Imaginary Worlds - Board Games Go Indie

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

We all grow up playing board games and card games, and now those games are growing up as well. I check out BostonFIG (festival of independent games), where a new generation of indie board game designers is reimagining what we can do with dice, cards and plastic game pieces. I also talk with Shari and Jenni Spiro of AdMagic -- the company that can make unorthodox games like Cards Against Humanity and Exploding Kittens into household names. Plus, Dylan McKeefe at NYU's Game Incubator, and Luke Crane at Kickstarter explain why this is the perfect time for indie games to thrive.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. A few months ago, I was invited to emcee an awards ceremony at the Boston Festival of Independent Games, otherwise known as Boston Fig. The festival was held at MIT in Cambridge, and it was actually run by some of the people that you heard in my last episode on LARPing. Now, I was happy to go up there and emcee, but I was also intrigued. I mean, I knew about independent video games, because these days anyone can design a video game on their own computer and post it online. But this festival was also for independent board games, which I did not know much about.

Now, during the day, the board game designers had set up booths inside this huge athletic center at MIT, and the general public was invited to come by and try out the games. Rat Race, Escape the Sewers, two to four player card management game, where you are rats in a sewer system trying to reach the surface by stacking as much trash as you can in order to reach the manhole cover of freedom. My game is Someone Has Died. It's a storytelling game that takes place at a will arbitration. So someone's died and left behind a fortune and one player is an estate keeper who has to give that fortune away.

Everyone else is playing characters that they come up with based on the cards they're randomly dealt and they have to argue as that character to the estate keeper they're the most deserving of the fortune. Born to Serve is a game where you play superheroes. That's the good news. The bad news is your group just lost its government funding, so now you all need to get real jobs. In town, there's a restaurant.

The restaurant owner likes superheroes, so he's basically agreed to let you all wait staff his restaurant one night. Whoever gets the most tips gets the waiter job. People who design board games are usually anonymous. You know, it's common knowledge that Parker Brothers puts out Monopoly. But you have to go on Wikipedia to find out who actually designed Monopoly. Indie board game designers have realized that's kind of like a secret power. They can use games to make a statement or to get players to reveal interesting truths about themselves.

And it feels like it's the game that's doing it, not the designers. So these indie game designers are inventing a new kind of gameplay with very provocative concepts that a publisher like Mattel or Hasbro would normally never put out. So Continental Drift is a prototype that we're working on for Resonim. So it's 100 million years ago, and the mighty continent of Pangaea is splitting apart, and the players are the ones who are doing that.

Now, probably less a thing that the continent cares about, but you're trying to collect the most of any particular type of creature. So there are mammoths, moas, and raptors, and you get to choose which one you want to try to collect the most of, and try to edge your opponent into taking the things they don't want as well. What would be your ultimate goal for

showing it today? What would be an awesome outcome for today? We're an indie board game company. We've been making stuff and we're really excited about making all these games and we have a ton of prototypes. This is one of them and our goal for today is to kind of judge how people think about it, what they like about it. So we use Boston Fig as kind of like a sounding board

and one of the reasons we actually really like this show is because we go to lots of board game shows like Gen Con and Origins and all these things that are filled to the brim with like hardcore gamers who really like to play board games. But this game, this place is really family friendly and we get to test with people who are actually going to be playing the games that we don't actually get access to all the time. But these unusual board games and card games aren't just being played at festivals. They're actually ending up in huge box stores like Target and Walmart. Now going from a flash of inspiration to the checkout aisle is not easy, but that journey has become very interesting. In fact, the way these games are going mainstream, it's

just as compelling as the games themselves. We're gonna tear open that box just after the break. Imaginary Worlds is brought to you by Liberty Mutual Insurance. Everybody who owns a car or a house knows the importance of insurance. It gives you the peace of mind to know that you're protected. But you don't want to be overpaying for coverage that you're not using. Wouldn't you want an insurance provider that lets you customize your coverage so you only pay for what you need? Of course you do. I mean, who likes paying for things they don't need? It's like paying for an all-access pass, but you only want to see one part of the event. check out Liberty Mutual and see how much you could save on auto and home insurance. Visit libertymutual.com slash podcast for a free customized quote. State

requirements and policy terms and conditions apply. So a quick history lesson on board games, and like most history lessons, we have to start at World War II. After the war, West Germany was forging a new pacifist society under American occupation. And American pop culture was very popular over there. But they were not impressed with our board games. To the Germans, our games seemed very warlike. And they had a winner-take-all capitalist ethos. In fact, the Germans started calling our games...

The term for it is Ameritrash games. Dylan McKenzie is the director and coordinator of the Game Center at NYU. And he thinks the term Ameritrash is actually pretty funny, because he relates to it. And when he was growing up, he hated family game nights. If they ever played a game like Risk. Why would I want to play Risk again with you? I know what you're going to do. You're going to demolish me in Australia.

And then, you know, you're better at me, this kind of thinking. And then I have to sit there and watch you slowly make your way through the rest of the world. And I have nothing to do. I'm just sitting there watching it happen. Whereas some of these other games are much more convivial. Convivial is actually a good way to describe the post-war trend of German designed board

games that did not have this war-like winner-take-all attitude. Everyone could come away feeling like they'd contributed to the success of the game even if there was an actual winner. Eventually, the German model spread throughout Europe. And in the 1990s, these Euro games made their way to the U.S., the most famous example

being Settlers of Catan. And for a lot of Americans, these games were a revelation, and they wanted to create their own games in that style. Now, at NYU, Dylan McKenzie runs the Game Incubator. And he's really excited about the way his students, first of all, come from a diverse background. So they bring a really interesting point of view to the games they're designing. And secondly, they're using board games and card games to spark conversations among the players. Where, for example, one of the games in our incubator this year is called Stress Express. A woman named Aim is making it. She's a solo developer.

She's not from the U.S. She doesn't even come from a games background. So she's making a game which is like a board game, like a party game about working in a bad company. And it's silly and it's fun and it's obviously a reflection of her experiences working in bad advertising companies. But it's a good board game

or objective was another game that they came through our incubator is like this is a card game that uh was about starting conversations about beauty standards so you're playing cards the the the judge says okay um which card is the most beautiful and then you have to play a card and then make a case for why you think a person is beautiful. But they may not be, they're not all, you know, white celebrities. And so you're like having a conversation about what is beauty. And that's because we're able to have this conversation, which is very complicated, but it's mediated through a card game. Now, when I was walking around the convention floor at Boston Fig, the games that I found there were also very thoughtful. Like I came across a game called

Schrodinger's Cat. It's based on a famous theory in quantum physics about a hypothetical cat that is put in a hypothetical box. Until you open the box, you don't know if the cat has suffocated. So, that cat is both alive and dead in your imagination, and maybe the cat is alive in one parallel universe and dead in another parallel universe. It's a very weird theory, and it's led to a lot of jokes over the years. But the game designer, Jessica Crean, has turned Schrodinger's cat into a moral quandary with little cat game pieces and toy bunkers and scuba gear. Because one team decides whether the cat is going to breathe through the scuba gear, while the other team decidesers in scuba gear. Because one team decides whether the cat is going to breathe through the scuba gear, while the other team decides if the scuba gear is full of oxygen or cat poison.

The teams can't coordinate, so they have to second guess each other. And each player will make a decision that contributes to whether or not the cat that you bond over and name lives or dies. And you make these choices, you put them into the bunker, and then you can live with your choices for the rest of your life. There are people who've been playing for at least six months now who pass it back and forth like once a month or so to make sure they have to maintain the integrity of their decision

to never become permanent cat killers. So you can do that forever, or you can make the choice to open it up and your cat is either alive or you are definitely a cat murderer. Now my favorite card game that I found there was called Red Scare, because as I've said before, I am fascinated by anything having to do with the Cold War. So this is a spy versus spy card game where you're racing to complete missions while trying to rack up the most points by collecting weapons, intel, or money, all of which are represented

by illustrations on cards that have this kind of early 60s retro design. If you were going to play the Soviet Union, you could choose to get the one-point weapon bonus, or you could choose to get a two-point weapon bonus, but you gain a deficit in money, which we tried to keep to the theme of what we think these countries would be their strengths and weaknesses. Now, the game designer, Bridget Crawford, did not grow up during the Cold War. And she thinks that kind of analog spycraft is kind of romantic.

In fact, she thinks the whole analog experience of card games and board games is one of the reasons why they're making a comeback. I feel like the millennial generation seems to have like resorting back to it, like sort of a nostalgia kind of feel. Something more tactile, less digital? Yeah, yeah. I think like people are starting, some people are starting to stray away from digital. You know, maybe it's because technology, you know, we've been exposed to technology our whole lives that we're missing that kind of human connection. Board games and card games are still 20th century products. They need to be manufactured and shipped to your home. But recent technological changes have allowed indie board games

and card games to go much further than they could before. First, there are print-on-demand companies. So it's easy to create a prototype that you can use to test on players. And when the game designers get more ambitious, they can turn to Kickstarter. Now, of course, I know that Kickstarter is a helpful way to raise money, but until I went to Boston Fig, I had never heard of Kickstarter being the make-or-break crucial step for anybody trying to advance in a field.

And right now I'm doing a Kickstarter. But that's the case with indie board games. We kickstarted it a couple of months ago. We're going to have a Kickstarter. Every week there's 10 board games being added to tabletop games being added to Kickstarter. In fact, the people that run Kickstarter were so surprised that board games were taking off on their site they hired a person to curate were taking off on their site, they hired a person to curate the games section on the site, Luke Crane, who is also a game designer himself.

There's an inherent narrative. There's an inherent gamesmanship to Kickstarter. You have a goal. You need to hit this goal. You have a time limit to hit the goal. You need to rally X number of people to hit the goal before the time limit runs out. There's a kind of an intrinsic understanding in the games community as to how an engine like that would work. It's a very simple game. On Kickstarter, a well-funded game could be like a seal of approval. If it's doing really well, more and more people want to check it out. And it's a way for game designers to build a community.

So I asked Luke, well, what's an example of a game that could have only found success on Kickstarter? He said, well, the most obvious example is Kingdom Death Monster. It is similar to Warhammer, where there's a big fold-out map with a grid, dice, cards, and miniature game pieces. cards, and miniature game pieces. The creators have raised $12.4 million, making Kingdom Death Monster the most well-funded game in Kickstarter history. So if the game is that popular, why didn't they just pitch it to Wizards of the Coast or Games Workshop, which publishes Warhammer? Well, those miniature game pieces are very intricately designed, which means they'd be cost prohibitive to mass market. But the bigger issue is that the character designs are wild. I mean, there's graphic nudity

with monsters having body parts in places they shouldn't be. They're such beautiful weirdo artists and they just said, we don't care about anything else, but we're going to make our weird world in this game and we're gonna make it the way we want it like there's a lot of like horror elements there's a lot of nudity uh in the game so yeah this game would just not only would the material components uh cost keep it out of retail but a publisher would just never publish that but they found an audience of 20,000 people or something on Kickstarter who were willing to plunk down $400 each on average for that project. Although, he says, these kinds of success stories can give some people false expectations. The big one is that Kickstarter

is the magic money fountain and that you set up your bowl underneath the magic money fountain and you reach over and you turn on the faucet and the magic money comes out. And then you take the magic money and it makes a game. That sadly is not true. Kickstarter is kind of a force multiplier where if you have a community or if you have a good idea or you have some kind of way to reach out into the world and say, hey, look at my idea, Kickstarter will amplify that voice. world and say, hey, look at my idea. Kickstarter will amplify that voice. Now, if you don't raise millions of dollars on Kickstarter, you can only make a limited number of games. And at that point, you're kind of stuck. Like I talked to a game designer named Jeff Lyons at Boston Fig. He is in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign for this

really cool game that he created with magnets. Yeah, the legwork of making the game I found really exciting. The legwork of going to every single retailer and keeping in contact with them every single month, that is a different side of the business. It's called marketing. Sure, I can make a cold call to a store, but I would really like somebody else to call them up every month

and ask them to reorder. Jessica Crean, who created Schrodinger's cat, also wants lots of people to discover her game. But right now, she's a one-person manufacturer. Everything is handcrafted right now, so I'm sitting up at four in the morning making tiny

cat tokens and putting them into tiny cat bunkers. So in an ideal world, there would be someone to do that in a bigger way and we'd be able to get the game out into the world. So you're hoping maybe a publisher might pick this up? Yeah, I think that would be amazing. I would love for this game to keep growing in the world. Forgive me, I'm just going to make sure that they get set

and then I'll call you back to you. Alright, are we all decided? Yes. Excellent. So this reality, this is now our one and forever permanent reality. So is there a company out there that wants to publish unusual, edgy games and can get those games picked up by traditional retail stores? There certainly is. And they're in New Jersey. My name is Shari Spiro, and I am the CEO of AdMagic and Breaking Games. And I'm Jenny Spiro, and I'm project manager,

also Shari's daughter. They were actually at Boston Fig, and they signed a few games, although they're not ready to say yet which ones. After the convention was over, I asked them what they were looking for. Honestly, the next big game. I love you so much,

because that was exactly what I was going to say. I know, I am your daughter. Well, what are the qualities that you look for that that you look for as somebody with a certain kind of taste and experience that you're like, yeah, yeah, this is a winner? Art is huge. It has to have good artwork. It has to be an easy gameplay. Not easy, but understandable. For me, I want it to have great game mechanics, but I want to watch the table and see if people are enjoying themselves when they play. And then if we have to, we spend a lot of money developing artwork because artwork, like Jenny said, is super important. And we also have to really love the designer. Oh, yeah.

If we don't like the person, it's really difficult to deal with them no matter how great their game is. Designers are perfectionists. They're special. They're artists. Yeah, we're not too much alike. Nope. Now, you may not know their company, AdMagic, but you probably heard of their big breakout hit from 2011, Cards Against Humanity. It's a judging game, sort of similar to Apples to Apples, which is a card game where each player gets to be a judge. They're given a card with a noun or an adjective on it, and the other players put down cards that they will argue fits the description of that noun or adjective. But Cards Against

Humanity is a hilariously inappropriate version of that scenario. In fact, it's advertised as a, quote, party game for horrible people. My assistant producer, Stephanie, asked Sherry how the team behind Cards Against Humanity found her. I was number one in Google for custom playing cards. And they just Googled you? They Googled custom playing cards and he called me up and he said, you have the ugliest website, but you're number one. So you must know what you're doing. But yeah, that was it.

And then I was grilled. There were hundreds of questions and hundreds of emails. It was like taking a big test. I was good at tests. So it'd be like a 10-question test email. It'd be like, okay, so what's the biggest job you've ever printed? What if we have to print a million? How will you handle that?

What if this happens? What if we have to print a million? How will you handle that? You know, what if this happens? What if that? And funny, all these scenarios that they laid out, you know, like nine out of 10 of them actually happened. These guys really thought it out. Wow. They had no idea what they were doing, but they knew what they had to think about. Interesting. Yeah. So Cards Against Humanity was a worldwide sensation. And then AdMagic had another hit with a game called Exploding Kittens. It's a really wacky card game that's actually similar to Russian roulette,

except you're not trying to avoid a bullet. You're trying to avoid a card with an exploding kitten on it. By that point, AdMagic had evolved to become a really competitive publisher of games, and they could work with indie designers to make their games look more professional. After going to Boston Fig and hearing about everyone's games as being these labors of love, it was really interesting to hear the other perspective, from the people that have power to make those dreams come true. Like I asked Sherry and Jenny, what are common mistakes they see when game designers approach them?

I asked Sherry and Jenny what are common mistakes they see when game designers approach them. Some of the most common ones are they don't have everything thought out in advance to a level that's professional enough to actually move forward. So that's the first thing. Like rules. Oh, yeah. Even their game rules. That seems surprising to me that they wouldn't. That seems like the most basic thing about games.

Why would they not have that completely thought out? I think what they do is they just constantly keep changing them. So they're not comfortable with what they have yet, but they just want to wing it. And at that point, we're like, well, we need to know how to play the game. Right, but it also speaks to the perfectionist in a game developer who constantly wants to improve their game, or they so thoroughly understand their game, they are not the person to explain it. And other misconceptions are, it took you 10 years to develop this game.

It's going to take me more than two weeks to print it. Exactly. Exactly. They want it right then, right now. How fast can you do it? And it's like, no, it takes time to make this game right and perfect. So I asked them if there's an example of a game that they loved that just didn't catch on. Well, Sherry actually brought that game to the studio because she's really proud of it. It's called The Game of 49. The board is 49 squares. You bid for squares on the board. The goal is to get four

in a row. And The Game of 49 did not sell as well as they thought. So Sherry wanted to rename it Auction Bingo. The game designer, Mark Corsi, did not like that idea. So I asked Sherry, in that kind of situation, how much input does she have? As I've grown more powerful, I have more input. So I really wanted more, because this is one of the most brilliant games, and I found it at Boston Fig and I wanted it.

And I didn't want to turn him off by saying, no, we have to change the name because he was he was dead set on keeping it a strategy game with this name. And then after a couple of years now, he's very amenable to changing the name because I still believe in it. And he said, you know, let's try Auction Bingo, whatever you think is going to, you know, now it's different. It's a different dynamic. I mean, part of the magic behind AdMagic is the way they can get these games into mainstream stores. And they don't just get them into the stores. They get the stores excited about these games. No, well, she was just at Barnes & Noble with me.

You literally just kind of throw it on the table. You literally like unpack the game. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We explain gameplay, target audience. And we have to pitch it as quick but as efficient as possible. Yes, because there are many games. We try not to leave anybody out, which is a problem.

I am going to limit myself for my next. So after this, tomorrow I'm going to the Midwest and I'm going to Meijer, which is a group of stores out there. This trip is basically I'm selling to retail trips. So it was Barnes & Noble and Target. Are you bringing the games? And I'm bringing less games this time. I'm only going to pitch probably a dozen now. Do you ever have a time where you have a game that you completely believe in and then you go to one of these big box stores, you do what you think the presentation went well, and then you're just like, I don't

believe it. They didn't go for it. No, that never happens. No, I feel like if we're that passionate about it, they actually take it. They trust our judgment. Wow, really? Yeah, because if I say you've got to take this game, they'll take it. I mean, my neck's on the line still, right? But yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're a tastemaker. Can I use that quote? Sure. In fact, here's another example of how Sherry is a, quote, tastemaker. That day, she also brought in a game called Mixtape. The box looked like a box of blank cassettes that you'd buy in the 1980s.

But it's a card game. We were asked to create imaginary mixtapes for all sorts of scenarios. And the other players vote on the best choices. I saw actually some of my friends playing this at a party. I couldn't stay, unfortunately, but I saw them play a couple of rounds. They were breaking out their phones and playing the songs. They were having a good time and laughing. And I'm like, who made that game?

So I go back to the office and I'm trying to look up who made the game. Turns out we printed the game. I didn't know that. Yeah. Saw it on Amy's desk. And I'm like, wait, did we print this game? And she said, yes. And I said, well, I want to sign this game to a publishing deal. So that's when it changed from just us printing the game. And that's when I redesigned the box and I started marketing it in earnest and I pushed it into mass market. I pushed it. It's

in Barnes and Noble, Target and a bunch of other places and Mixtape just does fantastic matter of fact. It's in Target now and like a special Display of its own because it's got this unique vintage appeal, right? Retros in yeah retros in fortunately, but I didn't wasn't thinking retros in when this you know hit me I was just like let's make it look like an old cassette box, you know Well, how many like thousands of copies of a game would make it successful or does it depend on the game? Well, that's a very good question. I mean, I would consider 20,000 to be pretty successful

and I would consider 50,000 to be very successful. And then anything over 50,000, it would be gravy. I mean, it was just like 100,000, 250,000, you're doing great. And is that different for an indie game as opposed to like a mass market game? Would they expect much higher numbers if you're a big company putting out a big game? But the indie games are in mass market. That's what we do. So Breaking Games is putting indie games into mass market and making a game that would normally be an indie game sell $100,000. So Mixtape, I think we've printed $100,000 of these so far.

That would have been a lot smaller number, you know, had we not taken it and shown it to mass market. Board games and card games have always been popular because they're a bonding experience, or at least they're supposed to be. They don't just alleviate boredom, they can bring people together who might not have much to say to each other. And the kind of bonding experiences that you traditionally have with a board game and a card game are considered today to be a wholesome alternative to the kinds of conversations that we have on social media. And those aren't really conversations, they're arguments. And I'm not just talking about politics because these days anything can turn into an argument online.

politics because these days anything can turn into an argument online. But as more of these indie games come into our homes, the kinds of arguments that we have online are going to be in person. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Well, that is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to everybody at Boston Fig, Dylan McKeith, Luke Crane, and Sherry and Jenny Spiro. Now, I didn't realize until I watched a video on their site that Cards Against Humanity has a secret card embedded in one of the editions of the game. Do I have a secret card in my box? You do.

Oh my gosh, yes, you do. I do? Do I have to tear the box apart for it? You can just cut it a little bit. Yeah, feel around in there and then use an X-Acto knife and you should be able to get it out. You just discovered this? How long have you had this? How long have you had Cards Against Humanity?

Years. Oh my gosh. I didn't know until I watched the video. You knew that? How did you know that? Well, it's in the bigger, blacker box. Wait, did you just tear apart the box? No, someone told me.

I looked online. Oh. My assistant producer, who's always the know about these things, is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emalinski and Imagine Worlds Pod. Imaginary Worlds is part of the Panoply Network. But the Panoply Network is not going to exist much longer. Next episode, I will discuss the exciting future of the show, where we're going next.

And that episode is going to be released two days early on Monday, December 24th, because we're going to be talking about a very particular Christmas story. And by the way, we have refreshed our merchandise store with really great new designs just in time for the holidays. You can get there through my site, imaginaryworldspodcast.org.