Think Like A Game Designer - Elan Lee — From Star Wars Intern to Kickstarter Triumph, Embracing Risk in Game Design, The Power of Storytelling, and Crafting Games that Build Communities. (#20)

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

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Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I'll be having conversations with brilliant game designers from across the industry, with a goal of finding universal principles that anyone can apply in their creative life. You could find episodes and more at think like a game designer.com. Welcome to the 20th episode of Think Like a Game Designer. Before I get to introducing today's guest, I just want to take a second to acknowledge all of you. There are now over 25,000 subscribers to this podcast, which is way beyond anything I could have imagined for a deep dive design podcast like this.

But it's been awesome. I've been able to bring so many incredible guests and have so many great conversations, and that's only going to continue. And I also want to tease something here because in addition to this podcast and the book and the other tools that I've been putting out there, I have the biggest game design tool that I've ever made that I've ever put together is going to be ready to launch very, very soon. So you can stay tuned to this podcast or you can sign up at justengarry.com to the email list to learn more. But I really have been trying to think of more and more ways to help you out there. And there's something really big and exciting that's coming. So please stay tuned for that.

In today's episode, I speak with Elon Lee. Elon is an incredible creative. Not only did he launch the most back Kickstarter of all time with Exploding Kittens, but he's also founded an entertainment company. produced an alternate reality game for 9-inch Nails. He was part of the team to create Xbox and was mentored by Jordan Weissman, who's also been on this podcast as one of the most incredible designers and creatives and entrepreneurs I know. He created an award-winning Hollywood studio, and he even won an Emmy.

So Elon is such an incredible creative mind. He also worked on some of the puzzles and games for the game Survivor, which I'm obsessed with, and we talk about a little bit. And we talk about all kinds of awesome things, including creativity, entrepreneurship, innovation, and how you build a culture that works. You can learn things like how graffiti on the wall of a military base restructured the way Elon thinks about communication. You can learn why nobody's job in Hollywood is to succeed or even to make money.

And you could learn Elon's theory about why games shouldn't be entertaining. Elon's mind is incredible and it was really great to get to talk with him. I've had a couple conversations with him now and I really look forward to many more. And you'll also notice how humble he is. always very quick to be able to give credit to other people, all the incredible people that he's worked with and mentors and teams. And it's part of, when we get into this discussion about building a culture, you can see why Elon's intrinsic goodness and compassion and kindness comes through. And I am convinced that that's a huge part of his success in addition to being a brilliant

designer. And so really try to pick up some of the subtext of what's going on here in this conversation because I think even more than the great principles that he espouses, you can hear the kind of person he is. And in my experience, for anybody out there that wants to be successful in this industry, and frankly, any industry, it's that kind of kindness and connection that's going to get you the furthest over the long run. So there's tons of great stuff in here. Elon is an incredible person. I was really blessed to be able to have this conversation with him. And so I'm hoping you'll enjoy it as much as I did. And without further ado, here is Elon Lee. Hello and welcome. I am here with Elon Lee. Elon, I'm so excited to be talking with you.

Thanks. It's really good to be here. Yeah, we only met recently through mutual friend. We got to a little preamble conversation before, and I was, I constantly had to keep holding myself back from stuff I wanted to talk about because I wanted to talk about it here when other people could listen and learn from it. So I have so much stuff to cover with you. I'm really excited. A plethora.

A plethora. Your background is so diverse and there's so many interesting through lines for it from working at Disney and Xbox and starting your own companies and launching the most back to Kickstarter of all time. and pioneering entire new genres of games. And I want to touch a little bit on all of it as best I can, but I really also want to find a few principles and deep dives here that you haven't talked about elsewhere because I've watched a lot of interviews

with you in preparation for this. And I recommend for other people, there's so much great content out there. You've spent a lot of time teaching. And so, yeah, I'm going to try to bring out some new stuff that hasn't been talked about before. However, I will start with the cliche question because I start with it with everybody. And I want to help bring things down to earth, right?

which is how did you get started in this process? What was the, what's your origin story and what got you going in this world? Yeah, let's see. So much of it is just weird, random coincidence luck meeting great people. But the short version is I studied computer science in college and that led me to an internship at Industrial Life Magic where I thought, oh, this is so cool. I get to be monsters and creatures and special. effects and I just figured I'm as happy as a person can be and I'm going to do this forever. And then one day I got connected with some people at Microsoft who said, hey, instead of doing that

forever, how about you get paid to meet video games instead? And I thought, well, that sounds even better. And so I moved across the country to Seattle and got a job as a lead game designer on what at the time was called the direct Xbox because they had settled on the beginning. It was just a hardware platform around their software called DirectX. And so I worked with that team. We put out for six games for the Xbox and that kind of started me off. Yeah, let me dig a little bit here because I kind of met some people and they kind of invited me to be a game designer. Sounds awesome, but my guess is that there's a little bit more going on there. So industrial and magic, I was just a intro there, but I got to work on

some really fun projects, and one of those really fun projects was Star Wars episode one. And really, yeah, you know, this little film where, let me, it's worth at least saying what I got to work on, because it's ridiculous.

I got to do a lot of the chaining and stitching effects on Jar Jar Vicks' neck. That is what the King Turn does. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, they had this incredibly talented team. The way Jar Jar Jar was created, right, is you've got a physical actor running around with a green bag on his head. And then you've got this incredibly talented team animating his face and all the expressions. And then. Sitting there like, this is going to be the most popular Star Wars character of all time. I can't believe it's going to be awesome. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Right. All of that, every act, yeah. But so you've got this incredible way, you've got all this motion capture, this incredible actor, and you've got this incredible team that's animating his face and expressions. And then someone has to frame by frame meticulously stitch those things together, or at least sit on the team to stitch those things together. That's the thankless, horrible work that you throw out the intern.

Okay. All right. So you're doing the ground work. You're earning your due. You're getting to fun. That's right. That's me. And then I got written up in a little tiny blurb in an online magazine somewhere for my dream internships.

Because I didn't tell them that I was working on stitching jargers neck together. Instead, it was, I'm working on Star Wars. And that's as deep as the interview went. And so I had a friend who was working at Microsoft, who pointed them at that and pointed them to me. And so Microsoft called me up and said, Listen, we, will you come over at first, it was like to work on a car now or to basically be some sort of program manager? And video games were kind of dangled in front of you a little bit, and I thought, oh, that sounds intriguing enough. I'm sure I can maneuver or something.

So I went in my interview, and the interview went really well, but he didn't meet me to join the team. And almost immediately met a guy there named Jordan Weissman, who is my now mentor for the the time just idol who's worked on everything like all the things that you love about geek culture and video games jordan is in some way responsible for those yeah and and and my my audience should be very familiar with jordan if you are not go listen to the interview i did with jordan uh it is he is also my idol and is just he is amazing he has done all the things and he has laid the foundation for all of our awesomeness uh yeah he's incredible what an incredible opportunity yeah well jordan Jordan said down with me. I was a key, I got assigned as the producer on one of his projects.

And we worked together for a few months. And one day, Jordan, Jordan, who was the creative director for the entire Xbox studio, he looked at me and said, hey, you're a terrible producer. But you're an incredibly creative designer. And so I think we're going to switch roles for you. we're going to fire you as producer and hire you as a designer. And that would take you more on some games. All right. I got to, I'm going to pick things apart some more because, you know, there's a lot of which where the surface version of the story is, hey, I got lucky and the right people found me and I got this job and then I got promoted and then things.

But there's there's so much that's going on to the service I can kind of see, right? You won. To get the interview in the first place for this internship, was that something that they just like came to you and were just like hiring things? Or did you seek that out? How did that come up? Well, yeah. So they offered me at least the interview.

I then saw it out. Like, I was very excited about that interview because I kept hearing video game console, video game console. There is something brewing over there. And I'm going to be roughly working for the entertainment group. So I pursued it. I prepped for the interview. I asked all the right questions.

I joked around with the right people and they made the offer. Like that was a really good, I will say I gave really good help. Yeah. So let's let's give, maybe there's some principles out there. These opportunities show up and people either don't think that they can do it. They pass it by or they just, they don't prepare properly. When you have your shot, getting ready for it and making sure you make the most of it is absolutely critical. So, so let's say somebody else finds themselves in that position, right?

They've gotten recognized or they find a thing and they get to an interview. and a potential dream job, what kinds of things should they be thinking about to prep for that? Yeah, sure. So what I learned right before that interview and what I've learned since in interview and other people is there are two basic questions that you know we're going to come. One vague and one for sure. One of them is about something that's gone wrong. And you know they're not just going to ask you flowery things.

They're going to ask you about the negative thing. Talk to me about the negative thing. But if something goes wrong, what do you do? Like something about the train is going off the rails, react. Or the train has gone off the rails. How did you react? Right? You know that question is coming.

And I prepped for exactly that sort of question. So that when it came, I don't really get an answer for it. And we talked that, led us into a lot of conversations about communication and best practices with communication and what's important. And what's all is flying around in the back of my head, whenever issues of communication come up, whatever project management comes up, whatever organization comes up, is my favorite. My favorite quote, I actually want to get this frame that I saw how it, is, what do you know, who needs to know it, have you told them? That's the most important thing

I have ever heard. I actually read it on the wall of a military base I was seeking a tour through, and I wrote it down because it was life-changing. So we talked a lot about that. When they talking about failure, I talk about communication. Yeah. What do you know? Who needs to know it? Have you told them? Yeah, I have wanted to pause. The more I think about it, the more profound that gets. Like, not just, you know, in the context of like interview employee, in the context of running

a company, in the context of your relationships, that feels like such a powerful set of questions. It's crazy. A little 16-year-old niece who saw that written on a wall as it applies to the same. the military. At first I just walked by, oh yeah, military, right, chain of command. And then I like stopped it in my tracks and was unable to function until I turned around and got a pencil and paper and wrote it down because I was like, this is everything. This is the secret to everything. So, yeah, I've been carrying that with me for 20 years now because holy crap. So we had that

discussion and that's a mind-blowing sentence and it's a really good one to drop in an interview because because most people haven't heard it. And it shows that you're very thoughtful and you're thinking through the right things, especially when, like I said, the train is about to go off the rails and you need to address it. And then the second one that you know is coming

is the interview is over. What else would you like to say? Is there anything I should have asked? What, like the addition, right? Interview is over, there's another slot. And most people say, nope, we're done. And that's the only wrong answer you can give. So I was sure that when they said, is there anything else?

I had a really good answer lined up. And there, for me, in that case, I talked a lot about gaming culture and deep culture and what's exciting to me and what's not being addressed and the opportunity that I thought Microsoft had to jump right into that space and take charge because nobody was doing it properly. And like I said, it was a really good interview. Yeah, no, clearly. And then so, okay, so great. And not only do we get some great interview principles, but just a key life and communication strategy principle here. So I'm happy to dig into that more.

Now I want to dig into that next transition, which seems rare and that there's more going on from the, you know, you're not that good a producer, but I see amazing talent in you for the creative side. What came about for that? How are you expressing that? What were you doing in your role that was going above and beyond in a way that Jordan identified? So we were working on a game together, time called, oh, I'm trying to think of it was before after Halo. I think it was a little bit before, and it was a game called Cartoon Mayhem. No, I've got this backwards in Africa.

Anyway, we worked on a bunch of games together, in one of them. I was performing extraordinarily poorly, and it was just a huge scene. I was 21, 20, something like that. and things had just gotten away from it. It was just too many people and too many things going on and there were like three different developers located in different parts of the world and I kept trying to get on planes to talk to all of them

but I couldn't keep it all straight. It was a mess and it was not well organized. But in the middle of that, one of the other things that was failing was the game design kept falling apart. And so I got to really step up and I got to write a bunch of design docs about what if we tried this

and what if we tried this? And here's a thing that's been failing at time and time again to play test. What if we fixed it this way? None of those are the responsibility of the producer. And I just felt really compelled to step in

because we just kept failing at those things over and over again. And I think that was really what Jordan picked up on. I think he saw those suggestions and saw that was really not managing the project while and realized that

maybe he was just humor and me. Maybe that was a good. better than firing me. But it all worked out. We solved for the game design, hired a better producer, and saved the day. Yeah, yeah, no, it's great. And my guess is, I mean,

I'm sure you had good answers there as a smart guy, but what's more important there is that you were asking the right kinds of questions. That's what I'm always looking for in those situations, right? It's when there's a problem with game design, what is it that needs to be solved, right? what are the things that are happening, what's creating the experiences, what are the goals, and that the right kind of creative thinking really foundationally is about being able to

surface those questions. And nobody, you know, getting the right answers usually takes iterations. It takes time. It takes a lot of smashing your head against the wall. But unless you know what you're looking for, you're not going to get there. And so as a sort of creative, as a lead, it feels like that's, that's, I'm sure that's a big part of what Jordan sort of found in you. and that taking that initiative when it wasn't my job, right?

That's the other thing I've seen in a lot of people, especially at big companies, right? And you know, you're working at Microsoft. The, well, that's not my job attitude of somebody is death. It's like one of the most painful things for the purposes of a team working together and motivation, you know, if, and especially if you're on a small team, right, when everybody sort of used to feel like they have ownership of everything and take responsibility for everything.

And that attitude seems like it was in your DNA from the beginning. Yeah, that's absolutely right. The other thing that I'll say that's really important to me, a thing I learned in Microsoft is there are two kinds of people there. And I think you find this in any large company. There are those who have been there for such a long time that they've learned to be risk-averse. Right. Like anytime they're taking a risk, they might fail at that. They're not going to get rewarded because Microsoft is set up as all large corporations.

They're not actually going to get rewarded for success, but they're damn well going to get punished for failure. And so nothing is at a risk. And the other kind of person is the young and naive new hires, or there's a few that have been there for a while, really, really embrace new challenges and opportunities to make huge changes. And luckily, Microsoft was able to build the very first Xbox team just absolutely step. with people excited about risk-taking. I think that's largely why that platform right from day one was so successful. Everyone wanted to take a risk, and everyone knew let's risk as much as we can because the opportunity for success is just massive.

Yeah, this is a great place for us to kind of pause and digging a little bit too because the number one thing that stops people from doing great creative work is fear. It's this constant fear of whatever kinds of failure you're perceiving, right? Whether that's the business failure or being disappointed and people not liking your stuff or people judging you or all of these things that being averse to taking those risks of putting your work out there, of getting the feedback cycles, of learning, of feeling stupid is the barrier. And it's not a barrier that ever goes away for people in a sense, right? We're always afraid of whatever that next level of challenges. So I'd love to dig into both how you, you you view those things and personally as well as, you know, in a company, how do you, you know, you raised a great issue that well, Xbox or sorry, Microsoft broadly was structured as many corps are to reward you for not taking risks and punish you for taking risks and failing. So how can we structurally create our environments or businesses to, to encourage this kind of behavior? So both your internal drive for this and then maybe how we set up systems to do,

to do a better job. So my internal problem, the thing that I keep in mind, whenever I'm starting anything to do is all of those spheres that you mentioned, and I may fail, I might look stupid, this isn't going to work, nobody's going to like it, everyone's going to ridicule me. Those are all true. 100% of them. They are absolutely true. And here's the thing, they're a requirement. Anything you do is going to fail.

Everything you work on is going to have mistakes. Everyone is going to laugh at you. They're going to make fun of you. It's all going to be horrible. If you just accept for a second that is part of the process and that everything successful in the history of mankind has gone through that process, then it's not so scary. And if you can say, knowing I have to get through all that garbage to get to success, maybe the answer is not avoiding it, but just getting through it as fast as I possibly can. And to me, that's really been the motivating force is saying, I'm just going to fail at everything. fast as I possibly can and identify them as failures so that I can move on to successes.

As long as I don't linger, then I have a chance of actual success. Yeah, yeah, I think that's wonderful. And I'd add, you know, as you get more experience over time, you start to find when you can look back on those failures, you can see the direct line that those lead to those, to your best successes, the lessons that you take out of those failures, that these were sort of necessary steps to drive those points home and to get you to that next piece. And it's one of the reasons why I love to surface, you know, failures and setbacks and weird starting points from all of these, you know, from famous designers and people who are, you know, huge successes because it, I want to demystify

that process because most people only see you the public success, right? They don't see the failures that have happened in the background. They don't see a ton of the work that's going on where you're just bashing your head against the wall and the projects that never see the light of day. And so I always try to just reinforce that no matter how many times people can hear it. And again, even for me, I mean, I love to hear it too because you're constantly having to push yourself and put stuff out there that's public and dangerous into your own ego. And it's a really powerful thing. I think, you know, I really hope people take away from this. I also too. I, you know, to move on to the next thing, it's like, how do you build institutions

that reward that kind of thing where, where there is a culture of failing fast, I, um, It really hit home for me. When I first moved from Seattle to Los Angeles to try to start a TV studio, one of the first things I did was I wrote a bunch of scripts. I teamed up for me, be clear. I teamed up with some incredibly talented, amazing, wonderful people, and we wrote a bunch of strips. And we sold them.

Turns out, we actually were very, they were good scripts, and we sold two of them. And they were going to go into pilot, it and then some weird stuff happened, completely unrelated, but both of them got canceled before they went to pilot. And I got really depressed because these were things completely beyond my control. And I had an agent at the time. We were on track for both of these things and both fell apart. I don't quite understand why or what I couldn't have done differently.

And he said something really world-shaking. He said, what you have to understand is that, nobody's job in Hollywood is to be creative. It's nobody's job to take risks. It's not even anybody's job in Hollywood to make money. Everybody's job here is to make sure that tomorrow they still have their job in Hollywood. That's it. And I realized, like, if ever there was a sentence that fully encapsulated this idea of

nobody's getting rewarded for taking risks ever no matter what, Like that's it. All of these people are just working as hard as they can to make sure that tomorrow this soldier got no risk. I'm not going to get celebrated for success, but I'm going to get punished from failure. So let me make sure there's no failure. And that failure, on my part, having two consecutive failures within like three days and hearing why it was because nobody wanted to take risk, that let me almost immediately turn around. And, and hearing why it was because nobody wanted to take risk, that let me almost immediately turn around. and build a business plan for a studio that was going to absolutely remove risk from the process. I figured out a way to write a plan that said, here's the new kinds of shows we're going to make in Hollywood, here's why they're going to succeed, here's why they're going to be economical to build. No risk, no risk, no risk, no risk. Everybody can sign up.

And within a few months, we had an investor who put in $200 million into that, and we got to start a TV studio. but it was learning from that failure, those two failures, and the source of them, not to lean away from it, but how totally being into it and play within those boundaries. So I think, like, from an institutional point of view, you have two options. One is figure out how to lean way down into that because there are plenty of opportunities to succeed. And the other, of course, is if you can maneuver things to start your own company or work at a small company. we always build a culture where success is rewarded. Way harder to find, you have to do that one yourself.

That's certainly the way to always create big, beautiful, amazing things. Yeah, yeah. I think that the two things have to get paired, not just sort of rewarding success, but the other thing that I have tried to do in my company, and this is very hard and weird at first, is actually to celebrate failure also. I love that.

That we run into situations. where we hit a wall where we're like, oh, wow, that didn't, we didn't, we totally missed time that that didn't get delivered there. Or this thing, you know, this thing went wrong. We dropped the ball on this. And then I'm like, okay, awesome. We figured it out. Now, wait, what do we get, we get a chance to learn?

Like, let's get excited. What's, how do we make a better process for next time? What do we take away from this? And, like, actually make it a positive moment for everybody that's involved has been a real game changer for us because if you're not failing, that means you're not trying hard enough. You're here really not, you're not pushing yourself. Yeah, you're totally right. So again, very counterintuitive, very weird to start the implementation of.

But it really does matter. If you know that failure is a necessary part of getting to the higher levels of success, then you should be celebrating failures in the same way that you celebrate successes. Yep. Yep. Totally right. Everything about that is right. Let's linger on entrepreneurship here for a little while because not that many people would say,

so you jumped from producing to game design, game design to storytelling and scriptwriting and then starting a company. Your first company was this entertainment company. And what was going on there? How did you get to the point where like, yeah, I can do this? Yeah, I'm going to build this whole business structure together. Like, what was Jordan kind of advising you around this stuff? I know he's been a serial entrepreneur forever.

Like what gave you the confidence in the path to go down and raise $200 million? Well, that actually wasn't the first one. The first company I started was actually with Jordan. We had both been working within Microsoft and building some really good stuff. You know, we got the Xbox off of your hand with all kinds of really fun projects. And then we accidentally, all right, this is a long story. So I'm trying to figure out that it would correct ways to not let it take too many hours. Jordan one day

brought into my office Steven Spielberg because that's the kind of guy Jordan is he walks around with Stephen Spielberg and he brings Steven Spielberg into your office one day Okay Yeah so Stephen Spielberg said Hey I've got this new movie coming out called AI

And you guys have just signed a deal with me To do a bunch of Xbox games based on that movie. And Jordan then said, all right, and so, Ron, you're going to be the designer on six games that we're going to do around this property. And I wanted you guys to meet and go get to work. And so we did. We actually started building gates. We built an adventure game, an puzzle game, and a racing game, and a fighting game, and all these things. Each one took one little bit of the AI world. focused on it. And then Jordan said something really smart. He said, okay, well, we've got all these

games, but what we need is some narrative thread to tie all of them together. So let's create another set of characters that we'll put in every one of those games, but they have their own life, and you will see them from game to game to game. And we started brainstorming that and thinking through what that might mean and where does that live? Like, what do you do with that? And Jordan came up with this amazing concept. He said, well, what if that story lived entirely digitally? And he said, what if it lived on websites and phones and fax machines? And we just like spread it out all of the world.

And that kind of made my brain explode. Holy crap. What an amazing, huge world-changing idea that is. And so we started working on it. And we called it the glue because it was going to hold it. all of this stuff together. And then we went and we saw the screener

for AI. We went to the movie theater and all the fancy executives are there and watch AI for the first time. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie. Yeah, yeah, it's been a long time, but I remember seeing the movie. I will refresh your memory. The movie is about a robot, an Android boy, like an

eight-year-old boy, who gets adopted by a family who cannot have kids. And then when they do have kids, and they basically want to get read of the robot. The robot, though, wants more than anything to be human. It wants its mother's love. It wants to be accepted and embraced. And what ultimately happens is the family throws it out. They throw it out into the wilderness. It has no love, no affection. It cannot, it cannot, this poor thing, cannot get its mother's attention until eventually it watches the whole family die and then it

watches all of human society collapse. It is heartbreaking and it makes you cry and it's just, I don't know about you, but nobody walks out of that movie thinking, oh, I can't wait to play the Xbox games. Like, holy crap, what a mismatch. So we walked out of there and canceled all six games because we realized it's just isn't going to work at all.

And so that was painful today and really complicated. Yeah, that's, that's, I know, I know it's a long story, but I also just want, I love to linger on these moments because that's got to be a difficult thing, right? You find that there's just a creative mismatch between these two. The world inside of Microsoft has to be pushing you towards, hey, we're making, it's a huge budget film with Steven Spielberg. We're going to make these games. This is the process, you know, to push those breaks and have the sort of courage to, you know, that sounds like that would be a pretty challenging in that moment yeah it was really hard um however that was it was the right thing to do yeah and so uh so we did but we still had this project with

glue that it cost they had no business mall right it's not like it's not like people were gonna pay to visit websites or answer phones but it was this beautiful narrative that was like six months work of content. And we had written it like a word of mystery where you could discover piece by piece by piece and it would screen you along for six months. And we thought, what if, what if we went to Spielberg in Universal and said, or Skip Warner? Was it? It's been a long time. And what if we went to that and we said, what if we released this thing as a marketing piece for your movie? And they said, sure. And so we did. And kind of inadvertently created one of the world's first. alternate reality games, this new, new form of narrative. And when we finished with that project,

Jordan and I really came enamored with this new form of storytelling. And so we resigned for Microsoft and started a new company to build more than. That's fantastic. Yeah. And I mean, if there was ever a better person to learn entrepreneurship and design and storytelling from, then Jordan, I don't know that they exist. So that's a great, a great way to get started. And so maybe I'll pivot a second from the entrepreneurship because I think there's, we know we've talked a little bit about, about lessons for running that. But here we're playing around in the edges of story and games. And I'd love to discuss a little bit more because, you know, I started off as a very kind of mechanics focused person, the play of games.

building that tension into the design and having people kind of express their own identity through that was something that always first drew me to games. Then over time, I've become more and more enamored with the importance of the story, not just the immersion story from play, but the overarching story and the medium through which you tell it and how that influences things. So I'd love to, you know, have you expound a little bit on how you think about that integration of story and game design. What is there one that's sort of always primary to you? What is the, what is the, what a storytelling through games look like relative to a more traditionally linear narrative. You know, we can go a lot of places with this, but I'd love to just kind of hear some of your initial thoughts on this.

Sure. So I believe story is 50% of any video game you work on. I think the other 50% is the game mechanic. But I tend to look at it very skewed. I think that the game mechanic is simply a mechanism by what your story is delivering. It is half of the importance of the project, but I really do think of story as vital. And I've had a very different kind of experience with story than most, because most of the games, starting with alternate reality games and moving forward from there,

most of the games and experiences that I've worked on, where I've got millions, and millions of people going through this narrative that I've painstakingly crafted to give to make them feel a certain way. If you look at them, they are almost all murder mysteries. And the reason is because, for me, personally, when you're writing a story, those initial scripts I worked on, probably those were not murder mistakes. Those were classic narrative structure. They had a beginning, middle and end with three acts, and some of them were comedies, and one of them was a drama. But they told the story of a protagonist going through a situation, specifically designed so that when you go through that situation with them, you will come out the other end, feeling a certain way, coming to a certain revelation, and feeling good or sad or at least intrigued by the process. The problem with alternate reality games is you are the protagonist.

And when you are the protagonist, I have very limited tools about what I can put you through. And almost no tools about what I can make you feel. I can create scenarios. I can show you the right ending. I can play music when you get to the right ending. But how you actually feel is entirely based on your own set. of emotions that you carry into that experience with. And that's the huge problem with alternate reality games.

So I have to rely on a different kind of construct, murder mystery, entry. There isn't mystery. There's something unresolved that you and only you, and thank God you're here, only you can solve this thing. And hopefully the resolution of that process and the hoops I'm going to make you jump through

to get to that ending will hopefully simulate those same chemicals in your brain when you successfully resolve a normal protagonist's dilemma and take them to the end of the story. Fascinating. In games and in stories, a lot of it feels like it's all about this sort of creation of rising tension and relief of that tension, right? Whether that's a protagonist moving through, right, you have the sort of classic three arc story, sort of rising, things are getting bad, things are getting bad, oh my God, there's as bad as they can be, and then, okay, we get out of it, we get this release. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, in a classic linear video game,

you can generally do the same kinds of things, right? You're the protagonist as you, but you are part of this sort of more narrative story. In a more classic and something where it's an alternate reality game, you're creating that tension through these unresolved mysteries. That's that sort of lingering tension. And I am going through and unlocking the keys to that next resolution. That's giving me that tension release.

And I find the same is true. Right. in games, right? I always said the sort of the heart of a game, the heart of your mechanic is where you create, what's creating the tension? What is the core tension of your game that's giving you that like, oh my God, is this going to happen?

And then release of success or failure or whatever happens. Yep. Yep. And so I think, you know, once you know where that heart of that tension is, then you can play around in tons of places. So it sounds like even with these alternate reality games, you're putting that, you're hinging that tension on.

on this unresolved mystery. And then from there, if it's, if I want to make you, you know, go run to a pay phone or solve this other puzzle or decode this thing, it does it to some degree that part, it almost doesn't matter because I know I can take you here and that's always going to tie us back to this. This is the tension that keeps you engaged and keeps you excited. Very well said. Yeah. Precisely. Awesome.

So, so I, uh, you know, when it comes to telling these stories and being a part of this, you know, you jumped from I, you know, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, You know, you sort of learned a program and you're scripting Jar Jar's neck to I'm producing things to and now I'm a game designer. And now I've doing games that also tell stories. And then you jump from that business to then saying, I'm just going to be writing scripts and I'm just going to tell stories directly. Like what was pulling you there to make that transition? I realized that I needed like everything that I was working on in the alternate reality space were marketing pieces. because no one's going to pay for these things.

Like, I worked on a giant piece for Nine Inch Nails for their album called Year Zero. And it was glorious. It was so much fun. And we had so many millions of people engaging in this thing every single day. And we could dole out more story and they would eat it all up. And it was great. It was an incredible collaboration with bands and Trent Resner. But what I realized is every night.

when I go to sleep, I'm actually not making any money. Like, I'm not producing anything that's going to allow me to feed myself tomorrow. It is only when I'm actually actively working that I'm producing everything. And because the very nature of alternate reality games is very temporal, right? You experience them in real time. And if you miss it, you have completely missed it. And so as a result, they can only function realistically as marketing. pieces, promotion at a certain time in a certain place. And I became really dissatisfied with that.

I thought it wasn't a very smart way to approach these things. And so I thought, Hollywood has this at least a little bit more figured out. They figured out how to turn narrative into a product that people can consume over and over and over again. So let me move to LA. Let me try my attempt at that, my best attempt at that just to see what that world is like. And that led to writing to scripts and then eventually starting my own TV studio. Fascinating. And it would seem to be like the natural jump would be to make games or video games rather than go to scripts in Hollywood since you've already, you've been part of that process, you've been building games, you've had relationships in that space.

Was that a consideration or it was just, no, you know, Hollywood's where it's at. This is what's for me. It was really strict on Hollywood. At the time, games. narrative like traditional video game narrative wasn't really scratching via 20. I felt like it's still how long a way to go and it did. Today there's a ton of video games I can play that will make me laugh and cry and have been elicit that response. But at the time it wasn't really doing it. Hollywood was really intriguing to me because it felt like no one has tried applying technology to Hollywood yet. And so what I say we started a TV studio.

It wasn't, and if you remember, my goal is to say, like, this is a sure thing. Here's how we're going to do it. That was a mix of your very traditional scripts that are easy to deliver. But here is a super cheap, fast technology platform that I can plug into this thing. So that when you are watching one of my shows and you see a character on the screen, pick up a phone to make a phone call, the next moment the cell phone in your pocket is going to start making. Because the character is calling you, and you will have a conversation. And my characters can send you emails and faxes.

And when you see a character walk by a printer or hold something in your hand, I can find a printer in your house, turn it on, and print out that thing. I can make the story happen in your life. I can use elements of your life as a canvas. And I can do that really easily and really cheaply. I've never tried anything like this in Hollywood before, so I'll put that I can get something started really quick. It felt like there was more room there, more room for experimentation for cheap, easy, low budget, low staff experimentation than there was in the video game field at the time.

Got it. All right. Now that this is, this is making more sense. I've, I've heard you talk about this in other interviews, but not not at this detail. So now there's this new interactive medium, which you have key experience in that you're bringing to Hollywood of saying it's not just passively watching a TV. Now the character can call me. I, can see things in my house that makes this story come to life, it'd be more interactive than anything before. I can see where that now became this sort of very intriguing thing to build something new in that space. Yeah. And wait, how long? Go ahead. Sorry. Please continue.

No, I just want to know how long ago this was that you started down that road. That was probably 10 or 12 years ago. Okay. It sounds such a cool concept, but I'm not, I apologize. I'm not familiar with it. I've not had any shows where anybody called me. But why isn't this everywhere?

This sounds so cool. I know. I know. It was short-lived. So two things that. One is we released our first show called Dirty Work, which I loved. It had all the interactive components. It won in a primetime Emmy.

Like, it was actually big. It was actually really well received. And holy crap, here I am, a weird narrative computer programmer. and I've got an Emmy sitting on my desk. That doesn't happen, and that is a very, very exciting form of acknowledgement of, yeah, you are creating something, and it's something important in a new way to tell stories. What happened next was we kind of realized, unfortunately, that in building our second and third show, that we hadn't identified the right kind of platform.

because, like all game mechanics, if you repeat them over and over and over again, your audience is going to get bored. And we were simply out of new ways to use this thing. We had done so many cool things on that first show, then our second show, it just didn't have enough rig to shine. And our third one, it was just complete regurgitation of the same concept over. So you do that enough times, and you're not winning awards, you're not getting advertisers and nobody's buying your shows and eventually, alas, you have to shut down that studio.

Yeah. Yeah. So it was like there was this great innovation, but it maybe only had so much room to explore before it kind of fizzled out and you needed to find something new. Yeah. Yeah. It was really a shame. Like I, that was for me that was about a year not failing fast. That was a year of failing very slowly.

And it was painful. and I learned a ton from it. But I really regret in hindsight how obvious those issues were. The fact that I'd spend somebody else's money without acknowledging what the future that might hold, I feel horrible about it. So was it, I'd love to sort of get more explicit with those lessons, right? Was it that, you know, you have to be, was it not projecting far enough into the future to see the consequences being too in love with the product and not necessarily

the value to the to the viewer and the customer? What were the takeaways that that you learned from that tough experience? Yeah, a little from all of those columns there. I think if I did put it in one sense, it was we absolutely felt a look at the first product. Everyone we showed it to had an incredible time with it, and we had zero ideas for what to do beyond that. Yeah. You know, some of that I let's play with this a little bit too because, you know, on the one hand, being able to sort of project out into the future and see the consequences and be able to plan for what's coming next is really important. On the other hand, I also tend to think that if you try to think too far into the future, a lot of times it can be crushing to your initial drive to build things out.

I mean, if I knew before I started how hard starting my company was going to be and how much work it was going to take to get everything done, I'm not sure I would have done it. In retrospect, I'm super glad I did, but it was only because I didn't know what I didn't know. So I wonder, you know, wisdom is all about being able to hold on to paradoxes and use them efficiently. But maybe do you feel that tension there? I feel attention in a slightly different place in that timeline. I think the initial idea was good enough to raise money around. It was a completely worthwhile show to make the audience acclaim, the industry acclaim that we received was married because this was new and exciting.

It is when we started working on the second piece and failing at it that we made mistakes. and mistakes were we did not acknowledge quickly enough that we were failing at it. We just assumed that we would find the answer and we spent way too long searching. And I think there were better things we could have done. I think there were other avenues we could have explored if we had not been so precious about. The second one has to look like the first one. We have to keep building on what we have. And it's okay to think that for a little while.

But when you think it for too long and you're not making any progress, you're failing slowly and you run through all your money. And that is the actual failure. Yeah. Yeah. No. And that's that falling in love with your product and not, you know, the value you're providing to to your customers, your viewers, your players.

And it's so easy to do. And just tying this back because I, again, I like to bring things down to earth. And I don't know how many of our viewers are working on television studios. But this applies to no matter what you're doing, right? If you're working on a tabletop game right now and you're just in love with what you've made for that game, but you're not able to open up and listen to what players are saying and what things they're going to need from it. And it's not just about how clever your thing is, but the experience that they're having and building with your toys. And so being able to

sort of zoom out in that way quickly, or at least before too long is really, really important. Quick is hard. I get that. Yeah, that's exactly it. So I do want to get into tabletop game stuff, but why? all were in the land of television. I've, I revealed a little bit of my fanboy done the last time we talked, but I'm also really interested in reality shows as a game concept. And I,

I am personally a huge fan of Survivor, and I learned that you have been a consultant on that show and been able to kind of help build some of their games and challenges. Yeah. I want to talk, I want to talk a little bit about that, but I also want to talk about it a little bit more in the abstract and building as a game designer,

building a reality show, building a game for an audience like that. And, you know, actually even just as I'm listening to your story about 42 entertainment and your technology there, that feels like cool technology to apply to this space too. So how do you think about designing for a reality show comparatively to these other things? And, you know, you can maybe tell some fun stories about the work of time. I should start by saying that I am obsessed with Survivor. I am one of those people who's watched every episode, every season, life, know all the characters. I believe that Survivor is the best game that has ever been on television, and no one else has come close.

So with that said, I have always been fascinated by. I really always wanted to be a contestant. I've learned that I'm now disqualified because I've actually worked for a company. I would love to be contested, but the surviving part of Survivor was always the thing that put me off. I love the game so much, but I don't want to sleep on the ground. Yeah, yeah, the bugs. Yeah, I know. But I, so I have a friend who is also a consultant on the show, and his name is Miles.

And Miles one day said, hey, do you want me to introduce you to that team? because you're smart, you design stuff, and what they really need help with, the team that he was working on, was the challenge design team, right? The guys who build, who design and then build all the physical challenges for the game. And I thought, oh, man, hell and yeah,

so plenty of major views. So he made the introduction, and we got along well enough that they invited me to sit through just a two-day brainstorming session with them, like literally two days. I mean, they broke for a few hours at night, but that's about it. And it was one of the best experiences ever.

And while none of like my fully realized things were ever in the show, little tiny elements that I helped brainstorm, I got to see on TV on the two seasons later. And it was amazing. Like, what a rewarding incredible experience for me to get to understand, like, when I pay something like, hey, let's build a survivor Super Mario level, and here's what floating platforms look like. And they come back with, no, listen, this is Gilligan's Island. Nobody on the show has access to anything beyond something that Gilligan would have access to. Therefore, we can't build that metal thing. Because think about it, have you ever seen metal on the show ever? It was like,

oh, wow, so much thought goes into this. And there's such a, there's such a long Bible they must adhere to, which is invisible to the fans, but so important to the show being successful. And I got to learn all about that, and I think I got at least a little bit better at it by day two. But in that process, I became very friendly with them. And one of the people I met was the host, Jeff Prost, and we just kind of hit it off. And since then, over the last few years, I've been in this just very fortunate position to get to not brainstorm challenges anymore, but I get to have conversations with him about what are the themes of the show? What are the bigger pictures that he can put audiences through and contestants through that will feel like something new and a new tape on the show and each season being better than the last? And here's where I have to be super careful to say, this is all, Jeff.

Jeff is the most brilliant game designer on the planet, and he doesn't even know it. And all I do is listen to his ideas and spit the same things back at him. It's just sometimes he needs to hear them from a different voice. Well, it's clearly been an amazing recipe and what he's been able to make, but I want to zoom it out and again talk about some of the principles here, that one, it's not, you know, this idea you brought up of, oh, no, no, we can't, you know, we can't have metal things here because there's this overarching story and theme that's going on that's invisible to the conscious mind of the viewer, but is critical to the success of the, of the show.

So, and I think this is another one of those things. It's just a fundamental principle of game design that there's, you know, a lot of that background structure and element and rules that you need to think through what's going to come across and what is the, you know, the feeling you want to evoke and what are the rules you're going to follow to do that is something that that applies to all different variants of design. And then and and then there's this. The other thing you talked about is where, you know,

Jeff shines and what you're trying to do is to build these new experiences and new themes that feel like something different, but still feel enmeshed within the world. I recently gave a talk on this sort of concept of building games that last, right? It's something that's, we're celebrating the 10th anniversary of ascension this year. And so we've made 20 products. And so it's been this thing of like, okay, well, how do you make this new same but different

paradox resolved and do something? And now Survivor's been around for 20 years and has the giant audience. It's insane. And it gets bad. I believe the last season was the best season yet. Like it's amazing. And what I think especially when you're talking about something to a to a viewing audience and a TV audience that this sort of simplicity of being able to get it in just a few

seconds, get it when I talk about it at a high level. but still have that execution and intricacy level to pull it off. And so I'd like to maybe what is it about Survivor that succeeds here? Or we can use other examples when you're designing something like this where an audience has to be able to jump in. How do you build something like that that comes across in the right sort of way? And maybe you can even tie into when you say you've got two days of brainstorming with just a break for some sleep. What does the brainstorming process look like in a world like that? Sure.

Okay, you just made a statement that for most people ought to be mind-blowing, and I hope it is, which is survivors in its 20th year, and they just have the best season they have ever done. Like, who gets to say that? That is insane on a level that is just unprecedented from television, right? Like, shows get worse over time, period. somehow that is not what is applied here. And holy crap. You just have to be so impressed with the creative team,

with the management team, and this organization has come together to produce the state. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's incredible. Yeah, yeah. You've got a closer eye view than anybody I've spoken to. So, yeah, what's the secret? How does it work?

So I don't, I couldn't tell you this, but I'll tell you the two aspects of it that I've seen. The first one is the physical brainstorming, they basically build a toy store. Like they have, they're really open to outside people coming in. And we all sit in a room and people bring toys. I found this little children's toy where I was traveling through Taiwan. and do you think there's some challenge to this? Or I went to Target and I played a new game and I decided to bring it in because maybe there's something to that. Or I just watched a different reality show from, I don't know, from Budapest.

And here was a challenge that I really liked. So I brought in a recording of that. And everybody just brings their toys. And none of them are good because they're not supposed to be good. They're just supposed to be the seeds of brainstorming. And that's what's really magical about that. You hear that thing, there's no such a thing as a bad idea. Truly, they embrace that in that room.

Everything is considered, no matter how ridiculous, everything is embraced, and they write everything down, and then they start the process about that thing. Hey, everything about this toy is broken. But you see what a little hinge at the bottom? What if we attached a basketball boot to that? that kind of hinge and blah, blah, blah, right? It's crazy how it works because they are as open-minded a group as I've ever encountered. And so there's a lot of magic there.

And it's a really important takeaway for brainstorming sessions, just how fully they embrace that concept. And also they invite others in. Like, it's not them. They know that they've been at this for so long. They need fresh ideas. We need new toys and new people for him in. So they do. So that's great.

And I'll just pause briefly because like this syncs 100% with modern research on the best ways to ideate and innovate together. I've done a lot of work with the Wharton School of Business on this and we've run ideation sessions for, you know, giant companies like Google and Twitter. And it is like these first stages, the one thing that you didn't explicitly highlight, but is there is that, you know, that there's always be exploring, right? Pulling things from all kinds of diverse fields, whether that's a toy or, you know, some other market or some other market or some other thing. Like, ideas can come from anywhere and being open to areas that are especially outside of your industry is key. So everybody that's designing games up there, you'd be looking for things from all other

places alike. Then, you know, being open to the no bad ideas phase and allowing people to present stuff and engage with each other, inviting in diverse views, bringing people who are not like you to share ideas and forcing those things to come together. And then writing everything down and being able to sort of parse stuff out and find connections and fine little pieces. Like every step that you described there is absolutely critical. And so I just want to make sure people are listening and taking notes because if you are

working with people and you're not following those steps, you are making yourself dumber. You are actually reducing ideas. You're actually compressing ideas. And so this is critical to success. So yeah, I just wanted to pause there because it's so important. Yeah, well said. I'm going to, I should add one more thing, which is the thing they did that I didn't quite understand until later.

So my friend who brought me in this, Miles, he had an idea that was really good. Like everybody just fell in love with it. And they wrote it down, they figured out how they could build it, and that it was, in fact, buildable. And they wrote it down and captured the whole thing. And so then they all go off to Fiji. And they go off. They'll need, what, 10 or 12 ideas, and they'll go off with 25.

And I didn't quite understand why because I was like, look, clearly you've got your favorites. You've even got like 15 that you can build and are ready to go and affordable. So like, why are you carrying all this other stuff with you? And I didn't understand it. And Miles' idea never made it to the show. Many of his ideas have it. This one in particular did not. And when they came back after the season, I just asked about it.

I was really surprised to see that, you know, a thing who were also excited about was on the show. And he said, yeah, we built it and it wasn't any fun. And there's no way we could have known that until we actually built it and put people on the apparatus. And so that's why we bring double what they need because there is this X factor of we're now in Fiji and it's X temperature and hence humidity and we've never actually tested any of this crap. So we need a bunch of spares. Yeah, yeah, this is the other fundamental piece of design and game design, especially. It's like you just, you don't know if it's fun until you test it. You can have the best brainstorm in the world and the smartest people in the room until you actually run a play session and see what happens.

You don't know. Yeah, it's 100% true. And that was a really important lesson for me. I loved, I loved seeing that. And then like, there were no hard feelings at all. And Miles was like, oh, yeah, of course it didn't. They built it and it didn't work. Of course.

That happens all the time. Really? All the time? Yeah, that's how this show works. And I just thought that was so smart. But it wasn't personal and fully expected. Yeah, that's great. That's the other attitude.

We call it sort of psychological safety in the brainstorming space where you know you're not going to get attacked for ideas, where you're not going to become so attached to your own ideas. If they do get, you know, shut down or not executed on. And, you know, building that culture is critical to long-term success in keeping people creative. Yeah. The other thing that I think is really worth talking about, the second half that I'm being exposed to is just the brain of Jeff Gross. And when he did, like, I'll talk to him a lot about, concepts, things that I'm excited about or he's excited about or things that he wants to try. and he does this one thing over and over again.

It's kind of like his own superpower. Whenever there's a new idea, no matter how excited he is about it, whether he's come up with it, someone else has come up with it, he writes it down and then is able to read what he has written as if it is the first time he has ever encountered it. And in doing that,

I don't know he does it, it's this crazy superpower. In doing that, he is able to instantly, identify when something is too complicated because it's just too confusing for him to read and he doesn't understand it even though he wrote it five minutes ago he suddenly doesn't understand it because he's been able to wipe his brain clear and read it from new eyes and in doing that going through that process he just he's got this laser focus on the audience is going to

understand this they're going to get it and they're going to get damn excited about it yeah that is that is an amazing superpower. It's one of those things where, you know, as we sort of touched on earlier, you know, you fall in love with your own ideas, your own product, your own thing that you've created. And to you, especially, you know, as a game center, to you, it's all intuitive. Of course, you know, this does this than this. And but to another person coming in from the outside with your set of preconceived notions without having talked through their thought through everything like you have, it could be completely opaque. And to be able to get yourself into the headspace, especially quickly is really impressive.

Oftentimes I'll have to, I'll do the same thing where I'll write stuff down, but I have to leave for a while and come back to it to be able to get that same mindset. Yeah, it really is a superpower. He is perfectly tailored to do this job because he's just got, he comes in with a skill set that I'm just in awe of

like so many times. We will have been talking about something that we're really excited about, totally works. It's super exciting. It's going to change everything. And then the next day he'll say, okay,

here's what we're doing, and I'll read a thing. And it's a completely different idea. And when I ask him about it, it's always the same thing. He's like, oh, yeah, I heard it down.

I didn't understand it. It's like, man, that's crazy. You know, you can do that. And what he'll go with instead is it a super simplified version

or sometimes it's a different idea. But whatever's on the paper is so digestible It's so exciting that he just, he is good at that thing, man. It's so good at it. Yeah. I think it's a great exercise for people to try to work towards, even if it's, yeah, I don't know anybody.

Maybe that could pull it off, but always being tried to see, see those things with fresh eyes. And I, you know, I want to, I want to, you know, transition a little bit here and praise you because I view you as having some of this superpower. Obviously, I don't see your process on a day-to-day basis, but in the, the games that you're maybe now most well known for exploding kittens and throw-throw burrito and most recently poetry for Neanderthals, these are games that have a amazing top-line simplicity to them, that like I can just get them in, you know, a minute explanation that have this

enduring appeal. And I'm so impressed by that. And I think it's a reasonable sort of transition here because that's the key for building a reality show that millions of people have to be able to get what's going on on the screen, even if they're just tuning in right now, to you, you've been able to sort of build this into your, your games,

and I'm curious, what is, where's your superpower in this? How are you able to sort of filter these things that way? You know, there's nothing you couldn't say that would make me happier than that compliment. So thank you for that.

That's incredibly flattering. I don't, I don't actually know the best way to describe it in myself. What I will say is, whenever I'm working on a new game, I rely very, very heavily on testing. I test it with all the people around me. I send it to people. I describe it to people.

And I'm watching the reaction really, really careful. I know that for my own part, I can't clear my head and read it with nuance. I just can't always in love with stuff. So I have to rely on other people to tell me I like this. I don't like this. I'm bored or not bored. But when I send games to people, I usually only send one question along with it,

which is the moment you finish, do you want to play again? The best question. The best question. Yeah. It's the only one I actually care about. They used to have a lot of questions. And then I don't actually care about the answer to any of them,

because I don't know that I'm going to get the right answers or that you're qualified or that you're, you know, all this stuff. Who cares? Really, do you want to play again? And so that question becomes really important. We just released a game called Poetry for Manderthals. And that game was really simple. Like, so, so, so simple.

It started out very complicated. It started out as essentially you have to get your team to say complex sentences. I went to the supermarket and met a dragging, and we shared lunch, we shared a hot eggplant sandwich together. I have to get you to say that. And the way I have to get you to say that is by only using single-syllable words. And I'll take 10 minutes to get you through that whole sentence. And it was really funny and really interesting, but, you know, I would always ask a question.

All right, you played around. You want to play again. Maybe, right? That's not what I'm looking for. So we simplified it and made the sentence is shorter. still was getting sort of maybe simplified it more. Eventually the game that shifts

has one word on each card. I have to get you to say marshmallow and I can only use single syllable words and I'm now that's a very short exercise right? I'm going to say you know this this white cube

put on stick put on put for camp right like something like that right and maybe you get marshmallow and you don't but I'm going to get through as many of those I can in two minutes, and we're all laughing constantly and having a great time. And not only were all the tests when I asked the question, do you want to play again. Not only was it unanimous, yes. But one of the things I do is I ask for the gains back when I set them out because I want

to test with a bunch of people. I sent out eight of these things, and not a single family would send a game back. Not even one of them. And I realized, like, okay, now I have a second level. not only do you want to play again, but you're stealing my game from me. Like, you're not going to get that. That's awesome. The ultimate test.

Did you steal this from me? Did you steal this from me? Yeah. So that happened with 8 out of mate on poetry, and I just thought like, oh, man, all right, let's push this thing out as soon as possible. So, yeah, it just came out earlier in the year, and it's doing really well. I'm so happy with this game. It's just it makes everybody who plays it start to giggle. Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic.

I, as soon as, again, I haven't had a chance to play yet, but I, you know, from just watching the videos, it was already hilarious, just the one minute I'm in. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is great. And so the, let's, I just want to dig into this testing process some more because it sounds fascinating. So when you, you have some playtest groups and families that are out there that have signed up or that, you know, you have connections to,

you send them a copy of the game with written instructions. Is that where, like what, how does this all work? Are you filming them? Are you getting, you know, what's your test process look like? Yeah. So we, we try to keep it really simple. We will send a family of prototype. By the way, if anybody wants to sign up, just go to Explanuton.

com and there's a little button, click the button. And so we send the games out. And all that we ask is that they film it. And we don't care how boring the videos are. but we can really watch the entire play test sessions and we either send instructions and ask them to read the instructions out loud or we send them if we're trying to test the instructional video

we'll give the URL for that and watch it and all we're really looking for is we want that video back and we ask our one question and usually we want the game back as well but now apparently we've got to change our policy a little bit but we're testing a cat casual party games, right? So like, we're not looking for, hey, play the game three times and tell me about the strategies that merge. We're not asking for balancing issues. All of that stuff I find tends to come out in that video. If I've got too many of one card versus another card, I don't need to ask that question. I can watch you play and watch people say like, oh, man, another one of those. Like when I hear that, I know, right, we've got a balancing issue. We've got to hit that. So I try to keep the questions almost

not existing. Yeah, that's great. Especially, yeah, for that category of game. One of the best experiences I ever had, I mean, also most painful, was being able to do some of those one-way mirror tests with the Bakugan game when I was working on that.

Like, and it's with kids, you know, so you've got like eight to 10-year-old kids. And, you know, I try to make this as simple as possible and straightforward, and you just watch with them just to just completely destroy your rule set, completely ignore everything you're doing. You're like, okay, well, that's, not going to work. And so I learned, I learned so much from that process. So whenever you can separate

yourself from that situation, and for those of you out there that don't necessarily, you know, have the ability to do that directly, just try to simulate it as much as possible, or be able to create a situation where even if you're in the room, you're not talking, you're not responding to those answers. You're making them answer stuff themselves. The interview I did with Eric Lang talks about this a lot. He talks about his process. He gets, he gets amusingly belligerent about it. But, you know, besides that, that's an opt-in. But as much as possible, yeah, watch people react and watch them struggle with stuff. And that's, that's going to give you your best lessons. Yeah. Whenever, whenever I'm sitting in on a play's on session,

line that I always say right before they start is, you know, I'm the game creator. We're watching you. So ask as many questions as you would like, be as vocal as you would like, and we will ignore it every single one of them. Great. That's a great line. Okay, I don't have that much time left here with you. And I knew I wasn't going to get through my entire list, but there's one more sort of meaty topic I want to dig into here. And that is, you know, we've talked about, you know,

the creation process of games and testing games. We've talked about the importance of storying games and tension and how these things rely on and jumped across a few different platforms, which is all fantastic. But there's something else that I think is critical to making games that last. and it is about building things that people become so passionate about that it becomes their identity, that it becomes part, they build communities around it. And I think that you are really uniquely positioned to this, you know,

and you've succeeded in so many different arenas with it where it's, you know, people are getting tattoos and proposals around and married around the games and building these, like, very deep Reddit communities and having conversations around everything and, and filming themselves with catbeard. and all kinds of crazy stuff. And so I want to dig in a little bit on what is it that makes games become a part of people's identity?

What lets them sort of build that community and grow to the point where this becomes more than a game, it's really a part of who they are? I have an answer for that, but I also want to tell you a story about that. The easy answer for me is a line that I've thought a lot about it and realized I've repeated many times,

which is games should not be entertaining. Games should make the people you're playing with, entertaining. And if you can figure that out the right way to deliver that, don't shine a spotlight on yourself. You deserve zero accolade for the games you create. You want to shine a spotlight on the people. You want them to celebrate each other, and you want to perform relationships, you want them to interact with each other. If you look at the cards and exploding kittens, which is one of our simplest games, every single card there, if you look at it very carefully creates an interaction between two players, very specifically designed to do so,

because that's where the entertainment values. And all of our games have that at their core. That's really my design philosophy for everything I've ever worked on. Let's celebrate the people. Every game should be a mirror and let people look at themselves and look at people around the table. My favorite example is conventions. We have to show up to conventions because we're a games company, and that's where you highlight your new games and make your product announcements, and that's where the audience is. But conventions suck.

Like, they're noisy and crowded, and there's so much going on that you can't possibly attract anybody's attention. You certainly can't shine a spotlight on anybody. And everybody leaves, they go to a booth, they pander over money, they get a game, they walk in. away, they have no memory of that interaction because nothing about it was memorable and certainly nothing about it was interactive. So we, and we did that for about two years until I got very frustrated and we all kind of huddled up and came up with a better idea. Our better idea was, what if we we designed the world's best bending machine? And there's a very specific reason that we went a bending machine, and that is to, because it would facilitate shining spotlight on people, but I'll

explain what that means in a second. So we built an amazing vanishing machine. It was about eight feet tall. It's totally covered in fur. It looks like an adorable cat holding out its arms to give you a hug. It has an interactive screen. It has buttons. You go up to it and put money inside and push the button at the game long. The game comes out the bottom. And that's it. But that's not what magic is. The magic is that we inserted an extra button. The extra button says random item, one dollar. And when you push that random item button and put in your dog, the truly random object is going to come out of. You might get a pineapple or a toilet plunger or an origami animal or a burrito.

We have 2,000 items that the vetting machine was capable of delivering to people. And it delivered them based on a little bit of intelligence to make each item perfect for the person. If you're dressed as Link from Zelda, you're very likely going to get a sword out of there, and it's almost definitely going to match your outfit perfectly. And the way we did this is we cheated. It's not a vending machine or all. It's a vending machine costume.

And inside are eight people working tirelessly to deliver the perfect item to everybody that walks up to it. And it's damn hard. and it's the hardest job I've ever done in my life. But so much fun because what happens is anybody who walks up to that thing, they push the item, they push the button. The object that they get is crafted with love. Now, luckily, we have a two-hour line usually for the same. It is the most popular thing.

The line goes outside our booth, down the hall, outside the doors, down the street, so much so that the fire marshal usually shuts us down and kicks us out. And not just a line, but also a crowd of people all watching as people purchase stuff. I mean, I've seen this at tons of conventions, and I'm sure there's got to be a bunch. People can Google it and find it because if you haven't seen it, it's brilliant. And it is like literally people are watching other people buy stuff and excited and cheering. You've had people build features to sit and watch 200 people, watch this vending machine. And let's be clear about why.

It's not because the vending machine is entertaining. is because the vending machine makes the people in front of it entertain. It creates custom experiences for everyone that walks up. When we see Danny Targary, Mother of Dragons from Game of Thrones, when we see her in line half an hour back, we know we've got 30 minutes to bedazzle a watermelon and make it look like a dragon egg. So that when she hits that button, out comes a dragon egg,

and her brain drips out of her ears, because that's not possible, but yet there it is. And we do that for every single person. And what happens is people's reactions, people's interactions, people waiting in line multiple times, people cheering, people singing songs, people proposing marriage to the machine. That's the entertainment, because the machine is just the tool set to enable that entertainment value by shining a spotlight on the person standing in front of it. So that's, to me, that's like, that's what all game design should be.

That's how you're going to get people to celebrate. That's how you get people to get tattoos. That's how you get people to build fan fiction. It's when you celebrate them more than yourself. And in fact, make that the core of everything you do. So I love that. And I love, you know, the sort of provocativeness of the phrase, right? Games should not be entertaining.

Games should be making the people playing entertaining. I bet that there's some in the audience that would push back on this. And I'm going to try to beat their voice here because, sure, that's easy. That's easy when you've got comedy and you've got a really funny IP and you've got all these jokes and you've got all these things. But, you know, I'm making a serious game. I'm making a strategy game. I'm making a fantasy game. I'm doing this other thing.

How does this appeal to me? Like my game is really complicated. It's the game that's really shining here. you make, how do those games become about the players and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I think, I think, I think it's definitely more complicated. I'm very sympathetic to that, but absolutely achievable. Let's look at sort of the mid-core game, for example. Let's look at sellers of good time. What is the core gameplay of sellers? What do you, what in your opinion? What is it? Uh, it's that, the, the, the exchange of resources between the players and the feeling of tension. Absolutely right. Yes. Yes. Most people. Most people.

I'm so glad you said that. Most people say it's a resource collection game or a resource management game, and they're just wrong. Silozo the Catan is an interactive trading game disguised as resource management game. Because all the value there is, what are you going to trade? What did you do you portray and you that sound? You move the robber to my space. It's all of that interaction embedded in a strategy game.

I grant you it's a light to mid-core strategy game, But still, it's a really good example and has sales numbers to prove it of why that formula works, right? Everyone who plays that game is providing entertainment for everyone else playing that game every single step of the way. And that's so valuable. I look at the other category that I've just become so fascinated with is social production games, right? The were a world from mafia. Those games are not entertaining at all. they 100%

the lie on the people, right? Like that's all they are. And yet, and yet they're thought of as this this like new form of strategy games. But every other strategy creates an attraction between you and somebody else. I'm not going to be able to like look at diplomacy

and try to break it down the same way. I'll bet someone much smarter than I could. But I would argue. Oh, wow. That's so funny you use that as a, example. To me, diplomacy is one of the easiest examples. It's all player. It's all that player to negotiate.

No, because, I mean, diplomacy is all about that personal interaction between the players, right? It's all about that, oh, I'm going to make a deal with you. I mean, it's Survivor, the board game in many ways, right? Like, yeah, we're going to work together, but eventually one of us is going to have to betray the other, and how much do I trust you? You know, but diplomacy is the game that I had the most

fun playing that I never wanted to play again. Because I, like, friendships, friendships were destroyed, like entire like world views were changed like to me the the mechanics of diplomacy and i i assume our audience is someone familiar with this but it's basically you know you're controlling different countries trying to take over take over the world and you basically all write down your instructions at the same time and it's it's just all about like did you get other people to do things with you and were you able to collaborate or if you betray each other and so that one that one to me is like an easy case of like

it's all the personalities and the reactions between the players but your point is well taken obviously the more complex and the more I'm staring at the board rather than talking to people, the harder I think it becomes to make it about the people. I think would be the line I would use. I think that's true, but I don't want to drop the challenge. I want to say, try it anyway.

I believe that your players will have such a better, a more positive experience if they can walk away feeling excited, betrayed, enthralled, whatever it is. If they can direct those emotions towards other players instead of at your game, I'm willing to guarantee they will have a better experience. Yeah, no, and I think it's 100% right. And I'll just speak from my own experience, right? Even a game like Ascension, where the player interactions are very limited, right?

Most of you're just buying off the same set of center cards. And so there's the story of like, I'm taking a card away from you or not. But the deck building genre in general succeeds where I'm in this hero's journey. My deck continually improves. I'm able to kind of build the strategy together and people can kind of see and I can show off. Oh, look at this cool thing I did. Look at these combos I made. Look at this thing where you express yourself through the thing that you built.

And even though it is an example of one of those games where you could just spend your whole time staring at the board, there is this element where my story evolves over time and those interactions come together over time. Those are the best moments and the best connection points and why people stay hooked. Perfect. Okay. I know I could keep going forever. I have already run past our allotted time. So I apologize for that, but not really because this is, this is awesome and there's so much great value here.

So I want to close off with where can people find you, find more of your stuff. I know you've got a ton of great, you know, talks that you've given and other things out there, too, for people that want to learn more. I purposely avoided some of the topics, which I've seen you speak very eloquently about elsewhere, like the Kickstarter campaign and other things, so people can kind of hunt it down rather than rehashing it here. So where can people find more of your awesome stuff? The easiest way is just exploding getting some com. And I try to put as much stuff there as possible as far as I have to find out what we're up to and where we're going to be. The other thing is, just like you said, if you do a search for any,

And you will find a lot of good stuff, a lot of horrible stuff, and a lot of stuff in which which is which. It'll be in saying that for the reader. I love it. I love it. Elon, it really has meant the world to me being able to sort of connect with you and now have two incredibly enlightening conversations. I appreciate it.

I hope very sincerely, this is not the last of these conversations we have, but I really appreciate it, man. Thanks so much, Justin. This is a lot of fun. I really, these are great questions. and it's a lot of fun to talk about, so let's do more. Okay, we'll be back again for part two. Good.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. If you want to support the podcast, please rate, comment, and share on your favorite podcast platform, such as iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever device you're listening on. Listener reviews and shares make a huge difference and help us grow this community and will allow me to bring more amazing guests and insights to you. I've taken the insights from these interviews, along with my 20 years of experience in the game industry and compressed it all into a book with the same title as this podcast. Think Like a Game

Designer. In it, I give step-by-step instructions on how to apply the lessons from these great designers and bring your own games to life. If you think you might be interested, you can check out the book at think like a game designer.com or wherever fine books are sold.