinterpreted. And we haven't even touched on translation issues.
James 1:06:20
Oh, my God. Well, I'm actually going to say, I had a whole set of questions on translation by the part those for now. Yeah. Because I'm really hoping that obviously, we'll get a chance to do this again. Yeah. So that's one of the ones we can we can do part two next time, though. Absolutely. The thing I really wanted to get into that I'm really, really excited to get your opinion on because it's a passionate area for me, is around the role of evolving how we teach games, right? In particularly around the development we've seen in the last few years of tutorials. Yes, so you know that I have put one into Magnate. Yeah, I did something which I've recently been playing with. Gloomhaven, Jaws of the Lion. And I've been going through the tutorial to that. And I'm thinking that I first came across it several years back with Fog of Love, which had one. So where are we going with this? Are rule books in the current form gonna be obsolete at some point?
Paul Grogan 1:07:09
No, we're gonna still have rule books. But the number of games that are now using a walkthrough, first game, read this first demo, whatever. Yeah, it's brilliant. And so different ones. I've done it different ways. That you know, there are ways to do it where it is literally scripted. So you've got like a four page, read this first booklet, and it says right, setup the game. Now this player, I've just actually done something like this a couple of weeks ago, me and a friend of mine got the Middle Earth collectible card game from 1995. Right, this is a really, really old card game. Now one of the problems with that game is it was very, very inaccessible because the rulebook was really, really complicated. And we found that in I think, 98, or 99, the company who made it released what's called a starter set for the game, it was the last thing they released before the game then got cancelled, because it was just prior to the films coming out, at which point, they didn't have the licence anymore. Okay, so that's why the game got wrapped up. But we found a starter set. And we were playing it. And we managed to find the Starter Set walkthrough that came with the game. And it was 100%, scripted, literally, even down to the dice rolls. Wow. So it told you to stack your decks in a certain order. It then taught you step by step through all of the phases of the game and told you right at this point, you need to draw two cards, you have now drawn this card, notice that your opponent has just moved through wilderness, so you should play this card on them. They then choose to fight the spiders, they roll dice, they roll the seven. So this is what happens. Right? What me and a friend of mine did is we played through this entire game on Tabletop Simulator. Following the scripted walkthrough. We made zero choices whatsoever. Yeah, right. We literally just followed what we were doing. reading from the book and going through the steps and moving the cards around. By the end of it, we knew how to play the game. That was the best way to learn that game. And that was 100% scripted with no player decisions and Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion has done it slightly differently. What it's done is it's split the learning up into five. Your first five scenarios it teaches you the basic rules and then says right off you go. Go and play them. Then it teaches the next bit of rules and says now go and play them. So it is giving you the choice. You feel that you're playing the game. But any game that uses that kind of approach for me gets gets a thumbs up and I know you've done it with with with Magnate. Because some people will not need that. Some people will read the rulebook and go right, I now know how to play the game and they'll go and play it. And other people will want to sit down with your walkthrough manual and go through that step by step. And so what you've done is you've reduced the barrier to entry to your game. And that's got to be a good thing. But how much time and effort did it take?
James 1:10:19
Oh, God, it was yeah, it was a monstrous time. It was months and months of development work in early last year. It was absolutely brutal. It was the the toughest, single piece of design that I had to do in the entire process, probably. And it was optional. And yeah, and it was optional, because we didn't need to do it. But I felt that this is really interesting thing about where tutorials might be critical, it felt like Magnate has a couple of mechanics that are I don't think that horrendously difficult to understand. But they present enough of a barrier, I think in themselves that even rulebook explanation of them, they're the kind of thing where you'd read a page and go, What? Hey? And then you play it and go, Oh, I see it now. But until you've seen it played, you'll, probably be in a bit of a headache. So to be able to demonstrate that and get that over. Also, you know, I just wear that so many games, it was before that sitting on people shelves for so long. And I know that the fact that I have to read a rulebook first before I can just start playing makes me slightly less likely to play something every time. And that just thinking, You know what, I could get the new game. I could unseal it and then begin playing it with my friends straightaway, without any prep. Just seems like a very attractive prospect to me. And I guess to that, the slightly wider circle of people? Because one of things I'm really aware of is that, you know, a lot of time on BGG, or a lot of time in the industry. By their nature, most people have heavier skewing tastes, and they're super tolerant of reading rule books, and they're super tolerant, of that sort of thing, because they have to do it. Yeah. But if you're if I'm with people who are more casual, they're the kind of people that don't play many board games play Magnate, they instantly recognise elements. And they're like, Oh, it's a bit like Monopoly. And actually, they're making strategic decisions before the end of their first game. So it's like, it's obviously not fundamentally too difficult for them to learn and play and get a lot out of, even though it's a pretty big looking game. But I just I just felt like I want to get people to that point so rapidly, right?
Paul Grogan 1:12:27
Yeah. And it's interesting, because, as you say, the board game hobby that we know, every board gamer that I know, I'll say every 90% are on BGG. Yeah. Right. How what percentage of gamers in the world are on BGG? Not many, a few percent. Because we're talking about the untapped. Well, not the untapped market, but the market of family games. Yeah, the Ticket to Ride the Catans, the kind of games 90% of the people who buy those games have never heard of BGG. They need a rulebook. It's like, Oh, I've bought this game. The last game I bought was, you know, Monopoly Exeter. If they bought Magnate, without your walkthrough book they will take one look at the rulebook, they'd start to read it, and it would go back in the box. However, the walkthrough booklet, there'll be like, Oh, okay, right. And I think what would be great, is if they say to their friends, we've got this new game, it looks a bit more complicated than Monopoly. But, you know, come around, it's got one of these walkthroughs we can sit down, we can try it. And we will know at the end of that, whether this is the kind of game that we're going to like or not, yeah, so it reduces not only the barrier to them learning how to play the game, it reduces the barrier to them even trying the game out, because there's a few people I know. The few people that I know in the world, though, who are not gamers. They're a bit scared. It's not just oh, I can't be bothered learning. It's, oh, that's too hard work. And that's for people who play those games, and think I am not good enough for that. And if you can just make the game approachable and say, look, you'll be fine, then then that's good.
James 1:14:14
Yeah, completely. Well, this is my sincere hope for it. Is that this, it takes the form of a deck actually, like a deck of Tarot sized cards that hopefully will, will do that. How many games are you seeing that are coming your way in terms of editing work that are that have a tutorial element to them? Is it still quite small?
Paul Grogan 1:14:36
It is quite small. And I think I need to be starting to recommend it more, because going back to what we were saying earlier on, when people hire me to be a rulebook editor, they get all of my other stuff bundled in that. And I think what I need to be doing is I need to be saying to people, have you considered some kind of you know, tutorial walkthrough for this game, I mean, I haven't even considered it for Weather Machine. I'm working on the Weather Machine rulebook right now, with Vital Lacerda. And I haven't even considered that. And I don't know if I should.
James 1:15:11
It's difficult to decide what are the right projects for it.
Paul Grogan 1:15:14
Yeah, because as you say, it's a huge amount of work, but also the target audience for Vital Lacerdas games. None of these other games have had walkthroughs or introductions. Whereas Burn Cycle is going to have one. The rulebook I'm working on at the moment for Chip Theory Games, Burn Cycle is going to have in the back of the rulebook, and we're going to reference it at the start, if you want to just see how the game plays, here's like four or six pages at the back of the rulebook with, it's kind of like an example first turn. But it's actually more is going to be explaining what happens explaining the different steps and actually seeing it being played out. And I think the plan is to write it in such a way that you can physically set up the game to match the images and physically play, play it through and play it through just to see how it works out. A little bit, maybe like the, the middle of the card game thing, where it is just literally we were moving the pieces around, as the texts told us to do so.
James 1:16:13
Yeah. So that's very interesting. And I guess the advantage of doing once you're doing a book over say, a deck of cards, is that a book: you can have those quite big graphical examples. Because the biggest form I think I faced on the deck of cards for this was that you had to just describe things really well, because obviously, you couldn't have more than a few pictures, there's not a lot of space, you can't have a whole diagram. It obviously has other advantages, because it meant we could do things like during the game, when we're accelerating the scripting bit, we give it to everyone draws their own secret card from the deck, and they know what actions they're going to perform over the next round, and that sort of thing. So it's a bit more flexible in some ways. And if obviously, it's nice it being bite sized, like people don't feel like there's too much being explained at once. That's an interesting challenge there. It's a fascinating one picking them because the Vital Lacerda's games, other than Escape Plan, which taught me the book must be almost two or three years back, other than that, I've not played any of his other games. Because to be completely honest, um, even though some of them look amazing, like the recent version of Kanban EV, yeah, I like that. And I'm all that looks up my street. But I am a little bit intimidated by them to be completely honest, even as someone who designs games that are not light, I look at them and I think oh, you know what, if you just told me there was a tutorial, I would be much more on board with it than having to wade my way through the through the rulebook even when it's a very well written rulebook. Yep. Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Okay, well, I'm we've been talking for quite a while now already. We have and it's been that the time is flown by so before we before we would like to just move on before we end to some listener questions. Yes. So we got a chance to do that because I'm sure there's loads of things we can talk about in future in another episode. And so I've got lots of people submitted questions I'm sure lots of people are just as interested in in picking your brains okay been so what I'm gonna start with I'm going to get the Jaffa Cake questions out of the way right okay, because those are always the classic one the most important ones because at some point online, your love of Jaffa Cakes became something of a meme in the board game industry. But I'm obviously really keen to get into the more practical questions. Where certainly publishers, aspiring game makers could could learn a few kind of useful tips, that kind of thing. So the first question jaffa cakes is of course, are they cakes? Are they biscuits?
Paul Grogan 1:18:34
So they go hard when you leave them out in the open? I think that means they are cakes. Yes,
James 1:18:40
I believe that was HMRC is ruling on them as well when it came to the VAT case on cakes. So that makes sense. And then the second question is, what are your thoughts on different flavours eg cherry or lime?
Paul Grogan 1:18:52
Right? So the cherry ones are amazing. The strawberry ones are good. The pineapple ones were better than I expected. The passion fruit ones I had one of them and gave the rest of the activity.
James 1:19:03
So no strong vote for passion fruit?
Paul Grogan 1:19:06
The passion fruit ones? Yeah, I didn't like them at all.
James 1:19:09
Well I'm very glad to ask you those questions. And I've got both very direct on brand answers along along with a very on brand Jaffa Cake related questions. So the next question I'm going to be on stretches is about rule books. And the next one is have you ever encountered a rulebook that needs such an overhaul that you just wanted to shred it to pieces instead?
Paul Grogan 1:19:28
Yes, and have done so, virtually. There are a few rule books which I have been a consultant on where literally they said, Paul, we're going to pay you for one day of your time to read through our rule book and then give us your honest evaluation. Okay, and on a couple of occasions, I have said you need to start from square one. You need to start back at scratch because the entire rulebook every part of it is a disaster. The whole structure is a disaster book As I read each individual section, it was in shorthand, right. Every section I wrote, every section I read was written, from the point of view of you already know how to play this game. And I'm just going to remind you of a rule in short,
James 1:20:14
Almost more like designer notes. Than really being a rulebook.
Paul Grogan 1:20:19
It was in PDF, it had images, it had layout. Okay, when you read it, it was like, yeah, so in the movement, part of the turn, each player moves their figure across the board. Right? How many spaces? Well equal to their move value? But it didn't say that. Can you move through other people? Oh, yeah, you can move through them. But you can't end the space on them. Right? It didn't say that. It literally just had short notes. So there's been a couple of rule books I had like that, in fact, three in the last six months, where I have provided one day's worth of consultancy work on them. All three of those were, you really need to start from scratch with this rulebook again. So yeah, I have had that. I've also had ones where they gave me the job of editing. And the first thing I did was start a brand new document, not even take the existing document and start moving it around, but actually start a brand new document, and then start copying and pasting bits of text in and editing them as I went, because I felt that the, the structure just, you know, just just wasn't there. So yeah, I've had that. And I've had, I've had other rulebooks, where it literally just needed half a day's worth of proofreading and minor grammar. And then it was mostly okay.
James 1:21:36
Well thank you to Tom, for that question. Because that I think, is quite illuminating, again, in terms of just making how clear how varied the work is from the point of view, they're very different processes, you're applying to very different rule books and what you get on the kind of input to that as well. So John asks, What's a kind of red flag that a rule book is going to be really poorly written? When you first encounter it; what's the kind of biggest red flag I guess?
Paul Grogan 1:22:01
Those things that I just described. I normally get a fairly good impression early on. I mean, yeah, when I start reading through it, I will get any, I will get an initial impression straightaway, just just from the way it's written. And I'm not talking here about language, if they if they're not using Oxford commas, and there's the occasional spelling mistake, don't care at this stage. I'm looking for the actual content in there. And it is, it's a combination of things. It's a combination of too much information. The front loading is a big problem in rulebooks. This is this, we could if we're going to do part two of this next month, yeah, front loading of information, we can I have a whole hour half hours discussion about that. Yeah, well, it's one of the big problems that I see in rule books, even ones that come out. But that is a red flag for me now. It's a red flag for me. And one of the rule books that I'm working on at the moment, had 12 pages of front loading information before then got into how to play the game. And I said to the publisher, how much editing permission, are you giving me for this rulebook, and they went, you have full control. And I went, thank you very much. Because I'm going to remove that 12 pages of front loading information, I've now got it down to two. Now, I don't like any front loading of information. But unfortunately, this game, there are some very important concepts you needed to have early, but I have kept it to the bare minimum. But before that, it was literally 12 pages of his loads and loads and loads of detail about very, very detailed stuff. Before we explain how you set it up. And that was just that was just too much. So yeah, it's a problem, which it's not a red flag, as in, I won't work on this. It's a red flag as in, this is a big problem you need to do something about
James 1:23:50
Makes total sense. AndI've known lots of rulebooks I've experienced where it's strangely structured with lots of upfront about that kind of conceptual stuff that I'm like, Yeah, I don't care yet. This doesn't seem like it's very helpful at this stage. So Mike asks, why don't more rule books use indexes to help facilitate finding keywords?
Paul Grogan 1:24:10
Yeah. So index is not a thing that I generally use. But in the last six months, I've been starting to come round to the idea of having more indexes in them. So some good summary books have indexes, Fantasy Flight Games, books generally have indexes, and sometimes indexes go too far. You know, I've seen some games with indexes with just like, you'd never look that up in the index. That's, you know, an index should be a player is like, they've got a rule like adjacency. What does adjacent mean? And rather than flipping through the rulebook to find where the rules on adjacency are, what they should do is they should be able to go to the index adjacency page three, go to page Right, right, that's fine. That's a good example of an index. A bad example of an index is putting something like game setup in the index. Right? You because nobody would go to the index setup, you'd go to the contents page to see where games at? Well, yeah. But yeah, so index is an interesting one, because some of the rulebooks that I've been working on in the last few years don't have indexes. Vital Lacerda's rulebooks don't have indexes. I'm considering suggesting to him that we put an index in Weather Machine. And that will be the first index in a Vital Lacerda rulebook.
James 1:25:34
And is that because they're potentially amenable to it, because you've got quite a large number of keywords and those sort of things that come up?
Paul Grogan 1:25:42
Not just that, it's just the fact that I've been coming more and more round to. So I personally don't use indexes that often. But over the last year, year and a half, I've heard a lot of feedback from people to say they find index is really useful. So a little bit like what you did with the Magnate tutorial walkthrough thing wasn't needed. It was an optional extra that you did in order to help the people who would find that useful. Yeah, if creating an index is going to be four hours more work on 100 hour job, it's worth it.
James 1:26:18
Yeah, especially with that kind of time commitment, right..
Paul Grogan 1:26:23
The danger is, so one of the components of Weather Machine is the research tiles. So do I have research tiles in the index? Well, you would think yes. But then what do I do? Do I put every page that research tiles are mentioned on, which are about 10? So um, that's the thing. It's not just the case of, oh, you should have an index. He's like, Yes, I should have an index. But what do I do? Do I do research tiles? How you get them? Page? 12? How you spend them? Well, that's on page. There's four different ways you can spend that. So I'm like, Yeah, I'm not quite sure. Where I go on that. And Vital might say, No, he might say, No, Paul, we've got the contents page. And that's actually got a strip that's got the breakdown of where everything is.
James 1:27:08
it's a difficult one. I mean, I mean, indexes are a pain point. I know, a lot of academic publishing, working out what you do with them. And it's effectively the same kind of problem, because he said, it's like, well, how are you going to choose what goes in and what doesn't? Yeah, you overstuff the index, you just end up with a replication of a lot of the book. And it's no longer useful as an index, right? It's, it's like you have to somewhat deselect what goes in there to make it useful. I would do and those are kind of always always pain point problems. So I think the last question we're gonna have time for today, I'll save that for another time, is from Liam. So, ignoring grammar and spelling, spelling mistakes, what are the three biggest mistakes that people make when writing and editing rule books? And how are they best avoided?
Paul Grogan 1:27:46
So front loading information, which we just talked about, which, for those people who don't know, it's basically a lot of information at the start of a rulebook, which you do not need at that time? It's important, it's very important that you know how to play the game, but it's putting it in the right part of the rulebook or not, right at the start. And so that's, that's one. One thing that's there, too, the other thing is potentially breaking up the flow of your rulebook with going off on side tangents when something could be subsection out and moved on. Like I mentioned earlier on with the actions, you know, you don't want to break up the middle of your rulebook with 10 pages detailing all of the actions when you could put all of the actions in an appendix at the back of the rulebook. And then just, you know, and I think the third one is a lack of examples. Now, most of the rule books that I read, have a lot of good examples with images. But some rule books don't give enough space for that, and you need to, but I also don't want to see silly examples. I don't want to see you know, if you if you take three apples to the fair, you gain three points. For example, three apples to the fair and gain. Yeah, no, right. I don't want to see. But what I want to see is at the end of the game, all players will score one point for every three apples they have. For example, James has seven apples, he gets two points. Yeah, right. Okay, because he would say round down in the text. You see an example of it happening, but where the example exactly matches word for word, what the text is, then it is not useful. So yeah, examples, lots of them. But but good ones.
James 1:29:39
So where they're genuinely disambiguating they're not just refer repeating text, and effectively they are there to there should be some intuition behind their design around anything that wouldn't be incredibly obvious just from reading the text is where you want examples.
Paul Grogan 1:29:53
If we're talking about examples, and this is another another bit of a mistake that I do see is never ever put rules in an example. So the example I've just given you was an example of doing it wrong. So I say at the end of the game, yeah, each player scores one point. For every three apples they have. Yeah, full stop. Yeah, example. James has seven apples. He scores two points. You needed the example to know whether you needed to round down or not. Right? That text should have Yeah. rounded down. Yeah. Okay. Never ever put a rule only in an example. Because an example should be optional. Right? You shouldn't need to read an example in order to be able to understand the rules. And you do see this. You see, this occasionally is not often, but you do see that you're reading the rules, and you get the rules. And then you read an example. And the example. There's another rule in the example that wasn't described in the actual rules, text, and you're like, Alright, okay, so I can move through my friends, for example.
James 1:30:56
Right there this is because actually, you're hiding rules in the examples, when really you need to have a clear differentiation between this is a rule, and it's one of the continuous texts. This is a tool for illustrating a rule.
Paul Grogan 1:31:09
Exactly. So you don't don't copy the text word for word.
James 1:31:13
Yeah. Because then it's probably superfluous.
Paul Grogan 1:31:16
Exactly, yeah. You never put something in an example that hasn't actually been covered in the rules.
James 1:31:21
Yeah. Completely makes a tremendous amount of sense. Okay, great. Well, I'm sure that will be very practically useful to anyone who's interested in making their own games. So we're close to wrapping up now. What should we be on the lookout for from gaming rules coming up soon?
Paul Grogan 1:31:37
Coming up soon? When are you planning this podcast to go out?
James 1:31:40
So this will be going out? In late April,
Paul Grogan 1:31:45
Late April, so by then, the Keyper at Sea rules video will be out. Because Keyper at Sea is an expansion set to keeper designed by Richard Breese. Oh, right. Yes. Yeah, he's going on Kickstarter on the 19th of April. So I will have the video will be finished next week. In preparation for that. It has a so if you've got Keyper if you've played Keyper and you like Keyper, it is an expansion to that. But it also has a solo mode in the game designed by David Turczi. Obviously, because he's the he's the I think, I think there's a contract that's been made that he designs the solo games for every single game in existence. I think that's the deal he's made.
James 1:32:26
Oh, yeah. He designs a phenomenal number of solenoids. I had a wonderful chat with him in Essen about about getting some advice for Solos for me.
Paul Grogan 1:32:35
So that's coming out. What else have I got coming out by the by the end of April? I can't actually remember. Let me just have a look at my calendar. I can tell you that my my workload for April has changed. I mean, we've discussed work work changing things before so the things that I did have planned for April have actually now been sort of delayed moved around that everything else but Weather Machine rulebook with Vital Lacerda I'm working on people are not going to see that anytime soon. The Burn Cycle rulebook with Chip Theory games, again, people are not going to see that anytime soon.
James 1:33:07
A lot of preparation probably. Yeah, lots of upcoming stuff and different videos.
Paul Grogan 1:33:11
Yeah, I will be working on the how to play videos for Stefan Felds to new games, Hamburg and Amsterdam. They won't be finished by the end of April. But they will be they will be hopefully sometime in May. I'm working on one of David's video for Defense of Procyon Three which is David Turczi's, game, and lots of other playthroughs I'm doing playthroughs generally two to three times a week at the moment on the channel. So there's lots of them coming out. A lot of that as part of your you've been because I know you're you've been as you've been kind of pushing your Patreon, right? Yes. The your you've been doing more kind of playthroughs and been able to bounce that a bit more versus just doing rulebook stuff. Yeah, this is this has been probably the biggest change to my channel and my life over the last couple of years is the Patron's support is basically it provides me the financial flexibility to take time off my paid work. Okay, so I have always said that the Patreon support is for the other stuff that I do. I don't want people to support me on Patreon for the rulebook work that I do, because I get paid to do the rulebook work right. Yeah. And I also I'm I not ideally wanting people to support me on Patreon to fund the sponsored videos that I do because they've already been paid for. Now I know other people do that I just I just don't feel comfortable about it. So for me the Patreon campaign is to fund all of the other stuff that I don't normally get paid for. And the biggest change to the channel is because the Patreon has been fairly successful over the last couple of years. It enables me to take X number of days off a week during which I produce content or do things like this this podcast so for example, this weekend this weekend is virtual Baycon. This will have been in gone by the time this podcast comes out. But I am doing over the next three days? Seven live streams of different games, none of which are paid for none of which are sponsored. And it is the patrons support that funds that because sure I'm doing a weekend. But I've actually spent approximately two days of my life in the last month planning and organising all of this. Of course, it's all that planning and preparation that's gone into it. So yeah, there's, there's lots of videos coming up coming up this weekend. But by the time this goes out from now, there will be about 10 more videos on my channel of games that I'm playing.
James 1:35:36
Well, I mean, I mean, that's gonna say right at right away, I want to say to the listeners, then look, if it means backing Paul's Patreon means that actually, he does podcast with me, then please do that. Because that I think is, I think that's great. Now, I think that that's really, really important. Well, you know, yeah, I think it's really great. I feel like I get tremendous amount of value out of your out of your patrons
Paul Grogan 1:35:57
Very much. It's giving something back. And it is really nice, because the Patreon channel, and this is a whole other topic for another time, because when I launched the Patreon I did so because so many other people had launched a Patreon. And it was like, Oh, well, maybe I should as well, right. And I didn't really know what to expect from it. And it started out fairly small. And back then, I don't even think I was live streaming because I didn't, I didn't have the I didn't have a good internet. Whereas now a couple of years on the Patreon is very important to me. And I just want to give more back. And I'm constantly enthusiastic about doing more stuff for the channel, covering more things playing more games and everything else. And it isn't just, oh, well, the Patreon people are paying me this amount of money, therefore I need to treat it. Like I need to give something back. It's it's not that it's more. This is actually encouraging me, and, and stuff like that. And of course, patron supporters get to vote on which games I'm going to be playing and what they want to see and things like that. Sometimes it's the ones I want to play. But very often, it's you know, the other day, one of my Patreon supporters had just bought again, and went online and said, Oh, Paul, you've not done a tutorial of this game. How am I going to learn how to play it? And I was like, Well, what are you doing next Wednesday? Do you want do you want to play it? And we did. And we actually did. We did a live stream. And it was a live stream for patrons supporters. So it wasn't a live stream that went public. But it was a live stream. And then we got somebody else who said Who else on the Patreon Slack channel wants to learn how to play this game. And they went Oh, yeah, I'll play it as well. So all of a sudden, I you know, I did, I did a live private stream for some Patreon supporters of me teaching some other Patreon supporters how to play a particular game. And he is nice. And no point in that did I feel? Well, they're giving me money every month, I really should give something back. It didn't feel like that at all. It was they are helping me have the lifestyle that I want. Yeah, I want to do this. And of course, I got to teach people how to play games, which, you know, I loved anyway. Absolutely. So and they sent me a package jaffa cakes in the post. So Oh, as
James 1:38:07
As as long as I get the Jaffa Cakes. That's critical. Right? Absolutely. Fantastic. Yeah. All right. Well, I just want to say thank you so much, again, for joining me, this has been so much fun. It's been tremendous going through all those things. There's so many things that I really want to talk about that we had to leave off. So we can do a part two, I would love to do, we can actually do a part two, we'll give give some of the other people a chance to be on the show. But yeah, at some point when you want to come back for part two. We do need, though, for part two, to remind ourselves what we've talked about here, because otherwise, we'll just talk about the same stuff again. So oh, don't worry, I will make a list. And I'm sure we won't be short at topics.
Paul Grogan 1:38:43
Yeah. Yeah. Cool. No, it's been it's been a pleasure. You know, me, I always like to chat about rule books and stuff. Because coming on to a podcast like this and talking about it for two hours, actually helps me as well. Because what it's doing is it's actually got more things going round in my mind. And it's the classic case where if you're just doing the job all day, every day and not stopping to reflect on what you're doing. Yeah, then you're not improving. So talking to you and getting questions from the listeners, you know, has been useful and just talking through some of the things again, you know, I you know, people say, Oh, Paul, yeah, he's like, really, really good rulebook editor. And I say no, I'm always improving. I'm always looking for, you know, where we can get better, where we can improve and things like that. So that's been good.
James 1:39:36
Producing fun is produced by Naylor Games. If you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, Producing Fun is also a product and thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, or simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at Naylor James and write me an email James @ NaylorGames.com Until next time.
Paul and Liam run East Street Games – A UK tabletop game publishing startup. In this episode we discuss the financial costs of game complexity, the personal costs of game development, developing and marketing games under pandemic restrictions and accidentally offending eurogamers. Lastly, they reveal their three most important pieces of advice for anyone looking to publish games.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames .
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Website/Store: https://www.eaststreetgames.com/
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/GamesEastStreet
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eaststreetgames/
I'm James, and this is producing fun, a podcast about making games from a product perspective.
Speaker 1
0:24
Welcome to Producing fun. This episode I talk to two guests, Paul Brook and Liam Kirkman. Paul and Liam run East Street games, a UK tabletop publishing startup, originally founded by Paul to produce a Viking themed skirmish game with a unique approach to character creation. Portland themes names were near the very top of my original invite list for this podcast, I felt sure that that unfettered take on the ups and downs of starting a new game publishing company would be really insightful. I am once again glad to say that I wasn't wrong. And if anything, the conversation proved to be even more fruitful than I expected. Their honest assessment of both their better and poorer decisions make for a set of really instructive and practical lessons on fundraising, the hidden financial costs of going complexity, the impact of personal taste on publishing decisions, marketing, and how to avoid accidentally offending Euro gamers. From a lovely story revealing the huge value of just being friendly to as many people as possible to a sobering one about the personal cost of making games. This interview was bursting with observations that I think even experienced game makers could do with being reminded of it was tremendous fun for me, commiserating with your guests setbacks and celebrating their successes always is. Paul and Liam are great people. And they've got some great ideas. I hope you find this one as much fun as I did. We joined the interview, just as I've asked Paul to take us right back to the beginning of the STS story.
Speaker 2
1:53
Absolutely, absolutely. So industry games actually started. Just trying to think I think I think it was incorporated as a limited company, I think in 2013. So a few years ago now, right? Yeah. My my first game was actually a Viking skirmish game, called the Valhalla sagas are really interesting. The time I was working on it, there were no there were no Viking skirmish games around on the market, particularly. By the time I launched, there was about half a dozen. And to make matters worse, the the most popular one was called saga. So. So the Valhalla sagas, all of a sudden people thought that the Valhalla sagas was saga, or that I was just like jumping on the saga bandwagon. Oh, no. How frustrating. So that so yeah, so shortly after launch Academy might have been just before launching. And I had to change the name to to Valhalla, and drop the Sagas bit from it. And that was, that was an interesting experience. And I, I toured the various Wargaming shows. And I see there's a big difference between war game shows and board game shows until the various board board game war game shows. And I think that year, we got we won something like half a dozen best participation Game Awards. A really interesting. So yeah, so that when it went down really well at shows. And but, you know, but hardly anyone's heard of it. If they if they if they didn't see a show.
Speaker 1
3:28
So presumably it was it was doing going down? Well, it shows this I understand it was going down? Well, it shows at the same time that you're in this kind of market where you know, where there had been none of these kind of Viking themed skirmish games, and then suddenly they're everywhere. Yeah, it was still it sounds like it was still doing pretty well, even in that environment. Right. And it at least at least at the conventions? Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 2
3:47
absolutely. Absolutely. But the other the other thing was that it was there was this kind of online aspect to it as well. Oh, interesting, that you create your crazy characters online, and then print off the like a sheet of paper and you play and that's your conveyancing or whatever. And it was it was very much incorporated into the core of the game. So it wasn't an optional extra. So I think that put people well, I was like, I think that was a problem for people sort of join it for people to sort of, I think that was a what do you call that barrier to entry? I think for people, it was the online aspect.
Speaker 1
4:25
Interesting. So was it your plan then as well to have rulebooks? And things like that also be part of that as a kind of web experience? Or is it just a kind of specific tool for character creation?
Speaker 2
4:36
So yeah, so the idea was that the the character creation was online, and it was and it was there to sort of help you set up set up your game pad before you had your game. And there was I did have a I did have a printed robot, but it was like at the time, you know, most robots, robots were sort of costing them 2025 pounds, obviously they they're more now and I just did up to minus, like a little pamphlet sort of thing for a fiver. So the idea was interesting. I was kind of I was kind of going through a different model, and and had some figures, I worked in partnership with a with a figure manufacturer and, and sort of had an associated line of figures with it. But yeah, and, and it was, it was really interesting because again, I did a I did a I did a podcast with with one of the Wargaming guys back then. And we did we did the interview. And then after the interview, he did a, he did a sort of a summary, after we'd finished the conversation with me sort of not not on the conversations, saying, you know, there was sort of the plus points and the minus points of it. And it was one of the things that was so interesting was I thought everything that he said, was really fair, and I hadn't finished all of the online stuff that I wanted to do. And I felt like I felt like it was incomplete. And he was sort of saying that, from his point of view, he was disappointed that he didn't offer everything that he was hoping for. And I was very much feeling the same way as him. But he was saying that, on the back of that. He said they'd never had so many people contacting him sort of saying, What are you talking about? It's a great game, you know, and it's like, Oh, interesting. So interestingly, there was, you know, there was a following there for it. And, and you know, and when I saw him at a show later, he was like, he was all apologetic and subtle say, Oh, I'm sorry, Paul. And I was like, no, no, no, I thought that I thought what you said was fair, you know, I thought, you know, I wholeheartedly agree with you, you know. And also, I think the other thing is, I think when you're when you're dealing with people in the media, my view is that it's important that they say that they say what's true? You know, I think that I think that if you if you produce? If you produce something that someone doesn't like, then then it's perfectly valid for them to say that, you know, I don't and I don't have an issue with that. You know, I think that I think that, you know, I think I don't think that every game is for every person. And I think that, you know that different reviewers will have different preferences. And if reviewers are happy to be honest about what they're about what they're reviewing. I think they have a the reviewers have a loyal following. So I'm gonna have a terrible tangent agent.
Speaker 1
7:10
No, I mean, I mean, but I but I do completely agree with you. I think I very much agree with that sentiment. And I think it's, well, it sounds like to me, that's a really important quality in being a publisher, right? You have to be able to listen to feedback from reviewers. And even if sometimes it's maybe a bit uncomfortable, because it's pointing out things that you know, maybe even in yourself, you think, Oh, God does, that bit is missing from it. Yeah, it's actually quite useful, right, both to you and the consumer.
Speaker 2
7:38
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And more and more recently, it's been interesting, because I think, I think particularly when you have a vision for a product, that robot Royale, for instance, I had a definite vision for it. And whenever and right through the, through the proto playtesting stage, people kept saying, Oh, we can add this rule, we can add that rule, we could add the other rule. And I was like, no, no, no, no, I want this to be really tight. I want this to be, I want this to be essentially, like a really simple, simple game to get the get your head round in terms of rules. But actually, I wanted, I want you to really have them on the page to really have to think about what they're doing, which and obviously, you've you've played it, and I'm, I'm very pleased with the result. But you know, I don't know, I don't know what your thoughts are, Mr. Terminalia?
Speaker 1
8:23
Well, Oh, yes. Well, absolutely, I should have to indicate to the listener at this point that I have some interest in this, in that I was one of your super backers for your first Kickstarter project, robot rail, and I in fact, and immortalised as the Terminator as one of the robots from the game, so that just just for the record, just in case has any kind of public query after this or inquiry into it. So I think probably it's something I'd love to discuss a bit more time. But we're going to question that because to me to to bring it back to the DIS Valhalla games, you've got this game, you've got this really innovative idea for doing something with digital character creation. It's kind of natively digital to some extent in a way that lots of war games are still not right. If you were to look absolutely the big games, workshop games, they're still not like that. So I guess the next question I'm gonna ask you is, why what what happened to it? And why did you decide? Because as far as I know, you're not working anymore?
Speaker 2
9:17
What What kind of led you away from it? You know, I think when we said when I started extra games, had all these sort of big dreams of mini games workshop and all that kind of stuff. I think there's every if we're honest, I think every every games publisher does, and and it wasn't really achieving what I'd hoped. But also I one of the things I found was that I didn't I work as a computer programmer during the day and I found I was finding it increasingly hard to focus on programming in evenings and weekends and
Speaker 1
9:50
the busman's holiday. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2
9:53
So then after that, we then sort of moved on to I then played a game that some Friends we're working on, which was a zombie sort of game. And it's called bullets and bullets and brains by by a couple called Casper and Christine. And it was, it was an excellent game. And I sort of thought, right, okay, I'd really love to publish it. So, so so put together a plan to, to publish that. And, and I put a lot of money into, into developing figures and getting, getting sculpt, getting a particular sculptor to work on, on several ranges of figures, for quite a lot of money into artwork, and publicity and all that sort of stuff. And we got to the point where we were just about to launch, or we had just launched at salute, which is a really big war game show. Yeah, we basically we sort of went along with it. However many sets 100 sets, and we sold about, I don't 10 or something, and, and it was really, and and that was that was quite tough. Must be very difficult. Yeah. And then, and then I think we followed that up with you with by going to UK games. And then I think, and then after UK games, actually, my wife was sort of talking to him about, you know, how much I'd been spending on all this stuff,
Speaker 1
11:18
right? Yeah, well, it's a big investment, isn't it? I mean, huge, absolutely huge. I'm guessing again, can you can you put a finger on it at all? Something approximate? I can, but I'm not going to. Okay, so it's probably about the same kind of figure that I had spent bringing magnate to market then. So it's a sort of number that you almost, you just don't really want to talk about? Because it's such a substantial man, I get that I get that 100%. Yeah, I think people go into this, don't they? And they don't realise. They think that because of Kickstarter like that it's any kind of game can be manufactured very cheaply, even to bring it to markets, even as a Kickstarter stage. And actually, unless it's a very simple card game, that's just not true. Especially not with miniatures projects. No.
Speaker 2
12:02
And and I would say that, just an honest response, I'm just being really open with you. And you're listening, just to highlight one of the one of the risks that I would say, that was the probably the biggest challenge I faced in my marriage actually. Interesting. Yeah. You know, and we, you know, as you can imagine, you know, every every marriage faces challenges, but yeah, was, I think that was the, that was probably the biggest thing. And yeah, it was, it was a really horrible time, for me, actually, kind of really, really horrible. And quite, you know, yeah, sort of.
Speaker 1
12:45
Yeah. It's, I guess that that's quite a warning, isn't it? Which I think people need to be aware of is that I think that's, and thank you for being so honest about that. Because I think, you know, that is something I think, as you said, that's, you know, there's lots of challenges that people face. And I think one should never underestimate that, that like, if you're going to do this, it's obviously a big financial commitment. And any kind of big financial commitment, you know, can add stresses and strains, right. And you've got it, you've got to think about that kind of going into this kind of process. And I think that's a that's a valuable thing for any anyone listening to this to hear, I think, yeah,
Speaker 2
13:17
yeah. And it certainly has taken and it took a few years, for me to sort of recover from that. I think, I can't I didn't shut down the street games, because I couldn't face to face it or whatever. But after, after a few years, I kind of met a man I met a chap that was there was really into board games, and and he he was running the southeast London play test group. Greg saga, I don't know if any of you.
Speaker 1
13:48
So it was just saying a second. What so what's Greg's? What's Greg's role? Just because I think it might be a bit helpful, because I understand he runs the UK play test. Can you explain that a bit more detail what we do?
Speaker 2
14:01
Yeah, so yeah, so you can play test? Group is obviously I say, so. It's an organisation based in the UK. And they have it's like a started metre. I guess your laughter similarly, your listeners?
Speaker 1
14:22
Yes, it's a it's a regular meetup. meetup.com. I think people are probably pretty familiar with that. And it's a regular meetup for playtesting games.
Speaker 2
14:30
Yes. Yeah. That's it. That's it. And Greg was so great. Ran the southeast London one. So which was just in in a pub in Penge, which, which was, which was really good. I think now they meet at the ludicrous these days. Because obviously, when they started the it was sort of before the ludicrous existed,
Speaker 1
14:48
right? Yeah. Okay. Great. And so you met him at this. You met him and you start going to these regular events? Yes,
Speaker 2
14:55
yeah. Yes. Yeah. So I went well, Liam, I I've done I've done a lot of talking to this point. But why don't why don't you? I'd be interested to hear hear this story from your side.
Speaker 3
15:05
So I, I'd known you a year or two, through playing some war games I sort of knew of you probably met you a couple of times in a few years. And it was a sort of mutual friend of ours that brought us together. I was I was sort of from a job. Yes, the matchmaking. So I was I was recently made redundant from a job or games. But actually, since that time, so pretty much in the time that I met you as well, I'd started working at the loot request. And I pretty much as soon as I started there, I kind of in a way that almost ease through his transition to board games rather than board games. As soon as I was working at eluded list, I was just in the board gaming world like so quickly. And three years ago, or three in a bit whenever it's whenever opened. I didn't actually know much about too many modern board games, I played a handful. But now I now I could talk about them for days. And I'm very passionate about them. And obviously what I enjoy and what I don't like. But again, getting back to that. So we had that initial meeting. And I remember, you showed off some of the ideas you had. And and those, those concepts are really exciting. It wasn't a case of this was you weren't just a friend I knew. And these were just some ideas. I was like, like they're okay. They sounded quite actually exciting and promising from the start. So I know. Yeah, we so we came together. So that would have been about three and a bit years ago as well. So pretty much as soon as I started working at New Requests, so a few different changes that
Speaker 1
17:03
we're talking about about 2018. There. So the loot request, it seems, is quite a meeting point, isn't it for these because the local UK play test events have moved there. Obviously, you were working there. And I think it's just that's I just find that an interesting one because it wasn't it was not familiar with it. It's the one of the UK so I guess the UK is top ballgame cafes, I believe in fact, last year, it won the gamma Award for Best Game cafe in the world didn't it? So absolutely. So not just in the UK, it's the world, it's actually the world you can claim to being the world's best board.
Speaker 3
17:37
When the best bonding cafe and then I think it was best like, designed cafe. So I think me and from like an interior, like from an interior point of view. And also like the aesthetics, and I guess the general customer service and things like that. So it was one just for being overall and one was just the design of a
Speaker 1
17:58
thing is bloody it's it's bloody good. And it's got a lovely interior, we can say that. And also that it is also again, this really interesting meeting place where it seems that multiple people are coming together and meeting and discovering things because I know lots people I've met through the leader quest as well, it seems to be a really good venue for that. So So yeah, so So that sounds very interesting. So you found you obviously met Paul, you've heard his ideas and thought actually, these are really solid ideas, and they could make something so what's next?
Speaker 2
18:28
Um, so then we we got cracking on robot, right. And so robot rail was my first go making board game. And I wanted to create something that was quite where the rules were simple, but you really had to think about what you were doing in terms of like the gameplay. So I wanted the complexity to be like, What am I doing? You know, where am I gonna move? And all that kind of stuff? And I suppose, you know, yeah, so I think I think I'd like to think I like the cheap that, you know, I think is, you know, because I'm very pleased with it. I'm very proud of it. And I still enjoy playing it now, you know, next, you know, these years on and would you
Speaker 1
19:13
say that's a general principle that you're looking for? Is that something especially in in looking for an all games it was as a gamer in particular, you wanted that kind of vibe for it?
Speaker 2
19:22
I think that's I think it's my, I would say that that's my personal preference for games. And it's and I think it's one of those things that preference, I don't think does me any favours because I think it's extorter because I think on Kickstarter, people are looking for things that have this fantasy that or that fantasy bit or whatever. And actually, I'm, you know, I I tend to sort of kind of quite like things that are sort of fairly straightforward. Would you even
Speaker 1
19:53
call it a minimalist even in terms of its its approach?
Speaker 2
19:59
For robots While but yeah, they are not I wouldn't say that's necessarily like the the the goal for a street but certainly for robot Raul, it was it was very much a minimalist approach because because there were all sorts of ideas that we had for, well, you could expand out this way or, you know, we could do this or, and there's lots and lots of exciting ideas that were coming up and playtesting. And I just, I just kept banging them ways that say no, no, no.
Speaker 1
20:24
Um so it was that was that Liam who was constantly suggesting, have this idea have this idea and this idea, or Liam, were you quite on board with this quite minimally,
Speaker 3
20:35
I was sort of on board with it, knowing sort of the restrictions of the game and what the idea and the intention was off the game. And the the things that maybe added, like extra rules and making it bigger and things like that they were coming from outside. So whenever we played tested the game, and we probably had some of these ideas as well. But we kind of wrote them in a notebook, put them to the side thinking not yet or not for this specific game. And then when we'd go to shows and things people would enjoy playing the game. We didn't encounter many people that disliked it. But there were a lot of people that liked the game like, oh, yeah, it's really good. Can you can you have this? Can you make them do this? Can you make them move that way? And it's like, we were sort of not necessarily going to do that. But we'll take it on board just because of the style of the game.
Speaker 2
21:26
And again, I think going back to play test UK as well, obviously, play test UK, the people that go along our board, our board game designers, and I'd say the vast majority of them are Euro game designers. So they're, so they're always looking to add more complexity and more complexity and more complexity. Whereas that was that was really not my heart. That was really not my heart. Yeah.
Speaker 1
21:52
So that's interesting. So do you think that that typifies that a lot of what you've experienced the Sanibel, that there's this tendency amongst other designers to sort of continually add more complication? Yeah,
Speaker 2
22:02
I think that I think that the people that get into board games are tend to be the people that really love board games. And my observation would be that they that they played board games for a lot of years. And it's almost like they've kind of, they've progressed from, you know, from the entry level stuff, like, you know, Settlers of Catan earlier on, or whatever they've gone right through, and then they're looking to, you know, kind of up their medication in order to sort of, hey,
Speaker 1
22:32
I love that description. They, they start on Settlers of Catan. And in the end, they need 1400 cc's of an acronym just to get just to get a slight hit anymore. I like that idea of a lot.
Speaker 2
22:43
Yes, that's it. Yeah. So I think I think it's a real generalisation. And, and I don't want to do anyone a disservice. Because it's because I think I don't think it's right or wrong. But I know if it was one, I went along to one. And I don't come from, like, I say, I come from Wargaming background, more than a board gaming background. And I remember going on to one play, test meet up. And, and I just like and I and I play the game by that was a game that was designed by literally an award winning game designer. And, and we played through it, and everyone was kind of giving their feedback. And I just kind of sat there and I genuinely asked, you know, do people enjoy these sorts of games? You know? Like, like, I wasn't, like, I wasn't being like, it sounded so mean, and so big,
23:38
then you weren't invited back again?
Speaker 2
23:42
No, man, I was lucky to get away with my life, I think from that one. But it was a genuine question, you know, because it's like, I just thought I don't like I just don't like these sorts of things. Yeah. Like, I, I like, I like the light of things in life. You know, I like, you know, I like a bit of fun and all that sort of stuff. You know, I don't, I don't really want to kind of spend my life like learning a whole load of rules.
Speaker 1
24:07
I find this interesting, because I think my stereotypical view would be normally that people who've come more from the war, the world of Wargaming would tend to be people who would be into all the rules, right? Because their genre of games that or other category of games tend to be quite famous for being highly complex in the interest of simulating things so that's interesting to hear that your taste is not quite that is that something you always found then that generally the war games your or is there something different about your against in this kind of regard about when we're talking about complexity?
Speaker 2
24:39
Yeah, sorry. And we're also going back to your point about war games. There are different types of war games as well. So I I remember from your podcast with Lily obviously spent a lot of time not a lot of time but there was sort of touching on hawk and and the history and, and sort of what Oh, yes, yeah. Games what Games Workshop Friends alike. But actually, if you if you if you park that the Games Workshop shop side of things and go to the historical Wargaming, which is more kind of what I was interested in, you know, and have done some of the games virtual stuff, it's it's, it's not always that that hard it's not always that trusting up trying so that they'll often try to simulate things, but the rules won't necessarily be you won't necessarily have the rules lawyers that you have in games workshop where people are willing, because they know what they know, the rules better person even knows the rules better than Person B, you know, it's like it's like the rules. Yeah, the rules are tend, in that on the historical side, tend not to be as challenging as the as on in the sort of the fantasy sci fi
Speaker 1
25:48
arena. Makes sense isn't to say it's interesting. I think that's something that's Yeah, it's really interesting, interesting to hear, I guess they very briefly considered because I know there are some of them out there that are a little bit more complicated. But actually, to hear that actually, a lot of the historical side is not always as as fiendishly complicated, even though it's trying to simulate, it's kind of really interesting. So that makes sense a lot in terms of how I guess your game, tastes, shapes, what history is trying to do. Companies are very much shaped by their early employees. So I also want to know how Liam's taste ends up shaping you street games, I'd be curious to know. And know that. And I guess, because obviously, Paul started the company, what you see your role as in the company. Now, Liam, so
Speaker 3
26:29
I, so strangely enough, Paul does like these fun, fanatic games. And not too rules heavy. And in the last couple of years, actually, definitely during the lockdown, I've actually started to play some more of the heavier ones and enjoying them. And you know, some of those are in my sort of top five top top 10 games. However, I know that those are games I enjoy. But I could only wish to design even if I wanted to, because there's so many mechanics and components to it. So I wouldn't necessarily be rushing to design those types of things now. But what that kind of gives me is, I sort of, you know, that the mid sort of level games that you see these days, they take some influence from simpler games, and ones and games above, above those as well. So because I'm playing pretty much the whole spectrum, I feel like I can assess what our what our games might need, potentially. And it's generally the ideas or the additions that I might say, might be more complicated, they might be unnecessary. But it's it's like I'm the the upper part. And Paul might be the lower part in terms of rules or complexity, and then we kind of meet in the middle a bit more. And that's probably happened quite naturally. Because the first game with robot Riel, it was also probably the simplest game we've done so far. And then the next game was a little bit more complicated. So that was mob sitters, which is a card game, probably only complicated just because the rules pages were a few more pages of rules, but not a terribly difficult game to learn. And then what we're sort of looking at now is almost like another step above, but it's still sort of gateway esque area. It's not like a super heavy Euro, they may have some sort of Euro style element, they may have a little bit of a little bit of take that or something that we're you know, I know Paul coined the term take this is might be featured in in a new working on. Interesting, but yeah, so I I feel like because I enjoy probably the middle to high complexity. I kind of want to try and infuse that into my games. But I also realised that actually what we both enjoy working on together is that sort of, you know, if it was a scale out of five, we would like white like to work on like twos and threes, but not like a four and a five or something
Speaker 1
29:23
entirely. Exactly. I think that is that is the BGG complexity scale, isn't it? So that makes it that makes a lot of sense. So that's the only one I guess the next question that comes to me then on the back of that is thinking about what how you select projects, because a difficult thing that obviously all publishers face is that there are basically a theoretically infinite number of games that could be made. And the problem is which ones you're going to pour the valuable time into to actually sell them because you need to make money from them. It's not just a question of it being just a hobby. So how do you how do you how are you choosing these projects?
Speaker 2
29:58
I think criteria changes as we as we, as we go along, really. So our first two games. So obviously, we've talked a little bit about robot. Well, that was that was chosen because I was just really, I was really happy with it. And I was really pleased with it. And, and it seemed to be pretty much nailed down rules wise. You know, and it felt like they were, there were a limited number of components. And it was something that we could do relatively easily, or we didn't necessarily appreciate it was just how tricky it was going to be getting paid even with a small game, even though it had miniatures in I didn't, I thought, I mean, we I don't think either of us really appreciated how, how tricky that was some to, you know, to just even to get get that on the table was was, was a real surprise to us. So the next game we did was, was mob sitters, which is purely a card game. And that was chosen again, because at the time, you know, the been played out, we you know, been play testing it for a few years. And I was quite happy with, with how it was playing and how it was working.
Speaker 1
31:16
So would it be fair to say then that there's actually a, do you have a pipeline of projects, and you're kind of picking the ones that are most advanced from that then partly, because if you if you're only going for a few years,
Speaker 2
31:26
well, yeah, actually, until we get to until we get to the pandemic, so. So. So our next game, after after mob sitters was we had what so I think, you know, so I think we sort of planned when we started robot Royale, we planned I think initially doing robot, we're out lending mob sitters, then doing a game called inhumane resources.
31:53
We remember this Yep. Which was,
Speaker 2
31:54
again, that again, would need like four to six players. So you know to do that's not fully played tested yet. And obviously, the pandemic hit. Getting four to six players together, was going to be a bit of a challenge.
32:15
A big challenge. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2
32:19
So, and also, mob sitters and in human resources are very much games that you need to play face to face, you know, like we buy Liam's done a really excellent mod for for mob sitters, which means that you can play it online. But actually playing online isn't like, it's like a 10th of the fun that you have in person when you're playing it in person. And you're interesting, and you're sort of teasing each other and, you know, just like the natural human interactions.
Speaker 1
32:45
And so as I understand it, it's a game that has a kind of party game, vibe, right? So it's, there's, there's a limit of that to it in terms of it being a kind of family type game, and it's payable up to eight
Speaker 2
32:58
or 666. At the time we originally, I think we'd originally hoped when we were running the Kickstarter, we were we were sort of we were aiming for eight but but then when when the Kickstarter when we pulled the Kickstarter, and then what we eventually released was just for was just for six, six players. So now what we're doing is we're working on a two player game so so so probably this time last year, I was sort of saying to Liam, I think it'd be really it'd be really good if we did if we did a two player game and I didn't really have any thoughts about what that two player game could be. I still very much in the in the monster world in the gangster world. And and
Speaker 1
33:45
as in off the game rather than Yeah, that was your job. Reveal. Organised Crime specifically you were in the correct headspace as Bob says this four to six player game is all about like face to face interaction. I got you take that kind of mechanic Yeah,
Speaker 2
34:03
yeah. And and and that was very much like a gangster sort of world it's obvious it's quite light hearted light hearted because it's babysitters stealing from the monster basically. Oh, right. Yeah. But when it came, one can go into lockdown and I and in my head I was still I was still in this sort of in my head. I was still in this good and gangster he sort of world like and I started doing some to player I started doing a two player gangster game, which I think like was which I was quite happy with how he was playing. But then I realised that it's a really dark world and actually, okay, you know, I like I didn't like the like, you know, whacking people, you know, demanding protection money and all this stuff, you know, within, actually think about what you're modelling is really horrible. And it's, you know, and I just didn't I just sort of, oh gosh, you know, I'm really not happy with this. I really don't like it.
Speaker 1
34:59
Um, It's so interesting you say that because actually, it's one of the projects I'm working on at the moment has that theme. And what's interesting about it is that if you try and do it remotely realistically, it actually strangely can be both dull, and and also horrifying. So I can understand that really, it's not always the most appealing project. Now, I think we've got a solution to that. That to make something that I think will still work very well, that takes in a very different direction. But it's interesting to me to hear that that that was part of the choice that you realise. Well, there's like a comfort with theme question here. That seems really important in terms of selecting projects. Would you
Speaker 2
35:37
agree? Yes, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so we choose from how we kind of get on to our current and I are working on which is where you can you can see that I went through a complete 180 and and this game is called the blessings of Bixi and the blessings of victory. I like that. That's great blessings and pixie. And it's it's going based in the the theme is that your monks in the foothills of the Himalayas, and you're trying to become the next Bishop of your, of your area, or whatever. And you have to travel around the land, taking various things around delivering them to the lands and delivering to the monasteries and all that sort of stuff.
36:22
And you couldn't really get more different to gangsters. Could you?
Speaker 2
36:25
Yeah, exactly. So I literally did a 180. And, and, and then and then from and then, and then where the the tight vest comes in, which is which was actually that was a, that was a Greg ism. Again, we're talking about Greg right. Okay. Yeah, that was something a term that Greg came up with. And it's, and it's the idea that, basically, when you when you complete a land you get, you get two blessing paths. And you have to give one to your opponent, you have to give at least one to your opponent. But actually you can give both to your opponent without you have choices about whether you look at them when you don't look at them. And you get and basically the more risky that that, the more risky the choice you make. So if you give both to your opponent without, without looking at them, get, you get four, you get four points, if you get if you basically, don't look at them, I'm sorry, if you do look at them. And only given one, you get no points. So but and then there's great in between that. So
Speaker 1
37:31
interesting. So so my question, then, what's what's the pandemic development process looks like then for this, because obviously, this is something that I think a lot of people are probably aware of is a difficult thing. And I think a lot of people would be keen to understand how, like the practical of how that's working.
Speaker 3
37:44
Yeah, so the game was designed, like, over over about a year ago, or just under a year ago. And the very first play tests, we were, luckily, able to play these in person. It was a, it was maybe two or three sessions. And I know Paul made some iterations between each one, and it was gradually getting a little bit better each each time. And it was starting to feel quite a good, a good little game, it's changed even more since then. But the fact that we're working on this two player game, suddenly, it made it a lot easier to play test remotely. Because even if it was myself and ball, then we know we can do that. And we can we can play a mod on TTS. But even if, even if you've had people play tests, it only needs to be two people, we don't need to gather five or six people around a table in you know, in person, it makes it a lot easier to play test. And also, as well, it's probably almost kept us It sounds a bit strange to say, but it's probably kept us motivated. Because Because this pandemic, you know, no one's really know how long this pandemic is going to go on for. And it's only looking like there's light at the end of the tunnel in the UK, for example. But oh, yeah, when Paul design the game, and when we're in the very initial sort concept stages, we were thinking, if this thing goes, if the pandemic lasts for like three years, we should hopefully be able to have this published. And you know, suddenly, people that are stuck at home with their partners, or just like one friend that they play games with. This is a two player game that they could play.
Speaker 1
39:30
Oh, interesting. So you've actually think about it not just from the perspective that it was easier to develop during the pandemic, but potentially, depending on the length of the, you know, the certainly the lockdown measures, at least I'm really hopeful that they're not going to be that long, but if that actually, you could sell it into that environment as well as another is another opportunity.
Speaker 3
39:49
I mean, the other thing with the pandemic is even if it was if you know if it i hypothetical goes on another, let's say a year in the UK, for example. In terms of restrictions, then yes hypothetically, you can sell to those people and you know, they're stuck at home, they need something to play with maybe just one person. But also, even if everything lifts very soon, and the world gets back to normal, and a lot of people have been stuck at home, and they've, you know, they've opened their minds a bit more to what to play only games, there are a lot of games. Ah, interesting. Gateway games are like two to four, two to five, two to six kind of thing. But there's quite a few that you, I would never recommend, like, King of Tokyo is a great, great game by Richard Garfield, you would never play that two players, even though it says on the box. Like, it just wouldn't work.
40:46
I have played it to players. And I can confirm it sucked.
Speaker 3
40:49
Yeah, it's like you, you need that third, and even third is like, not amazing. But third is like, Oh, this is what the game is about. So I guess the bonus is that people are more open minded to to play only games, and they're a bit more exposed to them. And you know, there's lots of really good to play games that have been out in the last 510 years of Seven Wonders deal is incredible for, you know, 20 pound or 22 quid, which it sells for. I know, I know, the Impaler played it a few times. And it is just such good value, that I'm really, really raving about this game, but it just opens your eyes to what a two player game can be. If it's just you and one other person, so
Speaker 2
41:35
please greet by plastic soldier company as well. That's a that's a very good to play a game as well.
Speaker 1
41:40
Interesting. So okay, so then I guess my next question is that, are we going to see an explosion then in two player games? Because presumably, you're not the only people have had this idea. Right? That there's gonna be other people developing a lot of to play games out there. Does that mean the markets gonna be saturated, but to play games in two years time?
41:58
Well, that would be the Eastern way go.
Speaker 1
42:04
Just just when everyone else is doing it, we're gonna land at exactly that point.
Speaker 2
42:10
That's it. Yeah. But just just slightly off. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1
42:14
I guess it's very interesting. I think it's going to be the, the, that's the way that I think not just the history's way, and this one, I think, I certainly feel like it's going to be the wave for lots, the whole market potentially, because it does seem like a very strong development choice, because it is much easier to develop, because either you can develop it with someone in person, because it's only one other person, or it's something that you can do online more easily, which is really interesting. Is that inside as well,
Speaker 3
42:41
it's, it's also something that you know, any anyone that was developing any kind of game doesn't matter, the number of players, that pandemic, as obviously sort of caused a delay, whether that's playtesting, or even manufacturing, like, you know, it's caused a delay somewhat. But that's, you know, some some designers or the actual publishers themselves, they're thinking, is this just delayed? And this comes out six months, a year later? Or is it they actively pursued other games instead, or as well, to fill that gap? But I suppose the way we're thinking we're, you know, we're working on our third game. And weirdly, even though it started as let's make a two player game, it's now become more of a, we've not just made it just because it's two players in the concepts. We'd like so much that, you know, as the pandemic lifts, and no one, no one plays to players anymore would probably still want to do weirdly. But yeah, other than that's gonna have that's not
Speaker 1
43:46
gonna change. Oh, well, I think the important the important part I liked, which I've not really considered before, what you said about that, some people's habits are permanently changed. And therefore, it's pretty reasonable to believe that actually, the two player demand will actually also be greater, as much as there might be a surfeit of them for some other developmental reasons, which I think is really interesting. So so far, we've not talked about any other designers projects, is that something that you would want to do in the future publish the work of other designers are you very focused on, on on what what Liam and Paul can develop?
Speaker 2
44:17
I would love Eastern games to be a publishing house where we, where we do publish other designers, games. We, we've we've signed a cover a couple of people's games, one of them actually, we signed quite early on. And unfortunately, we had to sort of go back to him after after sort of robot rail I think then sort of, I don't think we can do your game because it's, it's just too much work for us. It's too big, right? Like there would never be too many components. Too many mechanics. It's like it's as a as a game, like we, because Liam and I both have day jobs, you know, we wouldn't be able to, we just couldn't do it. You know, we just don't, we just wouldn't have the time to put that into into production. And I think that's, again, something that we've that we've learned that there are limits on what we can and what we can achieve. That's interesting.
Speaker 1
45:22
And what do you think the limits are in terms of what is the most time consuming aspect of these additional tasks you have to do?
Speaker 2
45:32
Um, I think that's, that's really interesting. That's a really interesting question. And I think it's really, it's really hard to say because it's, it's, it's almost like there's no big kind of like little mini dependencies on on things. You only need a little, you only need a small delay on on one thing for something else to be held up, you know, and then if it's not your day job, then you say, well, actually, I'll leave it to the weekend. And then the weekend comes and something Oh, well, I'd rather go out with my mates, you know, it's like, I'm in. And then, and then you slip to week, you know, and I think there's all sorts of just little things that can happen, that that push things that pushes back. So I think
Speaker 1
46:15
I think we How do you identify projects that were that's like within the comfort zone of where you what you can do right now, because we are not yet at the place where you can just live off the company?
Speaker 2
46:27
I guess it's it's, I feel like the number of components that the the literally how much artwork have we got to specify how many miniatures have got to be designed? You know, how many components have we got to get quotes for and, you know, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1
46:47
So it's a lot a lot more about gain complexity than component complexity. I mean, obviously, those two things do tend to go hand in hand to some extent. Yeah. So it's straightforward. It's not as perfect correlation between those two,
Speaker 3
46:58
it's probably fair to say it speaking complexity wise, but this particular project, it was, it was becoming apparent that actually, aside from sort of ongoing admin costs, and things like going to shows which were sort of a big expense, and it was becoming very apparent, apparent that artwork is one of the biggest costs, right. And for some of our games, I mean, for robot reality, the artwork costs were the front cover, we didn't really have any other external artwork, I don't think. Whereas mob sitters, we had lots of unique individual characters and lots of cards. And that wasn't extravagant, but it was noticeable. And so when we'd realised that, you know, this is what this costs the artwork on this other game. And it would have been lots of artwork, it would have been lots of cards, lots of boards, lots of probably miniatures scopes as well. And it wouldn't be such a big big project for us that it would have been very difficult to do. Without that money. Even if we did have all of the time and all of the expertise and we weren't doing our day jobs. And we could do Monday to Friday, nine five late very easily, it would have still been probably difficult without a lot of artwork costs up front, almost.
Speaker 1
48:20
So that that's very interesting. So that that makes sense. There's there's a big artwork cost challenge there. I mean, that's something that we've also in the next project I'm working on is a challenge, as well, and certainly for magnet was a quite punchy, and the component thing of saying it's interesting, because that's been my experience. I've been very fortunate that during this period of what I've been working in publishing magnate, I have been either for most of the time, either part time or for short periods being fully focused on this. So it's not something I've had to worry about fitting it alongside a full time job for an extended period of time. So so that makes total sense. And I think that's probably a quite important thing for people to bear in mind, if they are embarking on this journey that the components add, they add additional add a lot of additional time and then the issue you raised Paul, about dependencies, certainly something that's IV, I've encountered quite a bit. It's been how challenging that that kind of dependency issue can be. So we've talked a bit about the pandemic as a problem for development. What about marketing? Because I know that you know, a lot of small publishers rely on conventions as their bread and butter. So I'm kind of really interested to hear about how you've responded in that way and kind of where you see marketing going in future for your projects.
Speaker 2
49:34
Well, I'm absolutely hopeless at marketing. I'll be honest, James. Useless. I think I'm entirely the wrong person to be talking to about Martin. You know, Liam, do
49:48
you have some answers for it?
Speaker 3
49:51
I can, I can give some answers so neither Paul and myself are from marketing backgrounds. and also well, there's there's marketing backgrounds, and then there's sort of marketing and board games as well as a completely separate thing. Yeah, we we don't have that kind of experience. So we've been learning it over the three years. And some of that marketing has been either mostly Kickstarter focus. So it's, you know, it's about driving signups and making sure people sort of back on the first day as opposed to any other time. But it's just been a learning process since day one. We've made marketing mistakes, we've made some positives, however small, we see them as a positive, specifically, during the pandemic, like, I mean, like, probably every publisher on the planet, we we've really sort of feel the absence of shows. Because not only for the marketing benefits, but as a publisher, it's, it's really nice to see people hands on with your games. And, of course, if you're selling and they're buying great, but also, it's, it's more, you know, they're meeting you, and meeting them in person is probably some of the best marketing you could have. So without the physical show, it's very difficult. I think, I think it's obviously going to get better. But I think even with the digital replacements that they were, they were digital replacements, but they weren't really replacements at all. Some of some of the events did really well to do what they could be just can't replicate the in, in person experience.
Speaker 1
51:45
That's the sense I have. I have a chat with working for Chris, we've discussed this sort of briefly, it does strike me that that is a huge problem, not being able to recreate the fundamentally physical real experience of handling and playing games.
Speaker 3
52:02
Yeah, I mean, it definitely affects independence more than smaller, smaller people like us. But I can imagine that, you know, even even bigger developers and bigger publishers would have would have found it hard. I mean, they, they have people that are proper experts in marketing, online or otherwise. So they might not be feeling it as much, but they would have definitely noticed a drop somewhat from not having that prison presence that shows either through meeting just general customers, the public, but also just meeting up with anyone for networking, things like that.
Speaker 1
52:43
Yeah, very challenging, very challenging. Well, hopefully, the answers begin to emerge, I guess, gradually over time as to how this can be tackled. I know, it's something I'm spending a lot of time thinking about. But the right way to do it, I think is something that I know the listeners will be really keen to hear is, is even more about what you would advise them to do if they're starting a game company now, because I know there will be people who will be interested in doing that. They might be thinking, Oh, God, this is the worst possible time to do it. Maybe it is. But people want to make games, I know that even if the pandemic were happening, magnate was starting just as the pandemic was starting, I would still be trying to do it. Because it's my dream to publish a board game, and then and then start publishing more board games. So I would want to do anyway. So what would the three pieces of advice be if you had to pick three really top piece of advice? For someone who wants to publish games, not just design them? What would those three pieces of advice be?
Speaker 2
53:41
I'll start with, I'll start with my, with my midwife thing, which I think is first and foremost, my absolute number one, and then I think, maybe if we let Liam have a go, and then I'll and then I'll mop up with a third. So my first thing is, is basically don't assume that your that your game is going to sell, you know, so treat it as a from I would certainly say from my, from my experience, and you know, and, you know, hopefully other people will have, you know, a more positive experience, we, you know, be better at marketing and stuff than I am and all that sort of thing, and they'll and their games will, will fly off the shelves. But I would say I would say number one, don't assume that your that your game is going to be the next gloom Haven or whatever, you know, I think I think I've got a friend that's in the horse racing and, and he says whenever he goes along to the track, he taught he treats every win as a bonus, you know, goes along with 100 credits pocket wherever and if he if he if at the end of the day, he's going he's going away with his mind. He spent all that money. He still had a good day at the track. He's had a few beers. He's had a few bets. You know he's had a good day. You I think for me that that's where that's where I'm at. And I would say, first and foremost, I would say, Yeah, I'd say, Don't be prepared, don't gamble more than you're prepared to lose. Because I think that I think that if you're looking to make a business out of it, I'd say it's tough is a crowded market. And I think that there are no guarantees. And I think that there are probably, I, I'd have thought that there are probably easier businesses to start if you if you just want to make money.
Speaker 1
55:37
Oh, I think almost every business is easier. If you just want to make money generally don't pick a relatively small, crowded marketplace where you're competing and lots of other people who are so in love with doing it, that they will gladly do it for not very much money, which I think is something else that's really important. Important to mention. Yeah.
Speaker 2
55:56
So I think, yeah, so I think that's so that would be that would be my that would be my my first thing. And, and I suppose that's, that's a hard earned lesson for. For me really? Hmm,
56:06
what Liam? What about what's number two?
Speaker 3
56:08
So this question was, this was specifically people that want to publish games as well as design themselves? Not exactly. Okay. And self
56:17
self publishing and beyond.
Speaker 3
56:19
Okay, so I'm assuming this person's at a very sort of beginning steps. And they're asking everyone, what can I do that's still going to do next? I would probably say, It sounds quite basic, but try and meet as many people as possible. And, and just generally, have a conversation with them, and get to know them, and talk about what you what each other does. It sounds very business II and network II, but it's, it's about, you know, that that person you meet could be really influential to you, in a way you don't realise at the time. I mean, Paul might have a small story about this, from Ali Pele, a couple of years ago. But you know, all those small little things, they can help because you might get to meet someone, and they sound excited by your game and they want to play test it, you might get to meet someone and they know, they know another person that that is starting out doing some artwork, and actually, it's really good. And you could condition our work through them. Yeah, it sounds like a very obvious thing to say, but just get to know people surround yourself with people. And I suppose we talked about the ludicrous earlier, but just being surrounded by that world is a very, very nice thing. Because non cut well, not not, not sorry, not non customers, but even strangers when they walk in the door. There's a very nice sense of community, in the hobby itself. We may have felt it lacking in the last year, but not not lacking online, but just lacking in person I keep banging on about in person versus online. But it's just kind of keep in touch with people and have have rapport with people to just be able to talk about your projects. And, you know, you don't know who people are going to know. So they might be able to help you in various ways. And you can also help them as well help. But if it's playtesting, or doing some artwork for them could be anything really.
Speaker 1
58:30
That sounds like advice that's worth repeating. Because as you say, Well, you could say this was obvious, but actually, we love games. That's why we do this. What we don't love is networking. I think that's true for the majority of us who work in the games industry. So it's worth remembering that that it might not be something that comes naturally but it is something that's really worth doing. And you never know who's going to turn out to be someone important, right? And someone that's going to be continually working within the future somebody's going to collaborate with and so it repays being really friendly with everyone and being very open hearted with all those kinds of connections. Right. And in fact, you mentioned that Liam a story about that with Paul. Paul, have you got a story on this one?
Speaker 2
59:16
I heard I have. I don't know if you've heard this before. But have you heard it?
59:20
Please? I listened
Speaker 2
59:25
Gosh, sorry. So so we were at we're at the show with Adam pally one that
Speaker 1
59:32
is tabletop gaming live. Yeah, base not late September time, right.
Speaker 2
59:35
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The one that Chris from your previous show.
Speaker 1
59:39
Yes, correct. Chris, I get editor the magazine it's the magazine's own show. Alexander price. Yeah.
Speaker 2
59:45
So so it comes to us at lunchtime and and one of our friends was there and he sort of Oh, cool. Yeah, you want to come over and just take a break from it. So so that so we went over and you know, grabs a pint at the bar and just So I went and grabbed a table, we sat down with sort of having an outer sort of talk about the show. And this guy comes over, carrying, carrying something to drink in a pie or something. So it kind of goes, alright, let's be mindful, just sit down as it is packed is a great place. And like, yeah, have a seat. So, so we started chatting, and, and stuff. And, and, you know, I didn't want to exclude him from the conversation. So I'm sort of, you know, sort of, including, you know, what have you had, what have you seen and all this stuff. And he sort of say, you know, how's the show been, and all that, and the conversation goes along and goes along, goes along. And, and, and I've been so Annie's, and I've been talking about my games and sort of saying, how excited I was about robot morale and mob sitters, and I was talking very animatedly about them all. And this chap kind of goes Oh, yeah, it's interesting. And then and then eventually, so it says, Yeah, it's interesting design. Yeah, cuz I work in the eye. Yeah, I'm looking at, you know, sort of what you do for work. So I'm lucky enough to work in the in the board games industry. And so I just thought, Oh, it must be another publisher or something, you know, taking a break from the stand. And and so so no, because, no, I'm the actually I'm the senior buyer Asmodee. And
Speaker 1
1:01:16
ah, ha. So as this is, this is Asmodee is distribution arm. So this is their the senior buyer for basically the biggest hobby game distributor in the UK pretty much. Yeah. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 2
1:01:30
and, you know, and I've had friends sort of saying, What a nightmare it was trying to get in touch with anyone that has me and, and you know, how hard it was to try and get our foot in the door. And, and, and, and, and he sort of said, it was so interesting for him to, to hear someone that was just like talking about their games without knowing who he was, and without actually pitching to him as just like talking someone that's just genuinely excited about their games. Yeah. came over. It came over to the store later in the afternoon, and, and he sort of said, Any, and he said, Yeah, you guys missed it. Sorry, guys played robot while he's like, he goes, Yeah, that's it, guys. Yeah, so that's a solid. That's a solid game, but it's kind of a hobby market game. It's not not a mass market game. And I was like, Alright, okay, fair enough. That's, that's cool. He don't at that stage. We were just, we was trying to play sort of like a really raw sort of demo version of, of mob sitters. So this was right on the Kickstarter, before we put any money into artwork, but the cards were just like, literally clipart that we just downloaded off. Right. Okay. Using for playtesting. And, and he played that, and he sort of sat back and he said, he said, Yeah, this could be a mass market game. Last night. I'm like, wow, yeah, I'm in Georgia. Wow. Yeah, gosh, you know, interesting. He gave us his card. And he said, Oh, yeah, you know, stay in touch. So I emailed him, he said, You know, so it won't be me that you're dealing with it will be, it will be one of the guys. And and I emailed him, I think on the Tuesday after the show, so I'm not expecting to hear anything. And then I think a couple of days later, I got a reply. And he'd copied in, like one of the one of the guys that we're forced into, right. And you know, we've had quite a good relationship since then, really? So it's been
Speaker 1
1:03:24
fantastic. And you actually have sold some copies into distribution? Yes, yes. Yeah. So that's, to me, that is a classic example of exactly what Liam is saying, is that that that is such a good story. I'm glad you recounted that. Because that you just don't know who you're going to meet. You don't know, when you go to a place like this, what's going to happen? You know, and I think as we as things get back to normal, eventually, whenever that is that serendipity will only become more critical. Yes. So I guess that brings us down to our last piece of advice. So what what is the third piece of advice that you would give any startup publisher,
Speaker 2
1:04:00
I think, as you're talking about, about for publishers, rather than game designers, I'd say, I know this is like a really cheesy, cheesy thing to say. But if you fail to plan plan to fail,
Speaker 1
1:04:14
right, yeah, yeah. plan everything.
Speaker 2
1:04:17
You know, think about, like, think about what you're going to be doing, you know, six months ahead a year ahead. When when you you know, don't leave. You know, try not to leave things to the last minute. I know, I can be quite bad for that. But, you know, but try and try and at least think through, you know what's going to happen and like with your Kickstarter, if you do a Kickstarter, try and think ahead about what posts you want to be putting out Kickstarter, before you get to that time. So don't don't wait until you're in the middle of a Kickstarter. And so I think all you know, much more posts we put out now, you know,
Speaker 1
1:04:57
yeah, you want to clear plan for that before you go into The Internet Project,
Speaker 2
1:05:01
it's really it sounds so obvious, but it's so easy to, to just just run, you know, just to kind of run at things and not plan is, is so easy and so natural to do that
Speaker 1
1:05:15
if you're carrying on carried away by the kind of inspiration, right, that's that's something which is understandable. But I think again, as we've said, just because the advice is obvious doesn't mean that it's not really good. And I think that's a really good example to me of like, it's always worth reminding ourselves that we to rein ourselves in a bit, do some planning and get that right. Okay, brilliant. Well, I'm sure that will be that'll be very useful. Before we wrap up. I'd like to find out a little bit more about what we can expect next from Eastery games. So what should listeners Be on the lookout for from you guys coming up soon?
Speaker 2
1:05:47
All about the blessings a bit. So yeah, I'd
1:05:51
like Liam, tell us more about the blessings of big soup.
Speaker 3
1:05:53
We are sort of, I would say 60. Now probably about 70% of the way 75% of the way in terms of overall rules, I think, would you say that's fair ball?
1:06:06
Yeah, probably.
Speaker 3
1:06:08
But we're looking to, we're looking to publish this sometime in the next year, hopefully, probably a Kickstarter. And you know, there's going to be various reasons for that. But it's also going to be our most complex game in terms of components. Not necessarily where we are, it will be complex as a game. But you know, it's certainly gateway esque. And, yeah, so I've been forgetting about a year. And generally, it's quite exciting. Because, as mentioned, you go around, you go around the different areas, have the sort of Himalayan mountain setting, and you're just trying to deliver these resources. But also, what we didn't mention earlier is delivering the resources, certain lands has this sort of scale where one of the lands might be more favourite view. And you can actually, it's kind of got like a tug of war system. So if I give to a certain land, and then my opponent does, it kind of goes back, the dial goes back to the middle. So no one's really favoured at that particular land. There's a few funky little things going on with it as well. But it's hopefully, it's hopefully going to be our next game.
1:07:31
Fantastic. What can we expect art wise from it?
Speaker 3
1:07:34
And art wise, it's well, how do you mean, do you mean? Just
Speaker 1
1:07:40
so I'm just curious to know, how, you know, how is there a look in mind, what does the end product kind of look like? Do you have a kind of vision yet for the product? Or is that as a finished item? Or is that still something?
Speaker 3
1:07:52
Oh, okay, yeah, so we have a really nice prototype at the moment that was actually made by me. I'm not tooting my own horn here. But this prototype was made in like a role playing game Map Builder. And it's actually really nice for prototyping. But it's definitely not the final product, but it's going to be this really lovely map that's going to be very bright, very colourful, it's not going to be like a dark, you know, scary game or anything, and generally is going to be quite a few sort of colourful components. And our hope is to potentially have really nice monastery monastery miniatures. That's sort of in flux at the moment, depending on on what's happening with rules and also on costs as well. We're just looking into costings at the moment for what that might be. Because if that's something that's just out of this world, we'd have to reconsider it. Or if it's, for example, on the Kickstarter, the monasteries are wouldn't be wooden tokens first, and then they're upgraded, then that is possible. But there's lots of lots of things to consider. And we have to we've, we've learned so many things in the past about costings, that we sort of start to really need to get our margins like they need to start getting more perfect for us in a way.
Speaker 1
1:09:24
Yeah, that makes sense. I will I think that's something very critical, isn't it? I mean, I would personally always add that on as a fourth point, make sure you've got proper margins on all of your products, because I think that is an element. I know. It's challenging. Certainly, I've found that with magnate that it's not really quite at the level, that would be ideal for distribution. I think it's worth it anyway, I think hopefully, people will be wowed sufficiently by that. We can make lots more sales in the future. But it's one of those ones where Yeah, margin sounds like it's obviously critical to do again, one of those ones that you don't necessarily work out how to do properly until you've had the experience. So
Speaker 3
1:09:58
yeah, definitely. I mean, Our, our first two games have been reasonably small print runs in terms of they weren't made sort of in China at mass mass production. So the margins on those games work, we're never going to be, like, really good. It wasn't going to be like, we're going to make the game for like, one pound 50. And we're going to sell it for 20 quid or 15 quid. You know, but they weren't, they weren't completely, like, awful. It just wasn't something that was going to make us like, millionaires or anything. Or make it sort of Sorry, go on.
Speaker 2
1:10:38
I'd say I was just gonna say actually, I think the margins on robot rail were awful. And and I think, especially when you when you look at the lead cost of miniatures, and all that sort of thing, I think there were a lot of there were a lot of costs there that emerged addition to the production costs, you know, and yeah, it was, I think we we learned, let's say, robot rail was a huge learning experience for us.
1:11:06
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 3
1:11:08
That's true. But I suppose with robot Riel because that was mostly sold through a Kickstarter. We weren't like selling through retail or distribution. So even though it was a very small margin, we were still getting something back. Whereas, whereas mob sort of example is a little bit better. And any game going forward, we always have to bear that in mind,
Speaker 1
1:11:31
the blessings of big Sue is going to be a bit better margin, why isn't the sound of it with your experience? Yeah.
Speaker 2
1:11:37
And so so with the pixie is the, the, their place names and things and all of the names are Nepalese, actually, and the reason? Oh, really. And the reason for that is, a couple of years ago, I moved down to Folkston, from Croydon, and there's a large Gurkha base here. So there's a huge Nepalese community. Oh, interesting. Sorry, I wanted to do something to as, as almost like, a homage to them that you're honouring them.
Speaker 1
1:12:12
That's so cool. So we've got kind of a, you know, authentic language effectively from from from Nepal, which has been using the game which that that sounds really cool. Well, I'm excited to hopefully get to play it at some point, the not so distant future. That sounds really great. And I just want to say in general, thank you so much for joining me, and I'm sure hearing the story, the real kind of trials and tribulations that one goes through as a start up publisher is going to be of real interest to many of our listeners. Well, thank
Speaker 2
1:12:38
you for having us on, James. It's been really really good chatting to you. Yeah,
1:12:42
it's been it's been really good.
Speaker 1
1:12:50
Producing fun is produced by Naylor Games. If you enjoyed the show, follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, or other major podcasting platforms. Remember, producing fun is also a product, and it thrives on feedback. So please leave a review wherever possible, to simply send me your feedback directly. You can message me on Twitter at Naylor Games or write me an email James@Naylorgames. Until next time,
]]>Chris is the editor of Tabletop Gaming Magazine, the UK’s largest board game, RPG and miniatures game magazine. In this episode we discuss what good tabletop game writing looks like, the ethics and effectiveness of Kickstarter previews and what ‘product’ really means.
Listen on podcasting platforms: https://anchor.fm/naylorgames
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For a while now, I’ve been finding myself less and less inclined to spend time writing a blog. This has probably been very clear from how sporadic, in general, my posts have become. My original plan – back at the end of 2019 – was to get back to blogging once the New Year started. I’d really enjoyed writing the pieces that explored the behind-the-scenes story of the Magnate Kickstarter. With a well-earned Christmas break behind me, I was fully planning to get back to proper blogging again shortly after. Of course, there were some un-forseen ups and downs and a few delays happened, unrelated to Naylor Games. But – I said to myself – before March 2020 was out, I’d be back in the swing of it: Not doing it with any fixed schedule, but just pushing out the odd thing every few weeks. Delightful!
Well…we all know what happened next. And because we all know (and I suspect as uninterested in talking about it as I am) I won’t address it directly. Instead I’ll leave this sentence as an odd and foreboding lacuna to future generations (should I be lucky enough that anyone is reading this in the dim distant future). After all, if a future reader has done their research they’ll work it out: even once it is – for them – just a fascinating curio about a time that a thing happened.
Given that so much of my life over the last year was already being spent sat at a computer on my own (as I suspect it was for many), the prospect of spending countless more hours writing at it grew less appealing by the day. And since I was only really interested in writing mostly detailed analysis pieces, I didn’t bother at all; save for one practical post on Mental Health I did because I think its really, really important and a highly visual one about our logo that was most relevant at the time it was posted.
What that left me without though was something of a creative outlet. With Magnate production much slower than I hoped, and playtesting greatly curtailed, I realise only now that I was feeling the lack of something important: making a creative thing that other people can actually enjoy, right now. It’s not that it’s been a total creative desert. Far from it: I have completed a considerable amount of valuable preparatory and behind-the-scenes work on future projects. Rather, it’s that precious little of this work comes with the buzz of human connection: of seeing the fruits of your labour in the faces of the people enjoying it. That payoff of seeing people enjoy something you’ve made is endlessly deferred. It’s all happening in here, not out there and it sucks.
But this locked-down time hadn’t been all negative. In happier developments, others reached out to me. I had recently been invited on several podcasts, streams and digital panels, some of which as projects had themselves been inspired by reduced human contact. They had all been successful and I found that I really enjoyed being a guest every time. It is never a substitute for physical presence, but they were hugely therapeutic and lots of fun in themselves.
Then I did an (as yet unreleased) interview with Mike of the Who?What?Why? podcast and got a bolt of very obvious inspiration – penetrating its way through a thick wall of my own obliviousness: “maybe I should do something like this?” Mike’s impressive ability to put me at total conversational ease while stealthily improvising key details of the conversation, made me suddenly see how good the experience of interviewing real people over video could be. I had already had so much fun with other skillful and charming hosts and I am already a podcast person; I listen to them, on average, for two hours or more of everyday. Clearly creating a show would be time consuming. But that time would be spent, at least partly, with people; not WordPress.
I don’t know why I didn’t see the possibility earlier. It is, I suspect, partly because I never had an obvious topic for a show. Being someone who always wants to be making things that are useful to people other than me and – often dangerously valuing myself only as far as I do that – I didn’t give it a second thought. Perhaps there was also a degree of long-held prejudice in my assumptions about the medium. Years back, it seemed like everyone was starting a podcast, and many of these had a reputation for being the same: just two or three guys (always guys) joshing around in a makeshift studio about nothing in particular. No one needs more of that I thought, better I don’t add it unless I have something really, really specific in mind. It obviously never crossed my mind that current podcast world is far more diverse than that. And that most of my own favourite shows do not match that description at all. And that the ones I listen to that are a bit little like that are still good fun. And that even those that absolutely started that way have nearly all evolved into something much better, while their boring contemporaries have faded away.
Still, I was left with a problem: I needed to do a podcast, but about what? It was much easier to start the blog: There were a ton of very specific things I wanted to write about from the off and I’ve never found brainstorming ideas for it too challenging. It helped that I’d already run a newspaper for 6 years so the whole process was incredibly familiar; no new technology or kit and no shortage of a sense of what interesting content reads like and what edits well. But the podcast would be more uncharted. I knew the podcast needed to be guest orientated – that’s what I’d enjoyed – and I didn’t remotely have the time to create a scripted, documentary show. But what to make it about?
At least half the answer came from research.
There’s plenty of board game shows out there – some of them excellent – but the more I looked at it, it seemed to me like there were relatively few truly industry focused pods. The well-known shows tend to, quite naturally, look at things more from a game design perspective (such as Boardgame Design Lab or Ludology) and while they are great at what they do, I don’t find they’re as interested in the product and market perspective: how games are positioned, how they’re made, how they’re marketed, how they come together as a whole to create fun (an experience that goes way beyond what you could usefully call game design alone) and especially how whole companies sit within an ecosystem; or the larger industry pressures and physical limitations that shape the titles we ultimately see on the shelves. As someone whose day job was running the product function of a multinational technology company, all of this happens to be my wheelhouse. And if you are a long-time reader, it’s also something you will know is a significant part of how I think about games. So it won’t surprise you at all, that such topics are an equally significant part of our internal conversations at Naylor Games either: for us it’s always about the whole product.
Those are topics then which I should – in theory – be able to do justice too. And given they probably haven’t been given the attention they could have in the podcast world, there looks to be some solid opportunity for product differentiation in the podcast itself. Hence, Producing Fun: a podcast about making games from a product perspective.
The other half of the answer is that I don’t think I can actually know yet. It seems all podcasts are experiments. Whatever shape episode one could have taken, I can be almost entirely sure that future episodes will be different; in improved quality, format, tone and – hopefully – my competence as a host (which will likely start low). I have been hugely cheered by listening to the early episodes of the some of the world’s biggest and best known podcasts. At their best these initial forays tend to be clanky, uneven and rather inelegant. At their worst, they are, to my modern ears, unlistenable, self-indulgent garbage. Today some of these command millions of listeners weekly. Times may have changed somewhat, but if they could do it then, then I, as someone with the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, can definitely do it now.
The first episode (already available across multiple podcasting platforms) is an interview with my good friend Louis, Managing Director of CMA Creative Solutions Ltd.
Louis is a skilled manufacturer – his company made the beautiful resin buildings in the Magnate prototype and produces minatures for the world’s top game companies. But he’s also a lot more: before he took over at CMA he was a publisher; first in books and then in games with Dropzone and Dropfleet commander (which raised around million dollars on Kickstarter). His advice to me, based on deep understanding of production processes and the convention circuit, has been absolutely invaluable to the success of Magnate so far. His expertise comes from a very different place that an experienced game designer would so he’s a perfect guest as far as setting out the show’s stall. Because we know each other so well, he’s also someone I can afford to make some mistakes with.
Louis is easily one of the most knowledgeable people that I have ever met in the games world. I hope you find what he has to say as interesting as I do.
I feel very honoured that several experienced industry figures, from a wide variety of professional backgrounds, have already agreed to be guests on the show. This gives me high hopes that I should be able to make some really interesting episodes. More details will follow on twitter ahead of show recordings.
I am not giving-up on the blog. I’ll be posting each episode here and, whenever I am inspired to do so, will post other content that suits a written format. It maybe there are pieces that actively build on what’s come-up in the podcast. But the blog is not likely to come roaring back, festooned with many ‘000s of words-long essays, just yet. I am enjoying this new medium and its creative possibilities. I want to spend as much time with other human beings in creative endeavours that I can. So for now, the podcast will be my main focus outside the business of actually producing games. I hope you will join me on this journey – I think it could be a lot of fun.
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